Thursday, July 8, 2010

Romantic Memories and Current Reading

I have written about associating certain books with certain times or places in our lives. Do we also associate certain authors or literary works with certain people we were close to, perhaps especially with romantic attachments? A friend -- whom I will call "Z" -- tells me (in response to one of my blog posts) of the effects of a youthful romance on his appreciation of a certain author. His romance with a sophisticated older woman -- let's call her Y -- in a glamorous city -- let's call it NYC -- included a mutual devotion to a certain young, well-known, understatedly hip author. Z and his lady love Y even met this author -- let's call her A -- at a reading. Now, some 20 years later, when Z lives another life in another city with another woman, he no longer reads A's work, and tells me that this is partly because in his mind A is too much associated with memories of his romance with Y. I find Z's story intriguing, and try to remember if there were a similar situation in my life. I rack my brain, hoping for an equally glamorous memory, but -- nothing! Before my long marriage began, I had the requisite romances, and I like to think that some of them were glamorous, intellectual and literary, but somehow my stories don't measure up to Z's in this regard. Sigh. (I did, however, just now have a moment of feeling a bit Carrie Bradshaw-esque, tapping away on my laptop about sophisticated romance in the big city...I can almost hear the voice-over...we get our glamour where we can....)
 
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