this one is actually labelled #211 on the
manic monday blog, but so was last week's post, so i'm correcting it and hoping the blogger does, too, so i don't have to be off one number forever. anyway, let's get to the Q&A.
1. Has reading a book ever changed your life? Which one and why, if yes?
i would honestly say that every book i read changes my life in some way, even if a small one. reading can provide a perspective or lens that differs from my own and thus change my life, or even just change my life by adding a moment of beauty with a particularly lovely bit of prose. for this question, though, i'll pick a book that changed my life in a more dramatic way.
i'm sort of torn between
the catcher in the rye and madeleine l'engle's
a ring of endless light. salinger died recently, which makes me lean toward the former, but it's also a gigantic cliché to describe that novel as life-changing, especially for an english major. i will, however, go with
the catcher in the rye, because popular appeal is no reason to eschew genuine feeling of affection for something.
the watershed moment that occurred when i read the novel in ninth grade had as much to do with the woman who taught it to me as it did with the text itself. jane hyatt was my english teacher when i read it for class in 1985 when i was a freshman at brebeuf. in class discussion, mrs. hyatt was talking about symbolism, and asked us about the hunting cap holden caulfield wears backward throughout the novel. she asked us what it could mean that holden wears that particular type of hat, and i answered that it meant that holden was searching for something. mrs. hyatt followed that up with asking about the fact that he wears it backwards. getting excited that i was figuring out something i hadn't thought about before, i answered, "he's looking for something, but he's looking in the wrong direction!" at this point, one of my classmates asked the inevitable question on the mind of young readers everywhere, "why does it have to mean anything? maybe he just likes the hat and likes it better backwards. i do stuff like that in real life that doesn't symbolize anything or have any underlying meaning." and mrs. hyatt, in a masterfully subtle stroke i have appreciated more and more deeply as my years as a reader and a writer have passed and i have been taught literature by less skillful educators, put the question right back to the class-- "i don't know. why
does it have to mean anything?"
and here's the moment that changed my fucking life, and i am in no way exaggerating when i describe it that way. i am tearful just remembering and writing about it, because this moment has informed every word i have voraciously read or written in the twenty-five years since. i was even more excited as i raised my hand and then answered, "because it
isn't real life! everything in there is in there on purpose, and stuff in books means something or else the authors wouldn't put it in!" i'm pretty sure my classmates remained unconvinced, but this was an absolutely revolutionary idea to me. i had already been a dedicated reader of seemingly-insatiable appetite for as long as i could remember, and realizing that nothing in fiction is random, extraneous, or unintentional, opened up a whole new world just as broad as the one that opened when i read my first words as a three-year-old. (yes, i was precocious. surprised? i thought not.)
so there you have it, a book that changed my life. that moment probably resulted in my majoring in english as an undergraduate, which definitely determined the course of my life-- it was one of those two paths diverging in a wood, and i took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.
quoting frost puts me in mind of the other most influential person in my literary education, hilene flanzbaum, one of my english professors at butler. what jane hyatt taught me about "translating" prose, dr. flanzbaum taught me about poetry. all of my english professors at butler were amazing (with the possible exception of grace farrell, who was much beloved by students other than me, and just didn't "get" me at all). when we graduated, all the english majors received gifts of blank journals from the english department faculty, signed by all of the professors inside the covers, and dr. flanzbaum wrote, "oh, stephanie, let literature soothe you. i have high hopes for you." i have indeed let literature soothe me, and i'm confident that, though i'm not doing what either dr. flanzbaum or i envisioned when i graduated from college (i had plans to get a ph.d. in english literature and teach at a university), her high hopes would not be disappointed by my present path. and i haven't written a word in that journal since i received it fifteen years ago, because i haven't yet found anything that seems "special" enough.
