* You’re getting old when tying one on means fastening your MedicAlert bracelet.
* In the world of Kindles and best-seller hardbacks, the rare occurrence of paperback reading can seem like a literary time machine. I experienced that a few years ago when I decided to revisit “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac. It didn’t hold up the way it did when I was in college, and the relatively tiny print and long paragraphs made it a bid of a slog. As for footnotes, it helped to keep a magnifying glass nearby.
Now I’m in the paperback cross hairs again. This time it’s the 1960 work of Robert F. Kennedy, assessing organized crime in “The Enemy Within.” It’s been on my bookshelf for years staring back at me in accusatory fashion for being an implicit imposter. I finally needed to read it.
Maybe I’ll finish it.
* Flashing back to (Penn State) intercollegiate days and English lit instructors, I still fondly recall a reference by one of the more humorous professors who shared some faculty-lounge ambience. It seemed that some profs—where academic humor meets peer competition—played a “Famous books I’ve never read” game. Even at that level, everybody had something glaringly unread.
Then it was on to the next level: “Famous books in my field that I’ve never read.” That took some candor and chutzpah.
When the field was finally winnowed and only the hard-core remained, it was time for the final segment: “Famous books I’ve taught that I’ve never read.” In other words, literary criticism and research could carry the day in a survey course of American literature. So, maybe this was the wry side of an ethical lapse or maybe he was kidding to relate better to his students. If so, the latter worked. This professor, a Hemingway scholar, acknowledged that for him it was James Fennimore Cooper’s “The Deerslayer.”
No, it wasn’t part of that course’s curriculum, And, no, I’ve still managed to work around it all these years.