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9:35 p.m. - April 21, 2003
Thanks, Alison, for this link. Hope everyone had a happy Easter---mine was spent at home, eating, watching a little TV, and doing a lot of reading for class. I should have never let myself get behind--I must have read like 6 chapters of stuff, so that's a lot of reading. Reading that I didn't want to do in the first place, anyway... But I also did some recreational reading--I read The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter by Sharyn McCrumb, and then I followed it up with Contact by Carl Sagan. I'm still reading it. Once I got over the amusement that McCrumb's main character's name is Spencer Arrowood, and that Sagan's character is Ellie Arroway, I realized just how gorgeous both books are. First, with The Hangman's...I kept thinking that it evoked a place, with myth and old stories, sorrow and joy, just everything. Surprising that a mystery book could grasp such haunting images. Especially since the first McCrumb book I read was a farce called "Bimbos of the Death Sun"--which is a great book that kept me laughing...And here, "he Hangman's Beautiful Daughter" is just so beautifully written, not humorous per se, but it looks so deeply at human nature and fear. It also looks at how the threads of our lives are so interrelated, and you can't tear them apart. There are things that are meant to be and they are not meant to be changed, even if they bring you great sorrow and pain. I recommend it. But first, you have to read "If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O" because that's the first one in the series, anyway. Read them, and let me know what you think. Now as for "Contact"--I'm still reading this. But oh my gosh, can Sagan ever write! It's so poetic. And the best part is that this book sings with the yearning I've had as a child, the wonderment at the universe I still have. The what-ifs of "out there"--is there life? are they more advanced than we are? if they came, would we understand them, and vice versa? All those questions, and the unmistakeable beauty of the universe and the stars and the planets. Sagan very effectively whispers to my conscious and unconscious thoughts about faith and science, of humanity itself, the belief that things can be better if we try. And of course, I totally identify with Ellie. To me, this surprises me because so few male writers create female characters that I can identify with. They are not human or falliable in the way I am, but Ellie, although I know no people like her, I can identify with her desire to know and understand the world around her. Her desire to do better, her desire to know what the truth and reality truly is. See, even though I believe in God, I still sometimes wonder how we know He's there. Is he there because someone said he was? Or is the Bible the Word? Or perhaps, perhaps...we invented Him because we needed something to believe in? Is there a Heaven, or is there just earth? What's the reality? There are days when I think like this. How do we believe in something that we truly have no tangible proof for? What are we suppposed to believe in? Or even the fact that Ellie ... as a child, she took apart a radio and tried to make it work. When I read those few short paragraphs, I realized with a jolt that this was me. I still remember dismantling an old lamp to try and fix it. It worked, creating a bright glow for about 30 seconds before it blew. I must have been about ten years of age. I think Sagan did a good job of making Ellie into a human being instead of a woman...there's just such a difference. When you write your character as a human being instead of a man or a woman, it makes it so identifiable, and we whisper, "That's me..." Just to have that sort of power with words...that's just awesome.
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