I always do my pleasure reading during the summer. It just works out. I have long stretches of time to dedicate to finishing a book, and Borders is air conditioned. I have yet to find a quaint, local bookstore in Northern Westchester County. Also, people seem to get me Borders gift cards for every gift-giving occasion. The point is, my indie cred is dying here for a reason.
Anyways, while I was on Maui I blitzed through "Love is a Mixtape" by Rob Sheffield. You might have seen him doing commentary about 80s new wave videos on VH1, or read his work in Rolling Stone. Rob Sheffield might have the coolest job ever. He also has quite a story to tell. You see, he met the girl of his dreams because they both liked Big Star (I'd never heard of them before I read this book, they're a folky, 70s group. Kind of Bob Dylan-esque.) He married her, and they loved the heck out of each other until she died five years into it from a pulmonary embolism. I've never been a widower, but I think he describes what it would be like perfectly: a lot of peanut butter sandwiches and songs he'll never be able to listen to again because they remind him too much of her.
Rob Sheffield's whole life is music. Every chapter he writes begins with a mixtape playlist that's related to what he's about to recount. As I read this book, I started thinking about those songs that are forever tied to those moments in my life. I thought about those songs that got shelved because listening to them made me too sad or made me cringe because they reminded me of those types of moments. I couldn't listen to The Decemberists for months because I had gotten into a fight with the friend who got me into them. But on the flip side, I feel giddy and happy whenever I hear "The United States of Pop 2009" because it reminds me of blasting it on New Year's Eve in a hotel room with my best friends, and keeping it on repeat while going to Ireland 3 days later. Basically my entire iTunes library is full of random vignettes and feelings and stories with every little file.
When I finished this book, I had somewhat of an epiphany. Not this whole spiel I've been typing out instead of cleaning my room, but another one. I was thinking about how much this book affected me and touched me as a music lover and a hopeless romantic, and how so many other books I've read haven't. I'm talking about those classics we all have to read in high school while the teacher puts more thought into the words than the actual author did, and then we write an essay on something they tell us. I hated "1984." I hated "Lord of the Flies." I didn't like "To Kill a Mockingbird" either. I dragged my feet through those pages and I'm sure my essays showed it.
But the book that really made me believe we're not meant to read books in school, where someone tells us how to read them, was "The Great Gatsby." I really did love this book. But not for the same reason everyone else seems to. Yeah, I get how it's a commentary on The American Dream and materialism. I get the Green Light metaphor. But I didn't want to talk about those things in my 11th grade English class. I wanted to talk about Gatsby as a romantic character; as someone who pined for someone his whole adult life and then had her right there but didn't know what to do about it. That's what stayed with me throughout the whole thing. But every attempt to bring this up in discussions was futile.
So I sucked it up and talked about that Green Light, but in senior year my English class called for me to write a story re-imagining something we'd read in school. I wrote a modernized version of "The Great Gatsby" and focused on this romantic aspect, of Gatsby pining for Daisy and hoping one night she'll show up for his party. When I got my piece back, my teacher had written in the margins "There's nothing about the American Dream and materialism."
So fine, I didn't read Gatsby the way my teachers wanted me to. But I read it and I loved it, just like I loved "Love is a Mixtape." There's nothing like getting lost in a book, and we don't need open book essays to help us get there.
Peace, Love, and Semicolons,
Lisa
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