10 Books That Changed My Life (continued)
6. The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
One day in yet another junior high English class, I was mouthing off in front of my teacher, one Mr. Denhalter. For some reason, the subject of the death penalty had come up; I think this was around the time that one of the Hi-Fi killers was up for an appeal. Anyway, Denhalter had become infamous among both the students and faculty for nearly beating a student out of his desk one day, and since that time he had become, shall we say, more tolerant of student opinions. I took great advantage of this, especially since Denhalter seemed to like me, or at least tolerate me, more so than most of the other students. So I felt free, on this particular occasion, to spout off all kinds of bloodthirsty creeds, voicing my hope that the killer soon to die would experience all manner of suffering. At some point during this tirade, Denhalter turned his evil eye to me. "So you're in favor of the death penalty?" he asked, with a withering glance at his favorite student. The room chilled. Would I be the next to be knocked out of his seat by Denhalter's back hand?
"Have you ever read The Executioner's Song?" he asked. Why he thought a geeky 8th-grader would be well-versed with the latest Norman Mailer novel is anybody's guess. "No," I said as arrogantly as possible. But Denhalter had already dismissed me. "Read it," he said, turning away in contempt. "It will change your mind."
I'm not sure what the bookstore clerk thought of the geeky 8th-grader asking for Mailer's 1000+ page "true novel," ("There but for the grace of God," perhaps) but a few months later, long after I had moved on to the next English teacher, Denhalter's work was done. Not only did The Executioner's Song change my mind about the death penalty in America, it opened my eyes to the dominance of the Mormon faith in Utah, and the often contradictory and harmful practices of its followers. It's a truly disturbing book, on multiple levels. But the miserable existence of Gary Gilmore, the murderer whose story Mailer chronicles, will put to shame any bombastic proponent of government-sanctioned murder, such as myself at 13 years of age.
7. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
My education as a budding liberal was taken up another notch after reading this treatise (it's only really half a novel, the rest is polemic). I think I first read it for a book report assignment in high school; I chose it off a mimeographed list distributed by the teacher. (Yes, I attended high school in the era before photocopiers.) It probably wasn't until I read it again some years later that it made its full impact on me. I remember finishing it late at night and sobbing. Even though Steinbeck's editorializing can grow tiresome, it is still among the most humane of novels in its depiction of completely unwarranted suffering. It's a hard book to shake off, but I will never understand why it is so often assigned to high school students who can have no full appreciation of what it means (see also Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, etc.).
8. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
I started to read this book on three separate occasions, but each time I literally threw it down in disgust at what I perceived as Malcolm's intolerance and contempt for the white man. It wasn't until this book was assigned to me in a class on Black History (yes, I attended college in the era before political correctness) that I was forced to read through it all the way. It was only then that I realized what an incredible asshole I had been. Malcolm's conversion to Islam and his own realization that all men are equal under the sight of God is, of course, the whole point of the book, but I couldn't get past the initial stages of his argument, probably because I was more like Malcolm in his youth than I cared to admit.
If you pinned me down, I would have to say--because this book not only delivers a powerful and beautiful message, but managed to open my eyes to my own impatience and intolerance--that this is probably the greatest book I have ever read. Not because it reinforced feelings I already had, but because it showed me how far I was from my own ideals.
9. Paradise Lost by John Milton
Yet another book I probably would have never completed on my own had it not been assigned to me in a course. Milton's epic poem interested me not so much for his subject matter (though it is, I'm certain, the most entertaining version of the Book of Genesis, other than The Wrath of Khan), but for his conception of the Universe. There's little doubt that Milton was a pretty fucked-up guy--blind, a radical liberal (for his time), and a clear victim of OCD, among other hang-ups--but it is often just these sorts of fuck-ups who see the Universe in completely unique ways.
This book was responsible for several major events in my life. Reading it made me realize that I wanted to study literature. Delivering an oral presentation (complete with self-absorbed diagrams drawn on the blackboard) on the book made me realize that I might like teaching. And the completely geeky and self-absorbed manner in which I delivered the presentation first brought me to the attention of a blonde girl in the back of the room who later became my wife.
