not written under the influence

I was reading To Kill a Mockingbird today, and at some point thought of the book survey, and realized that perhaps I'm not reading enough contemporary novels. I did just recently read Everything is Illuminated, but still...not very much. Yet I still feel that I need to firm my base in the classics...this is the first time I'm reading To Kill a Mockingbird (I'm in college), and I still haven't read Catcher in the Rye...I'd like to read more Dostoyevsky...and anyway, Naked Lunch put me off contemporary writing. I mean, just because you're on acid and a half million other drugs doesn't mean that you have the right to publish nonsensical garbage. I swear, 99% of people who bought that book bought it to look intelligent. Now that I think about it, some of the shittiest stuff I've read has been written under the influence...sure, many greats in writing (the beatniks), music (duh) and the rest of the arts have been on drugs, but for a good majority of people, they just make them stupid. And then they think their works are so great...man did I get sick reading poems and listening to songs by my stoner friends with egos too large for what they were producing.

The lesson here is...I have a lot of reading to do! And unfortunately, somewhere in there I have to waste my time reading Lord of the Rings because I promised a kid I would...though, she doesn't seem to be keeping to her word about reading an actual work of literature. I think I'll put it off.