When it comes to books, I know what I like. I like Jane Austen. I like George Eliot, the Brontà sisters, Emily Dickinson. I love Virginia Woolf. And not even a hurricane could dampen this emphatic devotion to my girls.
This was my attitude last spring when I submitted my sample columns for The Daily Cardinal literature column. So it definitely unnerved me when, after I got the column (yay!), the arts editor said my column topics needed improvement because they were too girly (boo).
After some consideration, however, I realized my editor was right. I had so deeply immersed myself in lacy, feminine Victorian novels that I was practically destined to become a crazy cat lady who spends her days writing sonnets to Mr. Darcy. It was time to expand my horizons. So, for the benefit of not only myself, but my readers who may tire of column after column in which I rank the Jane Austen heroines according to whom I would most like to be friends with (Anne Elliot comes out on top; Emma is on the bottom), I set myself a summer goal to read a bunch of guy books."" You know, books about hunting, fishing and wars that win Pulitzer Prizes. Ernest Hemingway, Larry McMurtry. Hoo! ...
At the beginning of the summer I went to the bookstore to gather a collection of ""guy-books,"" determined to add some books about dead animals to my library full of novels about stately manors and marriage. But when it got right down to it, my courage failed me, and I seemed to always find an excuse to stray from my resolve: ""On Beauty"" by Zadie Smith was on sale; ""The Blind Assassins"" had a pretty cover. And I wimped out when I actually came face-to-face with a shelf of Hemingway. I've read Hemingway novels and stories before, and I just couldn't bring myself to spend some of my precious book time reading about bullfighting and drinking again.
In the end, I picked John Fowles' ""The French Lieutenant's Woman"" (which I admit was cheating, as it's about a Victorian love-triangle), Michael Chabon's ""The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay"" and John Steinbeck's ""East of Eden.""
Perhaps the pages of these books aren't dripping with blood and sweat, but they are still ""manly"" enough that I normally would have passed them up for something more familiar. Despite my doubts, I'm glad I read them. Though I wasn't wild about ""East of Eden"" - it was over-bearing, and rather pretentious and you can almost envision Steinbeck staring at you with a self-impressed expression as you read it - it's one of those classics I needed to read. ""Kavalier and Clay"" and ""The French Lieutentant's Woman"" were amazing.
""Kavalier and Clay"" bubbled over with energy and was fascinating from first to last page. The characters were drawn with such precision and affection. ""The French Lieutenant's Woman"" was mind-blowing: The way Fowles' plays mind-games with the reader and experiments with author-function literally made my heart race as I read it.
So maybe I didn't dive deep into the pool of ""guy books"" and emerge covered in intestines and animal carcasses. But I waded in the kiddy pool, at least, and I discovered some books that made a deep impact on me. And perhaps now not all my columns will be about ""Little Women."" Maybe next summer I'll even get around to ""All Quiet on the Western Front."" Maybe.
Anna claims she emerged from her ""guy books"" binge free from blood, sweat and entrails. If you want the real story, e-mail her at akwilliams1@wisc.edu._
