Some
people are afraid of the world, afraid of being out in it.
Some
people prefer to theorise from a comfortable spot, all they need is
the right materials; materials that supply the information they want
or didn't know they wanted, information they can collect facts or
phrases from. Their mind more a river than a place, moving and
changing all the time, sifting and sorting. These people won't alter,
not for anyone or anything. They like the old cotton-wool life: safe,
familiar, contained.
These
people, though, can still be shocked by the words they read:
disturbed, repulsed, revolted, and wish an article hadn't been
recommended them and they hadn't subsequently decided: yes, they
would read.
Oh
it was dark, too dark for them, this boy's, this man's perspective.
This mind from 1975 was too depraved. Such darkness should have
stayed private, been kept from public gaze.
Picture credit: The Sinner, 1904, John Collier (source: WikiArt).
Some
thoughts, some phrase plagiarisms in reading First Love,
Last Rites by Ian McEwan.
Written October 2022.
