Literary Snob

For her birthday yesterday, I gave my mom the book Fall Down, Laughing by David L. Lander. David Lander played the part of Squiggy in the old '70s TV show Laverne and Shirley that my mom really likes. When we found out that one of the actors was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (which my mother was diagnosed with almost ten years ago), I knew I had to get the actor's autobiography about his journey through life with MS for my mom for her birthday. It came in the mail two days before her birthday, and I sat down to skim through it to see how good it was. I was sorely disappointed.

Although it provides many interesting facts and anecdotes about the actor, the book is poorly written. It wasn't until my mom had read a few chapters and we talked about them that I realized how my literary tastes have been shaped by just one semester in Torrey. I discovered that the way Fall Down, Laughing was written disgusted me. The few crass words in the first few chapters could have been replaced with so many other words that would have more accurately portrayed how the author felt or what was going on. I caught sentencing typos and even a misspelling of the name of the director of the hit show David Lander co-starred in. The only positive element I could see in his writing was that it sounded very similar to the way Squiggy (the character Lander is famous for playing) talked: unsophisticated and crude, which may be the way the writing was meant to sound.

At first I thought I just didn't like Lander's writing style, but as my mom and I talked about it, we agreed that my education and the books I had been reading lately had taught me what good writing truly is. I had learned words that could effectively capture a mood or feeling. I had been struck by so many beautiful analogies and metaphors, and sometimes I found myself underlining a sentence or stanza in a book simply because the imagery or diction made me see the story in a new light.

I am tempted to think that I have become a literary snob. Maybe I have. However, I think I have actually learned how to appreciate good writing (and old writing). I have learned what it means to be educated: in my case, to read hard books and think deeply about them and the ideas they present. The books I read shape who I am and how I learn. Anna Karenina has brought to mind new definition and thoughts about love, truth, honor, respect, fidelity, hope, joy, and God's provision. Dante's Divine Comedy taught me to appreciate language, heritage, the epic tradition, and the incomprehensibility of God. Faerie Queene taught me about truth, deception, virtue, how much the writers of the past relied on Christianity, and even the evolution of the English language. So much is learned from the books of the past, and I wish more people could have this type of education so that thought and writing in this country might be a little better.