Sept. 11, 2002 - 15:39 PDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Said That

Every once in a while I stumble across a book that totally enthralls me by the author's use of our language and who also makes me think about things in new ways.

"Crossing To Safety," by Wallace Stegner is one of those books. I should have known, because I read his, "Angle Of Repose," a year or two ago. He makes a quote, attributed to Henry Adams (who might well be real) "Chaos is the law of nature; order is the dream of man," which strikes home to me. Maybe it is because of the time in which we live, but I had the urge to jump up and shout, "You got it there !" That little sentence is so vulgar but it gives an idea of how it strikes me.

He mentions something about us, "Every frog of us was lustful for a lily pad." Diaries and journals make one heck of a big lily pad for me. At least I feel at home and secure on that pad floating on a sea of ideas. He also says something which fits my case too. "We have been invited into their lives, from which we will never be evicted, or evict ourselves." Which tells it like it is, I have been invited into the World Of Journals and Diaries kept by of good, warm, kind and thinking folk and don't intend to leave or do any harm to cause me to be evicted.

He talks about a period of history in New England and the women of that time who were spinsters or widows or whose husbands were at sea, fighting a war or for some reason were absent from New England. He wrote, "The clear lesson of New England's history is that when there are not enough suitable men around to run the world, women are perfectly capable of doing so."

Of course he was writing about the educated women who had influence and often wealth. But it seems to me that although we have many men of genius, expertise and experience they have not succeeded in making the world much better or safer, just more shaky and dangerous. In so many ways I think that women are much more realistic about things and handle raising kids, working a job and keeping their mate happy that running the country would not be too much more to handle. I have seen Heather handle five kids, work a job and still take care of other things. It wouldn't have suprised me to hear her say one evening, "Oh, by the way, I am the new mayor in town." I guess the question of how she managed to do that would not have occurred to me.

I ran into a new word in his story, "Manque," with a little mark above the 'e', which in the dictionary shows as being pronounced mankay and was used in the sense of a man who had written some poetry but hadn't produced a single book of verse." The dictionary mentions a poet, but why not those of us who write on line diaries and journals ? Aren't we, "writers manque?"

Every page of Mr. Stegner's brings some new idea to my mind or some beautiful use of our language. I will read his book through to its end, happily and every so often will say to myself, I wish I'd Said That . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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