Summer Reading...
I just finished re-reading Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. It's the first time I've read it since I was fifteen or sixteen when I pulled it off my sister's bookcase one summer. I'm not sure what to say about it. My first response is to say that I "loved it," but I'm kind of sick of saying that I love things right now. It was good. Really good. Just a few months ago I read "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" for the first time. There's a copy of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction at my parents' house, also in my sister's bookcase. I don't know a whole lot about them yet, but I like the Glass family very much. I haven't read Catcher in the Rye, and I'm rather uninterested.
Tonight I started reading through Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, a collection of essays by Ander Monson (pronounced Mun-sun, according to one of my former profs). I think that maybe I would recommend it. I haven't read it for a couple of years. He has an essay about car washes and about taking baths (he is self-conscious about his weight and talks about the water displacement); there is an essay about snow that I remember mostly for its comments on isolation. His writing is sometimes surprising, sometimes beautiful, sometimes crass, mostly honest, sometimes dull, sometimes it fails in a way, and more vulnerable than perhaps you would expect. Reading his collection makes me want to move to Minnesota. Which I don't understand because he grew up in Michigan (I think).
All of the following are from Ander Monson:
"My current toothpaste (no joke) is Aqua-Fresh Extreme Clean: Empowermint. It is most definitely righteous."
Just a warning for this next quote: you have to read the whole essay and see it in its environment to truly appreciate it. Basically, each time in this quote that there is an ellipsis, there are actually many more periods/ellipses in the real essay. Okay, here it is:
"I have been thinking about loss... How each winter is the story of a burial...gradual... (and each spring another revelation)... a compilation... a complication... until we are up to our necks... in North... in enough... in what we feel... what we contain... in what we are contained... in what we barely understand..."
"What I am trying to tell you is this: in my own way, I love you. And you can trust me, mostly. I won't lead, wouldn't lead, haven't led you wrong. It would be bad form. But please know that if I do lead you wrong, I once thought it was right."
Tonight I started reading through Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, a collection of essays by Ander Monson (pronounced Mun-sun, according to one of my former profs). I think that maybe I would recommend it. I haven't read it for a couple of years. He has an essay about car washes and about taking baths (he is self-conscious about his weight and talks about the water displacement); there is an essay about snow that I remember mostly for its comments on isolation. His writing is sometimes surprising, sometimes beautiful, sometimes crass, mostly honest, sometimes dull, sometimes it fails in a way, and more vulnerable than perhaps you would expect. Reading his collection makes me want to move to Minnesota. Which I don't understand because he grew up in Michigan (I think).
All of the following are from Ander Monson:
"My current toothpaste (no joke) is Aqua-Fresh Extreme Clean: Empowermint. It is most definitely righteous."
Just a warning for this next quote: you have to read the whole essay and see it in its environment to truly appreciate it. Basically, each time in this quote that there is an ellipsis, there are actually many more periods/ellipses in the real essay. Okay, here it is:
"I have been thinking about loss... How each winter is the story of a burial...gradual... (and each spring another revelation)... a compilation... a complication... until we are up to our necks... in North... in enough... in what we feel... what we contain... in what we are contained... in what we barely understand..."
"What I am trying to tell you is this: in my own way, I love you. And you can trust me, mostly. I won't lead, wouldn't lead, haven't led you wrong. It would be bad form. But please know that if I do lead you wrong, I once thought it was right."
posted by Sylvia Louise at
9:39 PM
3 Comments:
Oh, I like the last quote a lot. Also, I feel you are right to be disinterested in Catcher in the Rye. I have no idea why it's considered a "classic." In general, I think, I'm not quite sure what to do with good ol' J.D. I REMEMBER his stories, but they don't necessarily MEAN anything for me. Hmmm.
Whatever you do, don't read Catcher in the Rye... Ugh...
I LOVE Catcher in the Rye. And I'm not saying that because I'm one of the masses. I adore flawed characters. I forgive them, completely. I see myself in them. Holden is completely real. His over dramatic reactions are exactly what makes teenagers so genuine. And I don't feel bad about saying so.
I say you should read it. If you like Franny and Zooey, you will also like Catcher.
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