fatalism belly fire I often wonder why I adore the works of John Irving quite so much. Not the movies...but the books that were stale from a used book store. (The once, twice or even thrice loved novels.) When I watched an interview with the great writer the other day, I realized he was a fatalist. Someone who writes from the last sentence to the very first, drawing out the lives of his characters from the deaths he has already prepared to write. He said, "How many novels have I written about the fear of losing a child, or actually losing a child? Thank God I have not lost a child, I have three boys. But, like any parent with an imagination, I think about it, I have nightmares about it and I think a part of what I write is about what I hope never happens to me." While I don't consider myself a fatalist, I find I have a deep appreciation for someone who draws the past from the present in an effort to understand his own fears better. In most cases, mulling many decades over something that may have come and gone - but not forgotten. Giving him a chance to laugh at what wasn't funny then. So I picked up Cider House Rules again, and I understood what I loved about it in a completely new way. How marvelous. 091020 ... rt interesting and well said. 091020 what's it to you? who go blather from