It was my second year in university. I sat next to an auburn beauty in Can Lit class. I mean, she sat next to me. I was minding my own business, staring out the window at the changing maple leaves in the courtyard when she interrupted my view. The month was September and I was about to be browbeaten by the professor, unable to either define or differentiate between irony and sarcasm. He licked his lips at my plight while I struggled, discerned, then backpedalled in an effort to save myself in front of the whole class. He smirked and then the class released a sigh. He would give us the definition, but first, break.
I don't remember much about the class itself other than the work was dry and boring to read. I enjoyed _Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town_ in retrospect and _The Mountain and The Valley_ not at all. I assume my seat partner felt the same coming less to class, spending more time in the library where we would run into each other after class, she at her carel and I at mine. She read the classics, Ovid, Virgil, while I flipped through the student weeklies, atlases, and perhaps the occassional required reading.
There we sat back to back, she later admitting that she had a crush on Ovid. I wanted to be dead two thousand years, too.
I was frustrated at having thought I had chosen a major that didn't interest me, confused because I did not understand what I read and bewildered because I could not master it. I had only begun reading to understand the year previous and while I understood, in part, what I was supposed to accomplish I didn't know how to go about it. I began writing academic papers and found I was no good, failing miserably in writing English papers, answering multiple choice questions in science, writing short answers for classics, and memorizing French verbs like haïr which, incidentally, means to hate.
The year passed quickly, though by the end of it I still had not learned how to write clearly.
It would land me in trouble the following year where I successfully puzzled professors. They looked at me and assumed I could produce when I couldn't. I did not know how to write but that was because I still didn't know how to read.
I was caught up in symbol and image and history when in fact, the story, the bare enjoyment of what I loved was what these professors wanted to hear. I forgot how to enjoy the stories. I thought professors wanted serious thought, depth, dry wit. If I had known that these teachers had wanted the same passion and simplicity I brought to the Hardy Boys, later to the Hardy Boys Case File series, Encyclopedia Brown's neighbourhood mysteries, and Tintin, then it would have been easier to tell them what I felt.
I felt the stirrings of emotion in my transition from those books of my youth just before university. I read Ibsen, Pirandello, Neruda, Naipaul, O'Neill, and Kafka for the sake of the story. It was pure enjoyment. I ranted with Kafka, labelling the world insipid and cringed at Pirandello's stark landscapes. I was afraid of Naipaul's eccentric characters and moved by Neruda's short poems. I didn't know why. I only know I felt them deeply.
I was puzzled. Was this what these learned men and women wanted? Someone who still enjoyed literature? Surely they still enjoyed it didn't they? I did not know at the time that they could not enjoy the works the same way I could, a virgin to the texts. They enjoyed the works at a structural level and were longing for students who enjoyed it simply for the story but were able to identify structural changes in the work that reflected perhaps the author's intention and creatitvity.
My auburn beauty gave me Chekov's _Collected Stories_ for my birthday the following year before disappearing. I started in on the book. It was a delight to read and I began to understand through what she wrote, how to read. I began to enjoy reading once again.
"To my dear friend Matt,
I started reading these stories on the train. "A Boring Story" looks like the most interesting one, though I didn't finish it. I guess that's up to you. I hope you enjoy the book. All the best for a new year.
Happy Birthday. L."
