Mean Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

library. It didn’t occur to me that this was such a bad thing to do because whenever I flipped to the card on the back, I only ever saw my own name written there over and over again. Eventually it seemed I might as well keep them at home, and it wasn’t much of a surprise that nobody even launched an investigation rudimentary enough to finger Lawrence Campbell as the number one suspect.
    The only fuss I ever remember being raised over poetry in my school—or in my young life, for that matter—was when a book called
Even Less
by Jim Arsenault arrived, having just won a national award. More people took an interest than was usual in such matters because Arsenault was an Atlantic Canadian. The library ordered a copy, and an enterprising reporter in Charlottetown even called Jim up for an interview.
    The reporter asked Jim things like, why do you live in Toronto? And, have you a wife, and if so, what does she think of all this?
    Jim said he lived in Toronto out of necessity at the moment, and, no, he didn’t have a wife.
    The reporter said, I’ve read your book and felt there was some unnecessary language here and there. I thought the poems were very well written in places, but some of the language was shocking. Some people down this way, I think, would be shocked by it.
    And Jim said this—the reporter wrote it down:
    “I am happy to hear it. Didn’t Kafka say that’s what good writing should do—should act as an axe to the frozen sea within us? I didn’t intend for my writing to waft over your readers like a friendly breeze, I’m afraid. I prefer the axe. Let your readers be shocked awake, or let them be shattered to pieces, it makes no difference to me. Only let something happen other than comfort and reassurance.”
    But you want people to read your book, don’t you? persisted the reporter. A great many people, in this part of the country at least, don’t enjoy being shocked and shattered.
    “Those people, in that case,” responded Jim Arsenault, “can go to hell.”
    The newspaper printed it “H*ll.”
    Because the library had made such a big deal about ordering the book, they now had to respond to parents, who kicked up a fuss and demanded to know what the school thought it was doing, stocking such filth in reach of children? That’s when I stepped in, slipping it off the shelf and into my schoolbag, solving the problem for everyone. The next week the school assured parents the offending material had been removed.
    I read the book over and over again. And then I read the interview, which I had clipped, over and over again.
    And then I knew three things.
    1. I wanted to be a poet.
    2. Anyone who had a problem with my being a poet could go to hell.
    3. I had to get the hell out of there.
    Of all three revelations, the most important was the second. Numbers 1 and 3 had always been present, but in a shapeless, jellyfish kind of way, jiggling dubiously around in the back of my mind. Because much as I loved poetry, how could I
be
a poet? Nobody was a poet, nobody readpoetry. That’s what had been holding me back, this idea of
everybody
—the everybody who couldn’t care less about poetry. But number 2 shook me awake—the insight I gleaned from Jim’s interview. This was the missing piece to the puzzle of my future. Number 2 was the axe to the frozen sea within me. Of course. It was so simple.
Everybody
could go to hell.
    I will quit Westcock if I have to. I will follow wherever he goes.
    Ring, ring.
    Good! Maybe it’s Jim. I have been wanting to call Jim all day, but I don’t have the courage to just ring him up at home like we’re old friends or something. The fact of the matter is, much of today’s daydreaming in front of the typewriter has had to do with this question—am I allowed to just call Jim at home like we’re old friends or something? Weighing the pros and cons. On the one hand, I spent a golden afternoon at his kitchen table, watching him blow his nose by way of punctuating his remarks