About The Best Diversion

Post 1390:

In my opinion, novels still matter. They would though, wouldn’t they? Reading was one of my primary forms of entertainment growing up. More comforting than video games, though I liked video games. More involving than music, though I would eventually become a musician. Sports were great. But I had a feeling I was good and yet not good enough to wholeheartedly pursue them. Kind of a bummer to know you’ve almost got what it takes. There are worse things, of course, but it ranks pretty high on the irritation scale.

So that’s my opinion. The novel should live on, survive and even thrive. Let there be a renaissance, a rejuvenation of the literary spirit. Makes sense to me. Also, it doesn’t.

Because then again, the novel is from my time. It was invented before I was born, yes, but this had the effect of making them even more appealing. I saw grownups reading fat books and I didn’t want to be left out. Whatever was in those pages seemed like a secret they were trying to keep from me and it sort of pissed me off.

I get why the novel isn’t so intriguing these days. Well, I do and I don’t. There were no cell phones when I was a kid. No apps. The internet is never going to make sense to me the way it does to a twelve-year-old. There’s nothing wrong with people from different times seeing the world different. A cell phone is probably viewed less as the enemy to a young person than it is to me. Old people shouldn’t like new things with childish ferocity. Stubborn and intransigent clinging to old ways is how things get passed down. Good and bad.

And there’s nothing wrong with being distracted from novels, even if you accept that they are more worthy forms of recreation than others, and that’s a big assumption. Hell, I like watching videos about cars. I’ll even let some random bit of news fire me up, though being “informed” by current events has never done me one bit of good.

Novels are, in my opinion, the best diversion. They make a person smarter, more empathetic, and even calm. Unless you hate reading. In that case do something else. Drugs might do. Cheers and see you after.