Admittedly, I started out my college career as a fairly uninspired student. It wasn't until the midpoint of my sophomore year when I got sort of ticked off with my (mostly) C grades and made a decision to try harder.
So, armed with copious amounts of coffee and a pipe packed with Edgeworth tobacco clenched in my teeth (it was the 70s after all,) I’d park myself at a desk and grind away from after dinner to midnight most nights. Lo and behold, my grades rose considerably.
My inspiration came in part from a conversation I had with a popular Boston all night radio host. I had met WBZ’s Larry Glick through my father, who knew Larry because they both studied Karate at the same Boston dojo. Larry told me to go out and get the broadest liberal arts education I could. I had an emerging interest in radio at the time. (I worked in that field for about 20 years.)
The other day I was looking around for a good audio book to listen to on my morning commute. I found the one pictured above. This is a fun read/listen. Foster ties together all kinds of writing and delineates the common threads that run through all the familiar stories many of which you’ve certainly encountered. The writing is both superb and entertaining and you’ll gain some new insights along the way. Themes dating back to the Bible recur and echo through pretty much everything that has been written since. For example, think of the story Hansel and Gretel. Those themes echo through a whole range of literary works that followed.
In recent years I’ve made it a practice to send a brief note of appreciation to authors who write works that I particularly enjoy. I found Foster (this time through social media) expressing how much I enjoyed his lively book. He responded with a warm reply. I mentioned to him that his book made me wish —as an English literature major—that I had “kicked in” a little earlier.
If you—as do I—have some good memories of those years when there was plenty of time to savor excellent writing, Foster’s book will afford you the opportunity to re-experience them once again…for me these 50 years later.