Books I Read in High School (or before), Part III

Hopefully, I will finish the list of books I read in high school (or before) with this blog... then I can move on to the book I just finished before I backtrack through college and other books I read on my own, before the dawning of the Great Book Throw-Down.


Zora Neale Hurston.  Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Quick summary: This book is set in Florida in the early part of the 20th century and follows the life of Janie Crawford, whose life has been mostly sorrowful and tragic, and yet Janie is a woman made stronger by her travails.  Her story is relayed through her conversation with her friend Pheoby, which frames the story.  There are lots of letdowns (even the most tender part of Janie's life doesn't seem safe), but it is a great work of African American fiction to be sure.

I have read this book a couple of times, the first being in ninth grade, and the last being a couple of years ago via Ruby Dee's superb reading on an audiobook.  I can't say how many people have borrowed my discs, but it is truly magnificent.  Dee's reading adds depths that I think I missed the first time around because I was trying to get past the thick drawl and dialect of the dialogues. 


As for high school, I remember two things: 1) the opening metaphor of the pear tree, representing Janie's burgeoning sense of her own sexuality; 2) Tea Cake.  I won't tell you about number two because I don't want to ruin anything for anyone out there.  The metaphor though is absolutely striking, although in high school, I thought our teacher had gone mad trying to tell us that a blossoming tree could in any way have anything to do with a metaphor for burgeoning sexuality.  I guess this is another moment that I could hold up to signify the good education I had, even before I was ready for it.  Want a taste of the prose?

Janie had spent most of the day under a blossoming pear tree in the back-yard. She had been spending every minute that she could steal from her chores under that tree for the last three days. That was to say, ever since the first tiny bloom had opened. It had called her to come and gaze on a mystery. From barren brown stems to glistening leaf-buds; from the leaf-buds to snowy virginity of bloom. It stirred her tremendously. How? Why? It was like a flute song forgotten in another existence and remembered again. What? How? Why? This singing she heard that had nothing to do with her ears. The rose of the world was breathing out smell. It followed her through all her waking moments and caressed her in her sleep. It connected itself with other vaguely felt matters that had struck her outside observation and buried themselves in her flesh. Now they emerged and quested about her consciousness.

She was stretched on her back beneath the pear tree soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees, the gold of the sun and the panting breath of the breeze when the inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was a marriage! She had been summoned to behold a revelation...

Oh to be a pear tree - any tree in bloom! With kissing bees singing of the beginning of the world! (pp 10-11)

Pretty obviously about sex, wouldn't you say?  Hey, I was a freshman and not so worldly!


I can't say much about this book with regards to a plot because everything is so intertwined and beautifully crafted, I do not think I could do it justice.  This is Alice Walker's the Color Purple before it's time.  It's a shame Zora Neale Hurston is not read more often... maybe you'll read her next?

Mitchell, Margaret - Gone With the Wind

Quick summary: Fiddle-dee-dee!  I'm sure most of you know the plot of this one: young, beautiful, and spoiled Scarlett O'Hara (Hamilton Kennedy Butler) uttered these words  and put off thinking about unpleasant events until tomorrow more than once as she sashayed through the South embroiled in the Civil War.  It's about life, love, loss... and growing up, sort of.


I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan of Gone with the Wind.  Oh, I don't mind it, to be sure, but it just never captured me the way lots of other historical fiction did when I was younger.  Perhaps I didn't know enough about the South in the Civil War or enough about the life people led then, but I just didn't get sucked in the way many girls did.  That's ok if you're shocked and awed, I can take it.  

To be honest, I remember more of the film than I do of the book.  In neither case did I really find Scarlett a sympathetic character, not even when Rhett leaves for good.  Maybe you guys out there can fill me in on what the hullabaloo is all about, but I just don't see it.  Go ahead, tell me. 


Virginia Woolf - To the Lighthouse Quick summary: One of the Woolf greats, not Mrs. Dalloway (which I have NOT read), but wonderful and melancholy.  This is another book that is difficult to summarize because it is extremely modern in its narrative technique replete with requisite number of philosophic musings as the reader follows the Ramsay family.  Wonderful passage with stream of consciousness - not to be missed!


We read this some time in junior or senior year, which I know because it was an option for the IB exam.  Alongside The Sound and the Fury, this was my first introduction to "modern" writing (although from across the puddle this time), and it only reinforced my liking for strange plotless fiction.  Not a small wonder, considering my love for French novels.  How many times have people said that both French fiction and film are plotless and depressing?  Sounds a lot like Woolf, eh?


Let me just say that I don't find Woolf depressing, and I don't find French books all that depressing either.  They tend towards thought processes and life and the ways in which it unendingly disappoints.  What I love about To the Lighthouse is exactly what I love about Marguerite Duras' Moderato Cantabile, which is also a rather intriguing labyrinth: To the Lighthouse and Moderato Cantabile center around those parts of life that often go unspoken.  

