Moral Queries

I have good news that I'm not allowed to tell you until Wednesday. I have other good news that I'm not allowed to tell you until September. I've found it's much less fun having good news when you're not allowed to tell people about it. Does this make me a bad person?

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I'm writing three book reviews right now for an editor who asked for some. Two of these books I like very much, one I do not. Should I still review it or should I ask to sub in a different book (one that I would have good things to say about)?

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Read these great paragraphs:

"He made his life up as he went along. Where was his leg? South Africa, Glasnevin, under the sea. She heard enough stories to bury ten legs. War, an infection, the fairies, a train. He invented himself, and reinvented. He left a trail of Henry Smarts before he finally disappeared. A soldier, a sailor, a butler--the first one-legged butler to serve the Queen. He'd killed sixteen Zulus with the freshly severed limb.

Was he just a liar? No, I don't think so. He was a survivor; his stories kept him going. Stories were the only things the poor owned. A poor man, he gave himself a life. He filled the hole with many lives. He was the son of a Sligo peasant who'd been eaten by his neighbours; they'd started on my father before he got away. He hopped down the boreen, the life gushing out of his stump, hurling rocks back at the hungry neighbours, and kept hopping till he reached Dublin. He was a pedlar, a gambler, a hoor's bully. He sat on a ditch beside my mother and invented himself."

--from Roddy Doyle's "A Star Called Henry"

(Penguin Books, 1999)

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This show knocked my socks off. At 3:45: hello.