The Big Book of Everything

So a co-worker of the CSO's wrote this.

It's his autobiography.

Yup, the crazy bastard wrote his autobiography and had it published by a vanity press. What gets me is that Amazon has 23 used copies for sale.

Having read it, I have to say that the guy could have used an editor. But regular readers of this blog know I could use one too. Can't really fault him there.

I can't say he tells his story in the pretty prose that I think I would use. That he thinks "How I stopped worrying and learned to love the sheep" is a subtle and clever reference to Dr. Strangelove is symptomatic of the sophomoric* tone he uses to tell his truths.

But I have to give him props for telling such truths at all.

When I was a kid, I imagined that in heaven there was a "big book of everything" in which one could look up how everything in the world worked, what had happened in every situation and the literal truth of everyone's life, both objectively and how they saw it.

To some degree, I used this image to keep myself in line. I oscillated between fascination with the ideas of reading the lives of others and worry that my own dramas would make good reading.

I still feel like I carry a bunch of ticking bombs within and that the world would to some degree fall to pieces if various people in my life found out how slutty, scared, incompetent, unpopular, selfish and stupid I can be. I intellectually understand that everyone has weaknesses, but I feel my own weaknesses.

It's not a great book, this thing the CSO's friend wrote. It's sophomoric and downright narcissistic. But I've been sophomoric and downright narcissistic a lot of times without ever getting a book out of it.

And without ever telling the truth.

CC

*But after all, what are twentysomethings but life's sophomores, the "wise fools" who are so freaking glad to not be teenagers anymore that they fool themselves much of the time into thinking that they have a clue what's going on. I maintain that illusion for whole hours at a time.