Literature Ministry

This has nothing to do with food.  If you were expecting food writing, and a recipe, I am afraid you will be disappointed and ought to stop reading right now.

The following conversation, while not actually made up (mostly), was edited.  The dialogue at the time was stilted and improbable, possibly even more so that what I write here.  If my life were a movie, the script would be sent back for serious revisions to the self-indulgent dialogue.  Most of my friends are just as bad.  Some of them are worse. 

The Tall Guy and I are walking down one of the residential streets in South Anchorage near the Bluff.  I'm in my gigantic black parka.  The Tall Guy is pacing along crane-like beside me looking meditative*. 

"We look like cultists."

The Tall Guy's look of meditative inquiry became more inquiring.   

"We could knock on doors.  'Excuse me, ma'am, have you heard the good news about George MacDonald?'"**

"Have you let the Lord Peter Wimsey into your life?***"

"Good one, if I had one of my omnibus editions with me it would look like a Bible.  'Can I interest you in twentieth century literary modernism?  If you have any questions, we'd be glad to come back and talk with you about W.H. Auden.'"

We've been friends for a long time. 

*The Tall Guy's default expression seems to be meditative inquiry.  My default expression looks a lot like a scowl.  Some people might suspect that this was indicative of our characters.

**A nineteenth century Scottish fantasist.  I'm outrageously fond of some of his stories, and in the same breath driven to argue myself blue in the face with them.  MacDonald being dead, I tend to direct my arguments at The Tall Guy, who bears patiently with my flights of literary criticism.  If The Tall Guy and I were going to go around handing out literature that we found important, we would get in fights on people's doorsteps about which MacDonald we ought to be handing people. 

***  If you read fiction, and suffer from a touch of Anglophilia, you ought to do so.  I would suggest starting with Strong Poison or Murder Must Advertise.