Things to see, people to do Smut

My father was cut from a similar cloth. My father and I were not close, but we shared a passion for books. The day he was buried, I visited his tiny apartment one last time. All of his possessions could fit into three plastic trash bags, a metaphor for his monastic lifestyle. When I entered his apartment, I noticed that he had no food in the refrigerator, no artwork, a tape player that worked only when it felt like it, and no television. But there were books all over the place. There were books about holy men and cowboys and the Romans and the Hound of the Baskervilles. There were lots of books about the day somebody died: Abraham Lincoln, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Wild Bill Hickok, Jesus Christ. As his life wound down, he had shed all the trifles one does not need in this world. There was nothing on television that could possibly mean anything to him. There was nothing he could hang on the walls that would make any difference now. But his books still mattered to him, just as they had mattered when he was young and full of hope, before alcohol got its hooks into him. His books still held out the hope of doing a far, far better thing than he had ever done, of going to a far, far better rest than any he had ever known. His books allowed him to cling to dreams that would never materialize. Books had not enabled him to succeed. But they had mitigated the pain of failure. Reading is the way mankind delays the inevitable. Reading is the way we shake our fist at the sky. As long as we have these epic, improbable reading projects arrayed before us, we cannot breathe our last: Tell the Angel of Death to come back later; I haven't quite finished Villette. This is the greatest gift that books give to mankind. Every life, even the best ones, ends in sadness. People we adore pass on; voices we love to hear are stilled forever. Books hold out hope that things may end otherwise. Jane will marry Rochester. Eliza will foil Simon. Valjean will outlast Javert. Pip will wed Estella. The wicked will be overthrown, and the righteous shall prosper. As long as there are beautiful books waiting for us out there, there is still a chance that we can turn the ship around and find a safe harbor. There is still hope, in the words of Faulkner, that we shall not only survive; we shall prevail. There is still hope that we shall all live happily ever after.