In Book, Ken Sparkling’s newest book, which I believe partway through now not only to be his best, but many’s best, on page 21, the would-be becoming age, the page begins like this:

“A space opens among words. Move the words apart. Wire the sentences to the page. Lean over the spaces you’ve made. Do you think they will all be the same? It must be part of the problem that they won’t go away. Make the sentences cold and unknowable. Every single sentence you’ve written, let this happen. They won’t fight back. Sentences don’t fight back. They get empty. Fake. They get hard. At some point the words will change. Twist. The words seem to open very wide. When the sentences seem to point and grin at you, indifferent, grab the paper. Watch the words appear beneath your hands. Run your hands over the paper.”

I am now age 31. Page 31 of Book ends:

“He thought if he waited long enough, the little campers would calm down and stop talking amongst themselves. He thought he could just keep waiting and that eventually one of them would tell him what this was all about. The ogre had an eye where his belly button should have been. Even more disgusting, he had two belly buttons where his eyes should have been.”

I hope to live to the age of 226, the last page of this book. It’s the only way to take it all in, no matter how magical, how funny, how every graph maxed. $$$. I’m reading.