Saul Bellow Vs. Glenn Richards

It was as I witnessed two conversing creatures on a Hurstbridge train that it first occurred to me; and it was as they reached the conclusion that a certain engine was superior to another that the occurrence transformed into a full-fledged decision that I would act upon that very day, and that would grant me further isolation from the riding rev-heads who alternatively and exclusively discussed automobiles and portable phones.

As soon as the journey saw me safely home, I prepared a sink full of water and burned every T-shirt and brand-name piece of clothing I owned, leaving only the clothes on my back, which I planned to dispose of after I secured a replacement pair and many besides to make up my new wardrobe. Not being very handy or well-equipped, I burned my arms and hands many times in the process, and eventually left my house resembling a neglected bomb victim with an unusually calm disposition.

Upon arrival at the reasonable pre-loved clothing store, I found myself in the company of numerous items which would suit my transformations and see me, at the very least, looking the part. Eventually I decided upon a heavily-patched brown jacket and plain belt-supported beige pants, which, along with a week of white shirts, I purchased in bulk with as little variation as possible for the unstately sum of twenty dollars.

The next step in the process awaited me at the library, and was laid out in multi-edition volumes, collected essays and histories, with inevitable detours through non-non-fiction to keep my mind up to imaginative speed. I became such a frequent visitor in my second closest library that the staff therein actually greeted me from time to time, and, on occasion, slipped a smile into their mannerisms, an expression seldom used since the gay days of their early youth.

When I was confident that my mind was suitably expanded, I began to try my hand at writing essays, ranging from mundane commentaries on the fallings of today's society, to attempted profundity in my philosophical forays. Publishers wouldn't touch 'em, but I still thought of myself as on-par with those who had inspired me and a bourgeoning talent, to say the least.

Unwilling to embark on acquiring new companions, I turned towards my former ones, who were on friendly terms with yesterday's version of myself, but wholly unfamiliar with today's, and, in an attempt at pulling them up to scratch, recommended books to them which I thought would be adequate tools for re-shaping their minds and ridding them of their pop-culture fascination. Somewhat perplexed by my erudite vocabulary and peculiar outfit, none of them were enthusiastic about their reading, and I dare say none of them actually read what I had taken great pains to choose and procure, so I gave up on them slightly after they gave up on me and convinced myself of the merits of solitude.

Though feeling that I still had some way to go before I was up to scratch, I was eager for an opportunity to flex my brain. It came within a month of that thought in the shape of two coffee-drinking university students discussing philosophy at an up-market café in the city. Listening discreetly for as long as it took to get a feel for their level of intellect and ideals, I finally interjected where one of them had clearly reached a point of contradiction by comprehensively arguing to the contrary. I'd like to think that it was solely due to the strength of my argument, but in recent years I've started to wonder whether it was partly due to my appearance and manner that induced their silence and rushed departure. Nevertheless, I counted it as a victory, but a victory, I'm glad to add, which was superseded the following year by a bout a stuffy professor and myself undertook concerning the deterioration of the English language, in which I allowed no room for credible opposing views, and from which I appeared victorious after rattling the morals of my opponent and leaving him utterly speechless.

With my ego fully-pumped, I took to the trains and waited for my former fellow passengers to breathe word of automobiles and portable phones. When they did, I was glad to discover no connection bar species linking me to the filthy twenty-somethings at the back of the carriage and those like them. It was at this point that I knew that I, like my spiritual fathers before me, was close to defining the human condition, and that time was my only object in achieving this through the truthful fiction of my own pen. Though the pages have yet to be writ; though the plot and characters haven't been outlined, I knew that the truth I had finally discovered would give birth to the modern masterpiece and bathe me in all the world.