2. Name one book you had to read but hated, and explain why you hated it.
i'd bet a lot of people name textbooks for this one, because why else would one
have to read anything? i'm no exception, and the textbook i totally hated was one for my marriage and family therapy course called
family therapy: history, theory, and practice. seriously fucking hated it, mainly because i hated the MFT course i had to take as part of my (as yet unfinished) MA in counseling and psychological services. i actually withdrew from that course (not because i hated it, because of other life stuff that took precedence that semester), so i STILL have to take the god damn thing. the instructor was great, the course was well-organized, the objectives were clear, and the expectations were reasonable-- there was nothing wrong with the course other than its subject.
i simply have zero interest in practicing anything in the neighborhood of couples or family therapy. part of my distaste for marriage & family therapy (MFT from here on) is academic, part is a matter of taste or style, and part is purely personal.
the academic part is that very little of the theory and technique of MFT is grounded in observation and research. it mostly begins as a hypothesis or theory about how families/relational systems work just from the deduction of the theorist, and then technique is applied based on theory. the theorists, of course, have done a lot of work with families and made plenty of their own clinical observations, but for the most part, the clinical observations aren't collected, measured, or analyzed in accordance with the scientific method. theorists observe and then interpret what they see using their own intuitive deductions about why families are the way they are, and based on these suppositions, they devise interventions that are similarly difficult to measure objectively. that being said, the theories aren't like wacky or off-the-wall, and they often make intuitive sense to me, but choosing a theoretical orientation in the practice of MFT seems more based on personal preference than a clinical determination of what data supports as effective. to be fair, the same can be said of much of psychology, not just MFT. a notable exception is gottman & gottman, who have done pioneering work in recording what actually happens in successful marriages in their "love lab" in the pacific northwest, and have published several books and developed couples workshops based on empirical data.
the taste and style part is that i believe that working with one individual psyche is plenty complicated without adding an additional personality or several personalities to deal with. just way too messy and complex for me, and there are far too many variables for me to enjoy working with. it would feel like utter chaos with no better approach than blind trial and error.
finally, my personal experience with both family therapy and couples therapy has been that the exercise was completely futile. and i mean there was not one redeeming thing i took out of family therapy with my parents when i was teenager or out of couples therapy with my ex-husband. i honestly can't think of a single couple i know who has undertaken joint counseling and stayed together. couples therapy looks more to me like planning an exit strategy than developing more intimacy and interpersonal harmony. i'm sure there are couples who have had great success with counseling, but i just can't think of any examples. maybe my disdain for MFT is causing me to block them out. my ex and i even attended a gottman workshop (a rather expensive gottman workshop) one weekend about a month and a half before we called it quits for good. i'm guessing a lot of the lack of "success" of couples therapy is that couples rarely seek outside help until it is far too late to heal the breach that's generating the current conflict. i think i once read a statistic that stated that on average, couples seek counseling about seven years too late. don't know how that sorts out for couples like me and my ex who weren't even together for half that length of time, but there you go.
so that's the book i had to read, didn't actually finish btw, and absolutely hated every word. soooo arduous. now that i contemplate completing my MA and realize i'll still have to take an MFT course, the idea of starting from scratch on an MSW looks even more appealing!
3. If you could pick a book you've read to make into a movie, which one would you choose?
ugh, i don't know if i even could. movies adapted from books are so frequently disappointing. peter jackson's LOTR trilogy is a notable exception. part of the disappointment is that expecting a two or even three hour movie watched with others in one sitting to feel as intimate and moving as the experience of reading a book over the course of several reading sessions alone with one's thoughts is a set-up for failure from the very start. but even when i approach a movie with the understanding that it is a movie and qualitatively a very different type of narrative from a book, i still usually come away wishing it had been treated differently.
i can't pick a cherished book for film adaptation because i don't want anyone to do that my friends, which is how i see my favorite books. and i can't really pick a book i found mediocre or only moderately compelling because i can't summon the interest in a book like that necessary to envision one that would be a good movie candidate. so i guess i'll just pass on this one. if i could a pick a book i've read to make into a movie, i would not exercise the choice.
