377 Days - Blog #34 or when I use a Facebook status trend as inspiration and not an excuse to complain
So tonight, my brain is still a bit of toast. But it is early enough to spend a little time
on a blog. How happy was I, though, that
I got a tag in one of those Facebook status trends that asked me to list ten
books that have stayed with me.
Excellent! Something book nerdy
to put on Facebook and expand on in a blog.
Because, really, I can’t just list a book title without telling you why
I think it is so important to me.
Maybe I miss the point, then. Because the instructions are to not think too
long and hard about it. Well, I made my
list impulsively. The paragraphs of
explanation for each book are not so hasty.
1. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
I read this book my senior year of high
school and HATED it. Twelve years later
I decided during a stint of unemployment due to budget cuts that I would use my
idle time to give the books I hated in high school or college another
chance. I have no doubt the fact I was
on unemployment at the time informed my imagination with a greater sense of
empathy of the disenfranchisement of the black man in the first half of the 20th
century. And I think even as I read it,
I knew I was in a depressed situation, but that it was temporary and that I had
the capability ease of an eventual remedy.
Even though the story was fiction, I understood that it wasn’t quite so
easy for those the invisible man represented when the novel was current and in
the present day.
2. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.
I read this the first time during the summer before high school
started. Well, in early 1990’s Quabbin
terms, that just meant we moved out of that hallway where most of the 7th
and 8th grade classrooms and lockers were. Anyway, I was besotted with the story. With the tenacity of Scarlett O’Hara. I was so very, very sad for the
Confederacy. I even, in my naïve 13 year
old brain, remember thinking, well slavery was bad and all, but did it justify
destroying the grand ole South? Um… anyway…
I reread it in college. In
between I became obsessed with the movie.
And by obsessed, I mean I accumulated a bizarre amount of trivia about
the making of it (most significantly a certain amount of disdain for the fact
that Scarlet was translated onto the big screen by men – men who thought she
was and wrote her as a total bitch). A
few years after college – after Higgins years and after London… and when I was
working hard at this novel I just found it in myself to complete, I tried to read it again. From the perspective of one of my characters,
an avid reader and woman of color. Yeah,
funny how the book suddenly changes when you add that into the mix. Presently, I have a very complicated emotion about it… but even that debate I wrestle within myself is very much something
that makes this book stay with me.
3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.
Well, this is obvious. It is almost always the book I claim as my
favorite. And yes, it is largely
informed by adolescent adoration of Edward Rochester. What can I say? I am drawn to witty, moody men with a past
and an intelligent sense of humor. I’ve read it even more than Gone with the
Wind. And, while, yes the romance
delights me still, I appreciate even more the unabashed commentary on the
cruelty against the poor, particularly poor young women. And then to get all nerdy, there is the whole
part about her being a heroine who has complicated feelings and desires. And then there is the loose basis of real life on Rochester - both the man for whom Charlotte Bronte had complicated feelings whilst working as a governess and the guy who actually did lock his wife in the attice. Clearly, there are a lot of layers to keep pulling away from this!
4. Hamlet by William Shakespeare.
Well, if you know me, this should be
obvious. This play more than any
other. Because I am a total cliché actor,
director, Shakespeare lover. I didn’t
like it in high school all that much, although the introductory emphasis that
Mr. Beschta implanted in my mind will play a large part when I finally (and I
WILL) stage this play. As a ghost
story. But… it’s also my therapy. The whole, do I or don’t I? Do I do what I should do out of familial
obligation and what is expected… or what I would rather do of my own free
will? Is there even free will? Kenneth Branagh has a lot to do with
this. I listen to that version ad naseum,
as background noise, whenever I need to get through a day or night or
whatever. But there is also David
Tennant and Rory Kinnear. The dialogue
and soliloquies sooth the hamster wheel in my brain… and ignites
inspiration. Indeed, that inspiration
took book form during one Nanowrimo when I decided to churn out 50,000 words in
a modern story from the perspective of my favorite character, Horatio. I could probably write this whole blog about
Hamlet. But I’ll save that for another
day.
5.Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.
