Horse racing isn't something that interests me very much, if at all. I don't have a moral stand against it, PETA-style; it just isn't something that normally interests me. I don't hate it, but I don't love it either. But because of the popularity of the movie Seabiscuit, and on the basis of my wife's solid recommendation, I read Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit, and I found it time well spent. The book probably means even more if you have some specialist interest in or knowledge of the word of thoroughbred horse racing, but she managed to write a book that I found pleasant, interesting and worthwhile even though I knew nothing about that world (to cite just one example of my ignorance, if someone said the word "Manowar" to me, I'd think of Lord Nelson, not race horses).
So I marked her down as an author I'd read again - if she could write a deft book and make me feel as though I was interested in something that I wasn't actually interested in, she could look forward to getting more royalties from me in the future (and I'm sure with the royalties she'll get from me, she'll be able to afford to add a new wing to her toothpick model of Monticello - assuming she has one).
I also confess that I feel a human compassion for her as a person. I don't have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, but I went through an awful lot of chemotherapy, and I'd say that I probably have at least some idea of what CFS is like. Mine went away, fortunately, when my cancer treatments eventually proved successful (thus far, anyway). Hers is still around, and I can just imagine all the people out there telling her "Oh, CFS is all in your mind; you're just lazy; get off your ass and do something!" My answer to them is "She IS doing something; she's writing interesting and reasonably successful books."
And I wish her continued success too, though not at the cost of continuing to suffer from CFS.
I think my favorite example of her writing was in Seabiscuit, when she described how, in period photographs, a certain trainer's head seemed to dissolve into the sky behind him, as though his head ended at the eyebrows. I don't know why that stuck with me, but it did, and since I read that, I've looked at old family photographs with an eye for that kind of thing and actually found an example of my grandfather's head fading into the background.
Purists probably sniff at that and say "commenting on faded period photographs isn't real literature, or real journalism, or real history, or real criticism, or..." Maybe not. But I liked it, so to hell with the purists.
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