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Anthony Guidry
Period 6
A broken heart
Some years ago, I was awakened early one morning by a phone call from a friend. She had just broken up with a boyfriend she still loved and was desperate to justify her decision. “Can you believe it!” she shouted into the phone. “He hadn’t even heard of Pushkin!”
We’ve all been there. Or some of us have. Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed — or misguided — literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast. At least since Dante’s Paolo and Francesca fell in love over tales of Lancelot, literary taste has been a good shorthand for gauging compatibility. These days, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, listing your favorite books and authors is a crucial, if risky, part of self-branding. When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. Sussing out a date’s taste in books is “actually a pretty good way — as a sort of first pass — of getting a sense of someone,” said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of “Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives.” “It’s a bit of a Rorschach test.” To Fels (who happens to be married to the literary publisher and writer James Atlas), reading habits can be a rough indicator of other qualities. “It tells something about … their level of intellectual curiosity, what their style is,” Fels said. “It speaks to class, educational level.”
Pity the would-be Romeo who earnestly confesses middlebrow tastes: sometimes, it’s the Howard Roark problem as much as the Pushkin one. “I did have to break up with one guy because he was very keen on Ayn Rand,” said Laura Miller, a book critic for Salon. “He was sweet and incredibly decent despite all the grandiosely heartless ‘philosophy’ he espoused, but it wasn’t even the ideology that did it. I just thought Rand was a hilariously bad writer, and past a certain point I couldn’t hide my amusement.” (Members of theatlasphere.com, a dating and fan site for devotees of “Atlas Shrugged” and “The Fountainhead,” might disagree.)
Judy Heiblum, a literary agent at Sterling Lord Literistic, shudders at the memory of some attempted date-talk about Robert Pirsig’s 1974 cult classic “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,” beloved of searching young men. “When a guy tells me it changed his life, I wish he’d saved us both the embarrassment,” Heiblum said, adding that “life-changing experiences” are a “tedious conversational topic at best.”
Let’s face it — this may be a gender issue. Brainy women are probably more sensitive to literary deal breakers than are brainy men. (Rare is the guy who’d throw a pretty girl out of bed for revealing her imperfect taste in books.) After all, women read more, especially when it comes to fiction. “It’s really great if you find a guy that reads, period,” said Beverly West, an author of “Bibliotherapy: The Girl’s Guide to Books for Every Phase of Our Lives.” Jessa Crispin, a blogger at the literary site Bookslut.com, agrees. “Most of my friends and men in my life are nonreaders,” she said, but “now that you mention it, if I went over to a man’s house and there were those books about life’s lessons learned from dogs, I would probably keep my clothes on.”
Still, to some reading men, literary taste does matter. “I’ve broken up with girls saying, ‘She doesn’t read, we had nothing to talk about,’” said Christian Lorentzen, an editor at Harper’s. Lorentzen recalls giving one girlfriend Nabokov’s “Ada” — since it’s “funny and long and very heterosexual, even though I guess incest is at its core.” The relationship didn’t last, but now, he added, “I think it’s on her Friendster profile as her favorite book.”
James Collins, whose new novel, “Beginner’s Greek,” is about a man who falls for a woman he sees reading “The Magic Mountain” on a plane, recalled that after college, he was “infatuated” with a woman who had a copy of “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” on her bedside table. “I basically knew nothing about Kundera, but I remember thinking, ‘Uh-oh; trendy, bogus metaphysics, sex involving a bowler hat,’ and I never did think about the person the same way (and nothing ever happened),” he wrote in an e-mail message. “I know there were occasions when I just wrote people off completely because of what they were reading long before it ever got near the point of falling in or out of love: Baudrillard (way too pretentious), John Irving (way too middlebrow), Virginia Woolf (way too Virginia Woolf).” Come to think of it, Collins added, “I do know people who almost broke up” over “The Corrections” by Jonathan Franzen: “‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’ ‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’”
Naming a favorite book or author can be fraught. Go too low, and you risk looking dumb. Go too high, and you risk looking like a bore — or a phony. “Manhattan dating is a highly competitive, ruthlessly selective sport,” Augusten Burroughs, the author of “Running With Scissors” and other vivid memoirs, said. “Generally, if a guy had read a book in the last year, or ever, that was good enough.” The author recalled a date with one Michael, a “robust blond from Germany.” As he walked to meet him outside Dean & DeLuca, “I saw, to my horror, an artfully worn, older-than-me copy of ‘Proust’ by Samuel Beckett.” That, Burroughs claims, was a deal breaker. “If there existed a more hackneyed, achingly obvious method of telegraphing one’s education, literary standards and general intelligence, I couldn’t imagine it.”
But how much of all this agonizing is really about the books? Often, divergent literary taste is a shorthand for other problems or defenses. “I had a boyfriend I was crazy about, and it didn’t work out,” Nora Ephron said. “Twenty-five years later he accused me of not having laughed while reading ‘Candy’ by Terry Southern. This was not the reason it didn’t work out, I promise you.” Sloane Crosley, a publicist at Vintage/Anchor Books and the author of “I Was Told There’d Be Cake,” essays about single life in New York, put it this way: “If you’re a person who loves Alice Munro and you’re going out with someone whose favorite book is ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ perhaps the flags of incompatibility were there prior to the big reveal.”
Some people just prefer to compartmentalize. “As a writer, the last thing I want in my personal life is somebody who is overly focused on the whole literary world in general,” said Ariel Levy, the author of “Female Chauvinist Pigs” and a contributing writer at The New Yorker. Her partner, a green-building consultant, “doesn’t like to read,” Levy said. When she wants to talk about books, she goes to her book group. Compatibility in reading taste is a “luxury” and kind of irrelevant, Levy said. The goal, she added, is “to find somebody where your perversions match and who you can stand.”
