Chris,
And yet you had your mother until you were seven. I'm convinced that we
retain more from our early formative years than we realize -- or maybe
we later realize some of it from the results. In my own case I was
raised by my paternal grandmother until I was ten. She had lost her
hearing in her adolescence for a year or two and so never finished high
school. She made up for it by reading and convinced me that reading was
the most important thing I could do. One could read greater teachers
than our schools could provide. My first library card was a very big
deal for me. I describe my feelings after I got back from Korea as not
liking the peace-time-Marines and list that as my reason for not
shipping over. And yet I spent my free time at the 29 Palms base
library reading "classics," and I supplemented those by subscribing to
Black's "Classics Club" which involved receiving a new book every
month. So perhaps I have deceived myself by thinking I might have
shipped over if I was promised some agreeable duty. Perhaps the books I
carried about in my sea bag counted more than any Marine Corps' promise
could.
And now I am 86 years old, and quite content to be sequestered in my
well-furnished house with my well-furnished library, reading one book
after another. I am pragmatist enough to need a purpose, but I recall
that my grandmother gave me one years ago: keep reading. It will equip
you to do anything you want to do and make you more than a match for any
future that awaits.
Lawrence
On 2/4/2021 2:11 AM, epostboxx@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On 27. Jan 2021, at 17:01, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I didn't see combat in Korea, but had I shipped over in 1955, I would have seenI find this an interesting and insightful comment about the personal evaluation
it in Vietnam; so DeMille's Paul Brenner novels matter to me. I've described a
personal set of considerations. Whether and in what sense Demille's novels
might matter to someone else, I can't say.
of literature. How important is a connexion to one's personal life in
appreciating (or perhaps even understanding) a piece of literature?
I remember that while reading George Orwell's KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING I had
great difficulty 'identifying' with the protagonist. (Among other things, I
couldn't imagine what it would be like to have to make a decision about whether
to spend the little money I had on food or cigarettes - like many of my
generation I have never gone hungry or had to worry from where my next meal
would come.) I found it impossible to make that 'identification' or in any
other ways 'connect' with what Orwell was saying and I never finished the book
- even though I find it easy to 'identify' with Orwell himself, and consider
him seminal to many of my convictions about life, art and politics.
On the other hand, the reading (several years ago now) of Joseph Roth's
RADETZKYMARSCH had a tremendous impact on me. What identification (or other
connexion) could I forge with the author or protagonist of a 1932 novel
chronicling the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire via the story
of three generations of a family whose promotion to nobility ultimately leads
to their ruination?
Recent research about Roth has shown me that he was a native of Galicia, a
region in Eastern Europe divided today between Poland and Ukraine. It was only
years after reading this novel (and wondering about its impact on me) that I
also learned that my maternal grandfather (who died 10 years before I was born
and about whom I knew virtually nothing - my mother died when I was 7 and my
maternal grandmother had already been remarried and again widowed before I was
old enough to retain any memories of her) had emigrated to Canada (my native
country) from this very region.
Was it some sort of 'genetic' connexion (in a literary, not strictly biological
sense) that had been forged in the reading of this novel? Or was it a purely
the quality of Roth's writing that 'spoke' to me, whereas Orwell in this case
(i.e. in ASPIDISTRA) had failed to connect with me and left me cold?
Chris Bruce, in
Kiel, Germany
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