Since i’ve been slacking on the literary posts recently, i’m going to play along with the college literary crushes (their words, not mine.) Yes, there was the obvious Hunter S. Thompson (who only Neal Pollack acknowledges,) and some teenaged girl turned me onto Henry Miller, even though i couldn’t bear to emulate that life. She made me wonder if she was one of the most worldly people i knew, and the fascination with her Miller was endless. A couple of years later, she became a born again Christian, and i still had Miller. There’s part of me that is nursing a desire to revisit those books again.
One professor had a profound effect on me by simultaneously getting me turned onto Don Quixote and the short stories of Raymond Carver. Don Quixote made me extremely sad, and i identified with him more than i should have. There was no comedy there, until years later. Carver cut out my heart. His work brought me no joy whatsoever, and there seemed to be too much truth. I won’t even read him anymore.
There’s not much more to revisit, as i went through a long fallow period of reading then, as i was too depressed to find anything of pleasure or meaning in literature after those encounters. It wasn’t until a few years later, when i read Gabriel Garcia Marquez, bombed out of my skull on antidepressants, that i began to edge back into reading.
I wonder if I should post my college book crushes?
Wait… what have I been doing on this blog for a year?
That’s right on about Carver- when I did read his stuff a lot, I could only take it in small doses, it was just so bleak sometimes.
I read “Don Quijote” under the best possible circumstances – while traveling around Southern Europe, mostly Spain, on the train.
My college book crushes were related to Kafka and Augusto Monterroso