Connections...

I've been reading Little, Big by John Crowley over the past week, but only a little bit at a time. Usually I can devour a book in about a day if I have uninterrupted time on my hands. This book is different. Tonight, I thought about what it is that makes this book different. Usually, I can't wait to get to the end of a book, not because it's bad (usually), but because I can't wait to see how it ends. How will the characters I've come to know and care about (or in some instances loath) make out in the end.

Then there are books like Little, Big where I find myself lost in every single word on the page. The language, the pacing, the timeless nature of this book is astonishing to me. If there is a writer to aspire to, John Crowley is surely at the top of my list. He's created an entire world that somehow manages to be of this world, and yet, not be a part of it.

"Little, Big" is a gift that I have to thank Haven Kimmel for. She writes a blog (as well as some of the finest novels I've had the pleasure to read) and recommends books from time to time. Another book she mentioned in her blog entitled "The Dreaded Desert Island Decisions" (read this entry here: http://havenkimmel.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/ ) is South of the Big Four, by Don Kurtz. Haven says "Simply the finest novel ever written about the Midwest" which I have to admit I wasn't so sure about. Especially when I found out it is set in the farm country of Indiana. A place that I left long ago and had no desire to ever revisit. I was wrong.

Just into the first part, I found myself quietly weeping reading it. Weeping for a familiar place in both time and geography that I'm not sure exists anymore. A place before farming became big business. An age when a man's worth was measured by the sweat and time that he put into his land. A place where a man can screw up and still in the end find redemption at the edge of a corn field during a late autumn harvest.

Over the past month, I've probably read more books than I've read in the last five years. I could easily blame it on being in Chicago and having so much to do there. But the simple truth is, I just didn't have it in me to be a reader. Coming back to Indiana re-awakened something inside of me. Call it, searching for my roots, figuring out who I am by looking back at what I used to do/be. But there seems to have been many things leading to this. Random things. People popping up that I've not heard from in years. Ideas wafting in on a breeze making me remember what my aspirations used to be. A convergence of events that make me think the universe was/is trying to tell me something. Robbie thinks it's all just coincidence, and if it were just a few things I would agree.

That leads me to the biggest question about what makes a great writer and here's what I think. A great writer isn't totally of this world. They see and hear things that most people don't. The pay attention to the details like all good writers do. But the truly great ones have a knack for feeling and seeing the undercurrent, the charge in the air, the things in the shadows that most people only catch a glimpse of from time to time - if they are lucky.

There is a connection to things and people in this world. Great writers/artists only have to pay attention to those tendrils to see what others don't. There is some randomness I'm sure, but most of the time, if you look closely enough, you'll find something that loops around something else that loops around another thing and before you know it, you've circled right back to where you started.

In future posts, I'll talk about how, after my dad was killed in a horrific car crash, what our pastor said to me finally has been revealed. (George, you are so right about "the worst accidents happen on the most beautiful of days.") Dad crashed his car on a straight stretch of road in the middle of the afternoon on a gorgeous, sunny June afternoon. The pastor said to me that there is a reason for everything, that we might not know the reason right away (if ever), but God has a reason for even the worst of tragedies. I'll just end this with saying that everything I have, everything I am, can be traced directly back to that moment in time. And I have my reason.

(this post was updated/edited 9-24-08)