Go Ahead

EVERY YEAR MORE THAN forty thousand books are published in the united states alone, and the number is growing. Nowadays many of them never make it to paper and cardboard, cyber books are the way (wave?) of the future. but still, anyone trying to maintain a current paper library is fighting a hopeless, sisyphysian battle.

Everyone should write a book. Its the best way to leave behind a personal legacy; pull up the rocks, and turn cemetaries into parks! Stop having so damned many kids! Write a book, and leave something of yourself behind for posterity.

I want mine to be a combination autobiography comtemporary history social commentary, and its nearly time to begin work on it, as i approach  the tender age of sixty. It always amuses me when some twenty five year old celebrity hot shot announces an intention to write an autobiography; autobiography of what?

My role model is and will be davy crockett's autobiography "A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee", a splended two hundred page succinct masterpiece, a best seller in its time, in print ever since, and still popular. He actually leavs out a lot of pertinent material, obviously trying to hurry it along. And of course, he left out, by teh irrevocable laws of nature, the most famous act of his life; his death at the Alamo...

Davy, who preferred being called "David", could read and write only on a sixth grade level, so he spoke his book, and a friend of his wrote it down, (which is how most people do it today), and hardly a thing was changed in any way, as per david's wishes.

I recommend everybody read it. The vernacular is classic american hillbilly, homespun frontier humor and fold wisdom, a model for mark twain, and the "Beverly Hillbillies".  Words like "reckon", "mighty", "heap", and "mite" illuminate his style, and he genuinely spoke like that, while simultaneously speaking and writing fluently, and intelligently, like tom sawyer, or jed clampitt. Instead of saying "I knew it would happen", crockett would say "I know'd it would happen".

Formally educated stuffed shirts made fun of him mercilessly during his lifetime, but davy had the last laugh, laughing all the way to the bank, and beyond, laughing all the way into the hearts of america, during his lifetime and beyond. Never was there a person of such wit, charm, intelligence, and wisdom packaged in a brain with so little formal education.

Davy Crockett and his life are, to my thinking, the very best of america; making do with what one has, and doing it splendidly. so, when you put a few more years under your belt, and start writing your own book, you'd be mighty right advised, to just be yourself, like davy, and, in his immortal words, to "first be sure you are right, then go ahead."