Sunday, November 14, 2004
Re-Literate
I have been having trouble reading for the last few (geez, five?) years. Every book that I would pick up would take me about half way and then I would lose interest. I think it was the purchase and subsequent tortuous read of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest that did me in. Perhaps it took years to recover from the mere 124 pages out of 1079 that I managed to get through.
What ever it was, it was making me feel bad about myself. I had always been a big reader and took books everywhere with me as a child. At family gatherings or camping trips, I could always be found tucked away from everyone else, living vicariously through exciting words. I'm sure this wasn't great either and that I should have been out playing with other kids, learning social skills and strengthening my wimpy little body.
Well, the curse has passed, and I can read again! In the past month I read two books and now I have started a third. I know this sounds lame, many people read a book a week, but this was a big relief to me. It was definitely starting to look like I had developed ADD from playing too many video games.
So, let me take a minute and plug the book that broke through the cellophane wrapper of my twinky-becoming brain. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III was beautifully written and absolutely heartbreaking. The world could have fallen apart all around me and I would not have stopped reading. Jeremy told me 10 years ago that I would love Dubus and although I stupidly ignored him, he was right. I could feel myself so thoroughly inside the heads of each of the three very different narrators. This book is truly tragic, even on a Shakespearean scale.
The odd thing is that this book that I really loved and thought impeccable, has gotten pretty bad customer reviews on Amazon. Seems its not realistic enough. I guess we all have very different views of reality.
What ever it was, it was making me feel bad about myself. I had always been a big reader and took books everywhere with me as a child. At family gatherings or camping trips, I could always be found tucked away from everyone else, living vicariously through exciting words. I'm sure this wasn't great either and that I should have been out playing with other kids, learning social skills and strengthening my wimpy little body.
Well, the curse has passed, and I can read again! In the past month I read two books and now I have started a third. I know this sounds lame, many people read a book a week, but this was a big relief to me. It was definitely starting to look like I had developed ADD from playing too many video games.
So, let me take a minute and plug the book that broke through the cellophane wrapper of my twinky-becoming brain. House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III was beautifully written and absolutely heartbreaking. The world could have fallen apart all around me and I would not have stopped reading. Jeremy told me 10 years ago that I would love Dubus and although I stupidly ignored him, he was right. I could feel myself so thoroughly inside the heads of each of the three very different narrators. This book is truly tragic, even on a Shakespearean scale.
The odd thing is that this book that I really loved and thought impeccable, has gotten pretty bad customer reviews on Amazon. Seems its not realistic enough. I guess we all have very different views of reality.
