The Captive Reader

What could be a more appropriate response to the excellent advice and support so many of you offered me over the weekend than to quote a brilliant bit of advice from one of my favourite novels?  It is an impassioned speech from a fictional monarch-in-waiting to the people of America that I may or may not have used as my own personal motto at various times in my life.

Marguerite - Guy Rose

All you need to do is refrain from smoking, drinking, and the use of drugs.  Eat only wholesome, low-fat foods with the emphasis on vegetables, grains and fish.  Seek work.  Work hard.  Show up on time.  Do more than is expected.  Think of ways to make the job efficient.  Don’t complain.  Shave, bathe, and wear clean clothes.  Be cheerful.  Don’t gamble.  Live within your means.  Save.  And then, when you have all this in balance, study things of substance.  Read to satisfy your curiousity.  Don’t father children out of wedlock or bear them as a single mother.  Exercise.  You will find that you will be promoted – perhaps not knighted, but promoted.  If that doesn’t happen, look quietly for a better position.  Find a husband or wife whom you love and who has the same good habits.  Invest.  Assume a mortgage if you must.  Teach your children the virtues.  And then, having become the means of production, you will own your share of the means of production, and if you do these things, all of which are entirely within your power, you will own your lives. 

 – Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin (p. 266-267)