Literary triage.

This blog could have easily been titled 'Dostoevsky drops my jaw', 'Nietzsche makes me kneel', 'Kazantzakis kicks my can', or maybe even 'Derrida makes me cry confusing tears'. But moving on instinct and passion, Kerouac steals the day. Ahem, the title.

Is it obsessive to say literature could be my girlfriend? Oh, its just a joke. Don't worry all you want to be Freudian psychoanalysts, literature is not my girlfriend. And 'this' sentence certainly doesn't flow like the song. For most of you though, my new devoted readers, the names of these authors will instantly ring a bell in your mind. Even the most self-admittedly clueless should at least recognize, or experience a hinting subconscious notion, of at least one name. If not, shame on you! Visit a library, they are free. These names stand as pillars in literary history.

On a personal level, the emotional effects of where and when I read is equally powerful. Reading The Birth of Tragedy while questioning the nature of injustice did drop me to my knees. Reading To Build A Fire, even in the oppressive heat of Bangladesh, made me shiver.

Literature, from the Latin word for "acquaintance with letters", incites deep, personal meaning. The terms 'book' or 'novel' may hold some credibility on their own, but to me nothing compares to the mental picture of Melville penning the first pages of Moby Dick. Or of Franklin racing into the night on a journey to complete his Autobiography; a momentary surge of literary inspiration; just one more sentence.

Even now, names crowd my brain. 'Swift makes me slaphappy'. 'Solzhenitsyn makes me shiver (and want to grow an amazing beard)'. I imagine all of the above arguing with me for rights to the title. Thomas Paine tells me the answer should be clear. Vonnegut is sarcastic, as always. I like him, but for now I don't care what he thinks. And poor Melville, he just sulks away when I shrug and tell him, no. He has obviously not yet caught on to my feigned apathy. For all he knows Moby Dick was a tragic literary attempt.

For me, these names are more than just a bell. They are a gong, reverberating beneath the surface of my skin.

You can imagine my concern in deciding which books to bring with me to Israel. A fraction of my personal library was stacked at my feet and about the basement. Standing there I felt like an old hen of a nurse, or a rooster in my case, caught at the scene of disaster. I clucked about, forced to triage the deserving victims. Who will I leave behind?

I tried to pick a few that would aid me as a graduate student. White Man's Burden - William Easterly and Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse - Sylvain Cypel. But to pass my reasoning as only academic, offsets what I am trying to prove: that literature, a book if you will, is enjoyable. It must be, if you are to be profoundly affected. I do not regard reading as an academic to be a dysfunction, but if passion for reading is first instilled--education will naturally follow.

So what did I bring? Without further ado:

The Shia Revival - Vali Nasr
White Man's Burden - William Easterly
Walled: Israeli Society at an Impasse - Sylvain Cypel
The Formation of the Economic Thought of Karl Marx - Ernest Mendel
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami
To Know as We Are Known - Parker J. Palmer
The Gift of Death and Literature in Secret - Jacques Derrida
Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question - Jacques Derrida
A Kierkegaard Anthology - edited by Robert Brethall

What are you reading?