Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage

It’s fun reading brain candy. You know, those books that have no literary significance that you just enjoy the heck out of but would not tell your English Professors about (Read: Cathy’s Book). But despite how gosh darn fun they are, they’re like cotton candy on your tongue; it’s sweet and enjoyable until it dissolves completely away. And they really leave no lasting impression (unless you get a cavity—I’m sticking with the cotton candy theme…yeah, you got it). It’s the stories that have a little more meat to them, the stories that bite, that stick with you. I found a graphic novel of Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” on the shelf the other day. It threw me back in time to when I first read the story of poor Gregor Samsa, the man who wakes up one morning to find he’s been changed into a giant bug. It’s a simple enough premise, but what Kafka does with it can change the reader’s life. And what about Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” the thoughtful employee who “would prefer not to?” I mean, what do you do if your employee just refuses to work? Literally. There’s a scene in Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms that haunts me to this day. Henry has just been informed that his love Catherine has died. He goes into her room to say good-bye but realizes, “it was like saying good-by to a statue.” With nothing left for him to do he leaves and walks back to his hotel. It’s raining, and I can just see this lone figure hunched over, walking slowly through the rain. Depressing, huh? But wonderful and beautiful too. We need stories like these to sustain us, to make us feel our humanity. I would trade all the fluff I’ve ever read to keep the moments of these stories alive. I invite you to recall moments of your own, moments that create the depth in your soul.

“On errands of life, these letters speed to death. Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!”