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Of Books & Feelings

by

One of the (many) things I have learned in graduate school is how much a bad book can affect you — while a good book can often lift your spirits.

This weekend, while researching a paper on the forest for my “Psyche & Nature” class, I read Alexander Porteous’ The Forest in Folklore and Mythology, which, while presenting many stories of the forest and trees in myth and folk tradition, made no effort to tie them together in any coherent whole. It was more a catalogue of such stories than an essay delighting in the power of these tales — and getting at their meaning.

To be sure, many of the tales — and a handful of the insights — will serve me well in my paper. The author left me to get at the meaning of this various imaginary creatures and legends. But, reading the book made me restless and crabby.

Today, I had the opposite experience as I reviewed my underlings in one of the books our professor had assigned us. While I didn’t always agree with the points David Abram made in his The Spell of the Senuous, I delighted in his interesting insights — and how he backed them up with reference to mythology, philosophy, linguistics and/or his experiences among primitive tribes around the world. Returning to this book helped lift my spirits — and made me less anxious about the two papers I must complete this week.

It is amazing how books are like movies, even like people. That their quality can impact the way we feel, maybe even the way we act.

Comments

  1. fascinating….how great you were able to connect feelings to the choices of the author or presenter…as an architect I couldn’t understand recently why an invitation to a spectacular, historically signifigant 20,000 square foot estate
    made me feel ‘crabby and grouchy’. Although I got alot of good ideas and sketches from the beauty of the design, something about its exclusive isolation and the near slave labor required behind its reality, depressed me. The gracious host’s comments about how servants in her family history ‘were enjoying radio soap-operas in the laundry room’ struck me on a hollow, euphemistic note. They were probably exhausted from washing corsets by hand… In an admirable attempt to enjoy this heirloom property, the social and economic inequalities required for its support/function seemed whitewashed…and unrealistically perceived.

    Today a friend took me to the top of a mountain to visit a twenty room bed and breakfast inn at a popular ski resort….I almost cringed yet decided to go….ironically I found my body enjoying this un-noted, modest facility built between the sixties and the eighties…there was a no nonsense air about the hostess…her comments on the tour were succinct and pertinent…she was an innkeeper and basically enjoying it and quite focused on the needs of her customers. She had something I wanted…a presence….she seemed grounded and content with the reality of her situation.

    Fascinating what information our experiences present if we pay attention…

  3. Well, I am amazed to find your posting — it’s 2007, and I’m working on a paper for my Psyche & Nature class!!! I am trying to find a bio on Alexander Porteous and your site came back on my google search. So, I take it you’re a Pacifica student/grad? Wonderful to find your site, and how funny our research took us to the same book. Well, probably not so funny, but still…. How did it all go?