Dykman: Suggested reading
Advice in the form of a dog-eared paperback
A walk through the drama section reconnects Kansan columnist Bryan Dykman with a high school friend and a classic of epic literature.
By Bryan Dykman
Wednesday, February 28th, 2007
Going into a bookstore without a specific book in mind is a terrible thing. That’s how “Chaucer After the Canterbury Tales” or “The Selected Letters of Emily Dickinson” makes it into your cart. I considered buying these two titles as I sat on a step in the poetry section awhile ago.
After a certain point, the titles all start to run together. I’m reminded that I already own most of the books I am browsing through. If I don’t watch it, I’ll be down $30 and seven inches of bookshelf space for nothing.
Maybe I’ve spent too much time in the drama section lately. A little epic would go a long way for me.
I needed to get as far away from this bookstore as possible to avoid any unnecessary purchases. I pulled out my phone. I’d make a quick call and find someone I could hang out with. I barely made it through the A’s before I came to Angela.
Angela is a friend from high school who is currently attending college on the West Coast. Unfortunately, last semester she felt lonely, discomfited and surrounded by students who were more concerned with their resume than their education.
I had only talked to her a few times since she left, and I wasn’t helpful when she wanted to know what I thought about coming home from Pomona, Calif., and pursuing college back in Kansas.
In high school, I had a book-filled relationship with Angela. We exchanged copies of “The Corrections” and “A Confederacy of Dunces.” We both like “Jane Eyre,” a rarity among high school teens. We went to see Chuck Palahniuk talk about his latest work “Haunted.”
Now that she wasn’t asking for a title recommendation, I couldn’t come up with any advice for her college troubles. Our relationship, based in books, had a theoretical kind of depth that died when we left the world of metaphors.
I didn’t know how to speak to Angela, but I was still in the bookstore while she was still looking for answers.
It was there in the fiction section that I decided on a weathered copy of “Don Quixote.” I picked up another copy for myself. I thought back on the last couple of months. Maybe I’ve spent too much time in the drama section lately. A little epic would go a long way for me.
More than anything, I figured that somewhere in those 1,000 plus pages by an author who, according to the great Vladimir Nabokov, “stands for everything that is gentle, forlorn, pure, unselfish and gallant” was the answer to what Angela should do.
I checked out and headed home. It was 10 p.m., and the streets were covered with ice. I had only a few hours before Angela left for California.
Dykman is a Westwood freshman in English.
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