The depressing effects of war are self-evident.
But DFW doesn't seem depressing (or depressed) ...at first. After reading him for a week, however, I'd say he is. He's all thought; unearthed, top heavy, like a big-headed Macy's parade float. Like a baby whose neck can barely hold its head up. Like a watermelon-brained Talosian on Star Trek.
I started to feel dangerously interior--
like I was alone, a mechanical being on a hollow planet.
So I hauled myself out and went shopping. I hate shopping, except at thrift stores and garage sales, which is more like sociological scouting than shopping.And, for my pains, I was rewarded.
In a glass display case at Steeple People Thrift I saw this graceful pewter bowl. I guessed it was a colonial reproduction, and sure enough, it's a Paul Revere repro by Boardman.
For a dollar.
I told the guy who got the bowl out for me that the price was too low.
He just shrugged. I went home looked it up, and it sells new for $56.
But it wasn't the good deal that restored my interior balance.
It was the reminder that colonial Americans loved pretty little things, same as anyone.
Weeks of reading about frontier guerrilla warfare had left me wondering.
So, I'm taking the DFW books back to the library and turning the computer off.
I'm getting on my bike and going to look for garage sales.
