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Book meme! Day 24
Sep. 6th, 2010 09:35 amLisa Goldstein's novel Tourists has one of my favorite extended quotations in it... I've moved, and my books and notebooks are all scattered across ill-packed boxes, so I can't give it to you word for word, though I know I have it transcribed somewhere.
It starts by saying we are all tourists in each others lives. That we carry around these guidebooks and phrase books that don't really allow us to perfectly understand the meaning of the objects and events we find when we visit each other. That this partial understanding is dangerous. That our maps don't necessarily take us where we thought they would.
I checked Tourists out of the library in Seattle right after dropping out of college and moving there for a year. I read it while I was still staying at the Green Tortoise hostel, before I moved in to the awkward roommate situation that I later abruptly fled.
That whole bit about being a tourist, permanently, that we were never at home in other people and had to come to terms with that, was the right thing for me at the right time.
( Book meme list... )
It starts by saying we are all tourists in each others lives. That we carry around these guidebooks and phrase books that don't really allow us to perfectly understand the meaning of the objects and events we find when we visit each other. That this partial understanding is dangerous. That our maps don't necessarily take us where we thought they would.
I checked Tourists out of the library in Seattle right after dropping out of college and moving there for a year. I read it while I was still staying at the Green Tortoise hostel, before I moved in to the awkward roommate situation that I later abruptly fled.
That whole bit about being a tourist, permanently, that we were never at home in other people and had to come to terms with that, was the right thing for me at the right time.
( Book meme list... )
