Skip to main content

What Else Has the Platypus Been Reading: The Platypus Reads Part CIX

So not everything this summer has been my usual return to pulp.  We've been part of a reading group and that has given me the opportunity to expand my reading beyond its normal confines.  I love the old classics and, conversely, I have great difficulty with many of the "new classics."  However, their newness and my lack of interest don't make them any less important.  Indeed, as I now teach moderns, knowing them a bit better has become a necessity.  Even if it wasn't, I still believe in reading broadly.  So here's what I've been torturing myself with: "Hannah Coulter" by Wendel Berry, "Gilead" by Marilynne Robinson, and "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh.  N.B.- I have ranked them in the order of preference from least to greatest.

Now there is something odd I've discovered: I prefer the dead Brit to the living Americans.  That could be because I have studied at Oxford (the setting of the first part of "Brideshead Revisited") and have only grown up next to farms.  It could also be that I'm not a woman and I'm not a pastor or the son of a pastor but I do know a few things about college friendships (even if Waugh is writing about homoerotic ones and I've only experienced heterosexual ones) and maturing to the age of thirty.  I also found "Hannah Coulter" ponderously slow and rather preachy, "Gilead" less slow (but still ponderous) and less preachy, and "Brideshead Revisited" neither slow, nor ponderous, nor (oddly as it's a Catholic apologetic) preachy.  I found all of them technically excellent and all of them to have great depths to their themes and messages.  All three were definitely books worth reading, but I'm still just a little stuck on my order of preference.

Now this brings me to a question I find interesting.  How much does our liking for a work depend on our ability to identify with its world and protagonist(s)?  Before you jump in, think about all the fantasy and science fiction you like.  Have you ever been to the Moon, been promoted to general, been chased by a cyclops, lived for a thousand years, or made first contact with an alien species?  So the connection must be at some sort of deeper level.  Could it be gender?  Have you ever really enjoyed a book with a protagonist of the opposite sex?  Then what is it?  A similar life journey or a similar view of the world?  But I like "Dune" and I'm neither a materialist nor a world-traveling journalist.  Nietzsche preaches a worldview that I find noxious and yet I love reading him.  So my big question remains: why do we like the books we like?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...

SNES as Money Well Spent: Platypus Nostalgia

I got my Super Nintendo Entertainment System when I was eleven years old.  That's a couple years after it first came out.  The occasion was a little dramatic: to celebrate the end of a two-and-a-half year course of treatment for cancer.  I had no idea that it would be waiting for me at home after the final doctors visit.  It was a nice spring day, the trees were waving gently in the breeze outside the bay windows.  With a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, I set down to play.  What was that first game?  It was The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past .  Around twenty years later, my SNES still works as does that Zelda cartridge.  It's been a long way from boyhood in Southern Connecticut to manhood in North Houston, but I'm still playing. Why am I still playing?  There were stretches when I didn't.  Many times, I've just been too busy.  There were also seasons when it felt embarrassing to still be playing video games....

Under the Moon: The Platypus Reads Part LXVI

My wife and I were discussing our favorite books from the Chronicles of Narnia on our way back from lunch.  My wife, true to her sunny personality, is a staunch fan of "The Voyage of the Dawntreader."  I can't argue with that choice but, when push comes to shove, "The Silver Chair" has always been my favorite. I have a bit of a theory.  I think "The Voyage of the Dawntreader" is Lewis' grail legend.  If that's so, then I'd hazard a guess and say that "The Silver Chair" is his "Pilgrim's Progress." -just think about the shape of Puddleglum's hat and the fact that he lives in the Fen Country and you'll see what got me thinking down this line. That brings me to why I like "The Silver Chair" so much.  When I was little, we had a children's version of "Pilgrim's Progress" that my mom used to read to me.  I lived in New England and the Christianity I was raised with had a heavy tin...