I just finished a novel by Michael Chabon called “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.” This guy can write. To me it doesn’t matter much what the subject of a work is about. I want to read a good writer.
Maybe it’s because I have read science and theology too much. Science, for example, can be detailed and boring and often looses itself in breaking down whatever it is talking about. I remember pouring over a long chapter on digestion in my physiology book. The author broke down the process in exquisite detail from ingestion to digestion and the storing of energy released in this process to maintain the living organism. Of course, energy comes from the sun and through photosynthesis energy is stashed in the carrot I am eating. When I digest the carrot, my body stores that energy to maintain my existence. The author had me riveted by his analysis of the process of digestion. I spent the better party of a day working to understand that chapter. I will never forget the gist of the last line of that chapter. It went something like this: Our highest flights of fancy and our deepest thoughts are nothing more than a little bit of the sun. Nothing more? What happened to the carrot?
Although a poet may say that, a scientist should know better. This is a reduction ad absurdum similar to describing your Mercedes-Benz as nothing more than plastic and metal combined according to plan in a workshop.
Back to Chabon and his writing. Please give yourself a treat. Buy the book and take your sweet time reading it. You’ll find words you’ve never seen before and scenes you never dreamed before. Read Chabon and he’ll draw you into an adventure you’ll be glad you took.