Last night, I met with Lakeland University’s Lit Lounge book club. They had read my novel A Hollow Bone for their September meeting. Beyond talking about the novel, there were questions for me about the writing process itself, and at one point, as inevitably happens for any writer, someone asked about my favorite book and other books that have influenced me.
Without hesitation I told the group that One Hundred Years of Solitude is my all-time favorite novel. My reasons are numerous, but at the base of my choice is the pure magic of the story, the brilliance of the language, and how Marquez immerses the reader in a human experience that is both personal and universal. Even upon a second or third reading, One Hundred Years of Solitude is not an easy book. Easy books are rarely memorable or worth one’s time. What’s more, One Hundred Years of Solitude is never the same book twice–always it reveals something new to me, something I had not seen or considered before. When I realized that Marquez was telling not just the story of the Buendia family but the story of human civilization, my sense of the novel became even more profound.
I was pushed to name more. Doing so in the moment was difficult, akin I suppose to standing on the Oscar stage and from memory trying to name everyone who helped you win your award. As I mentioned To Kill a Mockingbird and Angle of Repose, I failed entirely to bring up the value Willa Cather has had on my education as a writer. Her imagery, I’ve often told others, is so vivid you can feel the temperature of the air, the sun on your skin. Cather is the writer who became my line of demarcation for what constitutes a good or great book and something easily forgettable. After reading My Antonia one summer, sitting on a hot August porch waiting for my first child to arrive, I realized that those trendy romance novels I had been devouring were not worth my time, which was about to become more precious than ever. I’ve never crossed back over that line. That decision to read better books helped me hone my sense of a well-wrought sentence perhaps more than any other decision in my life.
There are so many great books. So many that I’ve read and kept in my heart for many reasons. It cannot be overstated that reading books is the best training for writers. Whether or not we realize it, when we read a great work of fiction, a powerful play or poem, we internalize imagery, diction, word choice, a writer’s particular style or syntax. A great book should often make an emerging writer pause and say, “Wow. This is powerful writing.”
Worthwhile books are unforgettable and their scenes linger, long after reading. About A Hollow Bone, in particular, one reader commented about a small scene where June Catalano tells her daughter, “I know you’re sad right now, and I wish I could tell you that you won’t ever be this sad again, but it would not be true. I sometimes think that’s what life means. Life is just people trying to be happy in between all the sad times.” The reader said that part of the novel stuck with her, for how sad it felt and how opposite June’s view of life was from her own life experience. What I know is that there are people like June. Happily there are even more people like this reader, at least I hope so.
I also know that we can find truth in books, truth that helps us navigate our lives. When we discover characters and situations that we can relate to, such experiences intensify our empathy with human experience. At some point a book may even give us courage to emulate the brave steps a character takes or to make a different choice, one less hurtful or destructive than a character’s choice. In short, books can show us how we ought to live.
To be a writer, one must feel he or she has something to say, something only he or she can say, which, when we’re young, can be hindered by a lack of life experience. So while each book listed below has been a good model for the craft of writing, each of these books has more importantly illuminated life for me, deepened my understanding of others, and made me more sensitive to the nuance of human experience.
At some point, we all live in Macondo, waiting for Melquiades to turn up with mystifying inventions from a world beyond our boundaries. As children, we know so little of what lies beyond the life our parents give us. Reading takes us on journeys ordinary life cannot provide. Not on the list below are a few books from my childhood that taught me this very truth. In My Friend Mac, I learned about the value of friendship and what it can mean for a child to live an isolated life. In Strawberry Girl I learned that one’s own culture and perceptions of life can differ immeasurably from others’ and that we ought to be grateful for what we have. I also ought to mention that I first read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was eleven. It had been a Book of the Month Club selection and belonged to my mother. When I pulled it off the shelf, she frowned and told me I wouldn’t understand it–a statement that made me even more determined to read it. I may not have understood the subtleties of race, the abject poverty of the Ewells, or the reason Scout feels she’s a foreigner in the world of women, but I did understand–and never forgot–Atticus’s relationship with his children, especially with Scout. Two years after my parents had divorced, I needed Atticus. I believe he came to me at just the right time. When I taught the novel in high school, more than one student confided their similar experience–as a fictional father, Atticus was just who they needed.
So when people don’t read, children in particular, I feel immense pity for them, for they are excluding themselves from the stories that can help them understand the big questions in life and that bind us all together in our search for answers.
The titles below are listed in random order.
- One Hundred Years of Solitude
- To Kill a Mockingbird
- My Antonia
- Angle of Repose
- Their Eyes Were Watching God
- The Things They Carried
- All Quiet on the Western Front
- The Old Man and the Sea
- Native Son
- The Crucible
