So Bummed! (Not Surf Related)

I have two degrees in English. That means I have permission to (but choose not to) brag about all of the letters I can attach to my name.

B.A.

M.A.

(I have another degree as well, but that one has been almost completely worthless—save one friendship that was worth the money and the effort spent in getting those two letters—so I will not even type those letters onto this screen.)

I say all this to explain why I am so bummed. I love great fiction. Good fiction is satisfactory. Great fiction is orgasmic. It's life-changing. It makes you smarter than you were when you first looked at the cover of that book and decided you must take it home. Although I am not religious, I believe a great author is doing God's work.

With that said, I learned yesterday that my favorite modern author has died. Granted, none of us will live forever. It saddens me, though, to know that I have nothing left to look forward to from this man. In my mind, he could do no wrong—even though he wrote some books that I either couldn't read at all or painfully plodded through. Either way, his writing made me better. I was better for having had the stamina to read his work. I was better for being able to follow pages upon pages of words with little to no punctuation. I was better because I got it. I could never explain his work, but I always understood what he was saying. And there were times when his books stayed with me for days. I'd finish a novel and think, "How did he do that?"

There will never be another like him. Ever.



From NPR:

Nobel Prize-Winning Author Jose Saramago Dies

Jose Saramago won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. He was the first author writing in Portuguese to be honored in almost 100 years of Nobels. His work is noted for mixing historical events with fantasy to tell the stories of characters struggling against authority. Saramago did not start writing fiction until late in life, yet he produced more than a dozen novels. Saramago died at his home on the Canary Island of Lanzarote after a long illness. He was 87.