Reading was not part of my childhood. Great Expectations was my official entry into the world of literature. Before opening it, pop-lyrics and movies served that purpose--a place for slow, reflective dialogue between writer and audience that opens interior doors and stirs the heart to want more than what currently is.
That is, after all, why we read, isn't it? To sip from something substantial, have a meaningful dialogue while sitting near the window, looking up now and then from the page to the snow falling in waves outside, to say, "yes, this is just how it is. I've been looking for a long time for a way to say this." Reading validates interiority--that the majority of our life occurs inside ourselves and that we are our own best friends, flaws and all. I've also found, overtime, that literature alters those conversations we have with ourselves--deepens them, broadens them, and in the process makes us better people.
Marci and I have often talked about how it was always the English professors in college who were open, honest, flexible and understanding. I actually switched majors because of this. Growing up, I'd always wanted to be an architect and I have always loved a good structure tied to the environment. That has never changed. But when I entered the School of Architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington, I was confronted with a competitive, corporate philosophy designed to weed out the weak and allow access to only the great. I'm pretty talented in most creative forms--painting, drawing, writing, film, photography--and probably could have made the cut, but competitive, I'm not. Being told the first day, "half of you will drop out of the program within the first year," did not stir me to greatness, just hate. Reading The Fountain Head by Ayn Rand as required by all freshman Architectural students didn't drive me to become the next Howard Roarke, it just drove me to hate.
At my core, I have always known we only become fully human when we take ourselves lightly and at the same time take humanity seriously, when our goal is to help others, not obliterate them. I quickly found that kind people inhabited the English department and that's where I wanted to be.
English professors, overall, are special people for a reason. Books. Not just any books, but the right kind of books. Books that deal honestly with interiority, who we are in between doing, behind doing, in front of doing. What we think in the midst of surviving (or not surviving) the chaos of humanity. You simply cannot read those types of books on a regular basis and not be changed in some way no matter what type of jerk you are by nature. And so it is the English professor who is usually the one willing to sit down and listen, ironically, even more than the psychology or sociology professor. I always found English professors were less professional, more casual, more human, and most importantly, more versed in human nature--something an extremely shy person like myself with lots of thinking errors, needed desperately to get me through the next day.
I hope, like my professors, books have developed some level of depth and understanding in me that I can pass on to others. In particular, I want to share five books that had an impact on both my writing and myself. These are the books that have been the most essential in my life: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, Daughter of Earth by Agnes Smedley, the Selected Poems of William Carlos Williams and Small Graces by Kent Nerburn.
I know most have their own list--and that's what is so wonderful, that at certain times in our lives books are our bread. But there are also those who don't have their own list, who are struggling desperately to find interiority, but have not yet found that slow, reflective dialogue between author and self that says, "yes, this is just how it is; I'm not alone after all." Perhaps these will be books that open that door, or open it a little wider, as interiority is an on-going meditative process which opens us up and deepens us. I'll start next time with Great Expectations.
