Last night I dressed up like a Smurf.  For the whole of the evening my identity was that of Vanity Smurf, actually, complete with mirror and face paint. Sporting such attire, even at a costume party, is an act of temerity. But then, I am often a bold person.  My girlfriend (none other than Smurfette) accompanied me to a fun gathering where we laughed, drank, and talked with a variety of friends and acquaintances. The people with whom I spoke each had funny things to say.  Generally, it was a good night.

    Somehow, though, it left me unsatisfied.  The friends were friendly, the beer was tasty, and songs were lively, but when we left, I felt ready to go.  Something within me withdraws slightly from large crowds, and tries to emerge as a member of smaller communities.  Though it may seem strange, the first of these communities in which I ìfindî myself is literature.

      Iím not  the first person youíd expect to write this essay.   Although I have a shy personal side, it is not the first glimpse of me that most people get.  You might see me running across the student union to give a hug to an old friend.  You might see me in a coffee shop passionately debating some obscure point about philosophy.  You might find me sitting outside, throwing a frisbee on a sunny day or building a snowman after our first winter storm.  These glimpses in no way represent any large portion of my personality, but they provide a few examples of who I am--or who many people think I am.

     If anything, I have always sunk deeply into my books.  It is a reality that has permeated my existence since my youth.  When I was quite young, my parents would put me to sleep expecting me to stay in bed.  However, after nightly prayers and stories, I would emerge into the hallway with a flashlight and some text which I felt needed additional perusal.  There were a great many nights when my parents found me out there in the hallway, using my book or flashlight as an impromptu pillow.  Although this may have been upsetting to them, they never complained about this occurrence, which became something of a nightly ritual. They always encouraged me to read.

     Some years later, I sit at my desk and mull over the texts I am currently reading.  Iím in the midst of Fitzgeraldís ìBabylon Revisitedî and Other Stories, Gertrude Steinís Three Lives, a book of translated poetry called Women Poets of Japan, a journal of Thomas Mertonís, and a book of poetry called The Clouds Should Know Me By Now.  Each of these texts, in time, will become a small part of my reflections about literature.

     The community to which I belong is one which I am only beginning to understand. The older I get, the more I realize that a community could be defined as any group with whom you share yourself.  In my case, literature and literary tradition are two of the communities to which I belong.   The more I read, the clearer my understanding becomes of how T.S. Eliot can revisit a thousand works of Western writers in his beautiful poems.  I see how Joyceís Ulysses is a work of brilliance.  He is brilliant not because he invented some new strategy, but implemented many strategies into a single work of epic proportions.

     In a profound way, the texts I have chosen to read and the continuing process of my reading has impacted me as a person. My choice of career and the ways in which I spend my time are reflective of this.  The students I tutor may wonder from time to time where I am coming from when I tell them the strange stories harvested from whatever text rested in my palms during the prior evening.  But it doesnít even matter, eventually they because they become my parables for life.

     Last week I heard Alice Walker speak about the Dharma of Literature. One thing she said which I recall was that our legends and our great canon of literature both function as a way to seek truth and community. This is a community which can be external and internal, or both at once. In my case, the stories Iíve become one with are firmly planted in my mind, and in time these stories can become real in the minds of my students.  Just as my many great teachers passed these legends and great books on to me, so too will I someday pass them on--perhaps to students of my own.

     The purpose of this process is many-fold, just as we have many reasons for the stories we each tell.  Some of our stories are those of funny family occurrences, reminding us of the great many wonderful experiences we have shared.  There are the stories of ghosts and haunted houses and goblins, leaving us feeling frightened and aware of the presence of spiritual elements in our world.  Some stories set forth a model figure--often a deceased relative--as an emblem of moral deeds and great virtue; other stories simply tell  fables or parables about how to live.  All of these have implications on the lives we lead, as all of life is hearing stories and telling stories.

     The community to which I belong is not exclusive, but it is elusive.  Though I myself often have dreamed the dream of writing the ìgreat American novel,î I donít think that doing so would make me any more a member of this community.  I belong to the community of literature because I think about the texts and their themes; the works of great power move me to improve myself as a person, and to emerge more fully into my own life, aside from the literary tradition.

     As I sit at my desk writing poems and editing poems, I know that the time and effort is going somewhere.  I know this only in the same way that I know heaven is somewhere.  I am no longer the first grader who thought heaven was in the sky.  But I still know it exists as an entity--somewhere.  When I spend my hours crumpling poetry that doesnít ìfeelî right and throwing it into the trash, then later recovering it and editing it, the time and effort is not simply disappearing.   Even if these writings sit on my desk and never are published in any sort of compilation, I would still write.  Throwing poems away may not be necessary, but it may very well be part of the process.

     The community to which I belong is one of great promise, one of great merit, and one of great division. Even within the community--as in any community--there is disagreement and misunderstanding.  Some might say that those involved in the reading and critique of literature are incredibly divided.  To some extent, this is true.  Especially in the Academy, there are many ìcampsî of opposing thoughts.  Yet, at some level, each of these professors and lecturers are me.  They are me lingering in the book shop.  They are me on my couch folding back the first page of a new book.  They are me sighing over my cup of tea as I set the book back on the coffee table, wishing I had another hour, half-hour, ten minutes.

 They are me because they too are finding community in their texts--it doesnít matter which book they are reading--they belong to it, and it to them!  The authors and protagonists and antagonists and wise old men and crazy women in the attic each come to life in a magical written version of ìReading Rainbowî and they see the events and dialogue happening before them.  Like any good Catholic, I believe that there is such a thing as a ìCommunion of Saintsî in which the living and the dead are united in spirituality. This has become an idea which Iíve attributed (however erroneously) to my study of literature. All writers and readers--living or dead--form one tightly knit unit. We are each members of this community because we believe that there is merit and worth to understanding the great mysteries, tragedies, and comedies.  To that end, the title I selected for the piece may no longer be valid.  Although it may seem like the love of literature is a ìCommunity of One,î it is more specifically a community of many--many whose death has ceased to matter, whose thoughts and voices are apparent on every page, in every paragraph, and in every word of their writings.

     Of course, I donít subordinate my personal communities to the community of literature, but then I donít linger in this clandestine literary community more than an hour each day--if that.  From  time to time, though, it rears its head in the midst of my conversations; more frequently, it remains as a small part of my composition. It isnít that Iím not the kid building the snowman or throwing the frisbee, it is simply that my personality and nuances of character drive me to find meaning and significance on levels besides these.

      Louise Rosenblatt once wrote that ìthe literary experience must be phrased as a transaction between the reader and the text.î  She was the lone voice of opposition to the New Critics, who wanted to forward the idea that all meaning was contained within the text, and that the whole idea of ìReader Responseî was ridiculous.  Rosenblattís argument is important to my idea of  literature as a community because it reminds me that I am entering into an experience in which my life will be impacted by the text and in which my experience of reading will have an impact on the text; by reading a book and considering its merit I find myself altered, and yet it also alters the schema in my mind of the entire canon of literature.  Among the texts which I have already read, and those I have yet to read, there remain many changes and paradigm shifts which I will undergo. But I look forward to them, for without change there can be no growth.