The Really Important Events

The really important events of human life

are recorded not in section D of USA Today

or retold on entertainment programs about

the entertainment industry and celebrities or

maybe they are

if such observations of endless, total

self-absorption might offer something more

than the predictable “un-uh, un-uh” illustrations

and admonitions in sermons –

What is it

you are spending precious time watching and

reading, Reverend? But rather in the really,

big, thick, dense tomes of the nineteenth

century Russian novelists, the novels

and short stories

of John Updike and the short stories of Ray-

mond Carver (who died of smoking rather

than drinking which he also almost did) who

wrote observations of endless, total self-absorption

and mundane events.

And maybe we asked ourselves, What is it in those

short stories of mundanity and novels of self-absorbed

protagonists we read for Stanfield, Jellema, Prins and the

really great, gay guy who got beaten up in Hyde Park

by his partner?