Last night I finished <em>The Reader</em> by Bernhard Schlink. I recall this book getting good reviews, and the paperback copy I have (bought second-hand at <a href="http://www.mckaybooks.com" target="_blank">my favorite used bookstore</a>) has an Oprah's Book Club logo on the front. I couldn't fathom why this should be, found the book not really that interesting, until three-quarters of the way through, I reached this passage:
<p class="quote">It is also not true, as outsiders might assume, that one can merely observe the richness of life in the past, while one can participate in the present. Doing history means building bridges between the past and the present, observing both banks of the river, taking an active part in both sides. </p>
Everything that came after that resonated powerfully with me, to the point that I feel I should read the book over again in order to fully appreciate it. I think the final quarter (and perhaps the preceding three-fourths) of the book largely concerns the narrator's failure to live his own philosophy of history; the fact that he is a writer, writing his story, and reveals himself as such in the book's final pages supports this idea, I think. I don't feel confident making any solid assertions here without re-reading, but this is my impression.

Madness, religion, history: Any book, movie or artwork addressing one or more of these themes I find instantly compelling. All three together (think <em>Saint Francis</em> by Kazantzakis)? So much the better! Of the three, however, it's history&mdash;by which I mean philosophy of history, or the idea of history, or personal history, or even the conception of time, much more than "official" or recorded hisotry&mdash;that exerts the strongest pull. 

There's one very obvious source for my initial attraction to history as a topic, but I think the real reason for my continued affinity for it goes much deeper. In a previous life, in which I was a serious (cough) student of literature, I planned to write about how a couple of characters in a couple of famous novels experienced&mdash;and dealt with their experiences of&mdash;history. Each of these characters belongs to a group long the butt of history's big joke (and "official" history is a big joke): One is Irish; one is Southern. Each of these characters finds it difficult to negotiate the meaning of history and experience of time, has difficulty constructing a narrative of traumatic personal events and, most significantly, can't reconcile his cultural (or ethnic) identity with the way official history defines his group. 

That last conundrum is one I share with Stephen Dedalus and Quentin Compson. How literature describes and resolves this problem&mdash;or doesn't&mdash;particularly obsesses me. History is written, as they say, by the winners; the losers populate its margins, red-headed stepchildren of the official narrative. 

Books like <em>The Reader</em> illustrate how even personal histories proffer their official narratives and efface&mdash;yet can't erase&mdash;their marginalia. 