Well, this probably floated into my brain
during impulse because I just wrote about it the other night. But, to be fair, I think Anne was the first
trigger to my love of writing. Granted,
it was big, flowery words and silly, over the top romances that had little to
no character development or realistic conflict… but the freedom of imagination,
the love of the simple, basic beauty of outdoors… well that clearly stays with
me to this day. As do the memories of
those play productions of that novel.
6.The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois.
I had to read this in college. And I read it during my second half – the half
after I worked in a history Museum for five years. After I grew up a little and had to struggle
to pay bills. After I burst a few
bubbles of innocence. But this book…
well, I really owe it to my professor who drew a connection to how we
discriminate and humiliate women through body image ideals to that sense of ‘otherness’
of which DuBois spoke. An otherness I
have known pretty much my whole life… but again, knowing it is something that I
can fix if I determine to make it happen.
Some otherness can’t be changed.
Okay, this is another whole blog subject matter. But this historic text really, REALLY started
to make me see beyond the whole ‘racism is over’ bullshit.
7. By Myself by
Lauren Bacall.
Well, this is clearly on
my brain because of her recent passing.
But her autobiography more than her acting stayed with me. Because, damn, she wrote well. But she also demystified Hollywood in some
ways. She put the whole McCarthyism
craziness into a context that no history class or documentary could. AND, the lady is a survivor. With her brains… and yeah, her beauty. But I really think that her intelligence was
something that I decided to emulate more than, well, obviously her desire to
smoke a cigarette. No matter how sexy
that was.
8. The Bible.
I have
to put this. It probably popped into my
brain because a number of these books I read in high school. In high school English classes, people would
look at me as “the Bible expert.”
Because I would understand every allusion early American authors made to
some Old Testament or New Testament parable.
And then the Bible was very important to me. Because being Catholic was very important to
me. It informed my faith… but it also
informed my lack of it. Aside from
Shakespeare and, well, life, I stopped buying into the fundamentalism thing
when I started reading the Bible looking for women. They were always prostitutes or mothers (and
yet as mothers, some impossibly perfect beacon of ‘purity’ and ‘holiness’). I started to appreciate the double standard…
the dirtiness… and yeah, no. I really
haven’t read it much since. But there
are some nice pieces that still inform me.
Do unto others… and the take care of the sick and poor parts. I like those.
9. The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
I chose this as a project for a major paper
my junior year in high school. The weird
serendipity of it was Spike Lee’s biopic with Denzel Washington came out the
same year. I remember my classmates
wearing ‘X’ baseball hats and t-shirts that said ‘by any means necessary.’ And none of them knew who Malcolm X was,
really. On that level, I started to see
through the veneer of the New England, liberal belief that we are less racist
than the south. But on the level of
actually reading the book and using other sources (which were readily available
in newspapers as a consequence of the movie coming out), it shed a whole other
light on the civil rights movement beyond MLK, Jr. and I have a dream. It taught me a lot… but most significantly, it was the fact he chose a more peaceful message at the end. He has a reputation of anger and animosity against the white man... but he found a spiritual peace during a visit to the Middle East. He wanted that peace and tried to change his message. And that was what
killed him. This book. I need to read again.
10. Orlando by Virginia Woolf.
So this is a pretty heady book. And weird.
I think that’s why I like it. It’s
also timey wimey. And gender
bending. I also have a weird fascination with the film and its soundtrack.
As I wrote this, I realized I left off one of the most
significant. Le Petit Prince, or The
Little Prince. I received my first copy
at age six or seven. I liked the
pictures, but the story was tedious.
Except the part about a boa constrictor swallowing an elephant. That has always stayed with me… and a bowler
hat has never looked quite right to me.
I had the task of translating it into English for my independent study
French class in 12th grade.
But in the last five years, so much of that translated poetry has spoken
to me. Through grief. Through a confusion of where I’m supposed to
be. Through love. Through understanding the universe. I often find a sentence or two from that book
puts a great deal of my mood into perspective.
And that’s what it’s all about… really. Books that stay are books that inform me when
the simple details of the day to day cannot.
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