8 October 1999
pop goes the culture

 

 

I was just telling Paul that I love literary references.

There is nothing more satisfying than sinking into a conversation and suddenly someone pulls out some obscure literary simile... and it's like a tiny electric spark zipped from them to you... and the jolt leaves you reeling.

I once asked Howard to describe the most charmed moment in his lifetime and he told me the story of the day he met Jim:

It was December 11, 1988, and I was wearing a gray wool double-breasted suit with a highly starched white dress shirt. I had been wearing it all day, the collar was digging into my neck, and I was getting irritated. I had recently finished reading Sons and Lovers where there's a character who died from an infection he got from wearing a tight, starched collar, so I was fixating on it all day and kept on mentioning it to people and nobody knew what I was talking about.

...Someone introduced us and we spoke for a few minutes and then I brought up my starched collar/Sons and Lovers story. He got it! It was just one of those moments where worlds come together."

Exactly.

But think about how literature invades our culture and how reading one book can lend you a deeper understanding of how we communicate. We express ourselves inside metaphors and analogies that are lifted from the pages of our dearest books. I "talk like a telethon" with Michael, post my "desert island, all time, top ten" lists on this web site, and often push myself to do things for the "fat lady" and because of it you get a deeper understanding of what affects me and how I'm touched by the words of Coupland and Hornby and Salinger.

I was recently rereading part of Alain De Botton's On Love, a book I read in 1995, and I was amazed at the references that I understood today that I surely glossed over four years ago without an inkling of the deeper meaning. Think of everything lost in translation, when you simply speak the language and not the culture.

Don't skim. Pause. Reflect. Inquire. Let yourself sink deeper and understand more. For me, it's the difference between existing and living.

What's the bee in your bonnet?

biggest kiss...

...kristen