On Graduating
The last time I wrote a blog post was a little under two years ago. A lot has changed since then. I’ve read a few more books, written a few more English papers (more articulate, hopefully), pretended to read a few more books (Veblen’s Theory on the Leisure Class, I’m looking at you), and in a few weeks I face my biggest change: the end of my undergraduate career. Standing on the brink of this unknown I feel a bit like Keats’ Cortez, who, “with eagle eyes,” stares at the Pacific Ocean for the first time. Keats captures the explorer’s awe-filled reaction in a word: silent. There is sea of wonder and fear, and mine is filled with new words and new books. For the first time in my life (excluding the gap year I took between high school and college), my life as a reader and part-time writer will be free from the constraints of academia.
Honestly, I don’t know what this means. I suppose it means no more academic papers and no more cramming to finish two hundred pages the night before a seminar. It means no more obligatory written responses and the fear that you have dedicated the last five days to finishing that 500 page Theodore Dreiser novel and have completely missed the point. But I wonder, does it mean no more painstakingly careful reading? No more deconstructing every last inch of a novel or five line poem? Forgoing Blake after a long day’s work for a less intimidating novel by one of the many Jonathan’s (Tropper, Safran-Foer, Franzen, Lethem – take your pick)? I am so curious, but also anxious, about what kind of reader I will become post-graduation. I hold all the cards, and it seems like an enormous undertaking.
In the past four years my education has endowed me with a questioning alertness causing me to resemble a Western Tarsier when reading – eyes bugging out as my head moves side to side with each line of text, and I excitedly underline or circle a savory word or phrase. Already a part of me mourns the loss of this reader and the dark, early mornings spent pouring over books – heavily caffeinated – a state that is half coffee induced and partially provoked by the thrill of my own pleasure. As a reader I have cultivated a discipline in my own right; yet there is something incredibly electrifying in being forced to read more than you ever imagined in the span of a week, for 32 weeks of the year. Someone is holding a gun to your head forcing you to read great literature. In a Keats-ian sense, the joy of reading is multiplied through the stress and “suffering” (let’s get dramatic) of being required to do so as a college student. Maybe the comparison is a stretch, but the notion is sound: the rigor and structure of college forces us to be more conscientious readers and consequently we derive a greater pleasure in the process. Had I not been forced to slog through the 500+ pages of Faulkner’s non-linear narrative Light in August, I would have lost steam and most likely abandoned it. While it’s definitely not my favorite Faulkner, I deeply appreciate the author’s use of stream of consciousness in telling the tragic story of Joe Christmas. I never would have revisited the Romantic poets after a brief but uninspiring encounter with them in the 10th grade, had it not been for college. Now, they pepper my everyday way of thinking, as evident by having referenced them three times, now four.
On the other hand, while anxious to lose that disciplined reader, I am excited to venture out into a new realm of reading – free from academic pressures. Academic settings require us as students to constantly question, challenge, and substantiate our ideas. These are basic skills in becoming a good reader and then writer, but when you’re hyper-conscious of these motives at all times, it becomes exhausting. I firmly believe that an intense pleasure stems from being intellectually challenged, but that is only one kind of pleasure. Another pleasure stems from pure enjoyment, which is not to purport that the two are mutually exclusive or the only kind in existence. However no one would contest that Anna Karenina satisfies a different appetite from, say, Jonathan Tropper’s This is Where I Leave You. The former is not superior to the latter, or vice versa. Merely, the former requires an attention to detail and mental gymnastics that the other does not, making Tropper’s book the perfect read for a lazy Sunday morning.
I want more lazy Sunday morning reads where I can give my pen a rest, not for want of brilliant sentences, but because there’s no compulsory need to circle and underline. However, whereas in the last four years books by Tropper, Lahiri, and Wolff have been my lazy Sunday reads, I am realizing that they will not necessarily be my lazy Sunday reads in the years or even months following graduation. While equally engaging as an Anna Karenina, my Sunday reads were my Sunday reads precisely because they were not the books on my class syllabi – they offered a reprieve from my academic regimen. Had I taken a class on the novel since 1945, then the tables could have easily been turned.
Terrified at the prospect of choosing my own books, perhaps it is not the choosing that frightens me, but what this choosing means in the greater context of my life: independence. I value the books from my English classes because I value the tastes and interests of my professors; course syllabi read as their personal endorsements, just as I devoured any suggestion from my mother after she handed me Miss Hickory and Island of the Blue Dolphins. My entire life I have eagerly read any book assigned or given to me because essentially it meant someone thinks this book is good. Of course as I grew older this broadened to include the concern of “being well-read.” I wanted to sample everything and be able to contribute to the larger discourses in literature. So, in college I discovered Faulkner, Fitzgerald (beyond The Great Gatsby), James, Wright, Whitman, Howells, and H.D., all under the guidance of my professors. Most I loved, and some I hated, but I respected them all because of the people who assigned them. I felt so unbelievably lucky to read authors that these professors had dedicated years to studying in grad school.
After these next few weeks, the endless stream of books that I have been assigned to read will abruptly come to a stop. Of course I have a list of over 400 books that I have wanted to read since high school, but running out of books to read was never my worry. It’s more that feeling that Cortez had when he looked out into the Pacific Ocean for the first time. This exists? Where to begin? Except in my case I have a slight advantage on Cortez, because I have had 23 years of preparation for this first step.
