Wednesday
I read Slaughterhouse 5 as part of a history course I was doing when I was about twenty one. I hadn't read many novels and I don't remember too much about it, except that I liked it.
Around this time I saw the movie, which was premiered in Edinburgh at the festival, and a little later I accidentally was at a meeting in a wee room in the William Robertson Building with Kurt Vonnegut. He's dead now. So it goes.
Thereafter, I read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut and really liked his stuff, but that was a long time ago. But just a couple of days ago, I picked up Slaughter House 5 and started re-reading it. I never re-read books. But I didn't realise how much I'd forgotten and I really loved the book again.
I realised I could go and re-read lots of books I've loved before, and maybe I'll love them all again and even more this time now that I know more about writing and such.
The next book I'm going to re-read is Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin. I loved this book when I first read it, and I recommend it a lot to pupils, but I can't remember a damn thing about it. Hurrah!!
7 comments:
Did James Baldwin write Black Like Me? I read that when I was a kid, then recently I heard it was all made up.
Albert? I think so. I read it as well. Can't remember a damn thing about it either. Hotboy
He blacked up and went to the ghettoes. I think this was before even Eldridge Cleaver et al.
Albert? Why did he black himself up? Was he trying to get into the Black and White Minstrels? Surely, he was black alreadys? Hotboy
In my memory he was white and wanted to report on the black experience.
Albert? You might be thinking of Black Like Me. James Baldwin was born black enough and was gay, I think. Hotboy
I just Googled it. Somebody else wrote Black Like Me, in which the guy meets one of Brian Wilson's relatives:
Black Like Me is the true account of John Griffin's experiences when he passed as a black man. John Horton takes treatments to darken his skin and leaves his home in Texas to travel throughout the South. At one stop, Horton encounters a black shoe shine man, Burt Wilson, who befriends him and shows him how to "act right" so that he can fit more easily into the African American culture. It is through Wilson that Horton learns the art of shining shoes.
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