A Book I Can Put Down I’m halfway through and I’ve gotten used to the way it wants to be read. This writer wants to spoon it up, wants to watch me swallow it. This writer makes a point of good deeds, clean living, god and country, when what I want is sin and shame, the rusty metal edge of cruelty, varieties of pain, his mother still crying years later, just like mine. I want a writer who’s given up on the moral of the story, one who’ll hand me a knife and sit back to see what I do with it. (Published in )