We got kicked out of Junior Great Books. We’d signed up of our own volition but were incredulous when we got the boxed set of books. Like Dorothy Parker, we wondered, “What fresh hell is this?”

“Aesop’s Fables. Ugh!”

“I draw the line at The Jungle Books.”

Let me put this in context:  we were eclectic readers, fans of Catcher in the Rye, Rebecca, The Martian Chronicles, and the Betsy-Tacy books.

There was mass rebellion over Treasure Island.  The leaders were “disappointed” to learn that no one had read it.  We were all kicked out.   Banned at 10.

The Junior Great Books debacle was a turning point for my friend Nancy and me. Neither of had ever been kicked out of anything. Nancy, a rebel and a rabble rouser, was thrilled.  Although we spent most of our time listening to Monkees records (“Last Train to Clarksville,”  “Daydream Believer”), we almost got kicked out of a movie for talking loudly. 

When she moved away, I lost touch with her.  Years later, someone told me she’d died in her forties of cancer. Even now it seems impossible that Nancy isn’t making satiric remarks and writing incisive political columns.

One day in the early 2000s, I went to another Great Books meeting. The group was discussing Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. 

“Oh my God, there are Faulkner fans here.”

Few were fans. One reader found it “disgusting.” Another said it was “unrealistic.”  And then there was the guy who said it was “irrelevant.”    

I protested mildly, but felt down-hearted. What would Oprah have said?  In 2005, she chose three books by Faulkner, among them As I Lay Dying, as her summer book club selections.

If Nancy had been around she would have said,  “You know what’s irrelevant, they’re irrelevant!”

I try not to take things too seriously anymore.