Neanderpundit

I read prodigious amounts. I read constantly. When I’m not reading, I’m sleeping. End Of Question.

Aside from my normal recreational reading, I have had the pleasure of reading unpublished works by a few minor authors, I’ve engaged more than one writer in correspondence.

Sometimes you get to read something so well written that it scares you.
Thomas Harris, for me, writes like that. His four volumes are masterworks, so brilliantly researched and written that they rivet you to the page.

I’ve been reading the work (in between other things) of a writer known (barely) to me, and I find it incredible. Pitiably, I suspect I will be one of a very few to read his work.

A complex and intricate novel is not the kind of thing people want to drop their $8 on. They want Steven King. They want neat stories where bad guys lose and good guys win and everything gets wrapped up in the end like an episode of the Brady Bunch. Most people want conflict mc nuggets. Problems with magical solutions. last minute desperate acts by highly trained personnel.

Pitiably, life is not like that. Wars are won in the long haul, not in the moment. Life never has simple solutions. And the very best books don’t have neat endings. Not because their authors are trying to make money off the sequels, either. The very best in literature leaves us with a sense that we have viewed a 350 page snapshot into a life, or several lives, and we feel that the lives of those people were happening before the book, and go on afterwards. If the author is good, really good, we want to know what happens to them. If he’s inspired, we kind of know what happens to them.

I wish I could write like that. Even if I could, though, I’d probably not make any money at it.

Frances W. Porretto has begun to post his work on the internet. Over at Eternity Road you can now go read stories by one of the best non published authors in existence. It’s a rare treat. Hie the hence, before he changes his mind.

I do NOT have a tinfoil hat, I do NOT have a collection of ‘soldier of fortune” magazines in my bedroom, I do not have delusions of the FBI tracking me down in my home.

I DO have a bugout kit. My bugout kit is a result of years of trial and error, and it gets used on a regular basis.

No, I don’t regularly have to bug out, but I do use the kits on vacations, hunting trips, etc. so they get checked and renewed, and the utilityof the individual items checked out. I know that in the event of a tornado, hurricane, any kind of “natural disaster” or even man made disasters, I’d be prepared.
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This year, I got a lot of DVD’s for Christmas, and I’ve mostly lazed around the last couple days watching them.

I have come across, what to me, are some of the most perfect moments in movies. A classic:

I look at you with your burnt out face and your big belly and your bear like paws and your shining eye, and I have to say, you’re a credit to the whole male sex. And I’m proud to have you for my friend.

Know the movie? the actors?
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