I really can't recommend Milton to you, unless you are in need of a different way of looking at how the Universe is structured, or you are prepared to abandon your life as you have known it, which, I suppose, work out to be about the same thing.
10. Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
I've always liked Alexie's work because he is such a non-bullshit kind of writer. He can be overly sentimental or lazy, but he always seems honest. For that reason, I thought this novel would appeal to a group of Job Corps students for whom I was attempting to teach an introductory class on literature. These kids had been in the shit, and had little patience for yet another by-the-book jackass who was going to make them write 10-page reports. They had been abused, they had been abandoned, they had been raped, they had been beaten, they had been addicts, they had been suicidal. They didn't need me. But they did need college credits. College credits would give some of them a ticket out of the pit that is Job Corps and help them figure out where to go with their lives.
So I abandoned my goal of teaching out of The Norton Anthology and started giving them stuff to read that they might recognize. Drunk Native Americans they knew. Frustrated musicians they knew. The promises of faith they knew. I had to become, for the first time as a teacher, a disciplinarian. They had to read so many pages a week so we could discuss the book as a whole. They had to take quizzes and stay focused. It was like teaching a bunch of unruly high school students, and that's really what they were, even though they were enrolled in a college course. They were just dumb, unlucky kids, but once we got through the fucking book, they started talking to me. Not the platitudes or attention-grabbing stunts they had been pulling while we read through Norton, but stories of their lives, of the shit they had been through, and what they wanted to achieve in life.
It was the hardest class I have ever taught, but I loved those kids more than any other students I have ever had. I think a lot of that feeling had to do with my realization that, had I not had books in my life and the wits to read them, I could have been one of those Job Corps losers. So when they would repeat one of Alexie's lines and laugh at his profanity, or say, "That dude's just like my dad!" or "What does blues music sound like?" or "That shit's fucked up," I felt like I had finally done something worthwhile in my life. I had shown those miserable fucks the door.
One day in yet another junior high English class, I was mouthing off in front of my teacher, one Mr. Denhalter. For some reason, the subject of the death penalty had come up; I think this was around the time that one of the Hi-Fi killers was up for an appeal. Anyway, Denhalter had become infamous among both the students and faculty for nearly beating a student out of his desk one day, and since that time he had become, shall we say, more tolerant of student opinions. I took great advantage of this, especially since Denhalter seemed to like me, or at least tolerate me, more so than most of the other students. So I felt free, on this particular occasion, to spout off all kinds of bloodthirsty creeds, voicing my hope that the killer soon to die would experience all manner of suffering. At some point during this tirade, Denhalter turned his evil eye to me. "So you're in favor of the death penalty?" he asked, with a withering glance at his favorite student. The room chilled. Would I be the next to be knocked out of his seat by Denhalter's back hand?
"Have you ever read The Executioner's Song?" he asked. Why he thought a geeky 8th-grader would be well-versed with the latest Norman Mailer novel is anybody's guess. "No," I said as arrogantly as possible. But Denhalter had already dismissed me. "Read it," he said, turning away in contempt. "It will change your mind."
I'm not sure what the bookstore clerk thought of the geeky 8th-grader asking for Mailer's 1000+ page "true novel," ("There but for the grace of God," perhaps) but a few months later, long after I had moved on to the next English teacher, Denhalter's work was done. Not only did The Executioner's Song change my mind about the death penalty in America, it opened my eyes to the dominance of the Mormon faith in Utah, and the often contradictory and harmful practices of its followers. It's a truly disturbing book, on multiple levels. But the miserable existence of Gary Gilmore, the murderer whose story Mailer chronicles, will put to shame any bombastic proponent of government-sanctioned murder, such as myself at 13 years of age.
7. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
My education as a budding liberal was taken up another notch after reading this treatise (it's only really half a novel, the rest is polemic). I think I first read it for a book report assignment in high school; I chose it off a mimeographed list distributed by the teacher. (Yes, I attended high school in the era before photocopiers.) It probably wasn't until I read it again some years later that it made its full impact on me. I remember finishing it late at night and sobbing. Even though Steinbeck's editorializing can grow tiresome, it is still among the most humane of novels in its depiction of completely unwarranted suffering. It's a hard book to shake off, but I will never understand why it is so often assigned to high school students who can have no full appreciation of what it means (see also Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, etc.).
8. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
I started to read this book on three separate occasions, but each time I literally threw it down in disgust at what I perceived as Malcolm's intolerance and contempt for the white man. It wasn't until this book was assigned to me in a class on Black History (yes, I attended college in the era before political correctness) that I was forced to read through it all the way. It was only then that I realized what an incredible asshole I had been. Malcolm's conversion to Islam and his own realization that all men are equal under the sight of God is, of course, the whole point of the book, but I couldn't get past the initial stages of his argument, probably because I was more like Malcolm in his youth than I cared to admit.
If you pinned me down, I would have to say--because this book not only delivers a powerful and beautiful message, but managed to open my eyes to my own impatience and intolerance--that this is probably the greatest book I have ever read. Not because it reinforced feelings I already had, but because it showed me how far I was from my own ideals.
9. Paradise Lost by John Milton
Yet another book I probably would have never completed on my own had it not been assigned to me in a course. Milton's epic poem interested me not so much for his subject matter (though it is, I'm certain, the most entertaining version of the Book of Genesis, other than The Wrath of Khan), but for his conception of the Universe. There's little doubt that Milton was a pretty fucked-up guy--blind, a radical liberal (for his time), and a clear victim of OCD, among other hang-ups--but it is often just these sorts of fuck-ups who see the Universe in completely unique ways.
This book was responsible for several major events in my life. Reading it made me realize that I wanted to study literature. Delivering an oral presentation (complete with self-absorbed diagrams drawn on the blackboard) on the book made me realize that I might like teaching. And the completely geeky and self-absorbed manner in which I delivered the presentation first brought me to the attention of a blonde girl in the back of the room who later became my wife.
I really can't recommend Milton to you, unless you are in need of a different way of looking at how the Universe is structured, or you are prepared to abandon your life as you have known it, which, I suppose, work out to be about the same thing.
10. Reservation Blues by Sherman Alexie
I've always liked Alexie's work because he is such a non-bullshit kind of writer. He can be overly sentimental or lazy, but he always seems honest. For that reason, I thought this novel would appeal to a group of Job Corps students for whom I was attempting to teach an introductory class on literature. These kids had been in the shit, and had little patience for yet another by-the-book jackass who was going to make them write 10-page reports. They had been abused, they had been abandoned, they had been raped, they had been beaten, they had been addicts, they had been suicidal. They didn't need me. But they did need college credits. College credits would give some of them a ticket out of the pit that is Job Corps and help them figure out where to go with their lives.
So I abandoned my goal of teaching out of The Norton Anthology and started giving them stuff to read that they might recognize. Drunk Native Americans they knew. Frustrated musicians they knew. The promises of faith they knew. I had to become, for the first time as a teacher, a disciplinarian. They had to read so many pages a week so we could discuss the book as a whole. They had to take quizzes and stay focused. It was like teaching a bunch of unruly high school students, and that's really what they were, even though they were enrolled in a college course. They were just dumb, unlucky kids, but once we got through the fucking book, they started talking to me. Not the platitudes or attention-grabbing stunts they had been pulling while we read through Norton, but stories of their lives, of the shit they had been through, and what they wanted to achieve in life.
It was the hardest class I have ever taught, but I loved those kids more than any other students I have ever had. I think a lot of that feeling had to do with my realization that, had I not had books in my life and the wits to read them, I could have been one of those Job Corps losers. So when they would repeat one of Alexie's lines and laugh at his profanity, or say, "That dude's just like my dad!" or "What does blues music sound like?" or "That shit's fucked up," I felt like I had finally done something worthwhile in my life. I had shown those miserable fucks the door.
posted by Chazzbot at 10:53 PM
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