Faculty Book Recommendations
[ Allen E. Hye | David Petreman ]
Allen E. Hye, Professor Emeritus of German
If I had not been a professor, I might very well have become a librarian. I love books, collect them on a small scale, and enjoy telling people about them. The departmental website now affords a fine opportunity to tell more people about some important books that interest me. Even if you do not agree with the findings of each book, I trust that you will agree that they are worth knowing about and maybe eventually reading in their entirety.
You will see that the books are summarized in the authors' own words, in key excerpts with page references to the particular edition cited. These are summaries, not reviews; any commentary, supplement, or introductory remarks from me will be rare and clearly identified, generally in square brackets. Reviews of these books can be found in the library and online, via search engines such as Altavista and Yahoo! The books themselves are still in print and available in paperback.
Peter Collier & David Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the '60's
Barry Sanders, A is for Ox: The Collapse of Literacy and the Rise of Violence in an Electronic Age.
to topDavid Petreman
My Favorite Book
Back in the days when I was known as "Beatle Petreman" the question was: "What is your favorite song by them?" To ask a professor of literature a similar question about a favorite book is equally difficult and challenging and, I must admit, (although there was a time when I would not have thought this) certainly more profound. I will not reveal my answer(s) to the former inquiry but will attempt to respond to the latter.
Each of us has his/her own criteria for judging and analyzing a literary work, from any number of literary theories to the notion of just really enjoying the read. Depending on the analysis, a book can become a lifeless grouping of words or it can explode into your consciousness like a supernova. On a more basic level, a book becomes great literature for me only if it 1) enlightens me, changes me for the better, makes a difference in my life, makes me think and 2) if it is enjoyable to read.
Two books always come immediately to mind. They have in common an emotional component for me that is undeniable: every time I read them I weep. I say every time since I have read them each at least eight times. Jorge Luis Borges, one of the world's most voracious readers once said (somewhat tongue-in-cheek, of course) that he doesn't read very much, but he rereads what he really likes. Keeping the proper perspective of comparison, since I could never in three lifetimes read the quantity that Borges read, nor ever be compared to him in any other way, I do enjoy reading and reading again my favorite books.
Most Spanish professors can recite on call the beginning of the first book: "En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo..." Don Quijote de la Mancha has certainly changed many, many lives. To be human is to revel in what Cervantes has to say about us and the human condition. To be educators is to live the ideals and beliefs of the white-haired madman who remains true to his cause. We are all both Don Quijote and Sancho Panza. And it is a book that not only brings tears to my eyes, but it also makes me laugh out loud, no matter where I am reading it. The great Mexican writer and orator Carlos Fuentes rereads El Quijote every Easter of his life. Even though I may not always do so, I want to read it whenever I am nostalgiac about my earliest studies in Spanish and about Spain. I must add that it is absolutely essential to read it in the original Spanish.
The second book, which affects me in a similar fashion, is Don Segundo Sombra , by the Argentine Ricardo Güiraldes. It is the story of Fabio Cáceres, a very young man who has been orphaned and who learns about life from Don Segundo, an aging but tough gaucho who really represents the concept or ideal of the gaucho who by the novel's date (1926) has all but disappeared from the Argentine pampa. Through hard work, poverty and suffered discrimination, Fabio Cáceres becomes his own man and embraces the life lessons he has learned even after discovering that he is an heir to some land and other wealth. With this new "burden" thrust upon him he still knows how to treat others with respect and compassion. It is a very touching story that teaches us a great deal about life and about loss. It is a good read when I feel that I am lacking in courage and strength.
If I had to choose a book that significantly changed the course of my life it would have to be Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo . I don't know if it was the strangeness of the book, or the confusion and the ambiguity, or the mystery surrounding the author who only wrote two books and is probably Mexico's most beloved writer of all time, but it planted a seed in me that is still producing fruit thirty years later. And the novel is just as haunting now as it was that long and that many readings ago.
It takes a time and a bit of hard work to realize that all of the characters in the book are dead. But these very personages opened up a whole different world to me, of the living and the dead, of the dead and the living co-existing in what the Spaniards of the late 15th Century saw as a New World. This book brought to me the new and exciting world of Latin America; a world in which the fantastic and the marvelous and the magical are simply another part of reality, and it helped me to see that we Western thinkers are foolish to try to separate "realities". This book showed me possibilities I never knew existed, both in literature and in life. And it led me to believe in a word that most of my former students will remember as my favorite in any language: perspective. One of the most important things we can do in life is try to see things from as many perspectives as possible, so as to make the wisest decisions, so as to analyze literature or even ourselves better, and perhaps most importantly, so as to come to an understanding of our fellow travelers on this planet.
I was in Mexico shortly after the devastating earthquake of September, 1985 and was there when Juan Rulfo died. Everywhere I went it seemed that two conversations constantly surfaced: in the aftermath of death and destruction, people also had their beloved Rulfo to speak about, an act that we might consider an attempt to keep him alive through their words. After having read Pedro Páramo many times, I knew that this was not a difficult task, since in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America, past and present and death and life are one and the same.
Dr. David A. Petreman