#552 Tension

Sometimes the world catches up with you. Sometimes the world passes you by.
I noticed that in a couple of ways recently. I was reading this book. And for the most part it was written as if it could have been happening in the present day.
All the current events matched up well enough, and since the author made no attempt to be right on top of the political news, everything in the story seemed like it was now.
Except for one cultural reference.
Because a good part of the dramatic tension in the book was created by people not being able to call each other every second on the phone.
That’s right, the book was written before cellphones became ubiquitous.
So every time the author needed to increase the tension in the plot and advance the suspense, he only had to create a situation where the principles were temporarily out of touch.
And it kept bugging the heck out of me because my brain kept saying, just call him on your cell, just call her on your cell. I had to keep reminding myself that the book was written in 1994.
Which meant that I kept not suspending disbelief, or I un-suspended disbelief, or I suspended believing, or whatever.
It ruined the book.
Which now really upsets me, because it means that the cellphone, the culprit for so many car accidents and incidental rudenesses in our society, from interrupting movies to blasphemizing sermons, is now also tarnishing literature written before the mid-nineties.
Oh well. I had the same problem with Huckleberry Finn.
Raft done the river? Why don’t you just take a bus?
Life passes people by. Like this guy I saw the other day.
He was coming out of a tanning parlor, his skin glowing with that UV radiance you can only get from a fake and bake, and as he put on his cowboy hat and sauntered in his boots over to his big truck with duellies on it, I noticed something else. His truck had a big window sticker that was a vinyl rendition of the confederate flag.
And I think: What’s wrong with this picture? This guy wants his skin to be darker...?
America ya gotta love it