Who has read a great book lately?
I would like to get a comment from any of my readers on a great book they have read lately! The reason I am writing this, is the utter dearth of books that would emotionally engage and entertain me, while teaching me profound human concepts at the same time. William Faulkner, one of America’s great authors once said in his 1950s Nobel Prize speech that only the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself alone can make good writing. “..the old verities of the human heart, the old universal truths,” he writes, without which a story is lacking. He believes, as do I, that it is a writer’s and a poet’s duty to write about great ennobling things---the spirit, the soul, compassion, love, honor, sacrifice. Included therein, there must be a willingness by the author to denounce moral decay and sophistry with its pernicious lies for political and material gain. The author must be willing to put up a fight to combat the base, the unwholesome and destructive impulses of his/her heroes and heroines and, thereby, giving the reader the courage to confront his daily temptations and travails. Only by lifting man’s spirit, by inspiring goals to strive for and ennobling the heart is an author’s purpose fulfilled. All else is pulp and not worth the paper it is printed on.
Having said this I will only add that I am sick and tired of politically correct books that tell the reader what he is allowed and not allowed to think. As the German poet Hoffmann von Fallersleben said in an incomparably beautiful poem:
“Die Gedanken sind frei, wer kann sie erraten. Sie fliegen vorbei wie naechtliche Schatten. Kein Mensch kann sie wissen, kein Jaeger erschiessen. Es bleibet dabei, die Gedanken sind frei.”
Translation: The thoughts are free, no one can guess them. They fly by like night shadows. No man can know them, no hunter can shoot them. The truth stands, our thoughts are free. (I hope that I do the poem justice by translating it thus.)
In conclusion: I would rather everyone has ten thoughts of his own, even in error, than one that has been implanted into his brain by per force of society. Think free—live free!
