I’d like to address a topic that most college students feel is anathema: Extracurricular reading. Why? Everyone knows reading is fundamental.
Mike D of the Beastie Boys said he was “MC’d to a degree you can’t get in college.” This is so true. College is preparatory for a number of things, but what you can do for yourself is just as important. Always having a book on hand was as key a part of my education as any test I’ve ever taken.
The first book I remember having read to me was “Where The Wild Things Are.” I was so entranced with that book as a toddler, my mother recalls me referring to the trees alongside a wooded road near my house as the “jeengle.” Apparently I thought monsters lurked in the woodland between subdivision tracts.
Growing older I was obsessed with reading. It helped that my mom was a librarian and had strict rules about my television consumption. Of course, those rules were easily circumvented, but my enjoyment of reading didn’t lessen.
“James and the Giant Peach,” “Charlotte’s Web,” and anything with witches, wardrobes or other magical items caught me up. I chafed at being enrolled in the summer reading program at the public library (as much as I liked reading, I enjoyed swim lessons and soccer camp a lot more). At least they gave out Dilly Bars on hot summer days.
In middle school I went through a dorky period of reading a lot of fantasy and science fiction that carried over somewhat into high school. However, it was in high school that I got a dose of what I really needed.
The first book was “The Dharma Bums” by Jack Kerouac. Briefly told, it’s the story of two best friends living in San Francisco who spend hedonistic weeks drinking red wine and smoking reefer and then spend the weekends drying out in the surrounding hills. The simple joy Kerouac had in describing both the Dionysian pleasures of the early beatnik era and the captivating beauty of Northern California had me hooked. I knew life was more than school was preparing me for. In fact, nothing in school prepared me to appreciate a cold sunrise or the warm flush of wine on the cheeks. That took someone with a lot more to say than my global-studies teacher.
The second book was “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” by Tom Wolfe. Later in his career, Wolfe would take some misguided stabs at fiction (and help produce the worst movie of Tom Hanks’ career, “Bonfire of the Vanities”) but “Acid Test” was phenomenal, documenting the burgeoning “hippie” movement.
Wolfe follows Ken Kesey, the author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” as he leads a bus trip from San Francisco to New York. Along the way many drugs are imbibed, new fangled stereo equipment is played with, and consciousness expanded. In a nice cultural feedback moment, the bus is driven primarily by Neal Cassidy, Jack Kerouac’s real life best friend. Yet, it was Wolfe’s detachment from the whole process that leant it credibility. He may have admired the hippies for their devotion to their “cause,” but he wasn’t sure he wanted to join it.
Getting into college, I continued reading while reading for my classes. I took exactly one English course as an undergraduate, and I wish I had taken more. As it stood, I always had something else I was reading in parallel to my studies. It was vital to my sanity.
To be honest, I feel like writing about reading is a little silly. If you’ve gotten this far in this piece, you probably already like to read, which is why you’re reading about it. Yet, it’s vitally important to read. Not just the news or what gets assigned to you in class, but reading for enjoyment. I’ve read books that have kept a smile on my face for days. I’ve also read books that have terrified or saddened me. When I devoured “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” the summer of my freshman year, I was devastated by the power of his words.
Words are power. Being well read isn’t about being a smart aleck, or showing off, or being nerdy. It’s about empowerment. Listen to any activist speak about the origins of their convictions, and many will cite a book they read that opened them up to possibilities.
Denying yourself the limitless expanse of human experience in favor of say, “Joe Millionaire,” is fine, if you understand what you’re giving up. If I wanted to learn about the foibles of the rich, I’d sink back into the couch with “The Great Gatsby” any day.
Lecturing people to read won’t win any converts. Recommending a good book will. The next time something you’ve read makes you laugh out loud, or makes your heart race, tell everyone you know about it. If one person reads that book as a result, consider your work done.
