The Other: Blog 3 3-03-09

I would like to start out by saying that this book has gotten better. It has not exceeded expectations, nor as it even met them, but I definitely overreacted in my last post, so I’m sorry. Now…

Cindy’s story ends within the first few pages, and she believes that she could put her story together with Neil’s to create a great film. However, she is left out of the next few chapters, which focus primarily on John William’s transformation into the hermit of the Hoh. Neil returned home from Europe, in the early 70’s, and to his surprise he had received a postcard that read,

COUNTRYMAN—

AT BADEN-BADEN THROUGH 9/4 THEN GOIN’
TO GET EJUKATID.
GET OUT HERE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE.

BLOOD,
SIMON MAGUS (87).

Neil spent many days working on what John William meant by this letter, eventually he just gave up and decided to concentrate his efforts on getting in touch with Jamie. One day, after he had been with Jamie for many other days before, the paper made an announcement of the death of the “heiress to a considerable fortune, Dorothy Best Worthington” (94). Mrs. Worthington was the grandmother of John William, who now was the heir to the family fortune, behind his mother, Mrs. Worthington’s daughter. John William, the man who was to become a forest-dweller was now one of the richest people in Seattle. For whatever reason, 9/4 came and went without Neil noticing, and John William remained true to his word, he went to Reed College to get an education. However, only four months later, John William had quit school and bought an acre of land on the Hoh.

Neil went to visit John William on his land by the Hoh, and they, of course, smoked some dope and got completely wasted, while they hiked to the site of their blood pact. When they arrived at the site, “John William announced that he was excavating a ‘cliff dwelling.’” (114). Neil helped John William with the excavation whenever he visited, however he began to dislike the work, claiming that the simile “Like striking stone” meant to be getting nowhere, which is exactly how he felt about this project. As usual, John William was upset with Neil because he was wasting his time with the crap he was taught in school, how it was apparently utterly useless. The line that John William had written down about six months ago, resonated in his head during his class lecture, and he realized that he had, many times, thought of “striking out on a new path…COUNTRYMAN—GET OUT HERE BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE. There was more to that than I realized” (117).