I guess, for me, I will always have a penchant for the thinking man's literature.  As my dissertation adviser and friend (hi Kline!) says when talking about the difference between American and French cinemas: If Americans had a motto, it would be, just do it; if the French had a motto it would be, just think about it.  I think that applies beyond cinema and into deep cultural differences as well... I like to think, to ponder, to wonder... I'm not a Nike, I'm a Mont Blanc.

Books I Read in High School (or before), Part I

Instead of attempting to write about the 26 books I have read on the list all at once, I want to break them down into when I read them (although some of them I've read more than once).  So, first... the early years...

I have to preface this by saying that there are a lot of "100 Best" lists out there, and, depending on the list, I have read a few to a lot of books on each list.  The experience of looking over the lists got me thinking about my experience in high school, during which I spent a lot of time reading for my IB English classes.  But, you'll notice that in my high school list, I did not read The Catcher in the Rye, 1984, Catch-22, or To Kill a Mocking Bird.  In retrospect, we did skip many of the "greats" as far as most canonical English classes in the American high school are concerned, but we also read things like Yasunari Kawabata's Thousand Cranes, Sawako Ariyoshi's The Twighlight Years, Natsume Soseki's Kokoro, R.K. Naryan's The Guide, Sylvia Plath's poetry, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, and William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury.  These varied experiences taught me to be a good reader, a deep reader, and a curious reader.  For that, I thank my early teachers.

One more thing before I delve into my first books... I'm not writing articles here, just impressions.  For you lit crit people out there: think of this as a Reader Response approach.  For me, English is the language I read for fun, the language to enjoy without writing an outline for an article or a lecture somewhere in the back of my head.  That is not to say I don't make literary connections or have deep thoughts, but it's just not a time when theory pops into my marginal notes!

Here goes...

Chinua Achebe.  Things Fall Apart.
Quick summary: Okonkwo is a great, respected man living in a small village in Nigeria.  He puts a lot of merit into titles and honor.  Things go awry when British missionaries arrive on their steel horses (bicycles), luring the weak (the elderly, women, and children) and the outcasts (the crazy, the disabled) into their circle.  The fabric of the village starts to fall apart, and Okonkwo finds that his respected name does not go very far once the foreigners arrive.  Nothing seems to go right, especially once his son, Ikemefuna, joins the Westerners...


This is one of those books that many people seem to read some time in high school or college, and it's one of the classics we did cover.  If I remember correctly, we read it somewhere in 9th grade, and it was my first experience with anything post-colonial.  The first time I read this book, I don't think I really "got it": the loss, the sadness, the pathos.  And, I didn't get the social commentary about Western imperialism, which functions largely through religion and commerce.  I think I understood it as one of those books that showed us a character about a man who refused to change with the times, who couldn't handle modernity, and who is stuck in the past.  I was too young, too Catholic, too white and too American to see any sort of reflection of my history in the British missionaries.

I did reread this book when I was visiting Jeevan in Kenya.  Seeing the modern culture that colonialism has left in even in rural Matoso brought a new understanding of the book.  I began to understand the sense of loss and distress that Achebe was addressing through Okonkwo.  Of course, my second time through this book, I was no longer too young, too Catholic, or too American.  I'd gained a little wisdom, I'd say, I'd fallen from the papal ties, and, well, let's just say I'd rather be French.  The too white part I can't do much about, but to my defense, I did marry a brown man!  And, I did gain the valuable experience of being the only white person in a crowd, the stranger in a strange land.

I had also read West African and Caribbean post-colonial novels in grad school, and this knowledge informed my second reading.  I cannot help but think of Achebe's novel in parallel with Ahmadou Kourouma's groundbreaking novel, Les Soleils des Indépendances (The Suns of Independence), which tells a similar tale of a man who can't quite come to grips with his changing culture, though this time the colonists are from the other side of the Channel.  It's worth a read, if you like this sort of literature.  I also put it in the realm of Alice Walker's Possessing the Secret of Joy.  One note of advice for both Kourouma and Walker: not for the faint of heart... female circumcision.

Judy Blume.  Are You There God?  It's Me, Margaret
Quick summary: Basically it's your typical pre-pubescent girl who wants desperately to fit in, but she doesn't have a religion.  Should she join the JCC or the YMCA?  When, how, where does she buy a bra?  What about her first period?  These are tough questions.


Who knows when I read this one?   5th grade?  Somewhere around there.  So maybe I didn't have any questions about what religion I was, but, man, did I ever want to fit in!  I wanted pants and shoes like everyone else, but it was hard to find them in my size.  For those of you who have memories of me in those days, you probably know that I should have just given up, that the safety pins on the jeans just don't look good on a dwarf (or anyone, for that matter).  Oh, and don't get me started on the shoes I have tried to fit my feet into over the years.  I could show Cinderella's step-sisters a thing or two!

All in all, this book helped me make it through some tough years, but I don't remember many of the details.  Maybe it'll be worth a reread some day.  But, if you have a pre-pubescent daughter or were ever one yourself, you should read this.  It will break your heart, and make you laugh, like only Judy Blume can.

William Faulkner.  The Sound and the Fury.
Quick summary:This one is tough to summarize.  First of all, the title comes from MacBeth:

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."

