Read This: APATHY AND OTHER SMALL VICTORIES

I don't normally read a book a day.

Recently, though, a head and sinus cold has latched onto me and in its presence, I've found myself frustratingly unable to perform any tasks which would require me to sit up and/or move my head and/or communicate with the outside world.

So, I've been reading a lot.

I knew I was in a for a good time when I opened Apathy to the first page, the dedication page, and read: "To my parents, who will hopefully never read this book."

Apathy is about a guy named Shane, who is very...well, apathetic. He is drifting, stuck in a hilariously juvenile mindset while going through the motions of a ridiculously bleak and banal adult world. He doesn't care about anything: his so-called girlfriend, his temp position at an insurance company, his money problems, his increasing desire to steal salt shakers at every opportunity, anything.

He's the guy who will say exactly what he's thinking and it's funny because it's so uncensored, but it's sad because it's so true. Take this gem:

"There comes a time in every man's life when he wakes up drunk on the toilet and begins to doubt the choices he has made. And when that time comes at least twice a day, every day, something needs to be done."

This book is absurdly comical and populated with ridiculous characters, such as Doug the Dentist, who someone manages to get his head caught in the accordion door of a public bus ever time he attempts to ride. There's Doug's deaf assistant Marlene, who meets the men she cheats on her husband with at karaoke bars (please let that one sink in for a moment). There's Mobo, a drug dealer who lives upstairs and who, Shane suspects, is having inappropriate relations with his pet guinea pig. There's the landlord Bryce, a tragic man with a passion for bowling, who asks Shane to sleep with his wife in lieu of paying rent. And of course there's Gwen, a former rugby player who manhandles Shane on ever encounter and forces him into the depressing world of cubicles and alphabetizing insurance forms.

It's Shane, though, who makes the story. His irreverent, acidic observations about life are deprecating, demoralizing, defeating...and truly, insanely hilarious. Here, after Gwen commends him on his ability to leave work at work and come home completely unattached from it (which may have something to do with the fact that he spends the majority of his day sleeping on a toilet in the men's room), she says, "I need to remember that Panopticon Insurance is not my entire life."

Shane's internal reaction to this?

"It was one of those completely untrue affirmations people feel like they have to make every once in awhile, like, 'This was for my lord and savior Jesus Christ,' whenever somebody catches a football for a four yard gain, or 'We did all we could,' whenever a doctor loses a patient who's old and not famous. It's just something you say."

Brilliant.

This is Paul Neilan's first novel and another thing I love is that he, much like Torch's Cheryl Strayed, is a Portland author.

Okay, so actually, he used to be a Portland author. I just checked his blog and as it turns out, he recently moved to San Francisco (whatever, Paul, whatever).

Anyway, reading these two books in succession was the equivalent of taking two incredibly different mood-altering drugs back-to-back: one book shot humor into the grief-filled holes inflicted by the other. One uplifted, through the dark triumphs of living and healing, while the other cast a light, albeit a breezy and funny light, on a basic sad truth about the repetitive, banal, meaningless way we sometimes lead our lives. One took us to a very real place and allowed us to confront our real emotions. The other took us to a crazed, comical, ridiculous place -- which we later recognized as ours, as our own real world, and were allowed to laugh at the absurdity of it.

All I can suggest is this: Take a sick day (or two) and get to reading. You'll be rewarded greatly. And when you get a chance, look up Paul Neilan:

http://apathy.typepad.com/paulneilan/