The Author's Hesitation

Ian is extremely determined and highly prolific, in his ongoing work on the "Tissue Man" illustrated book series. I'll walk into the bathroom to find Daniel at work on the commode while Ian is at (other) work on the floor, surrounded by 8.5-by-11 sheets of white paper, pouring himself into his next volume in the collection. At this moment, Ian has come out of the bath and, without completely finishing putting on his pajamas, has spread himself out on his bedroom floor, drawing and writing to his heart's content.

As the technophile that I am, I put in another plug for the prospect of putting at least the written portion of his work on a blog, to share with the world, with the idea that if the original manuscripts and their many photocopied reproductions ever get lost, we might still have easy access to the original text online, and also society at large would benefit from this contribution to world culture. But Ian, giving it some thought and knitting his eyebrows in thoughtful hesitation, said he thought some people might not like it. I told him that was fine; there's a lot of stuff on the Internet that people don't like, and nobody likes everything anyway. But then he added a more nuanced consideration:

"Well, Daddy, some aren't very homesome."

I took "homesome," to mean "wholesome," although admittedly "homesome" is actually a more organic, wholesome sounding word than "wholesome" itself. But I was perplexed by his reluctance. He particularly cited volumes 1 and 5 as potentially controversial material, but I have no idea why anyone would take exception to a work entitled, "Tissue Man Versus The Snot and the Pig-Head of Snot."

I guess it's just another mystery to contemplate...

(July 9, 2011)