So I haven't shared what I've been reading lately because I never have enough time to read -- let alone write -- particularly when the Blogger server is 'having issues.' (heh heh)

What I've Read - The Education of Henry Adams
When my parents were visiting a month or so ago, they asked what I was reading. As I began gushing about the book I was finishing, Mom pulled A Face: "Ugh, don't you think he's such a downer?"

It's not so much an autobiography as a memoir by the grandson and great-grandson of the Presidents Adams. It had been published around 1915, and was a bestseller and required school reading for a generation or two after. (Maybe Mom was forced to read it in high school in the '40s.) This was one of the books I picked up lying in the haphazard piles at the public library's booksale last fall.

Opening the book, it was disconcerting to see pages holding a dense paragraph of one sentence rife with semicolons, but it turned out to be an easy read. Adams wrote fluidly and with such vibrancy that his description of events 100 or 150 years ago made them as clear as if they were occurring today. Whether writing about the events of the Civil War or the personalities of the Grant presidency that followed, I could draw more than a few object lessons to today's personalities. History does repeat.

More important, while Adams' perspective was that from a political family, the emotionality of his writing was strikingly universal and therefore contemporary in its appeal. While he discussed the politics of mid-19th century Europe, all that served as a background to the impact of his sister's death. While some in his small circle of friends were involved in politics, he made it and them interesting by describing their personalities in relation to how Adams himself felt or behaved.

For me, his writing particularly struck a chord. If there was a broad theme to the book it is Adams' search for meaning in life -- and not finding an easy answer. Politics, society, religion, technology, materialism -- all tried on and ultimately rejected as meaningless. Semicolons and long paragraphs aside, the observations were modern ones.

Impressed with his writing, I researched more about him. Lots of folks shared my Mom's thoughts on him being depressing, and 'depressing' is one of the many Downer words used to describe him. Some believe his book captures an excrutiatingly minute account of his every failure; him turning away from the 'family business' of politics, his failure in academics, his failure in finding an easy answer to life. I discovered that his wife committed suicide in what would have been a social scandal (she is not mentioned once in the book).

But I didn't see it that way at all. Adams hints (and other books detail) how forward-thinking and well-respected he was by peers and students and if the word 'failure' was used it seemed to be in a context of self-deprecation. The testimonies to friendship, summed up in clever quotables like "friends are not made; they're born," hint at the strong bonds he molded and retained throughout his life.

Knowing some of the adversity like his wife's suicide tell me he was a Survivor. I found his book comforting and even hopeful. To me, his book encourages The Quest. He has written other book and other books have been written about him and both have been added to my future reads list.

What I'm Reading
Since Adams, I've begun two books. One is Metaphors on Vision about filmmaking by experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage. For the first paragraph of this so-far intriguing and in no way a Downer book, click here. Not only is experimental film an ongoing hobby of mine (post about recent Pittsburgh trip forthcoming), but this book will come in handy: My friend tells me we are tagged to speak on experimental films to a class at Bowling Green State University this fall.

Experimental film is the abstract art of the film world. It is all about the emotional response. Indicated by the opening paragraph of his book, Brakhage encourages freeing the restraints of how we've been taught to limit our minds and viewing the world as a child would. I look forward to finishing this book.

The other book I've begun is Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again. I had never heard of this novel or its author, but as soon as I picked it up, I seemed to hear references to it everywhere. When I heard Kerry speak at the downtown ballpark last fall, he began with "They say you can't go home again," which I take to be a reference to this book. Not a week later, I read a reference to Wolfe's 'grandiloquent' vocabulary in a 20th century lit crit book.

So far so good. The book is flowing well and hints at depths to come. 45 pages into it (out of 700-plus pages), and I've come across only one word I've needed to look up: Risibility. A good word.

Off to read a few more pages before bed...