![]() And while the tone of the book certainly held my attention, its structure, pacing, and plot enthralled me. It was (is) surreal and harsh and violent and funny, a prolonged attack on all of the bullshit that my 15 year old self seemed to perceive everywhere: baseless optimism, can-do spirit, and the guiding thesis that “all is for the best.” The novel gelled immediately with the Kurt Vonnegut books I was gobbling up, seemed to antecede the Beat lit I was flirting with. I remember being unenthusiastic when my 10th grade English teacher assigned the book-it was the cover, I suppose (I stole the book and still have it), but the novel quickly absorbed all of my attention. No book stuck with me quite as much as Candide, Voltaire’s scathing satire of the Enlightenment. Some of the books I left behind, metaphorically at least ( Lord of the Flies, The Catcher in the Rye), and some books bewildered me, but I returned to them later, perhaps better equipped ( Billy Budd Leaves of Grass). ![]() I liked pretty much all of the assigned reading in high school (okay, I hated every page of Tess of the D’Ubervilles). ![]()
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