One L

I read Scott Turow's One L, something I really should have done about four years ago. Next is The Paper Chase by John Jay Osborn, Jr. Then, I'll probably drink myself into a blind stupor, as is my wont.

This has not been the most difficult book I have ever read (that honor goes to Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, a book I have attempted to read three times, and never gotten past page 100). However, this is readily the most emotional experience I've ever had while reading a book. I was wandering through a used bookstore, exploring the stacks and the bookshelves, just aimless, when somehow, it caught my eye. Six dollars later, it burned in my hand like holy water (I can no longer enter Catholic churches, due to defiling the holy water in an "accident" a few years back).

The first few times I made an attempt to read it, I could only stand a few pages, then had to set it down and walk away. If I was in the living room, I would walk to the bedroom. If in the bedroom, I walked out to the living room. It was like reliving the war, but through another person's experiences and perspectives, still markedly similar, but with enough unique details to remind everyone that we all suffered, and not all of us are reaping those tarnished rewards, nor are we all reveling in our pyrrhic (pyorrheic? I ate a lot of candy) victories.

Turow attended Harvard Law, at the time the top-tier law school in the land. It has now been supplanted by Yale Law, but attending Harvard Law is still no small feat, and constitutes an achievement worthy of praise and maybe a little twinge of jealousy (hey J.L.H.). I was incarcerated at UMD Law, now a middle-second tier school, no idea what it was at the time of Turow's experience, years before I was even born. Nonetheless, we dealt with the same circumstances, though the dated differences are quite amusing (electric typewriters for exams? First-year associates pulling down twenty-two thousand dollars a year?).

He was twenty-six during his first year, the age I'm about to bid farewell to, the age I started a new career outside the law. I know that I never again need rely solely upon the juris doctorate to support myself, if I choose to. Still, it stains my heart, and I cannot let it go. Instead, like a war veteran (and I apologize to them for diminishing their great accomplishments), I have to pick up and move on, which I'm trying to. And, of course, gambling helps, which will segue into the rest of this week's posts, the TS company meeting at Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut.