A Father Is A Man Who Fails

I’d Spent My Whole Life Waiting To Awake On An Ordinary Morning In The Town That Was Destined To Be My Home, In The Arms Of The Woman I Was Destined To Love, Knowing The People And Doing The Work That Would Make Up The Changing But Essentially Invariable Landscape Of My Particular Destiny.

[comics] Were Viewed As The Literary Equivalent Of Bubblegum Cards, Meant To Be Poked Into The Spokes Of A Young Mind Where They Would Produce A Satisfying But Entirely Bogus Rumble Of Pleasure.

Misogyny Comes Naturally To A Young Man In His Late Teens; It Is A Function Of The Powerful Homosocial Impulses That Flower Along Fraternity Row, That Drove The Mod Movements Of The Middle Sixties And Late Seventies, That Lie At The Heart Of Every Rock Band Formed By Men Of That Age.

And Then The Man Reminded Max, With A Serious But Suave And Practiced Air, That Freedom Was A Debt That Could Be Repaid Only By Purchasing The Freedom Of Others.

All Literature, Highbrow Or Low, From The Aeneid Onward, Is Fan Fiction....through Parody And Pastiche, Allusion And Homage, Retelling And Reimagining The Stories That Were Told Before Us And That We Have Come Of Age Loving--amateurs--we Proceed, Seeking Out The Blank Places In The Map That Our Favorite Writers, In Their Greatness And Negligence, Have Left For Us, Hoping To Pass On To Our Own Readers--should We Be Lucky Enough To Find Any--some Of The Pleasure That We Ourselves Have Taken In The Stuff That We Love: To Get In On The Game. All Novels Are Sequels; Influence Is Bliss.