il maestro ignoto

“Come now dad, even a bad book has it’s merits”, I remember sputtering at 12 to which he retorted “You read voraciously and without discernment. Boy!”.

While I admit he was right, this smarted a great deal for two reasons, I resented being called “Boy!” and he knew this. I was also, I believed, on a mission to find out what makes great and mediocre authors and books, to do this, one has to be indiscriminate about what one reads - it however doesn’t imply a lack of good judgement.

6 years later, a now ex-girlfriend would shatter that innocence when she recommended I read Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

Never again..!