This morning, the crisp cool breeze startled my skin, and the limbs of the weeping willow billowed and danced as if to clap and say, “Goodbye summer breeze, I desire autumn’s chilling caress, if you please.” I found myself engrossed in a book and loving it. Ever so often this happens, and it’s usually the result of my haphazardly selecting a book from a shelf – or in this case, one of those spinning paperback holders in Duane Reade – and telling myself, “You need to read something and you know it’s not even going to be Cry, the Beloved Country, so stop playin’ and get something else.”
I’ve been reading that book for 2 years, ever since I didn’t read it in 12th grade and cheated my way through an essay about it. It’s not bad, but I never get farther than like 10 pages before I find something else to take me away. This should not happen with books I feel, because in my opinion, that’s why I’m reading them, to get away for a bit, to escape.
I just re-read what I just typed and laughed out loud at the fact that I actually chronicled my choosing a book – that completely engrossed me, mind you – from the spinning paperback holder at Duane Reade. It doesn’t seem possible, but it happened, so there. Yeah it was chick-lit, yes I clutched it in what is too-often, but aptly described as romantically deprived fingers and yeah, I loved it. Totally passin’ it on.
I think Jennifer Weiner is a wonderful writer in that her dialogue clips along as if I’m right there in Philadelphia people-watching. That’s one of my favorite pastimes, people-watching, and to do it through a book isn’t as cheap as I initially thought it’d be. (“Why people watch in a book when you can sit your tail on a park bench and do it yourself. Hell, you’re in New York City. Duh.”).
Anyway, as is usually the case after reading a book and loving the feeling I get as if I’ve been on vacation, I am ready to read something else. Cry, the Beloved Country practically scoffs at me from my bookshelf, as it sits not too far from that Tom Wolfe book, I Am Charlotte Simmons, which I bought in B&N and haven’t finished. It’s as thick as a Harry Potter book, but not even as enchanting …
I love reading. Where did that love go? And why does it visit me like blue moons, as if I was alone, with a beat in my heart, but not a love of my own? I love how I get lost in a story, meeting all the characters, watching them come and go, and analyzing what they need to do before page 521 in order for this to really be an ending that will leave me satisfied. And then when they do leave? I wonder how we met, and if I’d ever find people like them again?
How does one create these people? This is my question. Do I have people like this that will just sort of create themselves on a page and then chart their way onward weaving scenes and stories? If I write it, will they come? I wonder.
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I watched A Love Song for Bobby Long today. It starred John Travolta, Scarlett Johannson and Gabriel Macht, and I enjoyed it, too. The thing I liked the most about it was how the script was infused, if not chock full of, lines from books and poems of all sorts. Travolta’s character was an ex-English professor, a troubadour of sorts, and Macht played his protégé, so there was a great exchange of replies and comments, cutting and imploring, that were basically just quotes. Of course, there were a few scenes where I was like, why can’t they just speak? Without quoting and being all smarty ass and smug about their literary prowess? But it was good.
I realized that once again that great and lingering list of classics that I’ve been saying I’d read (and re-read in too many cases) is still waiting to be checked off. I also realize that I keep adding to this list, which I guess is probably the point, since our quest for knowledge, for growth, for explorin’, etc. should never be complete.
The canon can wait, I feel. I have my life to start making better sense of. So instead of re-reading To Kill A Mockingbird in preparation for the release of the special, commemorative DVD, and instead of re-reading Memoirs of a Geisha in preparation for its winter silver screen debut, I will wrap my searching fingers around the spine of The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter and perhaps unlock the room inside myself where I’ve long retreated …