The idiot is Benjy Compson, and the first section is told from his point of view.  Although it's not clear exactly what is wrong with him, Benjy clearly has a mental handicap.  This makes for an interesting narration because events don't necessary mean much to him, nor does time; so, it's all out of order, and you spend the rest of the novel figuring his section out from the remaining parts.  The second part is Quentin's section, and it tells the events leading up to his suicide and explains some of the past events Benjy relates.  The third part is Jason's section; he's another Compson brother and is quite jaded.  The fourth part is told in the third person but concentrates on the Compson's maid, Dilsey, and takes place on Easter Sunday (Benjy's section takes place on the preceding Saturday, and Jason's on Good Friday).  It's all sorts of symbolic, in the stream of consciousness,  and I love it!  It's full of Faulkner's tortured visions of the South after reconstruction. So, if you like tortured souls in discombobulated narrative form, this is your novel!

I could go on and on about this novel.  It's one of my all time favorites.  (Sorry, Christy!)  This is one of those novels that taught me to read.  The prose is amazing, the narrative structure challenging, and I just couldn't help but be sucked into the decadent world of the Comptons.  I still have my high school copy, and I would be horrified if I ever lost it.  I don't know if I would have gotten a much better reading of it in college.  One of the things we had to do for every novel we read in IB English was to memorize 10 sentences from every book (to use on essay exams).  Oh, at the time, it seemed an annoying task, but as a teacher now who struggles to force students to memorize a poem here and there, I understand the purpose... plus, it makes you sound and feel smart.  Of the 10 sentences we had to memorize, one always had to be the first sentence of the text, and the other had to be the last.  Our teacher, Mrs. Rhodes, maintained that you could tell an immense amount about a text by it's opening and closing lines.  How right she is!  One of the most important opening lines in literature: "Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure."  Proust anyone?

In any case, the opening line of The Sound and the Fury?... "Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting."  This is Benjy's voice, and it says a lot.  Benjy seems to always be looking from outside, through a barrier.  He doesn't say what is going on because he doesn't really know, but the reader slowly figures it out.

The last line?... "The broken flower drooped over Ben’s fist and his eyes were empty and blue and serene again as cornice and façade flowed smoothly once more from left to right, post and tree,window and doorway and signboard each in its ordered place.” It all loops back to Benjy.  It's sad and brilliant.  Nothing has changed, and everything has changed. 

E. M. Forster.  A Passage to India.
Quick summary:  Dr. Aziz, an Indian doctor, and three Brits (two women and a man) make a day trip to the Marabar Caves.   In the darkness and claustrophobia of the caves, Adela experiences a moment of terror after which she goes on to accuse Dr. Aziz of attempted rape, even though nothing of the sort ever happened.  The trial that ensues brings to the surface the increasing discontent smoldering under the surface of colonial India.


Another high school read, one that led me to Forster.  Sometimes I have a strange habit of finding an author I adore and then I gobble up books by that person.  Examples: E.M. Forster, John Irving, Milan Kundera, Sylvie Germain, Albert Camus.  (Bonus points if you know which one was the topic of my dissertation).  Anyway, I don't know why, but having favorite authors is like having favorite musicians or actors: they have some sort of je ne sais quoi that speaks to you from the depths of your being without rhyme or reason.  My dissertation adviser did say though that the topic of my dissertation was no accident.  Aren't you curious?

Forster.  So proper.  So British.  Just as in Howard's End or A Room with a View, it's all about class struggle and social divisions, although this one is set in colonial India.  The obliviousness of the colonial rulers to the life and struggles of the Indians is so uncanny.  The Indians really become a prop against which the Brits conduct their lives and contrive scandals to escape the monotony and heat of life in the colonies.  Oh, these are the days of the budding independence movement, and tensions are high, but the British still seem to continue on as if everything should and will remain as it is.

The descriptions are interesting... Everything in the British quarters is straight and orderly, while the Indians live in disorder.  Ask my husband about this stereotype; he'll say this is true.  But, it's not that the stereotyping is upsetting; it's that it's stated with such ease and frankness: order must be imposed.  There's no, "you go your way, and I'll go mine," about it.  It comes from another time, and it has an idyllic aura about it.  Although Forster is bring the social unrest to the forefront, there is still an undertone of wanting to maintain the good ol' days of the Empire.  Unless you read it with a critical post-colonial eye, the book does not make you want to up and cry freedom.  It took another book to make me see just how one sided this novel is, even though I still love it.

We read this book set against R.K. Naryan's The Guide.  It was colonialism from both points of view: the British and the Indian.  I remember pouring over both books looking for quotes (those quotes, again!) to find ways in which the Empire was portrayed from varying points of view.  Lesson learned: history is not just dead, white men.  Cliché?  Yes, but a good one to learn at an age when most students are mostly learning about just that.

One more thing.  I don't know if it's an accident or not, but I think I was in love with Dr. Aziz in A Passage to India.  A sign of things to come, perhaps.  If only I could marry an Indian doctor... oh... I did!