As I continue to describe myself through my loves...
THE MILL ON THE FLOSS by George Eliot, which I read in eighth grade English. The cataclysmic final image is burned on my brain. (Or at least I think it was the final image. Certainly the only one that mattered.)
VILLETTE by Charlotte Bronte. I'm one of those who feel this is her best work. No question. The steeliest, the clearest-eyed, the most moving. "But: he is coming." Beautiful.
LAUGHING BOY by Oliver LaFarge. While we're in that tragic victorian mood. Defines bittersweet.
Speaking of westerns, how about THE VIRGINIAN by Owen Wister. I don't think there's ever been a better definition of love: "You feel about it the way I do. I could not have dreamed there'd be two of us to care so much." What sticks in my mind is not the central love story, though, but the bitter side-tragedy of Shorty and Pedro. The lesson here is, if you love something in a harsh land, do *not* set it free.
THE OUTLAW BIBLE OF AMERICAN POETRY, ed. Alan Kaufman and S.A. Griffin. Dirty-faced American antiheroes who get there any way they can.
REBEL ANGELS: 25 POETS OF THE NEW FORMALISM, ed. Mark Jarman and David Mason. And this would be the crowd that gets to the exact same place in the opposite way--giving the 'rules' a whole new meaning in the process.
STRAIGHT HEARTS' DELIGHT: LOVE POEMS AND SELECTED LETTERS, 1947-1980 by Allen Ginsberg. The erotic poems here are second to none in my opinion, and the story of Ginsberg's relationship with Peter Orlovsky is ambivalent and gripping.
NUREYEV: HIS LIFE by Diane Solway. From a poet of words to a poet of the body. Solway is part of the "everything and the kitchen sink" trend of biography, but in this case, it's more than welcome. Besides being a great artist, Nureyev lived a quintessential 20th century life--vast, riven, and strange. Ultimately lonely but never less than defiant.
Which makes me think of J.G. Ballard's EMPIRE OF THE SUN. In a very different way, it tells the same story--the complete fracturing of anyone and everyone who got too close to the heart of the last century.
There are so many books and so little time.
