Pugnacious, happily-married Franklin-like contemporary of Jennifer Egan
/The always generous Jim Higgins of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel wrote a piece about me and one of my recent blog posts entitled Top 10 Ideas About Books. I’m not sure what thrilled me the most about the piece:
- The title, Ideas About Books: Matthew Dicks, Jennifer Egan, which places my middling little name alongside the great Jennifer Egan.
- His mention of Something Missing as one of his favorite novels of 2009
- The fact that Higgins refers to me as a modern-day Ben Franklin
- His prediction that I would enjoy a long and happy marriage (presumably to Elysha)
- His description of me as “a pugnacious character”
I was wavering between the Jennifer Egan connection and the modern-day Benjamin Franklin moniker when I decided to look up the definition of the word pugnacious. While I already knew what the word meant, I like the formal definitions even better:
- hard-bitten: tough and callous by virtue of experience
- Naturally aggressive or hostile; combative; belligerent
That may trump everything else on the list.
Either way, Higgins has made my day, my week and perhaps my month.
And he managed all this in an impressive 150 words.