Marks

 


I was introduced to The Winter of our Discontent when I was just out of college, where I had studied literature a bit but had never really enjoyed it. It was one of a handful of books—Hell's Angels and The Illustrated Man among them—that opened me up to reading and imparted me with certain images I still love and will never ever shake.

The astronauts drifting endlessly away from each other in space, the boozy journalist beset upon by bloodthirsty hooligans, the semi-suicidal man walking into the ocean and back out again, a razor blade in his pocket.

I only mention them now because I have started re-reading The Winter of our Discontent and it is stirring up all those old fondnesses.

So I am remembering those old books and the girl who lent them to me. And I am thinking it's a strange thing, the way different people leave their marks on you.