September 21, 2004

Life-changing books

Isabella posts about the same story I linked to in a smart-alecky way, a couple of days ago: the story about women listing books that changed their lives. She has some trouble coming up with such watershed books, though she does manage to find a few. I wonder, after reading her post, if it is not the books themselves that are so memorable but rather our state of mind when we read them. That is not to say that these books — in my case, Doris Lessing's Martha Quest series, some Anaïs Nin (okay, that's embarrassing), Graham Greene, Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet — I could go on, but since a some of what I'm dredging up is difficult to confess to, I will stop now — it is not to say that they are not wonderful, but rather, that we read them at a significant juncture. I doubt I could stomach much Durrell or Nin today, though Lessing and Greene are still in the pantheon. I read the books mentioned here sometime between the ages of fourteen and twenty-four: the decade in which my mind was a sponge, life seemed without limits, and any world-weariness I evinced was a complete pose. That was also the decade in which my thoughts and my tastes were unformed and I could genuinely try anything. And the decade in which I had endless energy and little to keep me from my books. The decade in which I got my real education; since then, it has just been fine-tuning. Okay, I overstate. But that state of seemingly being open to anything is long over; now, I try to keep the flood out, try to pick and choose carefully. Now I am proud of my hard-won ability to winnow, to cull, to reject. Now I have solid preconceptions and knee-jerk reactions. Or, more charitably, have developed my tastes. Or both.

Others?

Günter Grass' The Flounder
Kate Millett's Flying
Lots more Doris Lessing, particularly The Golden Notebook
Charlotte Brontë's Villette
Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man
Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary
Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children
Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed
Henry James' The Portrait of a Lady
Some Jorge Luis Borges

Most of these, I think, I would still be gripped by were I to read them again. All fine books, but by no means the only fine books I have read. What makes them stand out is the intensity with which I remember reading them, and that is a product of when I read them. And interestingly, only three listed here (Brontë, Flaubert, and James) were part of coursework (and the same course, come to think of it); the rest I found on my own or had recommended to me by others in my circle. Which begs some interesting questions about what we are doing with our students.

Were this books life-changing? I don't know. But my life was changing when I read them.

Scribbled at September 21, 2004 10:43 PM AST | Permanent link to this post | More? books/reading

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