Consolation

Consolation

The happy ending still beckons, and it is in hope of grasping it that we go on. The poet Wisława Szymborska caught the writer’s dilemma of choosing between hard realities and the longing for the happy ending. She called it “consolation.”

Darwin.
They say he read novels to relax,
but only certain kinds:
nothing that ended unhappily.
If he happened on something like that,
enraged, he flung the book into the fire.

True or not,
I’m ready to believe it.
http://www.vulture.com/2017/11/annie-proulx-national-book-award-speech.html

Comments

  1. Timothy StreetDecember 1, 2017 at 8:18 AM

    Marvelous speech - but there is something to do other than hope and keep trying. Thomas Jefferson told us two centuries ago - education.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Drew McCarthyDecember 1, 2017 at 8:28 AM

    Book larning don't hurt none, but there might be a little more to it than that...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Timothy StreetDecember 1, 2017 at 8:38 AM

    You speak the very soothe Drew McCarthy - the education system increasingly has failed, and there is little recognition of the problem. There are those who believe Facebook will save us, of course. : /

    ReplyDelete
  4. Drew McCarthyDecember 1, 2017 at 8:47 AM

    Timothy Street <<>>

    ReplyDelete

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