Literature that changed your life?

Exactly, Sozobe. The idea that one continues to be the same person is impossible. The value of past experience also changes enormously over time. I'm not sure whether Dlowan means intellectual development (easier to account for) or emotional charges (and changes). If the latter, you wouldn't get the same answer out of me two days in a row!

Let's let larry richette off the hook.

I think he has described, with much candor, the way Dostoevsky's novels have changed his life.

What else is left for larry to add?

Damn fine question, Soze - what DO I mean?

By the way, I do not see Larry as "on a hook" - I am simply asking for more.

I guess I am looking for something of an operational definition - ie what does one do differently, how has the course of one's life been changed by what the literature has contributed -or, more exactly, I suppose, by one's reaction to the literature. Is it "just" an internal change, a deepening of perception or whatever, or has it made a real difference in the course of one's life?

I realise this is a VERY difficult question - and this is the only reason I keep pushing people - who may choose to reapond to the pushing, or not - to try to get more than an appreciation of the work, but to examine the NATURE of the change, if any.

I do not think the size of the change matters a whit.

LOTR really DID change my life, i'm not talking about catharsis---i'm talking about learning the value of never giving up, how important friendship is, journeys, growth, darkness.....the good vs. the bad. Hobbits and the likes are a reflection of real life people....but I understand how you all can find it petty.
Besides, doesn't everything thing we do change our life, even in small way? Unless you chose to remain stagnate and unaffected.

I disagree with Bluxx and others who say that everything we do and everything we read changes our life. This may be true to an infinitesimal degree, but most books and most experiences don't have a measurable effect on the course of our lives. That is why we remember CERTAIN books and CERTAIN experiences so much more powerfully than others. In the course of an existence there are really only a relatively small number of such books and such experiences. Otherwise we would be constantly reacting and constantly changing course in response to new stimuli.

Yes, and this makes even the smallest change in our life----why is it that you remember only certain parts of a book, it's probably because it was some how applicable to your life OR it touched you enough so that you see the world maybe just a little bit, a tiny bit, differently. You gotta think outside the box here....I know I may sound Freudian (well not really) but what about the newspaper? What about magazines? Sheesh, even cookbooks.

As an abused child I was extremely withdrawn and living my life through books, movies and radio shows. Books like the Black Stallion series kept me going from day to day. Early on I discovered Dickens, Oliver Twist in particular. As I grew into a teen ager I remained withdrawn. Having nobody to talk things over with, I discovered Philip Wylie. His Essay on Morals and Generation of Vipers are the first books I know for a fact changed my life. He gave voice to things I already knew about life, put a sense of order to my thinking. I still read Essay every several years, along with Wylie's Opus 21.
Many books have affected me a good deal, such as Faust, Freud's book on dreams, Wayne Dyer's books, and so on. Joyce has been one of my lifelong loves. A Christmas Carol is my favorite fiction ever and Rimbaud's A Season in Hell has been profound.
Henry Miller's works have been very soul nourishing to me as well as giving me hope that my efforts at expressing myself have not been in vain. I read some of his books every four or five years.
I have always had a darwinian/freudian view of the world. One year I read Dianetics by L Ron Hubbard and I found myself thinking of human development in terms of engrams and cognitions. Dianetics has integrated into my mind to become a part of my very basic thought process.
There have been other examples, but these are the ones most outstanding.

Very interesting, Edgar.

I must admit I'm beginning to smell a rat in the "how has this changed you" question!!

Goodness, Tartarin? What rat?

If one is a constructivist, then, of course, every little change in your perception of the world DOES change your world and, presumably, you, since your self-perception must change, and your interaction with the world - since you cannot really separate "observed" and "observer".

Granted, dlowan, everything changes our perceptions to even a small extent. But those are not SIGNIFICANT changes like the ones edgarblythe is talking about. The larger and more lasting changes--which literature can and does effect--are the ones we should be discussing here.

Like so many women, my girlhood was formed by Little Women and the Anne of Green Gables books, both of which were given to me by my mother, not read to me. I read them to my daughter as well as my own discovery from the end of girlhood, Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books. When I read them to my daughter, I discovered how it was that I always knew how to make cheese!

Reading Arthurian material had a great influence on my life. Simone de Beauvoir influenced me as well, but, perhaps, it was meeting people including Nelson Algren who knew her that lead me to read de Beauvoir ... a round about way of saying, maybe there was no change.

I fell in love with C.S. Lewis--Chronicles of Narnia in my childhood. Since then I've read nearly everything he wrote and his letters and biography. Also tried to read as much as I could of what he read and thereby discovered E. Nesbit, George Macdonald, William Morris... finally did a graduate degree in sixteenth century literature. But, curiously, I never became a Christian, although I was much influenced by his religious reasoning. I grew up in a different world and a different culture from Lewis, but since Narnia, I have always felt him to be a kindred spirit. He was a man who believed that reading was one of the most important things we can do with our lives, that true readers are addicts for life and what we read is not separate from our "real" lives, it makes us who we are intellectually and spiritually--just as food makes us what we are physically.

Trailblazer,
I, too, love Lewis but did not love him on first reading, but later on. I think because I read him after I became acquainted with his great, good friend Tolkien, I found the Narnia books lacking. However, when I had children of my own, I read Narnia to them ... more than once. As a family, we love Reepicheep above everyone else in Narnia.

We are not Christians, although I was raised a Roman Catholic. My children, now 25, 23 and 18, are not religious in the least. My youngest does not read for pleasure, despite having been raised with books as were his siblings. My 23 year old went on to read all of Lewis, just as you did.

I am curious, plaindome, do you think there is anything essentially "Catholic" in Tolkien, as compared to something intrinsically "Protestant" about Lewis?

I am a Shakespeare enthusiast.
It is interesting to note that Harold Bloom, Professor at Yale, who is considered the preeminent literary critic of our time by many, has told us that:
"The phenomenon of Hamlet, the prince within the play, is unsurpassed in the West's imaginative literature"
However, Bloom feels there has been a great deal of misinterpretation of Hamlet by cursory readers.

Mamajuana mentions her favorite quotes in Hamlet-"To thine one self be true- etc. etc. by Polonious.

Perhaps Mamajuana is unaware that Shakespeare depicted Polonius as a posturing old fool whose "advice" to his son, Laertes, was mainly meant to be a parody on fatherly advice.

Trailblazer,
Lewis loved the idea of Catholicism but never converted so I do not think there is anything intrinsically Protestant in his work. The figure os Aslan is what Catholic intellectuals during the 1960s might have called a Christ figure.
Tolkien was a Catholic and many of his closest friends were Catholics as well. A film presented on public television but made perhaps 20 years ago in Britain featured the man who then held Tolkien's old chair. This professor classified The Lord of the Rings as a post-WWII novel, more in line with the angry young men and with the social satirists. Re-reading it now, I quite agree.

Italgato,


Perhaps Mamajuana is unaware that Shakespeare depicted Polonius as a posturing old fool whose "advice" to his son, Laertes, was mainly meant to be a parody on fatherly advice.

You are almost right so perhaps you are unaware of a common Medieval literary form known as a Mirror for Princes. It is this form and not fatherly advice per se that Shakespeare was parodying.

This thread woke up! Thank you all.