The Town and the City
I just finished The Town and the City by Jack Kerouac (195076ya), easily one of the best things I've read this year. There are a number of things I can hope to get from reading a work of fiction; in this case I got feelings of having been seen by the author, and also deeply moved.
But "being seen" has become a meme-cliché. Rather I think Kerouac quite beautifully showed me the America I hold in my dreams. Not the red and blue one, but the one tied to time, and place, and the earth it sits upon.
This is the second time I've read this book, which brings up another curiosity about my own perceptions.
I remember reading it, possibly as far back as high-school, and that I enjoyed it. It wasn't assigned to me so I'm not sure what occasioned my first encounter. That doesn't matter so much as the fact that not one event related in the book was triggered in my memory while I read it this second time.
What was my brain made of way back then? The book is over 400 pages long! I retained nothing? Kerouac's style was familiar of course because I've read his other work, but to remember nothing of the plot seems strange. Worrisome in fact.
It's become a familiar thought my brain berates me with these days, that I've spent a lot of my life just not paying attention.
Better late than never I suppose.