In the throes of early retirement, Buddy confronts the meaninglessness and purposelessness of human Being.
A journalist for 40-plus years, he decides it’s time to fulfil a germinating desire to write a novel, loosely based on his own life experiences, but starring a fictionalized hero that can easily be denounced as ‘not at all autobiographical’.
As the episodes emerge, however, Buddy becomes increasingly jealous of Curt Langstrom’s exciting, action-packed life, compared to the depressingly predictable path he’s trudged.
Almost all of Buddy’s career has been spent as a reporter and editor with the Times Colonist, Victoria B.C.’s major daily. Immersed in the hubbub of the newsroom, and his cherished responsibilities as a husband and father, Buddy didn’t feel at all short-changed in his career and life choices.
But now he’s quit the newsroom, the kids are fledged, and his wife has a career of her own to mastermind, he feels left behind, swirling in the backwash.
His is a laughably privileged portrayal of the existentialist dilemma. For 60 years he’d gauged life’s progress by the middle class milestones of growing up, getting an education, finding a life partner, climbing the career ladder, owning a home, and raising a family. Now all that’s done, he finds himself feeling worse than useless.
“I’ve built my castle in the sky; now the bottom’s fallen out,” he laments.
This ‘late-life-crisis’ intensifies. He hits the reset button often enough to know it’s disconnected. There will be no going back to his comfy notions of life’s worth. But he can’t help: feeling proud of his career, loving his kids and his increasingly estranged wife, even his adopted hometown. Certain no-one will understand his loss of faith, confused and conflicted, Buddy flees.
The crowning irony to Buddy’s detached, existentialist turmoil is his growing obsession with suicide. At first he flirts with the notion of ending it as a way of discovering his life’s meaning. “What kind of vacuum would be created in the world if I ceased to exist?” he asks. What would be missed? That line of reasoning only leads to ‘obligation’, continuation of his life sentence so as not to abandon and hurt others.
That’s not enough to quell the suicidal urge, which takes on the attributes of a ‘somewhat perversely noble act’ to his way of thinking. By a devious twist of logic, ‘ending it all’ becomes his raison d’être! An act that will demonstrate the courage of his conviction by taking the forbidden step of ‘self-murder’ – as St. Augustine would characterize it.
HAVE YOU GOT A ROLE TO PLAY? – Perhaps you know things about my characters I’ve missed. If you have any comments or suggestions to make GET IN TOUCH.