Since I’m someone who lacks practical wisdom, I often find myself seeking it from those who have it. Of course you have to be careful about who you choose your practical wisdom from. And if you lack practical wisdom how do you know you’ve chosen rigght?
Well I think you have to be guided by their work and the way something genuine in it seems to speak to you. Recently I’ve found two valuable guides, from remarkbly different people: Willie Nelson and Nora Ephron.
In %%AMAZON=159240197X The Tao of Willie%% and %%AMAZON=0307264556 I Feel Bad About My Neck%%, two wildly different sensibilities both manage to convey with wit and humor a remarkable accumulation of wisdom both specific and practica,l often just through their distinctive voices. And I don’t think they’re gender specific. Women can learn from Willie, men can learn from Nora.
There’s one piece of literary advice I’d like to pass along from Nora. She’s talking about rapture, pure rapture, the rapture of the deep and the rapture of reading. And all of a sudden she says, “finally, one day, I read the novel that is probably the most rapture-inducing book of my adult life.”
It’s %%AMAZON=0161439610 The Woman in White%% the amazing novel of paranoid Victorian visionary mystery fiction. I couldn’t agree more. Discovering Wilke Collins’ masterpiece was a landmark in my life. Once you enter its world you won’t want to escape. And you’ll never be the same.
Ron Rosenbaum, Writer 