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December 15, 2008
My life as a really rubbish thriller
Is my life a thriller - in the really rubbish sense of the word?
I've just read a thriller - 'The Ghost' by Robert Harris, and I enjoyed it. I don't read a great deal these days - and the last thriller I read was 'The Da Vinci Code' about five years ago.
I say I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure it did me much good. I'd forgotten how insistent thrillers are that you crack on with them. This is why they are called 'page-turners'. They don't want you to pause or reflect. Hell, no! Instead, they pressure you into a mad and future need; the need for all to be explained and become clear.
For this reason, thrillers make me inhuman, particularly when I get to the last hundred pages. I don't want to be disturbed. 'Go away!!' I say - or maybe worse. I'm trapped and entirely stupid now.
When I get to the end, and crawl from my entrapment, the outcome of the story is immediately forgotten, and the book is put on the 'charity shop' pile.
Similar to my 'thriller' life, in fact, as dehumanised, I race ahead to some crucial future outcome, imagining it will somehow be defining, and important, and really significant. More fiction. Life has no beginnings or endings; just constant present and precarious adjustment.
I am not racing towards a final line. The final line - which reveals all in a startling denouement - is now.
Posted by Mr Bojangles at December 15, 2008 10:41 AM