So I have a bit of a confession. I am April. April=books. Well here's the kicker, I ain't finished a goddamn book in six months. I have some sort of syndrome that only allows me to get 100-200 pages in, and then thud, the thing falls from my hands and my mind like... something else I can't remember. This is not a new development. Sure it's stepped up its power over me in the last six months, but like cancer, there were early warning signs. It all started a few years ago. I'd be on a huge reading binge, and then misplace the book. This happened a lot when I was still living at home, toting around two or three titles in a giant bag because I was nerdy like that. Where they ended up is beyond me: UMSL classrooms, under my car seats, J & D's place, Ryan's house, Ryan's Columbia apartment, the library, various coffee stations across STL, I was out and about a lot of the time. But it was fine, I could replace one with another and manage to plow through that one until I laid eyes on my old friend. Then came comics. I read a lot of comics before I worked at Star Clipper, but upon being hired there I felt the need to read EVERYTHING in order to be an informed employee. You may not know this, but comics folk are pretentious bitches and if you don't know jack they will never trust you ever ever again. I could finish all of those because, pictures AND words make me insanely happy; I almost always finish graphic novels in one sitting, even if they're written by Alex Robinson. But there's something that that kind of reading does to your brain (ie MY brain). I dunno if it's laziness or some form of pen and ink ADD or what; all I know is that my former co-worker calls normal books 'prose novels' as a way of equalizing the medium, and I'm thinking of adapting the phrase as a device for making myself feeling less lame. That's pretty lame. But even with Batman and Clyde Fans swimming in my head, I still read, just not as much as before. I took to reading even more short story collections, because it was easier to do it piecemeal. Easier to finish a little something, rather than leave a big something open ended. But now...
I thought the whole unfettered access to the (free!) library reserve system might be my panacea, but no! I order them, check them out, read a solid hundred in one go, and then let them mock me with their closed covers until I return them. Even if I'm really, really, really loving them (Wickett's Remedy). I know my skills of concentration are marginal, but books have always been the one place I could dig in and set up camp, so I cannot believe that this syndrome is all my doing. In fact I know it's not. Of the exceptionally wonderful books I've managed to finish in the last few years, I can only think of one (one!) that had a satisfying ending that did not a) bore me to tears or b) make me throw the blessed book across the room while screaming Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! And this is what really scares me. Because, see, I have these characters and I have these words and I have this mad overwhelming desire to start to throw them all together on paper. But every time I scrawl shit across a yellow legal pad lately, an obnoxious little fairy eats away at my fingers until I can no longer hold the pen for the pain of the fear of a wretched ending. Because even writers who I know are heads and shoulders above me never pay attention to her and allow their fingers to continue to write until they're down to the bone and all their fancy research and words are turned stale with the blood. Overwrought metaphor? Try this one on--heads so far up their own asses they fail to think of the sorts of readers who pine after books; who form entire relationships with the cover, the spine, and the meat inside. The kind of readers who trust that every time they crack open a new title the mysteries of the world will come spewing forth. I know it's a lot to expect. I believe in easy love in the real world, but I guess my expectations for fiction are just a liittle more high maintenance. I want the book to be the white knight that saves me from this dullard world, and when that knight turns out to have a 300 hundred page beer gut and unachieved ambitions of his own then I tend to to walk the other way.
I am seeking a remedy. I'm digging throught he annals of my youth. Children's books with fewer pages, large type, and realized goals. Books I've read. Books that inspired me to continue reading. And books I always should have read but was too occupied reading other ones. Little books with big beating hearts that will hopefully rebuild my trust in fiction so that I can continue on to their more complex big brothers. And then maybe I can once again go all the way
