Theo Siggelakis
Prof. T Dansdill
February 20, 2012
Of Books

Books either encompass my thinking or they stretch the limits of my imagination. Some of the most inspiring books are those which capture life, as I know it down to every specific detail. These books are similar to watching an HD TV; every detail is just so pronounced and accurate. Books that resemble this beautiful real life portrayal could be like J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in The Rye. Every emotion that Salinger delineates through his characterization of Holden Caulfield is so potent that those details resonate even more for someone dealing with a similar internal struggle. When I read the book at 15, every sensory detail that Salinger described helped better illuminate part of my own internal struggle. The over exaggeration of the resentment of society as being in genuine really captured my own internal resentment for molds that people contrive themselves to fit. The one scene with Caulfield sitting in the bathtub depressed after refusing sex from a hooker will always be infused into my constant sub consciousness. When I just feel worn out and pushed to my emotional limit, I see that image burned bright into my memory because that scene is the ultimate depiction of frustration and stress. Although, this style of writing may be beautiful, sometimes it is nice to escape the hyperrealism captured in a book like Catcher in The Rye, and instead read something that expands the mind’s imagination. The contrary to the book that affirms one’s emotions and ideas is the book that challenges one’s conception of reality.
A book such as Bram Stoker’s Dracula has the unique ability to really push the envelope on one’s conception of reality. Stoker undergoes writing a novel, which completely strays from what was believed to be the reality of that time. Late Victorian England was dominated by the belief that logic could solve any problem. Stoker constructs a novel that minimized the impact logic could have on society by maximizing Dracula’s illogical ability. By Stoker making Dracula thread between binaries like young/old, human/animal, and visible/invisible (transformation into mist), he creates a character which can defy and stretch one’s imagination as well as their conception of the world. In Stoker’s novel he defeats society’s view on problem solving in the Victorian era, by posing a character that can only be unraveled by superstition. Books like Stoker’s are the ones that almost act like those eye-lid clamps placed on Alex in Anthony Burgess’s A Clock Work Orange. Even after one puts down Stoker’s novel their eye lids are still fixed open, wondering more about the accuracy of one’s view of the world. However, not all will be put into this intellectual orbit around the realm of disbelief. One can only make out of these books what their personal perception allows.
Francis Bacon directly addresses the idea that two people can use the same thing for different uses in his personal essay Of Studies. Bacon takes a look at how each different man could approach the task of studying. “Crafty men condemn studies, simple men admire them, and wise men use them (Bacon).” This quote really resonates well with the binary of the encompassing/challenging. A piece can only encompass the mind, which is wired to that emotion. The shallow, fake, and superficial could read the masterpiece that is Catcher in The Rye, and find it to be nonsense rambling. The same can be said for a believer in the supernatural, who reads Dracula and the book simply encompasses their already possessed perception that superstition proceeds over logic. These literary examples I discuss can really only be applicable to the labels I choose in my own mind. Michel de Montaigne takes a similar avenue in exploring perception as the determining factor of what gives a book merit.
“Most of Aseop’s Fables have numerous meanings and interpretations. Those who take them allegorically choose some aspect that squares with the fable, but for the most part this is only the first and superficial aspect (Montaigne 52).” Here, Montaigne shares a similar sentiment in his personal essay Of Books. In his essay, Montaigne looks at the different ways in which he connects to different writers and their work. The key thing in his essay that connected to my better understanding of literature was his analysis of one’s perception and how a work can be versatile in the message that the work conveys depending on one’s perception. Montaigne’s message on perception is really the cornerstone to personally gaining a better understanding of my relationship to books.
Books can affect one’s perception not just in concept, but also in practice. Some writers simply encompass the sounds and words of a society, while others stride to form a new way to move though language. In my opinion, Zora Neale Hurston is the godmother of the encompassing of culture as written in a literary form. Hurston, in her most famous work Their Eyes Were Watching God, completely alters the English language in a way to better represent the dialect of the African Americans of the Jim Crow South. Hurston’s unique ability to write words how they sound rather than simply how they are supposed to be written creates a culture which could not be accurately accessed without her depiction. "Cause I hates de way his [Logan’s] head is so long one way and so flat on de sides and dat pone uh fat back uh his neck." This quote above displays Hurston’s use of language that is reliant on depicting sound. She uses “de” rather than the, or “dat” instead of that. These assertions create a better rendition of how the African American tongue sounded at this time in history in the deep south. Despite all these literary resolutions, the reason I consider Hurston’s work as an encompassment rather than a challenge is that she is capturing a culture that existed as opposed to creating a new one.
Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, challenges the structure of writing far beyond the encompassing work which is Hurston’s Their Eyes Are Watching God. "The Korova milkbar sold milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, which is what we were drinking. This would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultraviolence (69 Bugess).” This quote is a good example of the construction of words which fit together to form coherence in Burgess’s work. Prior to the book’s publishing, this quote would never have been anything but a mere stringing together of random words. Burgess’s ability to push the literary envelope of what language is and how language can challenge one’s thinking is unprecedented to his time. He is the other side of the binary that opposes Hurston’s use of language. Regardless, both works would be considered progressive and that is why they are worth writing about. I could examine a binary of works that are creative to those which are more conventional, but I don’t believe any standard piece is worth mentioning in my connection to books. Yet, all books are a means of education but some have the ability to enlighten in the process.
I can enjoy an economics book for it presents me with a means to greater knowledge but no textbook can parallel a work of literary merit and its ability to not only convey ideas, but also place them within the context of a society. A textbook simply states a setting and a time while a book paints and unravels an image .The limited scope provided by a textbook calls for less close attention. Bacon uses a nice metaphor, which relates the way one indulges in books to how one indulges in food. “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; only to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention (Bacon).” I would rather have books that let me get a full course of knowledge rather than ones that just give me regurgitated facts off of the pages. Books of literary merit not only stretch my conception of a specific topic, they teach me how to think. The great works of literary merit require one to not only just receive information with their eyes, but decipherer information through literary devices. The way books cause me to learn to think differently about the word not just in the context of the books, but also in all my own endeavors.
My relationship with books is to either better capture how I feel or simply challenge the ways I currently look at the world. Despite these two concepts of books being great, the most important concept is that books overall change my perception of the world through the analytical perspective they create. Many of the decisions I made, I may have made differently had I not been so well read, and accustomed to looking things in an analytical eye. If books are the fountains of my intelligence, then analytical reasoning could be the water I drink. I’m so grateful to be able to not only taste books, but in my unique ability to “chew and digest” them.