[Peace-discuss] My thoughts on books

[Carl G. Estabrook]

Interesting question. I recently had an occasion to reflect on it. My friend Jeffrey St. Clair sent the following note: “My friend, a librarian at PSU, asked: what book changed your life? So many books, so many life changes. The Little Prince made me want to read, The Catcher in the Rye allowed me to tell adults to fuck off, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee ignited a rage that hasn't died, Ulysses disabused any notion of becoming a novelist, since it obviously couldn't be topped. What about you?” 

My answer concerned things I read before college; from matriculation on, it's a more difficult question... 

~ Edith Hamilton’s MYTHOLOGY (1942) introduced other times and climes, as did
~ Howard Pyle’s MERRY ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1883), MEN OF IRON (1892), THE STORY OF KING ARTHUR AND HIS KNIGHTS (1903) et seq.;
~ Mark Twain’s A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT (1889), with Hamilton and Pyle, suggested that an easy dismissal of the pre-modern and ’medievalism’ wasn’t possible.

~ The forgotten historical novels of Louis de Wohl (1903-61) and the forgotten verse of Robert Service (1874-1958), on the Yukon and the First World War, presented other questions about the past, unasked in my education, while
~ Kenneth Roberts’ OLIVER WISWELL (1940) offered a corrective to the nonsensical US history I was being taught in school; meanwhile
~ Evelyn Waugh’s BRIDESHEAD REVISITED (1945) told me what being grown up would be like.

~ HAMLET was substituted for the syllabus by a half-mad English teacher in my sophomore year: I can’t thank her enough. Meanwhile I was reading
~ Isaac Asimov’s FOUNDATION series (1951-53), which led me to his inspiration, Arnold Toynbee’s A STUDY OF HISTORY (abr. D. C. Somervell) - which led me to Marx (and eventually degrees in history and theology).

(Then, when I got to college, I read Faulkner and realized I was Quentin Compson; from there I frantically searched for myself thru fiction…)  —CGE


> On May 31, 2018, at 1:27 PM, Karen Aram via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> wrote:
> 
>> While shamelessly promoting my daughters first novel, I am told by some, as an excuse perhaps," that "they never read fiction." Though all fiction has some base in reality.
>> 
>> I admit that I rarely read fiction these days, as a political activist I have so much to learn, and so many books yet to read. However, its fiction that made me who I am today.
>> 
>> "Red Badge of Courage" by Steven Crane, convinced me that war is the greatest of all evils. "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Hemingway convinced me that resisting oppression, occupation, exploitation
>>  and destruction, was necessary and an identity I chose as my own, even when working for corporations I never backed down from my principles regardless of the costs. "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, saved me from the era of "Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll"
>>  though I do see the wisdom in music as long as it doesn't become the "end all" thus a distraction. The opioid epidemic we have now is a result of those years of convincing a generation that drugs whether RX or entertainment were "harmless and cool." More recent
>>  in 2000 the book "Ismael" by Daniel Quinn, about a talking gorilla of all things, did convince me not to be too discouraged with the state of humanity, given we were a "work in progress" and there still was hope.
>> 
>> I no longer remember anything I read in those books so long ago, other than the "lesson learned," and there are so many books over so many years, they become lost in memory. However, I
>>  do still once in a while treat myself to a book of fiction knowing that a picture is worth a thousand words and fiction often creates a picture that will stay with me, if only in the abstract.
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