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445 pages, Paperback
First published September 15, 2020
“Keeping people stupid is a good way of controlling them, but it’s a tough trick to pull off.”
“I was left behind soon enough, and dropped out of the race. I couldn’t see no point to it in the first place. Nobody in Mythen Rood knowed these things, and we did well enough.”
There ought to be a rule in the telling of stories, my husband complained to me once, after I had brought him some dismay with a sad one. You ought to say before you start whether things will be brought in the end to a good or a bad case. That way them that are listening can gird themselves up somewhat, and be ready when the ending comes.
I told him I was sorry for the hurt to his heart and promised to give him fair warning next time. But I thought more thereafter, and in the end I came to this thinking on the subject. There can’t be any rules in the telling of stories. They’ve got to go where they go, which is not always where you would want them to. And as to the happiness or the sadness of it, that depends on where you’re standing. A happiness for one is sometimes a sadness to another. Or it might only be a happiness when you squint one eye. Or you might not know, even after it’s all done, whether it came out well or badly.
The future rises out of the past like a fountain, and cannot be held back.