More about today’s linkfest below.
Yesterday, I had occassion to drop by my Wonder Woman’s library. She was at a meeting, so I twiddled my thumbs at her desk for a while, noodling around doing random searches of the card catalog. [Telescoping the story… ] I ended up quickly reading a Louis L’Amour book–something I’d not done in many, many years. It reminded me why I read all his books, despite the fact that the plots are predictabe to the point of being hackneyed, all his characters are complete sterotypes, dialog is frequently didactic to the point of being “preachifying” on traditional American virtues, etc. So why did I read darned near everything the guy wrote, lo those many years ago?
The guy could write descriptive narrative. I’ve been many of the places he describes, and some of them I recognized on my first visit from descriptions in his books, others I knew well I knew better after reading his descriptions. That’s something.
But more than that–and the reason one of the most learned men I know once told me he read L’Amour and considered him his favorite “theologian” *heh*–the “preachifying” on traditional American virtues are a welcome anodyne to the pain of viewing the steady erosion of those virtues in contemoprary culture.
So, I may dig out those old paperbacks and skim ’em for some of that preachifying didactic dialog from time to time whenever I begin to be nauseated by contemporary culture. Because some “light reading” just shines more light than some more “substantive’ reading.
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