WISDOM

READ: the short story Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin (even if Go Tell it on the Mountain made you want murder yourself), additionally read everything JD Salinger wrote (even if you dislike Catcher in the Rye, though I happen to not dislike it) esp A Perfect Day for Bananafish (short story) and then Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters (novella?).

“If there is an amateur reader still left in the world – or anybody who just reads and runs – I ask him or her, with untellable affection and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four ways with my wife and children.” – JD Salinger, Raise High the Roof Beam Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction Dedication

“Creole began to tell us what the blues were all about. They were not about anything very new. He and his boys up there were keeping it new, at the risk of ruin, destruction, madness, and death, in order to find new ways to make us listen. For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.” – Sonny’s Blues, James Baldwin