{"id":567,"date":"2014-12-16T10:27:24","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T10:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/?p=567"},"modified":"2014-12-16T15:51:54","modified_gmt":"2014-12-16T15:51:54","slug":"down-i-went","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/?p=567","title":{"rendered":"Down I went&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>in a December bleakness, seeing writing finished as a thriving, important force in our modern lives. More trouble than it&#8217;s worth. And then a few pages steal in front of my eyes and I&#8217;m smitten again, stopped in my tracks by the scenes and visions of another mind, empathy in ink. Books are subtle seducers, they undermine any world or word-weariness. But they disappoint too, you won&#8217;t find the answers there, just doorways to other mysteries, other books. Better never to have opened the covers, was Wolf Larsen&#8217;s lament, watching his more ferocious and untainted-by-literacy bro, Death Larsen, bearing down on his ship. Death was too busy living to be leafing. But when I do come across a page that&#8217;s tender and intelligent and true, I get that shot of life, the seconds of raw glee when the world seems right and spinning correctly and not cruel and futile. Books <em>have<\/em> lost the clamour and fanfare of the Press and what&#8217;s left of the arts establishment, writers aren&#8217;t admired and envied as rising stars and beat heroes the way they were when I was a kid. But there are fine voices making it to print, hidden away in quiet places, unpraised and unpaid. They flame to words because the voice comes out, not for money or a spread in a magazine. And if your heart needs the books, you&#8217;ll still find them, wandering pilgrims on the plain.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/bike.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-568 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/bike.jpg\" alt=\"bike\" width=\"428\" height=\"640\" srcset=\"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/bike.jpg 428w, https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/bike-200x300.jpg 200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 428px) 100vw, 428px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>in a December bleakness, seeing writing finished as a thriving, important force in our modern lives. More trouble than it&#8217;s worth. And then a few pages steal in front of my eyes and I&#8217;m smitten again, stopped in my tracks by the scenes and visions of another mind, empathy in ink. Books are subtle seducers, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-henry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":572,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions\/572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrybrook.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}