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A primer is a book that covers the basic elements of a subject. Well, the subject of this primer is Reading. I have always loved to read. I also like to talk about what I've read, why I've read it, what it made me think about, what I'm going to read next, so on and so forth. But instead of blathering here for hours, I have split up my literature and reading information, and included links to the relevant portions of my website below for my fellow bibliophiles.
I really like to read. I read fairly fast. Thus, I have and do read a lot. My pleasure reading spans genres and historical periods. I have finished a classic of literature and gone straight into the most pulpy science-fiction; from Poe to Chandler to L'Amour to Crane, I just plain read.
A slight tangential rant here, but it will become germane, I promise:
I have heard, especially fairly recently, several "Baby Boomers" complaining about my generation's lack of knowledge and or respect for anything before 1960. A premium example would be the anecdote that author, essayist, and critic Harlan Ellison recounted about describing a piece of artwork he would like to have to illustrate one of his stories:
"I'll give you a real interesting anecdote. I got a publisher who is bringing out 31 of my books next year, early next year. And I'm having dinner with him in Chicago, I was at the American Book Sellers Association Convention and we went out to have dinner. And in the middle of dinner I'm talking about a cover idea that I had for my comic book, Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor, and I said it's this great idea: you got a guy who's climbing Mt. Everest, you know, climbing back to Shangri-La. And, and the wind is whipping the snow in a curtain off to the left. And it's like Ronald Colman climbing back to Shangri-La. And as he looks toward the summit he sees McDonald's arches."Now, I thought that was very funny. [...] But I suddenly realized as I was talking to them that they were looking at me as if I fallen off the moon. I said, "Ronald Colman? - you know, Lost Horizon, the movie? The black and white movie? Hello -Hello? Ellison to Earth". They didn't know. they didn't know anything about Lost Horizon. They didn't know Ronald Colman. They didn't know Shangri-La. It's impossible, almost impossible, to write anything today that an audience today knows anything about if the audience is under 20. They just don't give a damn. they don't know and they don't care. And it turns into a kind of situation where even the most famous stuff becomes no price." -- Harlan Ellison's Watching, Sci-Fi Buzz
Personally, I think the anecdote is very sad, but Harlan immediately launches into vilifying the young; ironic, since that was one of the things he complained most against in the Sixties.
A personal anecdote: I got through all of my formal schooling-- that's high school and college-- never having had to read Jane Eyre or anything else by a Bronte. I never had to read Moby Dick, or Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground. Only in specialty courses did I ever read any Milton, Hardy, James, Faulkner, TS Eliot, or Pound. No Tristam Shanty, no Elmer Gantry, no Sister Carrie. The only plays we read in High School were Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar, MacBeth, Our Town, and West Side Story. Only by taking an Art of the Cinema course (and by sneaking into some of my friends' filmmaking courses) was I able to see and appreciate films from Battleship Potemkin to Un Chien Andalu to Citizen Kane to Kiss Me Deadly. My knowledge of great art and music is sorely lacking.
Part of this, I fear, is the addition of more stuff by these Boomers to our curricula. This isn't to say that the mid-eighteenth century women's writings don't deserve to be there, or that the Peruvian folk stories shouldn't be included: I firmly believe that such things are positive enhancements to our educational bills of fare. However, there's just not enough time in the day to cover both the legions of Dead White European Males and this newfound stuff and give them all any quality of discussion. So things, usually of the DWEM variety (and in a few cases, rightly so) have fallen off the fruit truck of education. Now, here is the rub: some of the complaints like Harlan's above-- in my arrogant opinion-- are about not knowing about the sorts of things that they (the Boomers) themselves took out of our curricula. It's infuriating: not only are we expected to know all the old stuff, which may not be as readily accessible to us as it was to them, we are also expected to be up on the current stuff, and finally to be generating the new stuff of the future.
As one of those twentysomethings who actually cares about good stuff and actively seeks it out; let me just say it's bloody hard to find such gems on your own. From what starting point do you begin? How do you know when standing in a video rental place whether Lost Horizon (or Twelve Angry Men, or Altered States) is gonna be any good? Or when standing in a library which stack to turn to if you wish to expand your mind a bit?
There's so much out there it's hard to pan out the gold. We're drowning in a sea of information today; a life line is needed. That's why now more than ever the recommendations of those whose opinions we hold insightful are valuable. I would have NEVER found how much I liked Norman Corwin's poetry without discovering that he was the specific namesake of a character on Babylon 5. I would have never discovered the books of Barry Hughart -- author of the wondrous Bridge of Birds-- if not for a list of recommendations I found online. I would never have watched the Orwellian movie Closet Land and the wonderfully thought-provoking Adam's Rib if not for the recommendation of someone whose taste in movies I trust.
That's why it's important to tell people what you think is good. It allows people to see that if they like A and B, which you list along with C as works you enjoy, that they may like C, too. It's the Transitive Syllogism of Goodness. Or something. Harlan should already know that the best way to let us "blinkered-by-Nintendo [sure, whatever]" young kids know what's good is to tell us what the older kids already know. Personally, I've found fascinating reading and movie-watching from reading his work.
So, it behooves me to place this Good List (tm) of books up on the Web for all to see. Check out the books therein; in my opinion they are excellent reading. For those of you who'd like a little more information, I've included a short blurb for each on a separate page, appropriately cross-linked and suchlike.
Amazon.com - The Internet Bookstore. End of story. Use this Search Box to search Amazon from here!
Quail's Libyrinth - Better experienced by the bibliophile than described.
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Last Modified: September 28, 1998