This afternoon I boarded the Amtrak bound for Utica. I have made this trip before, as well as many others on the train and never have I had a conversation like I did today. It was just a “how small can the world be?” type of moments, like seeing a someone you know on vacation half way around the world. Thinking that the reading assignment for Kindred was due by Tuesday, I got a head start on the reading the first few sections. As I pulled the book out of my backpack the guy sitting next to me immediately asked, “How far into the book are you?” No other questions asked. I told him that I haven’t started yet and he said he just finished it for a literature class he was currently taking at University of Buffalo. He happened to be a sophomore enrolled in an English 101 course, and I told him that I was taking a comparative literature course currently focusing on the truth and lies in stories and the authentic and fake. He found it so interesting, and seemed almost jealous that I had the ability to take a course like that.
I asked him what the story was about, and he said, “I did not end up finishing it, but I had no idea what was going on, what was real and what wasn’t, so that would be a perfect read for your class.” I have not read far enough to make conclusions, but so far it seems as if it is comparable to The Man in the High Castle in a sense that towards the end of the book the reader’s interpretation could have been flipped and reversed the plot. What if the Grasshopper Lies Heavy story was the truth in the story? And the lives the characters were living was the fiction in the story. It is interesting to think about, and I am excited to see if Kindred evolves as a story in the same way Man in the High Castle does.
In regards to the authentic and the fake. It seems as if people want to have the authentic because the way they feel while having it, or wearing it. A sense of confidence. For example, somebody wearing a fake is probably the only person aware that it is fake because an observer would not notice on the street that a watch is not authentic. Fakes are so "real" looking today that even the fakes seem real.
I love moments like those. One of the reasons why I love reading in public places!
ReplyDeleteI read Kindred in my freshman year of high school. It's a thought-provoking read that will riddle you with "what-ifs," not a "I can't go on with this!!!" kind of novel. It seems to me that Mr. Sophomore at University of Buffalo is one of the lazy readers who relies entirely on a reader's companion to makes sense of things (funny he gave up since there IS a guide in the back).