Our Quiet Growing Time

Prior to this moment in my life, I've had a strict no re-reading policy. My motto has always been "So many books, so little time," so clearly, I have no time to waste for rereads. I had a sweatshirt sporting this slogan that I wore exactly once to school in sixth grade. That's all the further I'd like to go with that story; the pain is still raw. ;) But I'm glad I revisited Gone with the Wind . You get a lot more out of a book when you're 27 than you did when you were 13.  You know the story: it's the tale of how one Southern woman survives the turbulence of the Civil War and the years following. What struck me this time was that Margaret Mitchell wrote an epic 1000+ page tome with a protagonist who was detestable. Name a bad character trait: Scarlett's got it. She's lied, cheated, stolen, committed adultery in everything but the final act, wished death upon others, hated, and murdered. She's cruel, greedy, selfish, mercenary, manip...

Reading is kind of like dating. You said 'yes' to dinner, you bought a book. You think: " Looks good." You sniff, (or inhale deeply) and think: " Smells even better." You open the book, you go on the date. You wonder "Will this one be THE ONE ?"   By the end of the date, by the end of the first few chapters, you probably have an idea whether this is the beginning of something special. Or you will donate the book to the Salvation Army's used book sale and give him a bogus phone number and dodge his good-night kiss. All the King's Men was a blind date for me. I didn't know what I was getting into, but I thought I'd give it a shot. I walked in to the restaurant, saw the guy looking expectantly at the door and thought "Dang. This doesn't look good." I sat down, planning an early escape to the restroom and out the back way, when he pleasantly surprised me. He made me laugh. He held my interest. He made me feel. ...

I finished The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn yesterday and thought that was quite fortuitous timing, since yesterday was the first day of Banned Books Week, and Huck has been one of the most banned/censored books in America. Huck is commonly banned because of its frequent use of the "N" word. But what would the dissenters ask that Twain call black people in his book? He can't call them African Americans, that's for sure, and issue would probably be taken with anything he called them. It's a part of America's oft-times ugly history and slavery and racism are sad and ugly things. But in the interest of realism and of accurately expressing the era in which the book is set, and the society that Jim and Huck are up against, why should Twain be censored?  Instead of censoring Huck for the "N" word, why isn't the focus on what I think is the true beauty of the novel? Despite the teachings ingrained in Huck by society, by his elders,  the c...

After the sit-in, all I could think of was how sick Mississippi whites were. They believed so much in the segregated Southern way of life, they would kill to preserve it. I sat there in the NAACP office and thought of how many times they had killed when this way of life was threatened. I knew that the killing had just begun... Before the sit-in, I had always hated the whites in Mississippi. Now I knew it was impossible for me to hate sickness. The whites had a disease, an incurable disease in its final stages. What were our chances against such a disease?  Martin Luther King, Jr. is the face most commonly associated with the Civil Rights movement. He was an idealist, an optimist, a dreamer, a preacher. He preached a message of hope and faith, not despair. Anne Moody, the author of Coming of Age in Mississippi , is a very different personality from the idealistic Reverend King. In her memoir, she frequently comes across as bitter and angry and pessimistic. Relationally, she's s...

I've always gotten a kick out of Mark Twain. His dry sense of humor really works for me. These are some classic Twain quotations that have always tickled my funny bone: C lothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society. Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. I defy anyone to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and not laugh out loud, or at the very least, grin stupidly. If you can, I don't want to be your friend. I've always thought I'd be a good mom to a passel of (no scratch that... I mean one or two ) mischievous little boys. And with a few tiny tweaks, Tom Sawyer is pretty much the epitome of perfect American boyhood. I laughed out loud so much reading this that I had to read passages out loud for Nathan to appreciate, too. But then we were both laughing so hard that I couldn't keep reading. This is my favorite funny passage. Tom is trying to win Becky Thatcher's affection and has succeeded in meeting her ...

I attacked As I Lay Dying , not as a leisurely read, but as a code to be cracked. I've been frightened of Faulkner for many years now, but as it turns out, my fear was misplaced. I should have been dreading Thomas Wolfe instead. This was actually a really fast read: I read it in only a few hours on Saturday and Sunday, holding the book in my left hand, ta king notes with my right. I like to give myself the occasional literary challenge in my efforts to call myself "well-read." This was one of those challenges (although it seems to be on the required reading lists of many high school sophomores... I guess I'm a decade overdue). My favorite kind of book is one in which I can forget myself and become lost in the pages; this was definitely not that. This was a book where I had to be focused the whole time, read and re-read passages, flip back a few pages, consult my notes, and pause to ponder. I hate this book's cover. What is with that lady's expressio...

I don't know much about World War I. This is what comes to mind: poison gas Ottoman empire Austro-Hungary Archduke Ferdinand That is the extent of the contents of the catalog in my brain under the heading "World War I." I bet a lot of people know that the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was one of the events that led to WWI, but I bet most don't know why. Similarly, I think 99% of American schoolchildren can name Eli Whitney as the inventor of the cotton gin, but few can explain what a cotton gin is . All I know is that it was a machine that revolutionized the cotton industry. I'm envisioning a massive robotic machine with many metal arms, propelling itself through cotton fields plucking cotton bolls at breakneck speed. But that can't be right. And I can’t explain the significance that the death of Archduke Ferdinand had on the world, either. One of the most famous books to come out of World War I wa...

From Pat Conroy to one of Conroy's literary influences: Thomas Wolfe. And maybe this was a bad move on my part. I can see the same pomposity (I looked it up this time. It is a word; pompousness is also correct) in Wolfe's writing that I disliked in Conroy's. They say writers live in Mississippi because of Faulkner; they live in Asheville because of Thomas Wolfe. Look Homeward, Angel is a huge autobiographical novel about a boy growing up in Western North Carolina in the beginning of the 20th century. Wolfe's editor was the famed Maxwell Perkins, the editor of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway. So why have the works of F. Scottie and Ernie entered the American literary canon, but old Tommy's books haven't? Apparently Wolfe was incredibly successful in his time, both critically and with the public. But that popularity hasn't lasted. I hadn't really heard about him until I read the inside cover of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn recently. Betty Smith said she ...