Overcoming failure in life July 13, 1985
Dear Mary Kay
The home life will grow even more as the classroom scenes shrink.
After a while, the novel will become the walls that enclose Patty and complete
her isolation.
Her struggle to escape may well be shown by her growing interest
in going to Israel, and has suggested in this chapter, she is the girl staring
into the sky and wishing she was over the rainbow. Maybe she already is, but
just doesn’t know it.
This is a novel I’m writing for my daughter but may come too
close to reflect her real life, Patty doing things my daughter might have done,
feeling the same embarrassments.
I have assured her that the novel was not written with that
intention, but in some ways, this is a lie It certainly symbolized the absolute
fruitlessness of her future, a life so much like her mothers as to ultimately
have to end up the same way, full of the same painful mistakes and same tragic
consequences.
Each chapter is an attempt to investigate the possibilities and
failures of life, and to show, somehow, the process of overcoming those
failures, reaching a new plain of existence and understanding with each, a new
level of conflict that is key to another level beyond that.
Yet, even when the novel is complete it will have flaws inherent
in this kind of writing, it will hang together badly with a strong central
theme needed to keep a reader going from one chapter to the next. It’s hardly a
page-turner. Each chapter will center around itself with the barest of threads
to connect the ones before and after it.
This is something I will have to examine more closely when the
whole thing is done. It is a struggle just to make the individual chapters
work.
Please read and enjoy it and tell me what you think.
Meanwhile, tell me what you’re up to? How’s the business
going? How is life treating you?
I recently made peace with another friend who went west to
get away from the hectic life and its horrible temptations in the east. She
wants to raise her daughter as a Christian, which should be near and dear to
your heart. The kid is attending Oral Roberts Institute of all places. For a
number of months, I was upset at her leaving and still feel a little hurt by
it. But I care for her too much to be bitter about it.
Anyway, I hope you are well. Please Write. I’ve been ill
for several weeks; due I suspect to overwork. Once I get myself together, I
fell a bit more positive about the change.
Take care.
Al Sullivan
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