|
by Peter Mladinic What to read? American Pat Boone's Twixt Twelve and Twenty or British A. J. Ayer's Language, Truth and Logic? Ayer, the father of Logical Positivism, instead of stimulating thought, might confuse me. Pat Boone tells teens what to do for their skin, their hearts and minds. My father, who told me I need to learn how to talk to people, gave me Twixt. In college I delved into existentialist Ayer. I like Hamlet's "nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so." I like Pat Boone when he comes out in that silk robe to do bathtub commercials. On Ed Sullivan, he sang "April Love." He wore white bucks, drove a Corvette. He and Shirley had been high school sweethearts. No sex before marriage he says in his book. It's on Amazon. I lost mine before I lost my virginity (to Penny Williams, I wish). Yesterday I opened Ayer's Language and saw my 1970 marginalia. Ayer, wan pallor, thin-face, shifty-eyes, looks like the bad boy girls go for. A kiss- and-run lover raising a glass in a pub with a bird, not a scholar in the stacks pouring over pages of Ethics, in '39, before The Blitz. Copyright 2025. All rights reserved.
|