To my surprise and delight, The Wind in the Willows was on Masterpiece Theater tonight. The actors were quite good and the story true to the original, but the truth is that nothing can compare to the book itself. The intricacies of language and the detail of the written word are among life's greatest pleasures, which is why I'm so enamored of the blog as a vehicle of expression. I've been wondering recently why I chose not to major in English, Am Lit or Brit Lit, and then I remembered...I have never really liked school!
I love learning, but the confines of classrooms and stylistic conventions, the toils of essay-writing and my penchant for procrastination always seemed to dampen my creativity. In fact, I think the only reason I'm a halfway decent teacher is because I don't like school. Getting back to the point, though, I remember deciding against English as a major because Emerson taught me to have an original relationship with everything, and from Thoreau I learned that the best books teach me, better than to read, to put them down and commence living on their hint. I reasoned that I didn't need any one to teach me how to read, interpret, reflect on, and write about books in my own language.
And so I chose Spanish, because I had "studied" it in the classroom for eight years but had minimal comprehension and fluency with the language. Ah, public school - if only my high school Spanish teacher knew what I was doing now! Anyway, Sevilla and Anette made the language come alive for me, and the rest is history. Now it's on to Swahili, but I guess my point is that I will always derive enormous comfort from reading books in English because it feels like home; I will never know another language with the intimacy that I know English.
I've always been given to hyperbole (but it's meaningful - when I say it's the best day of my life, I mean it, and every song and every riff is the greatest ever in the moment I declare it to be!) so I'll sign off tonight with a first draft of my top nine favorite books list (in no particular order). Readers, feel free to share yours...
1. Growth of the Soil - Knut Hamsun
2. Homage to Catalunia - Orwell
3. 100 Years of Solitude - Garcia Marquez
4. Kavalier and Klay - Michael Chabon
5. Moby Dick - Melville
6. Sometimes A Great Notion - Kesey
7. Angry Black White Boy - Adam Mansbach
8. On The Road - Kerouac
9. Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck
10. The Awakening - Kate Chopin
2 comments:
So here is my first ever blog comment..I was struck by this particular post because I had just unearthed a memoir by your great-grandfather, Frank W. Taylor, otherwise known as 'Cranberry'. I quote: "I grew up on the East Side, going to school and hating it. I wanted to be where the action was and, for me, it certainly wasn't there....My career in high school was marked by no scholastic achievement...Principal William O. Brown called me on the carpet constantly, threatening me with expulsion, because I was surreptitiously writing and circulating my own little magazine, "The Owl." In the "The Owl" were poems and jokes about the faculty, including Mr. Brown. Miss Mary Black, one of my teachers, and Miss Salvas, my music teacher, thought the poetry revealed great talent and I might even become president. Mr Brown thought I might easily become a drop-out. By invitation."
Post #2 - I've almost finished Growth of the Soil. Love it. Thank you, Alexander and Anette!
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