Reading Recommends: Why The Great Ones Suck

Someday I’m going to get my book club to do a book study. The theme is going to be “Artistic Bastards Of The Early 20^th Century”. Hopefully, it will go better than the classes I teach at the community college, meaning less texting, twitching and weirdo excuses. You didn’t read the assigned chapter in Anna Karenina because you were on the suicide hotline talking a real-life Anna Karenina off the ledge for 12 hours last night? This is an actual excuse that a student gave me a few months ago.

What does one say to such an excuse?

           “Bravo?”

 “Extra credit for everyone?”

 “12 hours? You don’t think you could have talked her down in 6 and still gotten the assignment done?”

But I digress, and honestly I’m positive that excuse was completely fictional, or I would not be making light of it. That student should have written the literature we were studying in class, not just read it. Neither of which he did… because his work on the hotline was so demanding.

The books behind my future book study are both fictional but based on real people and real facts. The first is The Paris Wife, which is about the life that iconic writer Ernest Hemmingway shared with his first wife, Hadley.

The other book is Loving Frank, which is about the love affair between architectural genius Frank Lloyd Wright and his racy and forward thinking lover, Mamah.

Both books are terrific --  fast and easy reads that will nonetheless spark questions in your racy, forward thinking brain.

Here are the questions we will cover in my book study:

- Do artistic geniuses get a pass for poor behavior?

- Is this a fair exchange?

- They create something of beauty, an artistic legacy that enriches the lives of people across the world and across generations. Does that make up for the lives the artist destroys in pursuit of his art, through the selfish, egotistical, downright mean-spirited choices he makes?

- Do poor behavior choices affect only the artist’s partner? Is the fall out limited and thus justified?

- Or do the choices become patterns that ricochet down the generations, the fallout spreading like radiation?  

These are deep questions I realize. You’re probably wondering, what did you eat for breakfast this morning, guru girl?  When I read these books my main take away was: What giant tools those guys were. Why do we revere them?

They were boys mascarading as men. Sort of like my 19 year old, non-literature loving student. Only unlike my student, whose tall tales made me smile, the stories Ernest and Frank made up actually hurt people. It’s not a good way to live life, but it makes for a heckuva good page-turner. (Both books are available on amazon.com for around $10 each.)