By Kaylee Johnson
Campus News
For most college students, summer break is a seductress, grazing their backs during dreaded final exams. But, I have found that when it finally arrives, the lack of structure becomes unbearable, especially in my small town where every faded road and overgrown farm field looks melancholy and grossly nostalgic; I hate nostalgia; the way it ties the most unsuspecting one down and carves the word “yesterday” into their fleshy, hopeful chest. I avoid the toxic hold of my small town, where time seems to stand still, by indulging in great literature; call it escapism, or a survival tactic. Over the past few summers I have read and reread some of the greatest American literature, and lusted over characters and alluring fictional worlds alike. Often, so wrapped up in literature that my lens starts to mesh with my favorite fictional characters; distorted, unworldly, and dreamlike. The days seem to go by faster during the summer, and sometimes they are wasted on senseless activities and the egotistical illusion of relaxation. If you can’t afford to backpack around Europe to find yourself, like most college students, you can still have a fulfilling, enlightening summer by immersing yourself in new literary worlds of the past, present, and future.
While enrolled in classes, there is often a shortage of time, and leisure activities that promote positive mental health, and intellectual growth gets pushed aside. If students do have minuscule intervals of free time, they typically spend it watching soulless television shows that evoke some familiar comfort or hanging out with friends, because they are understandably burned out from grueling school work and rigorous jobs. During the fall and spring semesters I regularly joked about the number of students spotted publicly crying on my campus; passersby so desensitized to the melodramatic sight that they reacted by sighing and walking away. In reality, the lack of coping skills that modern college students have is not something to laugh about. Social media has caused a very noticeable decline in the mental stability and social skills of young adults. While reading is an independent activity, it can teach one how to interact with others and how to approach real world problems with confidence and inner peace. Knowledge that can be applied to society and one’s functional and dysfunctional interpersonal relationships can be learned from almost every literary character, antagonist or protagonist. Embracing the arts will make you feel much more in touch with the world than Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook ever will, for social media will infect you slowly with its tempting mirage, but one night you will wake, sweaty and disillusioned, feeling overwhelming anguish over all of the time wasted on superficialities.
If you devote time to uninterrupted reading on a regular basis, it will become a very spiritual, stress reducing, part of your routine, and by the end of the summer, you will find yourself wanting to carry it into the fall, winter, and spring. In order to find the genre that makes you feel invigorated and entranced you must experiment with multitudinous styles of literature and remain open minded about works that you have never read. Here is a personally curated list of some of the greatest, diverse, classic literature to indulge in this summer. All of these novels have changed my life in preeminent ways:
- “A Confederacy of Dunces” by John Kennedy Toole
- “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker
- “Emma” by Jane Austen
- “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D Salinger
- “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Tender is the Night” by F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “Annie John” by Jamaica Kincaid
- “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac
- “Their Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston
- “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde
- “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert M. Pirsig
- “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote
- “Angela’s Ashes” by Frank McCourt
- “Naked Lunch” by William S. Burroughs
- “The Maltese Falcon” by Dashiell Hammett
I read “The Catcher in the Rye” during a summer road trip to Florida; at the time I was seventeen, angsty, and questioning everything about the woes of society. Protagonist Holden Caulfield made me feel strangely understood; having an intricate, abstract mind does not mean one should be cast out of the unforgiving world. Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray” encouraged me to ponder the concept of time, or the lack of it. And the question I have been asking for years, why is time such a vastly different experience for each person? Time is the greatest enigma; there are fine lines under my eyes to prove that my emotional battle with the clockmaster was senseless and grotesque. Even the dreamers will eventually be crucified on an analog clock; a hand carved wooden one if they were loved. Be mindful of how you are spending your days, for whether you realize it or not, there is more to learn from the great fictional literary characters than the average rule-followers of society. Let them teach you what they know.
Kaylee Johnson is a senior education major concentrating in English.
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