How To Have A Book Written About You, If You Don't Really Exist

The Goodwill bookshelves seem to have been taken over by Nicholas Sparks, the guy who wrote The Notebook. Turns out he wrote other stuff too. I have read none of it, for reasons too complicated to go into ( It’s an aversion to drips).

Today I bought The Lessons of History and Tom Sawyer. Some couples are big enough to have their last names omitted – Sonny and Cher, Barrack and Michelle, Brad and Angelina. Are “Will and Ariel” in that class?

With Tom Sawyer, Mark Twain may have tied John Steinbeck as my most purchased author, not counting Agatha Christie, who is merely a diversion from the heavy hitters (like Mark Twain and John Steinbeck). I’ll have to count someday.

Speaking of Agatha:

There are some things possible for an author to arrange that real life could not. The way Poirot solves cases being a fine example. No real human could notice and connect such small things – and be right – as he does over and over again. I just finished The Blue Train, which Dame Agatha, evidently, was not particularly fond of. I guess it could have been a little tighter, and there might be too many characters – e.g. Russians With Jewels occupy a great many words at the very beginning, and then are not even mentioned again until the very end.

But I liked a lot. There were so many plausible guilty parties that, while having my own favorite, I wasn’t sure until the end: the victim was about to divorce her lazy boy husband, who instead inherited millions upon her death; her scoundrel boyfriend was trying to steal her jewels; her maid mysteriously abandoned her, etc.

Poirot to the rescue, with those miraculous connections -- “It occurs to me – could the boy she saw be a girl?” and, mirabile dictu, he’s right.

Of course, if you aren’t capable of miracles, why invent you and write about you?