Sunday, May 17, 2009

Aleksandar Hermon

Was reading the New York Times today and ran across an article about the writer, Aleksandar Hermon. The full article is HERE. I was really intrigued and went online to learn he was giving a reading in Chicago this afternoon. After planting a few tomato plants I headed down to the Book Cellar and heard Aldksandar Hermon read from his just released (today) book, Love and Obstacles.

I was blown away...

One of the many moving passages was from The Noble Truths of Suffering, short story, one in which the narrator is invited to meet a Pulitzer Prize winning author. Now I ask you, what creative person has not pondered the following...

"When he was young, like me, he said he used to think that all the great writers knew something he didn't. He thought that if he read their books they would teach him something, make him better; he thought he would acquire what they had: the wisdom, the truth, the wholeness, the real shit. He was burning to write, he wanted to break through to that fancy knowledge, he was hungry for it. But now he knew that that hunger was vainglorious; now he knew that writers knew nothing, really; most of them were just faking it. He knew nothing. There is nothing to know, nothing on the other side. There was no walker, no path, just walking. This was it, whoever you were, wherever you were, whatever it was, and you had to make peace with that fact....
"This?" I asked. "What is 'this'?"
"This. Everything."

Another reading in Chicago is tomorrow, Monday, May 18, 12:30 PM, Borders on State Street (150 N. State St.)

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