At different times, one is in the mood for different kinds of reading. I recently read a couple of enjoyable Louis L'Amour novels, and thought I'd continue in that direction. It was time for a little mild manliness in my literature!
Not long after I started "The Shepherd of Guadaloupe", by Zane Grey, however, I had to give it up. It seemed to be, not a Western, but some sort of demented Romance novel. I don't know anything about Zane Grey and wonder if this was typical of his books or just a quirk? I had also been under the impression that Zane Grey was a writer of the Old West, and that wasn't true, either, this book being set at the end of the First World War. Our cowboy comes home from the war injured, still debilitated, and barely recovered from some serious bouts of memory loss. Then a very rich girly girl, once his neighbor and now grown up, finds him. She used to hero-worship him when she was 12 and he was a young man, so she now jumps on him like a loving leech, swarms on him, smarms all over him! Aaagh! It was enough to make a goat puke, not to mention me in one of my rare reading forays into cowboy stories! A cowboy's only supposed to get the girl at the end of the story—that way he gets to smooch her and we don't have to watch. It's good for the cowgirl to be there, to take part in the story, but hey, hold the smooching till the end, please!
"Oouu, the poor widdle injured soljer! Don't you need some help, doncha, doncha?"
A bad guy was established in the story already, so I guess there may have been shootouts and fisticuffs later in the book, but I couldn't wade through that much mushy stuff. Anyway, it was news to me that Zane Grey was "women's reading" in the damn pure old-fashioned sense of the word. I think I'm going to go read Peter Pan next, where boys are Rude and men are Pirates! And not the perfumed kind of pirates, either!
Actually, I've never read Peter Pan, I've seen it. I guess the book could be tougher or softer than I know about. Basher Pan? Pansy Pan? Well, it would be legal and all, but it wouldn't be what I was expecting.
How To Get Mad
Overheard from a man apparently talking to his bicycle chain
"I'd like to think that I'm smarter than this, but that's the same stupid shit that everybody likes to think of themselves! Uh, let's see, now I got it--no, I don't!
Aw, shit in a bucket!"
Red-faced, he kicked the bicycle chain as hard as he could; the bicycle jumped and rattled.
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Abandon hope, all ye who enter here! (At least put on your socks and pants.)