“The Day Dream” (1880), Rossetti
Disclaimer: This is not going to be a humblebrag about how I am charmingly bookish. If there’s one thing an English major doesn’t need, it’s a bigger ego.
Even more, before delving into the importance of narrative (in the form of the novel), I want to point out the glaring irony that this blog post will, in fact, be written in a narrative form. It is natural for me to make my writing (and life, for that matter) into a book-like structure, with each significant instance being its own chapter. Perhaps this is because I have been book-crazed throughout my conscious memories. While this can be binding, I find that an acknowledgment of my own existence pulls me away from my tendency to hide behind the sort of absurdism I am prone to.
I was a strange child. With eyes too big and the glasses prescription of someone’s grandmother, my towering classmates intimated my elementary school self to the point of silence. In fact, I didn’t find my voice until my sophomore year of high school. My escape from the horrifying state of being perceived, therefore, came from reading. While not the best way to come out of my shell, reading provided me with blissful, never-ending worlds of fantasy. It was, and still is, what Hitz of Lost in Thought calls a “refuge from the world.”. It was my safe haven from the bafflingly fearless classmates surrounding me. And now, it provides an outlet from the taxing condition of being a senior in college, still unsure of “what’s next.”
Now, as a slightly too loud half-adult, I still escape into reading. It made sense, then, that I chose to major in English when entering my undergraduate career. Why not get a degree in what I was already doing for pleasure? Interestingly enough, I found that the literature I have consumed over my undergraduate career perpetuates into every aspect of my life and studies. Yet I also struggle to connect with it in the same way in which I once did when it is assigned to me. While I am known for being headstrong, this isn’t a cognizant choice. Instead, it is the fact that the reading has become “carnal” to use Karen Swallow Prior’s word in her Atlantic article “How Reading Makes Us More Human.” It is less about reading to have a spiritual connection to text and more about getting through Chapter Sixteen as fast as possible so that I can go to sleep before midnight. Unsurprisingly, this is exactly why I stopped taking art courses––something about being forced to be creative takes all the inspiration out of it.
That being said, an essay in the New Yorker by Ceridwen Dovey entitled “Can Reading Make You Happier?” caught me off-guard upon my first reading. Like Ceridwen, I have a “passionate commitment to serendipity in my personal reading discoveries.” Ceridwen breaks out of this need for serendipitous reading when she doubtfully goes to a session with a bibliotherapist. This bibliotherapist (the name is exactly what it means) “prescribed” Ceridwen texts that made her happier, more empathetic, and more nurturing towards herself. While I don’t plan on paying for a session myself, it is worthwhile to note that reading is a recognized form of therapy, even for those in prison or the elderly.
I am glad to have studied English throughout my undergraduate career, and I’m even more glad that I don’t plan on studying it as a graduate student. I am, by definition, “well-read,” for I have read almost every canonized book. Even better, I’ve read texts that are not a part of the university-accepted canon. I have found the niches of literature (the Victorian novel and post-war satire) that make me feel like a shy kid checking out three books at a time in the school library. And this feels, to be quite frank, a lot better than reading Robinson Crusoe. Deciding that I do not want to work with the materials that, in other aspects of my life, offer unadulterated satisfaction has been liberating. The saying has always been, “do what you love”; however, because of the evidence that reading for pleasure scientifically makes you happier, I want to retain the luxury of having my refuge in literature.
This was a very entertaining and well-written piece. Throughout, you really expressed a flow of consciousness that was organized yet not necessarily too specific, yet still unique, making it easy for me to relate to and differ from your own story. Like you, and probably most, if not all, of our classmates, I found refuge as a youngster reading to escape the world. This is why I, much like you, decided to study English, specifically literature, as an undergraduate. I like that you have already decided to turn away from any further academic study of literature because you believe that you have already read enough in such a collegiate setting. So of course such continuous studies would be murderous for your own interest if you continued to examine literature carnally, rather than spiritually, right? I have been turning this question around in my own head for quite a while now: do I want to continue studying English after my undergraduate career? I like your piece because it doesn’t necessarily give me an answer, but it provides me with your perspective; it gives me something to meditate on as my final semester comes to a close.