What Dreams May Come...

Current Reading: The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein

Inspirational Quote: "What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers." -- Logan Pearsall Smith

Some recent passages:

J.D. Salinger. I never read Catcher in the Rye. About the time I was Holden Caulfield's age, I was reading the Hobbit and Watership Down, the Chronicles of Prydain and the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Regardless. His words gave form to the teen angst and disaffectedness of generations.

Kage Baker. Another whose work I have not read, but whose passing has affected many and whose work inspired many others. The SFWA's notice of her death is here.

Woody Allen once said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying." I agree wholeheartedly, but realize that death is one of the things which defines human existence, and is one of the realities which inspire us to art. Art is, for many of us, a way to face death, to think about it and explore the ramifications of it and try to figure it out while we still have the opportunity without the experience. Occasionally an artist will achieve immortality by finding something new to say or finding something old to say in a new way that resonates with people outside of his own time. Then their words outlive them and can reach across time, across the great divide of death, to speak to those who come after.

As legacies go, it's a good one.