Top 10 Reasons Books Are Responsible For Any Deviant Impulses I May Have
As I sat here tonight thumbing through my weather worn copy of Half-Asleep in Frog Pajama's, trying to get into the right second-person mindset, my mind wandered to the oddities on my bookshelf and I realized something important; it's all literature's fault.
What I read was never monitored for...uh...explicit content. My mother liked that I read (and my reading level surpassed her own by the time I was about 8) she she was never much fuss about what I decided to pick up. As a child, I read any and everything anyone reccomended; whatever I could get my hands on and the books I loved weren't Goosebumps like so many kids my age. I was drawn to The Giver. I read Anna Karenina before my English teacher did and when I was about 10, someone handed me a copy of Skinny Legs and All.
I blame it all on Tom Robbins.
No 10 year-old should be handed a copy of this book. It's a good book, that goes without saying, but when you throw in the authors tendancy toward the sexual (including the 50 year old Jew with the shoe fetish) it's just flat out not appropriate. Then, i suppose no one thought Tolstoy was either. What can I say, anyone can read Number the Stars; I was a Maverick and there's shit in Half-Asleep in Frog Pajamas that I wouldn't validate.
From thereon out, I was hooked. Tom Robbins was my man and I have dutifully picked up every book he's put out since that day. Switters, the pedophile CIA agent. Larry Diamond, the ex-Broker genius gone frog-licker. The characters were never the reason i read them - who can resist a book with lines like "Christianity - the emey of teeth, the clitoris and the brain," but when i dissect the character responsible for every pseudo-deviant motivation I have, it's a piece of these concepts behind it.
While girls my age were watching Cinderella stories sans-poofy skirt and really uncomfortable shoes for their make-up of the perfect man, I was at home with four-hundred page novels liberally sprinkled with phrases like "This is more than a vagina, this is a monstre sacre!" It's something like the difference between Chad Michael Murray and Billy Bob Thorton, but wittier, i suspect.
While most girls my age were falling for the guy with the motorcycle, I was fawning over a man created and compiled by many an hour spent reading that should have been spent sleeping. He doesn't exist, i know this, but there's a piece of every male-lead i've ever enjoyed in him. A bit of John Galt and a dash of Howard Roark with just touch of Siwtters and a pinch of Larry Diamond. He is the instant orgasm.
And that, class, is why books ruined my teenage years.
I'm fucked.
What I read was never monitored for...uh...explicit content. My mother liked that I read (and my reading level surpassed her own by the time I was about 8) she she was never much fuss about what I decided to pick up. As a child, I read any and everything anyone reccomended; whatever I could get my hands on and the books I loved weren't Goosebumps like so many kids my age. I was drawn to The Giver. I read Anna Karenina before my English teacher did and when I was about 10, someone handed me a copy of Skinny Legs and All.
I blame it all on Tom Robbins.
No 10 year-old should be handed a copy of this book. It's a good book, that goes without saying, but when you throw in the authors tendancy toward the sexual (including the 50 year old Jew with the shoe fetish) it's just flat out not appropriate. Then, i suppose no one thought Tolstoy was either. What can I say, anyone can read Number the Stars; I was a Maverick and there's shit in Half-Asleep in Frog Pajamas that I wouldn't validate.
From thereon out, I was hooked. Tom Robbins was my man and I have dutifully picked up every book he's put out since that day. Switters, the pedophile CIA agent. Larry Diamond, the ex-Broker genius gone frog-licker. The characters were never the reason i read them - who can resist a book with lines like "Christianity - the emey of teeth, the clitoris and the brain," but when i dissect the character responsible for every pseudo-deviant motivation I have, it's a piece of these concepts behind it.
While girls my age were watching Cinderella stories sans-poofy skirt and really uncomfortable shoes for their make-up of the perfect man, I was at home with four-hundred page novels liberally sprinkled with phrases like "This is more than a vagina, this is a monstre sacre!" It's something like the difference between Chad Michael Murray and Billy Bob Thorton, but wittier, i suspect.
While most girls my age were falling for the guy with the motorcycle, I was fawning over a man created and compiled by many an hour spent reading that should have been spent sleeping. He doesn't exist, i know this, but there's a piece of every male-lead i've ever enjoyed in him. A bit of John Galt and a dash of Howard Roark with just touch of Siwtters and a pinch of Larry Diamond. He is the instant orgasm.
And that, class, is why books ruined my teenage years.
I'm fucked.
posted by Kay at
9:52 PM
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