The Morning Reading: "The American Boy" - "It's not who you are, it's what you do with it."

In the January 7 issue of The New Yorker, Daniel Mendelsohn writes about his long and unlikely and instructive relationship with the writer Mary Renault which began when he was fifteen and wrote her a heartfelt and revealing fan letter and continued until her death.

excerpt:

"She had shown me a picture of what I was, when I needed to see it, and had given me a myth that justified my fears and limitations. The writers we absorb when we're young bind us to them, sometimes lightly, sometimes with iron. In time, the bonds fall away, but if you look very closely you can sometimes make out the pale white groove of a faded scar, or the telltale chalky red of old rust."

For a link to the online abstract, click here.

To read the entire article, pick up a copy of the issue.

*