Photo: from the book's Goodreads page
Smooth as silk novel with such believable characters and life-lessons that it seems like a life parable, which I guess it is. Spot-on writing has no genre to fall back on, so no tropes, no easy scenes or action to pass the pages. Just life, and daily living, making the mundane magical and the ordinary extraordinary. This has always been one of my favorite books, though I haven't read it in over 20 years, and it's only gotten better with age. One of the unique things about it is that there is no villian, exactly, except maybe fate and life itself. A writing teacher will tell you that Sarah is the antagonist, and I suppose on paper she is, but really the biggest obstacle for Macon Leary is Macon himself, which is the whole breathy idea of the book: We are our own worst enemies, as is our inability to adapt and move on. Simultaneously impossible and necessary, moving on is the only way to live, even if it makes living more difficult. Would Macon have done so if Sarah hadn't left him to begin with? No. Would it even be necessary but for what happened to their son? Of course not. But you have to ride the wave, or (as the extended metaphor shows near the end) you have to just ride the plane's turbulence and strap yourself in, because what else can you do? You can't prepare to much or worry to much, or live your life not living your life. If you do, you may turn into a man so afraid of the world that he writes travel books about not experiencing anything, about not leaving your hotel room, or trying new restaurants, or doing anything but what you've got to do for business in that city and then going back home. But life isn't like that, and your idea of what home is may change as well. The entire conceit of The Accidental Tourist is one of the best extended metaphors in all of fiction, and all the novel and writing have to do is just follow the wave it makes.
Anyway, you owe it to yourself to read this one. The movie is good, too, but don't let it stop you from reading this. This is a rare book that you can read 20 years apart and still get as much, if not more, out of it now than you did then. Like a classic movie, this book can be experienced over and over again, and savored like a favorite line or a classic meal. I couldn't effusively praise it enough.
Photo: Norman Rockwell's "Merry Christmas, Grandma!" at addictinginfo.org (Not my kinda site, but it had a good photo of this painting). Is Christmas ever this old-fashioned and homey?
"So
Many Reasons to Celebrate the Season," my most recently-purchased
story, about how a best-selling author deals with a collapsing marriage
on Christmas Eve, was published by On the Premises (Link: www.onthepremises.com)
on March 10th, in Issue #19. Use the link above, then click on
"Latest Issue (March 2013)" and then click on "So Many Reasons to
Celebrate the Season," four stories down on the page. Check out other
good stories in that publication as well. It's all free. When you're
done, please go to this blog entry and leave a comment. Let me know
what you think. Thanks!
For those who care about such things, this story is especially important to me because it is the first non-genre piece I've sold. This means that it's not science fiction, or horror, or mystery, or speculative fiction, or a specific genre like that. It's a more everyday story, very contemporary, very today. And it's about relationships, about how they end, and about not lying to yourself about them. It's a tough lesson to learn that your life is crappy, and that you're full of crap as well, but that's what happens here. But I digress: this is especially rewarding because there aren't any tropes of a genre that the writer can fall back on. For example, in a horror story, you expect some blood, some terror, some fear. In a mystery, you expect a puzzle, a whodunit. In both cases, the writing itself doesn't have to be all that good, in a way, as long as the blood and terror keep coming, or as long as the reader is hooked so much on the whodunit that he doesn't notice how terrible the writing is.
In a non-genre story, it isn't that easy. There are no bloodletting scenes, no whodunit, no YA romance, nothing that a genre writer can fall back on when nothing else is working. It's just a real-life guy and his real-life problems. Characterization is more important here, and so is the conflict and the reality. So when something like this sells, the writer feels a little more confident because this type of writing can be much harder to create than a genre piece.
So if you've taken the time to read it, thank you; if you haven't, please do. And please comment below. Let me know what you think, good or bad. Let's have a discussion about it. As long as your comments are politely stated (and a specific example from the story would help), I promise to publish them. Please, and thank you.
As usual, thanks for reading my stuff. I appreciate and respect the time you sacrifice to do so.
