Suddenly Felt Like Writing Something

I'm very interested in the act of reading. So I'm sitting in my dining room, feeding strained peas and squash to my six month old son, and I start thinking about where the impulse to read starts. I suppose the reader starts by hitting upon an author, or a book, or a subject that they want to experience, or learn something about. Take for instance my interest in Walker Percy.

I've never read one of his books. I started the novel Lancelot, because I'd heard of Percy, because the book was available at the public library, and because the title interested me. I knew a couple of guys who had read Percy, and I respected their choice of reading materials. I knew that he was one of the Catholic writers, along with Graham Greene, who I had already discovered. I looked him up at the public library, where the choices are too often painfully limited, and I think that Lancelot was one of two books they had written by Percy. Because of my interest in Arthurian literature, I already had experience with the fictional Lancelot, who I simultaneously admired and loathed, so I was predisposed to wonder what Percy could mean by choosing such a title. Unfortunately I started the book, but never finished it. It wasn't to my taste, somehow I couldn't really understand the implications of the action, and I gave up on it.

I still really want to read Walker Percy. I want to know why a friend described him as a grouchy old man. I want to know how and why he came to be identified as a Catholic writer. Mostly I want to know, and learn, and see if he has anything to teach me. Whether I am capable of meeting the lesson, I just don't know.

I am about to read a book of essays by Walker Percy in company with some perceptive female friends. Day by day I check the mail to see if the book has yet come. It's much to early to expect it, but I can not help but look. Simultaneously, I have checked out another book from the library that discusses Percy in company with some other Catholic writers who were his contemporaries. I can't satisfactorily start that one yet because I've promised myself I would finish Crime and Punishment before embarking upon too much else. It's hart to read with two young children in the house, along with a recent obsession with an on-line community based game, and a long term cross-stitching project I've been pursuing.

Even as I sit here writing this, I am thinking about another book I almost checked out from the library but didn't, that talks about the Celtic influence on Southern Literature. It's title reminds me of what I learned from Diana Gabaldon's fiction, that Celtic ceremonies play a significant role in the activities of (I can hardly stand to think the words, much less type them) the Ku Klux Klan. I'm also reminded of an almost thrown away comment read recently in a Mark Helprin novel, that the Apalachan poor still bear the genetic markings of a noble highland ancestry. I don't really read Southern Literature. I'm sure that John Grisham doesn't count, though Flannery O'Connor certainly does.

So much to read, such a limited amount of time.