It’s Father’s Day.
First sentence: It’s Father’s Day. I am lying in the bed of my large-hearted ex-wife and will look after our kids while she went to Prague with her own father for the next couple of days.
…While I am waiting in vain for my kids to bring me some coffee in bed, I’m spending my time reading the list of „The Guardian“’s 100 best novels of all time – „a countdown of the greatest literature ever published in English, as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide.“ („The Guardian“)
Currently, on this very Father’s Day, they have published the Top 100 – 61 – and ashamed I realize how little my education in fiction is. I’ve read only three of those forty books listed.
At the end of the ranking „The Guardian“ asks its readers about their own best three novels and why these three ones are the ones for oneself.
That is an effort of self-reflection and intellectual humbleness for which I usually don’t have any time. But today it’s Father’s day! – which means that I still have no coffee, but plenty of time in bed!
So, here’s my Sunday-Story-take on a thursday-as-a-father-figure:
- „Wuthering heights“ by Emily Bronte
First sentence: 1801—I have just returned from a visit to my landlord—the solitary neighbour that I shall be troubled with.
Why No.1: I read it late in life, and I’ve never seen such a storm of life before, a storm that wuthers in inner soullandscapes with such psycho-profound, tender and terrible outcome, break-out, coming out and collapsing – all of it at the same time in a timeless tale. It showed me a very complete and coherent meaning of life experience throughout the lifespan of people.
2. „Owen Meany“ by John Irving
First sentence: I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice — not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God;
Why No.2: True friendship and the truth about society in an all-american epic story that is the only true hero story from the U.S. I’ve ever read. I read it when I was about 18 and it showed me what kind of friend I would like to be for my best friend later in life.
3. „It“ by Stephen King
First sentence: The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years — if it ever did end — began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.
Why No.3: I‘ve read it in the summer when I was 14 and even in the brightest daylight of those intense, hot summer days I was scared to death on my sunlit bed, because my imagination was led into its own darkness by a King who reigns in and for the hearts of Kids. It showed me for the rest of my life that my own imagination has the power to become a reality.
My son just has made scrambled eggs for him & me. It’s Father’s Day. 😉
Welcome to the Reset of the Real 