To Be Perfectly Ernest

My son has decided to catch up on great American literature, and I have vowed to join him. Which is why his dog-eared copy of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms has been sitting patiently on my nightstand for two weeks, awaiting attention.

By last night, I had run out of excuses. I had filled in every square in the New York Times Magazine Sunday crossword, had correctly organized the numbers in the weekly sudokus, and had attained a score in a round of spider solitaire that will be virtually impossible for me to beat. I don't read other folks' blogs because if there's something out there better than my own (hypothetically, of course) I don't want to see it, and, anyway, I'm way too self absorbed to be interested in whatever anyone else has to say. It seemed only logical, then, to read a book. A good book.

Which is what I did. Or tried to do. After about seven pages of stark yet elegant prose describing wartime Italian countryside, I drifted off to sleep. And, truth be told, when insomnia interrupted me only an hour later, I opted for my paper back sudoku collection over Hemingway. Numbers can be so much less threatening than letters.

As I sit now with my son at Starbucks, he is well into For Whom the Bell Tolls, and I am still stuck on page eleven of Farewell. Not even the simplicity of Hemingway's diction can tempt me away from my more comforting habits. Yes, I have put down the number puzzles for the time being, reserving them for those long hours in the dark when I most need the reassurance of accomplishment, the sense of worth that goes along with filling in the final square. But my return to the world of letters and words is, as it often is these days, as writer rather than reader. It is life in a world of my own creation, life on my own terms.

I wonder what Hemingway liked to read, or if he liked to read at all. It's difficult to imagine him sitting in a Paris cafe, wasting time with his head buried in a book authored by someone else. Why read another guy's interpretation of things when you are perfectly capable of making your own observations and drawing your own conclusions? Why miss all there is to see when sitting in a Paris cafe?

I know what you're thinking. I am certainly no Hemingway, and my Starbucks in suburban Illinois is certainly no cafe on the left bank. I've fought some battles, but have never been away at war. I have tried to run, but I have never lived the life of a true expat (self-imposed exile in the neighborhood does not count). I can get mired in bullshit, but I shy away from bull fights. Come to think of it, I have seen relatively little (even though I think, sometimes, I have seen it all), and should, by all rights, have relatively little to say.

But when has that ever stopped me? Or anyone, for that matter. And so I will continue to read less than I should, do sudoku puzzles until my fingers ache, and blog about whatever springs to mind. It's how my world takes shape.