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10/08/2004: "Lives"

Of course, I am a character in a novel; in fact, many characters in many novels, depending on the angle from which the tale is viewed. I am John Dobbin, good-hearted, slightly dense, patient, out of his depths, but assured of his prize in the end. I am Lewis Wetzel, the half-savage Deathwind, the hero morally indistinguishable from his enemy, and felled not by a villain's arrow but by the creep of civilization and the loss of love. I am anyone from Dickens, surrounded by threads of plot, in a maelstrom of arriving and departing and reappearing characters, blithely accepting of every fortuitous coincidence. I am the smart, plain sister in any of Jane Austen's. I am on an island with a Bible and a gun, and too much time to think. I am Queequeg and Jim and Meyer and Watson. I am Richard Hannay, Rudolf Rassendyll, David Balfour, Harry Feversham. I heard the owl call my name.