Difficulty Reading

DIFFICULTY Reading

^Franny and Zooey in existential crisis!

A Confession. In my many years of formal education, 19 years to be exact (gross!), I've only read through a handful of books to their very last pages. Maybe 20 in my lifetime. I too quickly give up if I'm not immediately captured by the words, due to a lack of patience, I think. Luckily, and/or unfortunately, I've been able to successfully write entire essays and participate in meaningful discussions without completely reading material first hand, as in the case of the classics I've sadly never come to finish: To Kill a Mockingbird, A Tale of Two Cities, The Scarlet Letter, 1984, Dante's Inferno, to name a few. I even took a semester-long seminar solely dedicated to that last one. In a way, I feel I've faked my way out of it perhaps intentionally, keeping myself ignorant at a distance. It's fun to guess sometimes, I don't know. I don't care to know. In the end, I'm pretty sure I'll never finish these books 'cause I simply have no desire to.

So it was a relief to find some exceptions this past year: Truman Capote and J.D. Salinger, so far. Especially Truman Capote. I read through Breakfast at Tiffany's today in one sitting, which NEVER happens. It's pretty short, but I'm also a pretty slow reader since I have to sound out all the words in my head to hear them. His collection of short stories, Music for Chameleons, is my favorite. Something about the rhythm and sound of the words, and how it's all arranged to create meaning, sort of like music. J.D. Salinger's, Franny and Zooey, too. In strict terms of plot, it's completely dull: Franny reads this book, freaks out, and lies on the couch for a while. Her brother, Zooey, lies in a bathtub, walks around the house, and consoles her. But the language and the substance, for chrissake, GODDAM.

My problem, I'm sure, is that I haven't actively pursued or explored literature with any faith. So I'm hoping to change that and give it a try after all these years. Trying to get my eyes off the computer screen and back into my imagination. Next stop: Oscar Wilde. He's supposed to be witty, right?

Some stuff from Breakfast at Tiffany's:

I came home to find outside my door a grand-luxe Charles & Co. basket with her card: Miss Holiday Golightly, Traveling: and scribbled on the back in a freakishly awkward, kindergarten hand: Bless you darling Fred. Please forgive the other night. You were an angel about the whole thing. Mille tendresse - Holly. P.S. I won't bother you again. I replied, Please do, and left this note at her door with what I could afford, a bunch of street-vendor violets.

And,

the trick had been worked by exaggerating defects; she'd made them ornamental by admitting them boldly. Heels that emphasized her height, so steep her ankles trembled; a flat tight bodice that indicated she could go to a beach in bathing trunks, hair that was pulled straight back, accentuating the spareness, the starvation of her fashion-model face. Even the stutter, certainly genuine but a bit laid on, had been turned to an advantage. It was the master of stroke, that stutter; for it contrived to make her banalities sound somehow original.

And,

They've had the old clap-yo'-hands so many times it amounts to applause.