Sophocles vs. Bellow (never thought I'd write that phrase!)

I’m trying to read Mr Sammler’s Planet now, but I’m not sure I’ll make it. I read another Saul Bellow last year – More Die of Heartbreak – and I’m not sure I want to go there again. Maybe. Bellow is All That, of course, with the Nobel Prize, writing Literature rather than novels, I get it and appreciate it. But I’m not sure I can relate. Perhaps I’ve chosen books whose characters are too old for me.

I was thinking, on the bus this morning, that Sophocles is easier for me to read than Saul Bellow. Sophocles, no doubt, is more germane, more essential to civilization, more Basic. So, using schoolboy logic, he should be harder to read, more inscrutable, denser. But I could be very happy with no one to read about than Oedipus, Antigone and those Trojan Women. Mr. Sammler, not so much.

More Die of Heartbreak, by the way, took a while to warm up to, but got me page turnin’ by the end. Benn is a wonderful character, his nephew/narrator could be a book himself. To whom we direct our feelings is of more import than, say, to whom we direct our vote, and love affects more people that even a nuclear nightmare could. Quite humanistic, quite true.

Well, I don’t know. I’m currently trying to write a mystery – something I’ve never tried before. So perhaps I should be reading a mystery. I have a book by James Patterson – mystery enough? I don’t know that much about him, except that Goodwill is often inundated with James Patterson novels. The selection at Goodwill lately has been atrocious.