Do What You Gotta Do And Stay

It Is Always So Simple, And So Complicating, To Accept An Apology.

[comics] Were Viewed As The Literary Equivalent Of Bubblegum Cards, Meant To Be Poked Into The Spokes Of A Young Mind Where They Would Produce A Satisfying But Entirely Bogus Rumble Of Pleasure.

[my Dad] Didn't Do Much Apart From The Traditional Winning Of Bread. He Didn't Take Me To Get My Hair Cut Or My Teeth Cleaned; He Didn't Make The Appointments. He Didn't Shop For My Clothes. He Didn't Make My Breakfast, Lunch, Or Dinner. My Mom Did All Of Those Things, And Nobody Ever Told Her When She Did Them That It Made Her A Good Mother.

But The First Lie In The Series Is The One You Make With The Greatest Trepidation And The Heaviest Heart.

All Literature, Highbrow Or Low, From The Aeneid Onward, Is Fan Fiction....through Parody And Pastiche, Allusion And Homage, Retelling And Reimagining The Stories That Were Told Before Us And That We Have Come Of Age Loving--amateurs--we Proceed, Seeking Out The Blank Places In The Map That Our Favorite Writers, In Their Greatness And Negligence, Have Left For Us, Hoping To Pass On To Our Own Readers--should We Be Lucky Enough To Find Any--some Of The Pleasure That We Ourselves Have Taken In The Stuff That We Love: To Get In On The Game. All Novels Are Sequels; Influence Is Bliss.