Page Turner

Just started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude yesterday. I've started here in my quest to be better read for a few reasons: 1) It is regarded by many (including some coworkers) as the best novel written by a living author. 2) My experience with literature written anywhere other than America and Britain is severely lacking. 3) I already owned a copy.

I first heard the title mentioned my freshman year at SLU. I was in the course all honors students were required to take called "Crossroads," a vague name for a vague class. The room was filled with adolescents fresh from their respective private high schools. Being in the honors program, even if everyone there was not eager to learn, they were eager to please the instructor and get an A at all costs. This was where I first met Frank, the class where he notoriously ruined a group project (in which I was a group member) and got in a shouting match with the instructor.

The professor in question was Dr. Smith, a man who was my first favorite college professor (he left the university soon after my taking this class). He was a classic wimpy dude: short in height, hair neatly combed, squeaky voice, an English teacher whose specialty was in women's literature. Fighting against this effeminate demeanor: his goatee. He was the sort of man whose facial hair made no room for lips, where his mouth was unframed by the usual pink skin. When he spoke, his mouth came from seemingly nowhere between his mustache and goatee.

On this particular day, Dr. Smith was attempting (unsuccessfully) to lead us in an engaging discussion about the personal writings of Ignatius of Loyola. Frustrated by his unenthusiastic "honors students," he asked us why we were so bored with the book. One student sarcastically spoke up, "Well, it's not exactly a page turner." Smith, with genuine curiosity, asked the class, "What kind of books would you consider a so-called page turner?"

My mind turned to the books that employ the quality of page turners. Books like early installments of the Harry Potter series and The Da Vinci Code fit the mold: simple descriptions, the plot always shifting to new and exciting moments in quick succession. My response was the Amber series by Roger Zelazney. I'd quickly devoured all five books in a weekend the previous school year. One classmate responded that they had read One Hundred Years of Solitude and found it to be a real page turner. Dr. Smith raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Oh, come on," he said, "It's a good book, sure, but not exactly a page turner."

It seemed that several students in the room, all freshmen in college like me, had read the book in school and enjoyed it. Though I enjoyed my high school English classes at the time (and have that enjoyment to thank for my current profession), I look back on it now as insufficient in many ways. Yes, I certainly came out a better writer, very adept at reading short stories. However, I was taught high school English out of anthologies and read only a handful of novels the entire four years. I teach each class a minimum of six novels per school year now. Starting college, I felt self-conscious as an English major who had not read many books in his high school classes. One Hundred Years of Solitude was put on my mental list of "Stuff I Feel Like I Should Have Read by Now." I've read many books on that list since that afternoon in my Crossroads class. Not sure how I made it through high school without reading The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mockingbird, but I've read them now (and am glad I did).

Now, still on that mission to have read all those "important books," I've finally started One Hundred Years of Solitude, the book adored by my former classmates. 50 pages in, I'm certainly enjoying it, but I must side with Dr. Smith here. Fascinating? Yes. A page turner? Well, certainly not in the traditional sense.