In the book Lost in Place, by Mark Salzman, there are three characters he really tells of their personality within' the first 2 chapters. So far, Mark himself is a very imaginative young boy, his very reason for learning Kung Fu was comical at best, but his reasons for wanting to learn Kung Fu was to get girls and beat up the, and I quote from Mark himself, "Eighth-grade assholes who used to pick on me for being tiny, polite to adults and a cellist in a youth orchestra.(pg. 9)"
His father is a pessimist, who will always look at the bad side of everything and expect the worst no matter what, however despite all of this he is one hell of an artist, "If my dad knew he was about to be ambushed by murderous cowboys, first he would shake his head with disgust and say that he knew all along that something like this would happen to him. Then he would pace back and forth for a while, muttering curse words and wondering aloud at the foolishness of people who romanticize the wild west. Finally he would resign himself to the inevitable, consoling himself with the thought that his murderers , like everyone else in the world, would die soon enough.(pg. 9)
His mom is the complete opposite of his father, she on the other hand looks at the brighter side of things, and sees a challenge as an opportunity, "To her everyday teemed with welcome challenges; she couldn't see how anyone could be bored. (pg. 24)"
As to say if I like them, I like Mark, however his parents seem like a magnet, one positive and the other negative. Mark however is the character I am focused on the most, not only for being the main character, but also for his crazy adventures as a youth. I also think I relate to Mark in a way, in the book he never mentions (well as far as I am in the book) any friends. I was a loner who loved to go around and make anything up just to entertain myself. I believe Mark is trying to find some sort of talent that makes him different from everyone else, trying to discover himself, that is what I could say that other people might not have picked up on on his early life yet.
If Mark was to come over to my dinner, it would most likely be a normal dinner, I can't explain what my dinners are usually like (not real school appropriate on what comes up), but I can say it's not much less different than he is.
I chose this book because it was a highly imaginative and eccentric kid growing up in a different state, I was wondering what it was like for this man and if we had anything in common. Non-fiction isn't really what I go into, I usually like to loose myself in the world of pretend. It's yet to have dragons fly across the sky, or an undead sorcerer who sacrificed his family in order to gain immortality, isn't really in this book, I normally just stick to what I love. What drew me to this book really was just the fact that this highly eccentric kid was living in a suburb just trying to find his place in the world through the most hilarious ways possible.
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