Reading Master of the Delta, a novel by prize winning novelist Thomas H. Cook, which the NY Times Book Review described as “an enthralling tale,” and then a novel by CP Snow called, The Malcontents, got me thinking again about why people write books about the failed lives of inferior people and other people seem to enjoy them. Master of the Delta has interesting, intelligent, engaging characters, all of whose lives end badly.  The characters in The Malcontents do better, except for the one that dies, but only inasmuch as they continue going nowhere rather than descend.  Although possibly to a different part of nowhere than they had been trying for (making public some vague sin of some important politician–the novel is a psychological study, so it’s not important what it was).

I suppose I liked Snow’s novel because so revealing of human nature, but that’s informrature, not art.  If I want to learn about human nature, I observe others, I don’t read novels.  What I want from novels is to experience Success the only way I can: vicariously.

True, it’s enjoyable accompanying likable characters like Snow’s and Cook’s to find out what will happen to them, but such a disappointment when something bad does, or nothing does.

That’s it for now.  I’m only very slowly getting back into some kind of groove . . . I hope.

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