Reading

I’m in constant battle to keep up with reading that arrives in the mail: The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Cruising World, Roadracing World, Soundings…  There’s a stack of these in the living room that I can never get to the bottom of.  Today, a rare day off from work at the marina or out on a boat, I had the luxury of several hours of reading to shorten the stack, even if temporarily. 

I read a wonderful article in The New Yorker (Jan 7/13) by an author whose articles I enjoy reading regardless of the topic – Daniel Mendelsohn.  The topic of this article was a retrospective of his long appreciation of the writings of May Renault and of his relationship with her.  Renault wrote many best-selling and critically acclaimed historical novels based in Greek antiquity about Socrates, Alexander the Great and many others.  When Mendelsohn was still in high school he began writing letters to Renault, who then lived in South Africa.  That began a correspondence between them which, while infrequent, lasted for many years until her death in 1983. 

The article became a story of Mendelsohn’s own growth as a writer, an academic of Greek classics, and as a homosexual. 

Often after reading a good writer I think not only about the topic; I’ll recall certain words and phrases used.  Among the phases I came away with from this article were in a letter from Renault that Mendelson quoted.  Referring to the writings of immature authors: “Impermissible allowance of self-pity” and “earnest humorlessness”.