Scene: int. bedroom, 3am. A light burns dimly by the bed. An empty whisky glass stands on the floor beside it. There among the grim black sheets lies a woman, The Heart of the Matter in hand, trying valiantly to read through a flood of tears: Scobie is about to kill himself.
So, yeah, last night, things got kind of rough. I'm glad it's over. I'm glad the moment passed. Because Jesus, and I'm talking to Graham Greene's Scobie's Jesus here, between him and King Ink, I've been taking a tour of the darker reaches the past few nights. Dante's Inferno is starting to seem like a frolic by comparison.
Ah. But let us turn our thoughts to the goodness that is finishing a book that tears you apart: the goodness that is the next read.
As one book closes, so another must open. If the last one's put me through the wringer, I like to be kind to myself with the next. So, what's the coming attraction?
Lawrence Durrell's The Dark Labyrinth.
Despite appearances—Durrell's got such a reputation for literary hijinks, and the title's certainly daunting enough—The Dark Labyrinth really is a rollicking tale of humanity cast in the setting of a Greek island holiday tour to an ancient series of underground tunnels. I'm not talking Dante's rollicking, I'm talking blatantly-humorous-holiday-reading rollicking.
I know you don't believe me. No one does. Everyone's scarred by The Alexandria Quartet and never goes any further. In any case, the point is that in books, as in life, after the great challenge and the mighty test of strength must, by necessity, come the period of recuperation in warm waters like Durrell's Greek isles. Or Capote's south. Or—yes—even Dante's vivid and fantastical Hades.
If only hell were more like Dante's vision, and less like Greene's, damn him.
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