I am currently 92 pages in to The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë—and I am fully prepared to declare them the best 92 pages of fiction I have ever read. No amount of enthusiasm or fawning could convey the spiritual transports I have enjoyed in the past twenty hours. I won’t attempt to convey them to you. I will only exhort you to find a copy at your earliest convenience and experience for yourself the beauty that life might hold.
For some time in college, when I was subject to such lines of thought, I was convinced that I was “untimely”—born a century and a half too late. I once fell in love with a woman’s name, simply because my friend described her as a classical Irish beauty whose manners and character were quite out of place in our own time, who could have passed for a Brontë sister in another era. I never met the woman, but I was sure she would have pleased me greatly if she remotely warranted the description.
Anne Brontë may always have my heart, but I’m not so selfish as to keep her all to myself. Go forth, men, and read. You’ll thank me for it yet.
NP: The Alkaline Trio, Stupid Kid
