i hate reading...(?)

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out, and taken yours."
— The History Boys


I've never seen this movie. Also I found out it's rated R, so I guess I never will. I always say I hate reading, but I'm determined to read all the books I bought and never read for school, or otherwise sell them. But last semester I read On The Road for pleasure in the midst of going to school, working, and pioneering, and since graduating I've finished two more books, so I'm beginning to question the veracity of my own insistent claims. I guess this quote from The History Boys pretty much sums up why I sometimes like reading. My most recent read was Still Life with Oysters and Lemon by Mark Doty. I bought it for an American Lit class on ekphrasis. Obviously I never read it when I was in the class, but I remember liking the prose and the cover art and besides that, it was short. 

This isn't really a book that has anything to be given away. It's more or less an exploratory essay in 70 pages about the relation of still life paintings to objects in real life to which we latch on and assign memory and delegate meaning. The still life's "lesson, ... is to remind us of the strangeness and singularity of things, and therefore of ourselves. Singularity, they wish us to know, resides in the physical, the particular, the seen; this knowledge can be looked at, can be held" (55). The objects in still life paintings inspire inward reflection, which seemed so counterintuitive to me before reading this because I had a strong prejudice against still life paintings as being the most boring of all painting genres. 

Doty's highly elegiac prose changed my mind though. Still lifes are tangible representations of memory infused by death. "Not that grief vanishes -- far from it -- but that it begins in time to coexist with pleasure; sorrow sits right beside the rediscovery of what is to be cherished in experience. Just when you think you're done" (47). Just when you think you have no willpower to go on, you go on, because life goes on. 


It's not enough just to live your life, though. Meanwhile you have to "Say what you see and you experience yourself through your style of seeing and saying" (67). I keep recognizing now the importance of the English major -- the importance of harnessing the talent of description and expression as a reflexive exercise. Experiencing yourself. Leaning that much closer toward understanding who you are by your reactions to environmental and emotional stimuli. Because there are so many times when you don't realize what you think or how you feel until it's been verbalized. If only prospective employers could see this importance..


I feel like I'm doing homework, except it's self-imposed..You can take the girl out of school, but you can't take the school out of the girl...? Where's Eugene to misapply idioms and scriptures when you need him. Maybe I really am starting to like reading. Good thing Colin just added me to their book club...since I haven't been in various makeshift book clubs for the past three years and never read the books..also known simply as "English classes." I'm getting lost in my own sarcasm.


In any case, I wish I still lived a train ride away from the Met so that I could see this painting. I need to test out this new way of looking at still lifes to make sure my prejudice is gone. In the meantime, I'd really like some actual oysters and lemon. I think Roux on Canton is still on scoutmob. Only problem is the 50% that I still have to pay for...