According to Alexis Kleinman (Huffington Post Tech Editor)
there’s a “new” fad going around on Facebook in which people are listing books
that “changed their thinking” and are challenging their friends to do the
same. You can read the article HERE. I had no clue that this was a new fad as I’ve
seen this about three times in the six years (six years, damn) that I’ve been
on Facebook. Maybe Ms. Kleinman heard
about the fad from under the same rock where The Huffington Post gets the bulk
of its articles.
I liken this fad of listing books (anything really) to be
more like the wave that pops in and out of popularity at sporting events. Or maybe they are like a comet. Point is they never really go away, but just
disappear from your sphere of influence for a while, until they’ve reached the
farthest of your contacts and make their way back. Christ, I hate the twenty-first century.
I rarely participate in these things. But I’ve participated in the book one
twice. The first time I listed books
that I thought fit the bill of those that challenged me or changed my thinking
in some way. When the list came back to
me again, I couldn’t really remember what I’d put the first time, so I listed
some books that have mattered to me over the last five years or so.
What constitutes a book that changed you? If Ms. Kleinman is correct, you folks who
listed books like Infinite Jest or The Sound and the Fury are lying, and what
you’re really doing is hiding in your darkened rooms taking all of your cues
from J.K. Rowling and George R.R. Martin.
Is she right about this? Are you
really a liar because you listed Moby Dick as a book that changed and/or
challenged you? Look, if you made your
way through Moby Dick once and found it a satisfying read I’m all for you
putting it on whatever list you like. Of
course I’m still not sold on Infinite Jest.
Maybe it should’ve just been one book with a decent explanation
as to why this book matters to you in the way that it does. I mean I could list twenty, fifty,
one-hundred books that I’ve walked away from with some new foresight or thought
that I didn’t have, but if push comes to shove only one book really matters to
me. On The Road by Jack Kerouac.
I don’t know where I heard the name Jack Kerouac. Maybe from my good buddy, Kristofer
Collins. Anyway I found him or he found
me. And instead of going to class I
spent my hours sitting in the campus library reading and re-reading On the
Road. I’d never experience a novel like
that. Had never been introduced to such
a loose cannon of thought and prose, dressed in the guise of a shy boy from
Lowell, Massachusetts. But there it was
in my hands. A new way thinking. A new way of seeing the world. All coming from a guy who could’ve been me.
I was hooked. On the
Road and Jack Kerouac became synonymous with my very being. Old ruddy Pittsburgh streets became jazz
glamourous tongues of pavement full of noise and sights and smells. Every car ride, every bus ride became imbued
with the quick desire for motion and movement, and every meal a beatific feast. Yeah I was just going around Pittsburgh, the
city I was born in, but I was eighteen and I was suddenly enlightened.
From the moment I read On the Road I was done. I was changed. I was challenged. Nothing would ever be the same. I stopped dabbling in writing and really got
down to what I wanted to say. I stopped
fucking around with the idea of home, kids, suburbs, American Dream, and
started trying to fit a course I could live with and live with happily. Sure that kind of thinking may have led to
living in a few cities, a decade plus of working more shitty jobs than I care
to count, and being basically broke well into my mid-thirties until I dragged
my ass, kicking and screaming, into graduate school. But it was worth it.
I re-read all of Kerouac the year I turned thirty and not a
word, not an emotion changed for me. I
meant to do it this year for my fortieth but life has sort of gotten in the way
of those kinds of goals. Still I imagine
I’ll get around to it. At the very least
I’ll go and read On the Road. And I
imagine I’ll get that feeling, the same feeling I always get, the same one the
eighteen year-old kid got that first time in Hillman Library in Pittsburgh when
he opened On The Road, and his eyes met that first immortal line: I first met Dean not long after my wife and
I split up…..and then just let the novel take it from there.
Aleathia says:
When you hear the name Margaret Atwood I am sure the first thing that comes to mind is not her collections of poetry despite the fact that she has published 20 collections from 1969-2007. She is best known for her novels and non-fiction works over the years. She is a highly decorated Canadian writer. I own several of her novels...none of which I have cracked open yet (the waiting list for my fleeting mind is so long), but I do keep her collection of poetry Two-Headed Poems at my bedside. If a book is at the bedside that means a lot in this house. It is reserved for my favorite poets: Mary Oliver, Jack Gilbert, Sharon Olds, Adrienne Rich, Ferlinghetti, and Margaret Atwood. It is also home to a portion of my collection of Buddhist texts. It is where I reach when something is not right and I need some words of clarity.
About 5 years ago while I was scouring the stacks of books at the Friends of the Library book sale I came upon this collection of poetry by Margaret Atwood. I was surprised because I had not known that she was also a poet. I liked that it was also an original publication from 1978 in great condition. I loved the look of it with its stark black and white background and blood red lettering. I have looked every sale since then and have never found another collection of her work. Sure...I could order it off of Amazon or some other retailer but the part of being a book collector is in the finding of books. It is the work of sifting through boxes and boxes of musty smelling pages to find that gem that makes your stomach flip and your heart race.
The Woman Makes Peace With Her Faulty Heart
It wasn't your crippled rhythm
I could not forgive, or your dark red
skinless head of a vulture
but the things you hid:
five words and my lost
gold ring, the fine blue cup
you said was broken,
that stack of faces, gray
and folded, you claimed
we'd both forgotten,
the other hearts you ate,
and all that discarded time you hid
from me, saying it never happened.
There was that, and the way
you would not be captured,
sly featherless bird, fat raptor
singing your raucous punctured song
with your talons and your greedy eye
lurking high in the molten sunset
sky behind my left cloth breast
to pounce on strangers.
How many times have I told you:
The civilized world is a zoo,
not a jungle, stay in your cage.
And then the shouts
of blood, the rage as you threw yourself
against my ribs.
As for me, I would have strangled you
gladly with both hands,
squeezed you closed, also
your yelps of joy.
Life goes more smoothly without a heart,
without that shiftless emblem,
that flyblown lion, magpie, cannibal
eagle, scorpion with its metallic tricks
of hate, that vulgar magic,
that organ the size and color
of a scalded rat,
that singed phoenix.
But you've shoved me this far,
old pump, and we're hooked
together like conspirators, which
we are, and just as distrustful.
We know that, barring accidents,
one of us will finally
betray the other; when that happens,
it's me for the urn, you for the jar.
Until then, it's an uneasy truce,
and honor between criminals.
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