Let's Read

Life Goes On:
Growing up
By Alex Ness
April 28, 2024

I worked hours on a piece that ended up being deleted. I was writing about the people who cheated me, or did things in publishing that screwed me. I also talked about my health. But people get compassion exhaustion and I sounded like I am asking for sympathy but that instead becomes pity. And screw pity. I am enduring.

(Edited to say: It turns out some people have been so kind to me, it seems cheap and niggling to complain about those weasels who did whatever they did over time to gain an advantage, or money that should have gone to me. So I am making this promise that in the future, I'll stick to covering the things others might be interested in, or even not, but it won't be my darkest thoughts when I am sick and haven't been sleeping well enough to recover. Sleep brings healing. If you pray for me, please pray I sleep and shut up finally about things I can't fix, won't be made right, and don't matter anyway, with a world of wars, famine, plague and pestilence, let me focus upon the things that worry me, and should worry us all.)

Instead I'll discuss, if briefly, the works that changed my reader world. I did always read and buy books, collecting them and such, my older brother read all the time, and we shared a bedroom, so I simply was repeating an observed behavior. I learned well. Along with our posters of football heroes, signed Tony Oliva and Rod Carew posters, and one hundred billion plastic models, we had bookshelves and comic boxes.

We read comics, of all varieties. We read books of similar genres, history and such. And he read Louis L'amour and Robert E. Howard books. I read Mickey Spillane, history books about crime, war and biographies of great thinkers and some creative but unkind stinkers. I was blown away early on by Alan Dean Foster and a wide variety of other authors. And still for me, there was never enough new works to try. Later in life Robert E. Howard became a favorite author for me.  But by age 14 I came in contact with the works of JRR Tolkien. The Ralph Bakshi movie was the catalyst for that, my beloved cousin Tom Orluck took my brother and I to see it. And nothing was ever the same thereafter.

I loved these books for most of my life, except for Harold and the Purple Crayon which I discovered as a father reading to my son.  I loved The Little Prince in 3rd grade, but reading it in French in university, and as an adult, it moved me deeply. The idea found within moves the reader to seeing the universe in a way that makes every moment something that changes our worldview.

Underdog and Turok are my two all time favorite heroes. I love the innocence of Underdog, the concept of Turok, being a native American trapped in a lost valley, filled with prehistoric dangers. I adore the glory and bombast of comics from the 1960s, and they are beautifully full of action and heroics. Not all of us can be heroic, be we can aspire to be so. We can learn from our heroes, or learn from their failed attempts. Courage might not be distributed the same in every human, but it doesn't mean we can't all face our fears with courage, and give a sucker punch to the bullies of our lives.

Starting at about 9-10 I began to read the full range of books of historical events, and science fiction. I began to realize how books allow you to mentally travel, without leaving your comfy leather chair and pet companion. I read Alan Dean Foster because at some point they looked fascinating, offered characters I could identify myself with, and were consistently good. They had reoccurring traits, of being quickly paced, filled with interesting ideas, different worlds, and regardless of where I was taken, what happened, the danger I faced, in the end these books were fun.

The Lord of the Rings introduced me to Fantasy.  I had a clue about it, but never ever dug deeply to find more in the genre.  LOTR and Tolkien was a way to enter, through clarity, vivid descriptions and a world built upon histories, and events that happened prior to moments, that is, it felt real because the depths could be delved, and the characters were given personality. I liked if not loved it, but it led me to read Robert E. Howard, my favorite author, and buttloads of other fantasy authors. In the present I found Dennis McKiernan, Elizabeth Moon and Ursula K. Le Guin to be similar in aim and kind of stories, but without Tolkien, I might never have been a reader of such stories.

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