ray's post about his two life-changing books got me thinking back to my senior year in high school. i remember taking breaks from classes and finding a nook to read dante's commedia. i also remember starting stendhal's the red and the black on stolen time and finishing it on the road to dallas on a college visit. neither book was assigned.
i happened to hear about dante in an english class my senior year, and luckily as a graduation present my mother let me borrow her credit card to buy some books. dante's commedia was one i picked up. i read it in the weeks leading up to graduation with fascination. i imagined myself a pilgrim, and as dante transformed on his journey, in many ways, i did as well.
just about the same time, i was wandering through a flea market alone and came upon a bookseller with piles of beaten books. in the pile, one seemed to call out from the romance novels and presidential histories--it was the red and the black. since it was only a quarter, i picked it up. the first chapters pulled me in, and the book, i thought at the time, was the best thing that i had ever read. the hero, with his romantic tendencies, his ways with women, his dramatic emotions, was just what i imagined myself as at the time.
dante's work has stayed with me over the years. i read it at least once a year, but my fascination with stendhal has passed. i read the rest of his works in the intervening years--all wonderful novels, but even on going back to the red and the black, i do not find the original energy that once moved me.
i happened to hear about dante in an english class my senior year, and luckily as a graduation present my mother let me borrow her credit card to buy some books. dante's commedia was one i picked up. i read it in the weeks leading up to graduation with fascination. i imagined myself a pilgrim, and as dante transformed on his journey, in many ways, i did as well.
just about the same time, i was wandering through a flea market alone and came upon a bookseller with piles of beaten books. in the pile, one seemed to call out from the romance novels and presidential histories--it was the red and the black. since it was only a quarter, i picked it up. the first chapters pulled me in, and the book, i thought at the time, was the best thing that i had ever read. the hero, with his romantic tendencies, his ways with women, his dramatic emotions, was just what i imagined myself as at the time.
dante's work has stayed with me over the years. i read it at least once a year, but my fascination with stendhal has passed. i read the rest of his works in the intervening years--all wonderful novels, but even on going back to the red and the black, i do not find the original energy that once moved me.
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