I did finish 'Ringolevio' with time to spare and enjoyed it all the way to the bitter end and it was a little bitter at the end. You can't finish the book without picturing him dead on the subway, stewing in his own ego and madness (and plenty of heroin). But I guess I should be summing up now why such a weird book makes it into my top ten reads of all time (so far). And yet I'm not feeling terribly lucid this evening.
I think it may come down to a couple of things. It's a brutally honest book. In my last post, I commented on Grogan's ego and how that may detract a little from his message about pure, anonymous actions. And yet in the last ten pages or so, he bemoans himself his 'monster ego' and alludes to how it damaged his credibility amongst his friends. It's a book with a 'character' compelled to, and unafraid to, challenge norms and accepted truths. And it's kind of a book about learning. Kenny Wisdom frantically explores all sorts of different lives and learns all sorts of different skills just because that's where his passion and his life takes him. I like that madness of that pursuit of knowledge and the effect it has on plot structure. To use a cliche, it is like a rollercoaster.
So it seems logical for February to move onto a similar book, one also produced by the Canongate Rebel Inc imprint, 'Stone Junction' by Jim Dodge. And of course Canongate published both these titles because they were exploring similar seams. It's no surprise then that already in 'Stone Junction' I can see similarities with the things I love about 'Ringolevio'. I've always thought that 'Stone Junction' was a novel about learning and teaching, for reasons I'll explore as I get further into the book. The plot structure is similar, and the characters not unlike those in 'Ringolevio.'
Next post, when I'm feeling less tired, I'll try to figure out if liking these two books makes me a hippy or not.
