Nothing like getting right to reading something from The Big Read meme list I posted about not long ago. The list was a top 100 of most read books and for the meme, I had to bold the ones I’d read and italicize the ones I intended to read. One of my italicized books was Mitch Albom’s “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.” I ordered this from the library this week and it came in the next day. I’m already half-way through the book. It’s good, but in the long run, I’m not sure how memorable it will be. Dealing with what happens after death or in heaven has been examined so much in books and movies that it really should be its own genre, like sci-fi or romance. The granddaddy of them all is Charles Dicken’s “A Christmas Carol,” which is also on The Big Read list.
In other Big Read news, I signed up for The Big Read Blog a few weeks ago. Posts aren’t that frequent, which is just fine with me. The site is run through the National Endowment for the Arts – a dot-gov site – so no comments or pingbacks are allowed. (Your government at work! Isn’t it funny that we can’t allow comments on a blog about reading in a democratic republic?) Anyway, David Kipen posted a fabulously crafted commentary about visiting an Edgar Allan Poe museum in Richmond, Virginia. Kipen says the following about the flagstone buildings the museum inhabits:
Poe never actually lived here, but we’re assured he visited the place during his army days sometime between 1827 and 1829, as part of a detachment attending the visiting Marquis de Lafayette. This is pretty much the literary equivalent of “George Washington Would Have Slept Here If He Hadn’t Thought Better of It and Slept Someplace Else,” but somehow it works.
The museum person in me is tickled by this, the need to sidle up to historical figures and claim them, even when the connection to said figure is tenuous at best. Tickled, but also saddened. I hear these sorts of claims to a particular local famous person so often that they’ve become humorous, but they’re also sad in that the people who do this don’t stop to think about how impressive their own families are.
I have to say, Kipen’s blog post makes me want to visit this Poe museum if I ever make it to the area. I’m also intrigued by his idea of studying the handwriting of great authors to see what it can tell us, rather than having graphologists merely stick with the handwriting of criminals. What do you think your handwriting would say about you?
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July 19, 2008 at 12:04 am
Caroline
“……..The museum person in me is tickled by this, the need to sidle up to historical figures and claim them, even when the connection to said figure is tenuous at best………”.
The builders of the museum needed Poe to have lived there, and so he did!!
And so a myth is born. Myths are always about the people who create them, and are almost nothing about those who the myths are ostensibly about.
It’s all about us, the mythmakers, who project our unfulfilled emotional needs on to those we mythologize. We also do this to our our lovers in the passionate state of the relationship, and often on our friends.
I, myself, have been projected upon many, many times, with my projectors seeing in me only what they wish to see. The real me they don’t see at all.
I feel sure you, and all others, have had this uncomfortable experience as many times as have I.
As is done to us, so we do to others.
July 19, 2008 at 11:59 pm
lkwinter
One thing that always shoots through my mind about history are claims. Anything I can’t see with my own eyes, well, how can I tell if anything I’ve ever heard or read about is true? Musings of a mistrustful child with abandonment issues I guess…
My handwriting would say one thing only: these words were written by a chicken.
July 20, 2008 at 11:29 am
woowooteacup
Well said, Caroline. That’s precisely what we see with claims of being close to our famous local hero. The local hero wanted none of that fame stuff. He was a quiet guy, liked to keep to himself, hated the attention. He’d have been mortified to have people glomming onto him.
LK – I think it’s okay to be mistrustful of history claims. The stuff I’ve seen written in newspapers and magazines about local history topics is so often flat wrong that I’m scared for future researchers happening upon these articles and taking them for gospel. Going back to the original sources is the only way to straighten things out, and then you can’t go back to only one original source. You must check many (as many as you can find) original sources to get the clearest picture of the past. Even then, you may only come close to the “truth” of a situation because the truth is different for each person.
I do hope you mean chicken in a chicken-scratching way and not in a not-courageous way.
July 20, 2008 at 12:02 pm
The Five People You Meet in Heaven « The Woo Woo Teacup Journal
[...] memory, mitch albom, neil donald walsch, the five people you meet in heaven | I mentioned the last time I posted that I was reading Mitch Albom’s “The Five People You Meet in Heaven.” I was [...]
July 21, 2008 at 8:18 am
Susan Coleman
Great blog. And, of course, you’ve now discovered that the “Big Read” list is actually from the U.K. and compiled by the BBC and not the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA’s Big Read (neabigread.org) provides grants to community organizations around the U.S for “one book, one community” programs. The communities then select from a few dozen (see the list at the neabigread.org website) books and then distribute free resources for book group and classroom discussions. Just thought the NEA and the local communities should get their just due. That same website will show a map for a Big Read program near you.
July 21, 2008 at 1:55 pm
woowooteacup
Thanks for your comment, Susan. I’ve looked over the list of NEA Big Read books and checked the FAQs section because I was curious about how the books were chosen. I’m glad they’re not chosen solely on the basis of how much money they earned. (Come to think, are most books chosen as classics or favorites based on this? Hmmm.)
Big Read book list here for those interested: http://www.neabigread.org/books.php
FAQs here: http://www.neabigread.org/faq.php
Looks like we could start a new meme with these books.
The joy of blogging is that when you don’t know something or you get something wrong, the answers will come through your readers. (Neil Gaiman has pointed out this phenomenon before.) And it gives us a chance to point out another great reading program.