New Texas Memoir<\/p>\n

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Excerpt from Bookmarked: How the Great Works of Western Literature F*cked Up My Life <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Copyright 2021 by Mark Scarbrough. Propertius Press. All rights reserved. Used with permission.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

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Caution: A Preface<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Stop me if you\u2019ve heard this one before: \u201cI found myself in Middlemarch<\/i>!\u201d Or \u201cShakespeare saved my life!\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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I call bullshit. Shakespeare never saved anyone. Least of all, me. Although I sure wanted him to. Ached for him to, somewhere in the marrow middle of my bones. And not only him but all the other literary lions, like William Blake, Charlotte Bront\u00eb, and Henry James, now dead and mounted on the wall of Western culture. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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I got sucked in by their promises, the best things. A once upon a time<\/i> that leads logically to the end<\/i>. Characters who remain true to themselves, despite what the plot throws at them. And desires that can be\u2014ta-da!\u2014fulfilled. Or at least understood. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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And something more tangible, too. Down in my soul\u2019s basement, where the lights are dim and my hopes are laid away in boxes, I dreamed up a mad quest through the great books to find a home. To hear the crackle in a fireplace. To feel the weight of the covers at night. To breathe in and out all that\u2019s human and loved. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Maybe I should have lowered my sights. Maybe only the main character gets home. Problem is, I\u2019ve always felt like a minor one: the sidekick in a baggy sweater, the wiseacre two desks down. The guy who steps into a story, pushes it along in some vague way, and gets a one-liner as his reward: Years later, I heard he died in a car crash.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Or maybe I asked so much from the great books because of my upbringing. When I was ten, my parents left the Southern Baptist church. \u201cIt is too liberal,\u201d they said, seemingly in unison, a plainsong truth-telling that led us to the upland pastures of American fundamentalism. Letters were sent. Ministers were challenged. Friends were lost.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Don\u2019t get me wrong. I didn\u2019t latch onto the great books because they were forbidden. I never once read under the sheets with a flashlight. Oh, sure, I had to skip the sex scenes and turn a blind eye to the notion that a liberal could be the good guy. Authors! What can you do? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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But nothing could befoul us. We were the true believers. We interpreted the Vietnam War, Nixon, and everything else as a story, a plot, rushing toward the apocalypse. The world sinned, it burned up, and we got out alive. Time was a straight line.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Once I started reading, I discovered that novels, stories, plays, and even poems were alternate timelines, descending and ascending like a grid. They even got to the same places we believed in: just deserts <\/i>or happily ever after<\/i>. For a long time, I wanted to homestead on that scaffolding, even though it kept coming apart and slamming to the ground. I just wasn\u2019t myself without a book in my hand.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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Then I wasn\u2019t myself with one. Over time, books stopped being words outside my skin and became shadowy bits inside my brain, alternate versions of me, telling their own stories. I morphed into a bizarre body of shredded volumes, stalking the far country of my imagination. That\u2019s how I saw a long-dead poet manifest in front of me one night. How I got a job fishing monks out of gay bars. And ultimately why I tossed the person I loved over the cliff of insanity in a hail Mary!<\/i> attempt to save my own brain from dissolving like a cheap paperback in a deluge. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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All of which is to say, be careful what you read. It can fuck you up, too.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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But don\u2019t worry. There\u2019s a truth beyond the great works of Western literature. Life may seem linear, forceps to tombstone. Instead, the cosmos is round and elastic, spiraled and helixed. Atoms, galaxies, your DNA\u2014they spin and come back around. I got out from under literature\u2019s curse. You can, too.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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So this story is a comedy, like Dante\u2019s, if not so divine. But there\u2019s no good news without the bad, which is part and parcel of it. In books, in life, even in the old poet\u2019s journey across the universe, the way up starts with the way down.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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