know. The more that you learn, the more places
you'll go.” -Dr. Seuss
These stories have been my university. My place of solace in difficult times. Fiction has given me an objective look at a life not my own, when my own story has become far too subjective. Life makes little sense when looked at too closely. No one ever celebrated the impressionist work of Claude Monet with their nose upon the canvas. Yet, my life is often too far upon me for me to understand the rhythm and flow of the imagines, sights, and sounds, which surround me. I’m lost within a flood of emotion where the strongest fears obscure to more subtle beauty contained within the whole picture. A feeling of helplessness is difficult to avoid. The book forces me to look at other problems and allows me a vicarious way of processing issues, some not unlike my own.
Reading about another’s life helps to maintain a broad prospected. I’m nothing like Dorian Gray or Eliza Doolittle, however, I lived part of their painful stories–for a time. Their lives impacted my own and I was changed. My life is one small journey in a massive history of human existence. To live constantly in the prison house of our own experience tempts us to hate and neglect others not like ourselves. Ignorance is the garden in which hate and neglect grow. But, these are weeds in need of removal. Reading about the life of one fictitious character opens an understudying of what it means to be human in an other race, time, gender, or land.
I was listening to a Henry James story today. It's like a book on tape. I don't enjoy Henry James, but I teach American literature and he's good conversation piece. It's the first time I've taught American lit, so it will be an experiment.
ReplyDeleteReading Henry James's fiction is interesting because he goes into the heads of two or three different characters. All his character are really flawed and not really that likeable because they are really vain. So when I was in grad school, I always wondered why the heck do I have to read Henry James? But I sort of figured out that there wasn't really a protagonist in his stories, but his stories were just exploring what is in people's heads. And also his stories are realism-----so they aren't meant to make me feel happy, but just sort of a like a reflection of the vanity of people in the upper classes.
Anyways------fiction is weird. Sometimes I can really get into it, but lately I just don't want to read it. I'd rather read theology or nonfiction. Maybe its because it is my job to teach fiction?
Nate