I haven’t read The Plot Against America yet. There seems to be a split opinion about it. Some say it is Roth being polemical, and I actually quite detest Roth the polemic, not because of what he says but because it makes whatever book it’s in much more fake to me. He’s so good when the characters speak for themselves but when Roth speaks through his characters it becomes something else entirely. However, many others say that The Plot Against America is one of Roth’s best books. I will definitely be reading it, and I definitely hope I’m in the later camp :) .

I think I may have to change that opinion!

5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I fell into this one after hearing about 1984 but read this negative Utopia novel first. This ranks as my strangest influence — I have no desire to reread either this book or Orwell. I ordered a bunch of Huxley a few years ago and am slowly working my way through them again — still have not figured out why I liked him so much as a high school student.

Brave New World was the book that got me reading literature. In turn I devoured nearly all of Huxley’s novels in turn. As KFC stated neither can I return to BNW or anything by Huxley. I liked him when I was in secondary school (this was in 1995) cause I felt that I could relate to Bernard Marx and the things that Huxley mentions in the book were things that bothered me about the world.

I still think that it’s way ahead of it’s time though.

We didn’t have a lot of books around the house so after reading Pooh countless times and Journeys Through Bookland (a 10-volume set of excerpts) I was pretty much a library reader. I do remember Edith Nesbit (especially The Railway Children and a few other English authors but not by name — read a couple of Hardy Boys and found them boring.

One thing that really struck me in Annie Dillard was her memory of being “promoted” to the adult library. In my case, that came at age 11 — first adult book was Ben Hur (it was the big movie that year); followed by The Old Man and the Sea, so I’m thinking one of the reasons that I don’t have a lot of childhood book memories is that I was reading adult books at an early age.

I got my first New Yorker subscription at age 14 — that would be the introduction to Salinger, Updike, Perelman and Barthelme, among others. I still remember reading the New Yorker serial version of In Cold Blood. And I suspect it was critical references in the New Yorker that got me onto the Russians, but that is speculation.

On other matters, I’m trying to think about what I read as a very young child that I enjoyed. Some of those children’s books are very poetic and touching.

I liked it more than Anna Karennina and War and Peace is the best of all.

I did not mention Hemmingway in my post and he was a factor in my youth, although an author who has not stood up to rereading so far. Faulkner escaped my attention then, but I have been catching up. For some reason I put him in a category with Conrad and Forester, perhaps because I came to all of them later in my reading life.

I will admit that I have only ever read one Stephen King book — found it interesting but no reason to pursue him further.

I loved The Return of a Native when I got to it (which was only a few years ago — Hardy, like Austen, was one those authors I missed). And I have never actually read Hamlet, although I have seen enough productions to convince me that I don’t want to see another. I do love theatre and will post later on my favorite productions. Stay tuned.

It was after that book that I started buying buying buying books, really starting my collection. However, just before I read The Brothers I had finished both Pride and Prejudice and To Kill a Mockingbird, so it’s fair to say those got me enough courage to venture into The Brothers.

After The Brothers Karamazov I read almost all of Hemingway and Steinbeck, asking my parents for their books at every holiday possible (I also asked for Faulkner’s books, and I have several, but I’ve only read As I Lay Dying, which I also loved).

This was all after high school. I read a lot in high school, but I was a journalism student (yes, Kevin) and mostly read features, nonfiction, and essays. It was this time, however, that I read Thomas Hardy and Alexandre Dumas. It took me forever to get through The Count of Monte Cristo, but for years it was my favorite book, and I still look back on it fondly. Hardy’s Return of the Native was a difficult read for me. I enjoyed it, but I remember having to use many resources to understand what was going on.

Oh, and Hamlet. Hamlet really may have been the piece of literature that opened my mind and forced my teenage self to look beyond Stephen King. No, I do not think Stephen King in any way opened me up to greater literature. I think it was probably counterproductive, actually, and I’ve never looked back.

Now, if we want to look at what really got me exploring, it was this blog. Because of it and through it I’ve come to know and love many authors I would not have otherwise met for a long time if at all.

So, I said I wanted to think about this for a while, and I still do. What did I read when I was little? What stories stood out to me? What opened my imagination and interested me in the life of the mind?

I think it’s time you read The Brothers Karamazov, Kevin. I liked it more than Anna Karenina. (Haven’t read War and Peace yet!)

1. The Catcher in the Rye certainly spoke to me as a youth. It led me to all of Salinger and I have reread him a number of times since and will do so again (I am one of those people who is hoping that there are several manuscripts on the shelf up in Vermont or N.H. that will be published eventually). My Salinger interest led me to John Cheever, someone else I mean to reread, so he does not get a separate listing.
2. Couples by John Updike. This makes my list because it was my first Updike and the first “dirty” book that I read — my mother (she read Reader’s Digest Condensed) discovered it and that led to a very painful hour. It led me into all of Updike which then caused a migration into Fitzgerald (note Trevor, no Roth or Bellow — I only found them later).
3. Who Has Seen The Wind by W.O. Mitchell. It is a book that is taught in high schools (although not mine) about growing up in the Canadian West and hence became my introduction to Canadian literature. I intend to post on it in the near future, comparing and contrasting with Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio (which I only discovered recently) so will say no more at this point. I suspect both you and Mrs. Berrett have never heard of it — I’ll be trying to convince you to get a copy so your sons can read it when they hit their teens.
4. Crime and Punishment. Mrs. B and I align here — I cannot remember why I decided to pick up the book, but I did. It lead me into a complete exploration of Dostoevsky (I do still favor the Constance Garnett translations) which has again resulted in a couple of rereadings — actually rereading Dostoevsky (and the extension effect of Tolstoy and Turgenev) is a more or less continuous, and rewarding, process. Finished A Raw Youth a couple of months ago and The Brothers Karamazov is on the future agenda.
5. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. I fell into this one after hearing about 1984 but read this negative Utopia novel first. This ranks as my strangest influence — I have no desire to reread either this book or Orwell. I ordered a bunch of Huxley a few years ago and am slowly working my way through them again — still have not figured out why I liked him so much as a high school student.

My more mature influences definitely came from a couple of university classes. One on the Canadian novel introduced me to Hugh Maclennan, Sinclair Ross and company — Atwood was just starting out then (and her non-fiction work Survival certainly influenced me). I don’t like much of her recent work but that book had an influence. The Year of the Flood is her offering this year and I understand the promotion tour involves choirs and recitals in a number of English cathedrals — all of which says I probably won’t be reading the book.

And a course on the Modern European novel introduced me to Man’s Fate, a great novel, and Camus.

All of which means that I never read Jane Austen until I was in my 50s, still don’t like Dickens (and I have tried) and only found Thomas Mann (another favorite) a decade ago.

Thanks for sending me off down memory lane, Mrs. Berrett. I just realized this post is a little short on American authors — I’ll try to remedy that later.