Every book I read is about someone I know. Maybe it's Joseph Campbell's fault: every story is really the same story, but I think the issue is that I'm much too sympathetic a reader. Sympathetic like when I read Goodnight Mr. Tom in sixth grade I ended up staying awake till my mom came home at midnight, insisted sleeping in her bed, and lay awake listening to her breathe and wanting to reach out and touch her arm.
I finished The Shipping News on my way home from Alaska and Nick was everywhere. I wished he would read it because I found answers there to questions I imagined him asking. Annie Proulx said things I needed to say but didn't know.
The Road with Tim waiting.
Which is where this speech by David Foster Wallace comes in. A little. Not entirely. But about literature's ability to pull us out of our own heads. About feeling less "freakish and alone" (Amanda--who's quote is this?) in the thralls of a good book.
I've just finished the History of Love, and while the English major part of me is pulling things apart, the rest of me feels very glad to be alive. What it left me with is longing (in a good way). Connection. And a desire to share this and say "this part reminds me of that piece you wrote but hated" and "I read this under a tree when I should've been grading" and "you were my Alma."
Thursday, September 18, 2008
History of Love
Posted by Kjerstin Evans Ballard at 4:22 PM
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3 comments:
"...[O]ne's example can serve to elucidate a more widespread human trait and make readers feel a little less lonely and freakish."
The quote is from Philip Lopate, in his Introduction to The Art of the Personal Essay.
Its a great quote, one that I read again recently and have been thinking about.
Man, if Skoticus whipping out that quote doesn't beat all. The truth of the essay is going forth! Haha.
And Kjerstin, as I read this post I kept thinking, "So true! So true!" Every time I read a book I find lines or plot lines that I want to share with specific people for specific reasons. And that's the 586th reason why good literature is like scripture to me.
A class discussion the other day about what we (as literary academics) do and why led to a conversation with a classmate about why we--collectively--feel we can't admit to loving literature for its ability to connect and to be beautiful and to change people.
That's why I read, she said. We pretend our work is something objective and purely academic, but it's not. There's always a personal element--we use literature to assign value to and derive it from the world around us.
I was happy that she felt that way, and that our professor admitted she was right.
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