and self-destructing things, then there is no truth, and if no truth, there is only power, and we, of all people, know what it’s like to be on the receiving end of power.”
Verity Jackson is talking to the ancestors.
“What do poor people have if they don’t have words? Do they have tanks? No. Do they have money? No. Do they have the majority of votes? Absolutely no. If they don’t have words that can truthfully and powerfully tell their stories—in a way that can change things—they are poor indeed.
“I got angry that night, and I started talking back to him, because Dr. Pratt wasn’t just talking against Big Brother and God and most of the writers who have given me hope in life; he was also undermining Martin and Malcolm and Sojourner and Gandhi and anyone else who ever said, ‘This is wrong and things should be different.’ Words may just be play for him, but they aren’t play for people like me who depend on their stories.”
We were all silent. Judy came to the rescue.
“I like … I should say, I like stories very much.”
TEN
Having talked with Professor Abramson and Verity Jackson, I have exhausted my suspects list. It’s obvious neither of them killed Dr. Pratt or know who did. As usual, I am a man without leads.
And so I do what I often do in this situation. I decide to read. Books were an early lifeline, and I turn to them regularly with a certain desperate hopefulness. People talk about reading as an escape from reality—I tend to think of it as an escape into reality. Books aren’t an escape from trouble. There’s more trouble in novels—and most other books—than anywhere else. Books aren’t even an escape from your own particular troubles, because a good book always makes you think about your own life while it pretends to distract you from it.
It’s just that books suggest the possibility that trouble can be survived, if you know what I mean. Or at least named. Books are more real for me than the rest of my life because they light up more parts of me than the rest of my life ever has. I mean, you can be little more than a damned cartoon figure and get along quite nicely in life—maybe even become president.
Think about our last few presidents. You don’t have to be any high-octane deconstructionist to see that having a movie actor for a president tells us more about ourselves than we want to know. We’ve had a surfeit of reality and grown sickened. Give us a guy playing president anytime over the real thing.
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