Marco Roth, an editor at the magazine n+1, said: “I think sometimes it’s better if books are just books. It’s part of the romantic tragedy of our age that our partners must be seen as compatible on every level.” Besides, he added, “sometimes people can end up liking the same things for vastly different reasons, and they build up these whole private fantasy lives around the meaning of these supposedly shared books, only to discover, too late, that the other person had a different fantasy completely.” After all, a couple may love “The Portrait of a Lady,” but if one half identifies with Gilbert Osmond and the other with Isabel Archer, they may have radically different ideas about the relationship.
For most people, love conquers literary taste. “Most of my friends are indeed quite shallow, but not so shallow as to break up with someone over a literary difference,” said Ben Karlin, a former executive producer of “The Daily Show” and the editor of the new anthology “Things I’ve Learned From Women Who’ve Dumped Me.” “If that person slept with the novelist in question, that would probably be a deal breaker — more than, ‘I don’t like Don DeLillo, therefore we’re not dating anymore.’”
Add comment March 20, 2009
Anthony Guidry
Period 6
THE BOY WHO GAVE HIS HELP
As a boy being born in the Philippines because my parents were ministers and were helping the orphans out there. I was almost no born because my mom had a rare disease called ameba which is the leading cause of death in the Philippines. My mother was really dehydrated and really sick and when she went to the doctor where we lived at the time she advised my mom not to have me. While my father was hoping and praying to god that if he wanted another minister / preacher in this world and ill raise him. My parents remind me time and time again that I am a miracle baby. They told me they thought they lost multiple different times but I’m just happy to be in this world at this time. We moved to Florida when I was still a baby but we go back and forth to the Philippines to help and play with the orphans often.
While I was kid growing up I always hoped that I would go to the University of Florida and now I am but I don’t just want to be known for playing football being an all star college quarterback. I want people to look at me different and say there’s something different about this guy. This guy has a relationship with Jesus Christ and I have inspired people those who were ashamed about showing they were Christians and have also got some who didn’t believe in no one to believe in him. I feel that Jesus let me be born to set people on the right path so that’s what I’m trying to do. So since that’s what I’m trying to do I make my way back to the hometown. You know I could spend my time chilling with the girls or hanging with friend’s or even going to parties but I choose to do something better. I choose to go to the Philippines every year to hang out with the orphans out there. That may have many years to live but then there’s those that only have a few years, months or even days and that’s why I’m there to support and make their lives good while it lasts and hopefully I can start to get donations for them or maybe get more people down here to help them out. I would like that more than winning Heisman or winning the national championship.
While I was there I also work alongside volunteer doctors where health care is hard to come by, just adding another credential to my resume. While I was out there I cut out cists and performed circum sition . In April I also went and ministered to the Lancaster correctional institution in Trenton, Florida. I find myself in weird places getting about 400 emails a month to come speak at places.
I have also won a national championship my first year here. It was a good year but I wasn’t starting quarterback at that time. Chris Leak was the starting quarterback at that time but my 2008 year is a year to remember. We planned on going undefeated that was my plan but Ole Miss. Ruined that chance. I give out to them they came to play. Those last few series we weren’t our selves. Were usually the team that if we need a yard on third down. Well we usually can get that yard but I did keep my promise. I said “I promise you one thing and that is that something good will come out of this”, and something did we won every game after that including the national championship but I still wonder if Demarco Murray was there would have been the same but in football there’s no what ifs there’s only what happens and you get no second chances you just get chances to make things up. Also beating Alabama in the Southeastern Conference championship but then I still got questions about that. In that game Alabama’s all American guard wasn’t there. He was on suspension. Oh and when I rallied my team to victory against Florida State University. I guess over all I had a great season but I still think I should have won Heisman but Jesus picked the better man at that time so it must have been him but I must have been the better man in the national championship if we beat them right. Oh and let’s not forget the stats not to be cocky or anything. Between my freshmen and junior years at the University of Florida I’ve attempted 651 passes and completed 430 of them. That means I completed 66% of my passes and had 6159 passing yards total. Oh and I carried the ball 453 times with a total amount of yards of 1928. So I was averaging a little over 4 yards a carry but to be exact 4.3 yards a carry. I broke Southeastern conference record for rushing yards for a quarterback and I tied the NCAA record for rushing yards for a quarterback. Oh n I also was the first quarterback to have over 20 rushing and passing touchdowns in one year and I forgot to mention 65 passing touchdowns between my freshmen and junior year and 43 rushing touchdowns. So I’d say to all those people who say I can’t be a or shouldn’t be the National Football League quarterback your wrong and I’m going to prove it to you when I get to the NFL and I’m the quarterback for one of teams. So I’d like to say to everyone that doesn’t know that I love the University of Florida and that I love being a gator.
Did I mention I won Heisman? Well I did. It was a real great moment and I will never forget that moment. This is to those people don’t what the Heisman is for or even who the Heisman was named after. The Heisman is given out every year once a year to worlds most outstanding player in the NCAA and it was named after John Heisman. I was the first sophomore to ever win it so I’d say that was an accomplishment. Oh and I also won the Maxwell award two years in a row. Again to those don’t know what it is. The Maxwell award is given out once a year to the college player of the year. This award was named after Robert W. Maxwell. Oh and to so you’re not confused who this is speaking. It’s your lovely friend Tim Tebow.
Add comment March 20, 2009
