High and Dry

Yesterday I came home from work a little groggy and very unenthusiastic about the group ride. This often happens to me. It is difficult to sit around all day and then try to get geared up for what is almost always a couple of painful hours. Of course, it feels really good when it's over. Especially while sipping beer with my legs up in the recliner.

While trying to decide whether or not I should go on the ride, the sky outside was getting darker and darker. We have had a lot of quick and violent thunderstorms this summer. When I checked the radar it looked almost OK. But I had been burned by this in the past. Finally at around 5 o'clock I remembered those other days that I went out and got pummeled by thunderstorms. The rides turned out just fine, but there were always a lot of worrisome moments and plenty of thoughts like, "this is stupid. Why are you riding your bike into a storm front?"

So I decided to stay home. I felt much better once I made this decision. Instead of riding, I made tea and sat down to read Frank Conroy's Body & Soul. I had started it the day before when I foolishly left my other book (Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale) at work. I was somewhat resistant when I started Conroy's story, as I was really curious about what was going to happen to Offred. But after only a page or two I was sucked in.

The protagonist is a young boy named Claude who has a natural talent for music. He goes from teacher to teacher learning everything from scales and posture to theory and composition. It is very well written and I find the music parts fascinating. They are extremely detailed, but not at all tedious to a non-music person like myself.

There is something simple about the story, too. About a hundred pages in I found myself thinking that it was really nothing new, that there was really nothing special about this book, but I liked it anyways. It was also around this time that the boy's only consistent tutor told Claude that his story of growing up had been told countless times, and that he really wasn't all that special or unique. I love it when authors are aware of these things and share that fact with their readers.

But the real reason I have been enjoying this novel (I'm not finished with it yet), I believe, is that I love the Bildungsroman genre. I have long said that I prefer the beginnings of stories to the other parts. The way the characters are introduced, come together, slowly encounter problems and begin to work through them. I find it all very exciting. And inevitably the feeling changes as the story progresses. But with the bildungsroman, I think the beginning feeling is prolonged just a little bit more. And for some reason I appreciate that.