I called this an anti-novel. It’s a semi-autobiographical rant that I wrote twenty-two years ago (where does the time go). A curmudgeonly old fart (me) is sitting in his study writing, having a mid-life crisis and seriously looking at the state of his life and the world around him. It’s a dark insight into a state of mind and the ridiculous mess we have made of things. I wrote it as a stream of consciousness. The ideas flowed. I summoned up the spirit of Kerouac and Henry Miller (if not the skill). It’s not like anything else. I enjoyed writing it and, here, twenty-two years later, I’m enjoying visiting with my old self.
It’s available on Amazon if you want to visit with my younger self. I was an angry man. Believe it or not – I am a happy optimist!
Extract from 53 and imploding
How can you be happy when a moronic footballer’s salary is hundreds of thousands a week? Stupid, selfish, greedy Rock Stars, actors and actresses earn millions while elsewhere babies lie bloated for want of a bowl of rice? A millionaire buys a trip on a spaceship while a whole nation festers in their own excrement?
How can you be happy when you’re sitting there gloating, smug, arrogant, superior and pampered, thinking that your wealth, power, beliefs, abilities, intelligence, make you superior?
Don’t you realise that you’re just a rich, wealthy, arrogant, empty fool whose whole life is built on greed and is utterly, destructively hollow? You are burning your seconds. You are no better or worse than the green slime on my pond, except the green slime performs a worthwhile function. It produces oxygen. You selfishly exist to make your vain self feel important. Are you cultured? – Knowledgeable and superior?
Pah!
I sit on the bench and you all rush to the shops without thinking about the state of affairs around you.
How can you be happy living in this pointless little existence?
How can you be happy putting you £2 sop into Oxfam when government policy necessitates the starving of millions of third world children for the good of our economy? Don’t you realise that the G7 could eradicate poverty and inequality if they really wanted? But then that might mean you can only afford three tellies and one car, mightn’t it? You might not want that!
53 and imploding eBook : goodwin, opher: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store