I thank GCSE English lessons for introducing me to Steinbeck. I'm pretty sure that I was in the minority, a minority who were secretly enthralled by character profiles, entertained a secret love for writing essays and kept quite whilst our peers sniggered at why anyone would ever willingly put themselves through the torture of reading a book. (God forbid; enjoy it.)
When Steinbeck was asked whether he thought he deserved his 1962 Nobel Prize for literature he answered: "Frankly, no."
The choice was supposedly a controversial one. The New York Times spoke of his 'tenth-rate philosophising'. Ouch.
I can't speak for world literature, but I can speak for the wrenching gut feeling I felt when reading East of Eden; which remains one of my favourite books. I can speak for the that heavy, hot weight in the pit on your stomach that won't go away for long after you've turned the page. My fingers shook for rage and agony.
I can't quite remember one of my favourite lines from the book, so shall have to settle for one that is 99.9% as satisfying: "It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves... The skin tastes the air".
Had Cathy Ames appeared in front of me in those moments, I was sure that I'd tear her skin to shreds with my very nails. Few villians before or since triggered such a deep, physiological reaction from me.
I like taking photos. I fear it is partly a selfish thing; I enjoy posting them to social media sites, and enjoy showing off what enormous fun my friends and I have together. Thankfully, I almost never take photos of myself, so this ugly truth masquerades as a selfless act of documentation and friendliness.
I used to adore creating photo-diaries of trips and holidays - 'Oh, remember this?' and 'This is when we found that funny looking tree/crisp/sign!'. I no longer have the patience for that anymore, and as people grow older they lose patience on the other side of the camera too - they don't like the flash in their face, they don't WANT to remember why they drank that 3rd bottle of wine.
The city in which I have lived for the last 3 years is beautiful. All turrets and gateways, bridges and cobblestones. But sadly, even that begins to lose its charm. I suppose that's what sets me apart from the 'real' photographers - I tire from beauty. What a terrible thing to admit.
The last three years have changed me to the point that I am unrecognisable to the person I was. I've fallen apart, nailed myself back together, bullied myself into obedience, lost myself in the process, fallen apart once again and am slowly - ever so painfully slowly - rebuilding myself, brick by brick.
Had I taken photos of those lows, my self-image would have been very different. But no, we choose to capture the good times. I look over albums of even the worst times with a tinge of bitter nostalgia. We think 'maybe it wasn't so bad at all?'. We use the digital images to sugar-coat daily life. Look at us: all parties and fun and games. No one knows what I was doing several hours earlier behind closed doors because THERE ISN'T A PHOTO OF IT. And the truth will be stored in the imperfect catalogue of our memories, distored and pixelated as need be, so we can plaster our bedroom walls with smiles and caricatures of an alternate reality we believe ourselves to have lived.
I often think that, if I were in The Matrix (a situation I regard as statistically likely to occur within my lifetime), I would have chosen the blue pill. Call it cowardly. I challenge anyone to choose differently.
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