For years now, every time I've seen anything featuring, or even resembling, rabbits, I have had the horrible compulsion to blurt out, "Ohmygod Ohmygod -- it's totally like Watership Down you guys!" The numerous occasions that communists, furry bands of animals, or some combination of the two, have made it into conversations with friends (you'd be surprised at how often this happens...or would you?), I HAD to bring up Hazel, Fiver and the gang. It's gotten so bad that, though this hasn't happened yet, I can assure you if I saw a ship on the water go down somewhere, I would certainly attempt a pun on everyone's favorite rabbit-based novel.
The weird part (aside from, you know, all those other parts I just talked about): I haven't even seen the book since I was about nine years old.
Watership Down is, in fact, just one in a long line of classic, beloved works of fiction that I recklessly, wantonly and probably erroneously bring up in my daily conversations.
The boss leaves our relatively youthful office alone for the day? Suddenly I'm making cracks about Lord of the Flies. I rushed through that one once, in a blind dash of terror, sometime around the 8th grade.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I have a bit more context for because I'm creepy and I've actually read the book (and seen the movie) recently, but that doesn't make it any less weird when I start growling about a trunk full of mescaline and a massive bat-fight in the desert.
Why have I let myself become this person? I think it's partly human nature - we like joining in the cultural conversation, embedding our lives into the bigger picture by picking up on things that are popular and connecting them to our own lives.
People reference stupid movies all the time. Because I enjoy getting beat up by common grade school thugs, I'm doing the same thing -- just with books. When you stand on a railing and scream, "I'm king of the world!" (or, more likely, unless you were a 14 year old girl when Titanic came out and you saw it 9 times in the theatre, some ridiculous bastardization like, "I'm on top of the world!" "I'm the king!" or "Fuck yeah!"), it's like me trying to sneak a Hemingway mention into conversation any time there's excessive drinking and manliness going on. You know what I'm going for, even if it's not dead-on.
If a book really is a cultural icon (and I hope to god that's still a possibility), is referencing one really that much lamer than quoting Anchorman for the billionth time? Sure, Gatsby may not be as endlessly amusing, but I'm betting he has many leather-bound books, and his home smells of rich mahogany.
1 comment:
Well, well.
You might remember one evening two summers ago, while walking on the financial center promenade that winds with the hudson, I led you to the top of some boat-like structure and screamed "I'm on top of the world." You then laughed...and then laughed some more at me. I thought you thought I was being cute. Instead, I now have a feeling you were thinking, "oh my, what a jackass!"
Also, there is never a reason to be ashamed of F&L: We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to set in. In the sky, there were what looked like huge bats all swooping and swirling and I remember saying something like, "holy jesus! what are these goddamn animals?"
And that's from memory.
I liked this post.
I'm going to finish my breakfast now: It is 2:20, in the afternoon, and I have a giant plate of my famous hashbrowns staring me down. mmmmmm.
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