In my obsessive-compulsive reading habits, I return again and again to American literature; I suppose I do this because I fear that, if I don't, I will reach the point where I decide that there is nothing redeemable about this country.
I began to read Emerson and Thoreau early--the latter at age 13, the former a little later, around 16 or 17. In any event, it was at such an impressionable age that they continue to think through me. I cannot escape them (though I've tried) and am learning to reconcile myself to that fact. It's not that hard, really. Father Emerson rattles on through Thoreau and Whitman, Wallace Stevens and Frost, but also Nietzsche and Tolstoy and, as fate would have it, Norman O. Brown.
Word-madness is the gift of the gods. If we remember to drink deep at the well of language, we may fortify ourselves against the Orwellian Newspeak with which we are daily inundated. Stay close to the Logos and you remain connected to the Over-Soul. Lose touch with that and you risk being turned into a monster: just another one-dimensional zombie wandering through the consumer-capitalist Apocalypse.
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