I was thirteen when my father found a copy of The Fan Club lying around in my room. To him it represented ultimate decadence of my literary tastes. I remember being amused at how he walked out in a huff to consult with my mother in the kitchen in exaggerated undertones.
To his credit, while he expressed disapproval over a lot he rarely ever embargoed anything. So, that summer I was reading a lot of Thomas Hardy and Lawrence Sanders instead of working on my math and science like he would have preferred - Sanders in defiance of parental authority and Hardy because he completely enthralled me. I continued to consume a combination of literature and "trash" (as my father called it) voraciously through my teens and think it turned out to be a good thing in the end.
J and I have been listening to Teasure Island on CD the last few days. I am not sure how much (if anything) she follows of the story but I am more hooked than I was the first time I read it - a few years before the infamous Fan Club episode. It got me thinking about the lasting impressions that classics leave behind and why returning to an old favorite is such a pleasure.
I can't wait to see J get hooked to reading - introduce her to Erica Jong and Simone de Beauvoir when she reaches the age of defiance. That would be the best inoculation against all things "decadent" and "trashy" that she will doubtless pick up along the way.
I never fail to remind J that there is a time and place for everything. It is possibly the line she will remember me by when I am dead and gone given how frequently she hears it. Instead of having her breakfast she will break into a song and dance number from High School Musical well past eight on Monday morning. She will insist that I watch and applaud the performance instead of screaming at her to finish her milk and cereal. Her sense of occasion is seriously lacking but then so is mine. Consider for example, a person walks into the grocery store with the express purpose of buying detergent because they are fresh out of it and laundry is only half way done. However instead of heading straight for detergent, they wander over to the natural foods aisle and go berserk upon finding goat milk on sale for a dollar a gallon. They at once proceed to stock pile so they can turn it to huge quantities home-made feta cheese. That person would be me. It would not concern me in the least that I ha...
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