"Suzette Haden Elgin - Peacetalk 101" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

PEACETALK 101

by Suzette Haden Elgin




Copyright ┬й 2000 Suzette Haden Elgin
All rights reserved




This book is for Ben.


Ben Elgin
1966-1995




PREFACE


This is the story of a man, and what happenedto him, and what he did about it.
His name was Henry, and he had a hard row tohoe. His first thought when he woke
up every morning was "Herewe go again -- and I can't face it!" But of courseit didn't
matter how many mornings he started out like that, hehad to face it anyway. That's
the way things are.
Henry had a wife and a child, and neither oneof them was what he had expected; he
was pretty sure he wasn'twhat they had expected either. He had a dog that
wouldn'tcome when he called it, and a car that only started about halfthe time. He
had friends who didn't show him the respect he deserved,and an elderly mother who
was getting vague and weepy and didn'trecognize him when he went to see her, and a
nosy father-in-lawwho lived much too close by. He had a greedy Congressman who
wasno more use than the dog. He lived in a rented house that washot in the summer
and cold in the winter and always felt likeit was closing in on him. He had a job that
he hated but was afraidto leave, because it was a pretty good job, and good jobs
aren'teasy to find. He had a bad back and he caught bad colds, and heweighed
twenty pounds too many. He was an ordinary man, with anordinary man's problems.
That didn't please him; he had thoughthe'd do a lot better than that. He believed in
God, but he didn't trust God; it seemed to Henry that God was unreliable
andabsentminded. And of course there was the crazy weather; he didn'tknow what
to make of it.
However, Henry felt as though he might havebeen able to put up with all those things
if that had been theend of it. What he couldn't bear, somehow -- what struck him
asbeing the last straw -- was that he had no peace , and asfar as he could tell, neither
did anybody else.
Everywhere he went it was the same. Everybodybickering and badmouthing and