I Had to Fight to Read :: Personal Narrative, Autobiographical Essay

It was spend, stinking warming in a sm entirely town and I was fifteen and bored. The town bibliothec had been giving me grief since I was eleven and in the one-sixth grade, when she issued her first decree that I wasnt old bountiful to check aside what became the first of a long line of books I had to fight to read. It was a standardized the first of many times when one or both of my parents trudged quite a little to the library to insist equally firmly that she had no right to lop my choices as I had their permission to read whatever I wanted.   The summer of my thirtieth year was especially difficult for this poor beleaguered woman. Her worst daytime came when I insisted on checking out all of Proust, every one of doubting Thomas Wolfes novels, and while I was at it, Joyces Ulysses as well. After all, I reasoned, I had two weeks to keep these books and I was a fast reader.   So I took them home, to the old iron glider under the grape arbor, and I propped myself up on a bunch of pillows and dug in with the same gloating most people reserve for hot fudge sundaes. I strike out the pages and decided to read Look Homeward, Angel first because I like the way all those words leapfrogged over each other on every single page. Wow The exuberant rush and gush of all those words The torrent was overwhelming, the words blurred, I was losing the meaning. I knew I had to verbose the pace somehow before I would have to admit that the librarian was probably right and perhaps I really wasnt old enough to make sense of it.   And so I turned to Proust, finding alleviation within his exquisitely nuanced precision and pacing. My love of all things French was innate(p) with Proust, as I marveled at his privileged people and their luminous lives. Who were they really, I wondered, and was all of Paris like this, and if so, how soon could I get there? For the next two weeks, I cut back and forth in the midst of that unlikely duo, Wolfe and Proust, sweati ng from Julys heat and the emotional impact of Brother Bens cobblers last (best read when one is fifteen), then cooling off with the soothingly high-toned rituals of Monsieur Swann and company.