jamiereadthis
Written on Mar 24, 2013
Points docked, really, only because of my adjacent reading of Rick Bass and Wendell Berry. In comparison it’s too pretty. It needs some muscle. It needs the fire in the belly. But, lest that keep anyone from picking it up, here’s a taste of what’s here, from the introduction no less, from the inconsequential part:
Stories do not give instruction, they do not explain how to love a companion or how to find God. They offer, instead, patterns of sound and association, of event and image. Suspended as listeners and readers in these patterns, we might reimagine our lives. It is through story that we embrace the great breadth of memory, that we can distinguish what is true, that we may glimpse, at least occasionally, how to live without despair in the midst of the horror that dogs and unhinges us.(So I read this one via Rick Bass, right? It had to be, right? Nope. Elmore Leonard. These Venn diagrams, they overlap something fierce.)