ChiTownScion
Call Me a Cab
- Messages
- 2,247
- Location
- The Great Pacific Northwest
It never occurred to me that a TV show or movie should resemble real life, let alone my life. Those shows took place in some magic land of imagination. The difference between a Twilight Zone episode and Leave It To Beaver was one of degree. Both took place in worlds of their own. Neither resembled the world I lived in. That is what I liked about them. If I had seen a show that reminded me of my life I would have immediately turned it off. Why would I watch some boring show when I could turn around and have the real thing?
That folded into "children's literature" for me as well. My dad tried to get me to read the Hardy Boys books, but I could never wrap my mind around the fact that they didn't live in a "real" city in a "real" state. I was about nine at the time, and it more or less set a tone for life. There had to be a nexus to reality. It was about this time that I snuck off to a public library and started reading Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. My imagination was stoked as a kid when I read about developing technologies, not unrealistic fiction. To this day I cannot deal extensively with Tolkien's little men with furry feet and such: if it has to be fiction, make it Mailer, Steinbeck, or even Vonnegut.