I think it is easier to think of books that have changed my life for some reason. Here is the start of my list. These are the fiction ones.
1. Damien by Herman Hesse
This was the first piece of literature I read without having to for a class. I hadn't been to college yet and high school for me was a totally hateful experience that I don't really want to ever think about it. The only thing I remember from high school was the first page of my French book. J'entre dans la salle de classe. Je pron my place, j'oevere mon livre, je regard la tour Effel. That's it and it's probably wrong. I "met" Hesse when I was traveling in Europe with a friend who had been to college and was by my standards of the day, very intellectual. She was my Virgil, my guide to enlightenment by choice. I was on a train in one of those old style compartments where the seats face each other. Julie is across from me. She had suggested I read Hesse. I was awestruck with the language even though it was a translation from the German, which I didn't speak then just the 4 sentences in french. I ended up reading everything Hesse wrote and pretty much continued that tradition to this day, that is, reading everything from an author until I get completely sated. Anyway, Damien is about a young man who struggles with his identity in a really big way. He is making the break with the traditional/conventional path of his parents and finding that he is quite different than they are. His world is very different from his parents and that is what struck me, how different my world was from the world my parents knew. There was then a tremendous generation gap. He discovers that even the greatest good can be used for horrid evil. It is not the typical coming of age book like so many others we were required to read either by professors or peers. As is so often true, I can't remember all of why it moved me but I do know that somehow it rearranged the chemicals in my brain and changed me forever. I was not the same at all when I was done. I was well on my own path to myself.
More on the generation gap. At that time, in the 60's the old world collided with the new. It was the dawning of the age of Aquarius, if you will. As hokey as that is it is the social metaphor of the times. My parents were raised by Victorians. I did not live in a Victorian world by any means. I am going to think about why things changed then so much in the world
and, why for people like me, it was such a struggle to become myself and move away from that past. We can discuss it later. Somehow that past failed us. I think Hesse thought the same thing. He made me do this.
1. Damien by Herman Hesse
This was the first piece of literature I read without having to for a class. I hadn't been to college yet and high school for me was a totally hateful experience that I don't really want to ever think about it. The only thing I remember from high school was the first page of my French book. J'entre dans la salle de classe. Je pron my place, j'oevere mon livre, je regard la tour Effel. That's it and it's probably wrong. I "met" Hesse when I was traveling in Europe with a friend who had been to college and was by my standards of the day, very intellectual. She was my Virgil, my guide to enlightenment by choice. I was on a train in one of those old style compartments where the seats face each other. Julie is across from me. She had suggested I read Hesse. I was awestruck with the language even though it was a translation from the German, which I didn't speak then just the 4 sentences in french. I ended up reading everything Hesse wrote and pretty much continued that tradition to this day, that is, reading everything from an author until I get completely sated. Anyway, Damien is about a young man who struggles with his identity in a really big way. He is making the break with the traditional/conventional path of his parents and finding that he is quite different than they are. His world is very different from his parents and that is what struck me, how different my world was from the world my parents knew. There was then a tremendous generation gap. He discovers that even the greatest good can be used for horrid evil. It is not the typical coming of age book like so many others we were required to read either by professors or peers. As is so often true, I can't remember all of why it moved me but I do know that somehow it rearranged the chemicals in my brain and changed me forever. I was not the same at all when I was done. I was well on my own path to myself.
More on the generation gap. At that time, in the 60's the old world collided with the new. It was the dawning of the age of Aquarius, if you will. As hokey as that is it is the social metaphor of the times. My parents were raised by Victorians. I did not live in a Victorian world by any means. I am going to think about why things changed then so much in the world
and, why for people like me, it was such a struggle to become myself and move away from that past. We can discuss it later. Somehow that past failed us. I think Hesse thought the same thing. He made me do this.
posted by Anne Coe | 6:35 AM
3 Comments:
Our parents were the greatgrandchildren of Victorians. Victorians were not all bad. The Victorian age included some our our best thinkers in natural history: biology and geology. It also produced some interesting innovations in art. Further, while part of the Victorian age involved exploration and conquest (which actually started much earlier, so the Victorian age was more colonization--or trying to change the cultures of those they conquered), it also involved a strong ethic of service, at least in some sectors of society. These were the missionaries who tried to protect and serve the vulnerable and while we may now critically judge the job they did, their intentions were honorable in many cases. Anyway, our parents were not Victorians, nor were their parents. Our paternal grandmother spent her life in guilt for not fitting the Victorian model, for qustionning its values. Both grandmothers worked tirelessly to help the poor.
The world wars changed the world so totally and in so many ways. One thing they did was destroy Victorian optimism of a better future and hope for mankind. Well, I have to run to a meeting or I would write more. Interesting
I think that during my life books have influenced me mightily, but also feel that much of my later life has been devoted to try and uncover the ways that those very books influenced me or others in our society to do things that in the long run were not in my best interests or the best interests of those I love. Narrative has a powerful influence on behavior, but not all influence is good. This gets us back to Plato and art and whether or not art encourages behaviors that contribute to something, such as a strong society and logical thinking or to something like self-indulgence.
I don't think I made a judgement on the Victorians at all. I just know that their world was very very different than mine. Two world wars changed everything. And the Manhattan Project and the invention of the BOMB! colored all our lives in a way that they would never have been able to comprehend. Not that they weren't well acquainted with death. The death they knew as a result of WWI was immediate and horrid. So much so that it changed all our death rituals in society. The BOMB was differnt, a silent, everpresent, fear. More later on this.
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