SPECIAL EDITION
Bay Area Readers on Their Most Treasured Books
Lori Fogarty is the director and chief executive officer of the Oakland Museum of California. I remember many books by how they coincided with certain periods of my life. Yet there are few that stay with me, providing a sort of literary compass throughout my lifetime of reading. At the top of that list is Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.”
In high school English, it was an essential in the canon. Somewhere, I still have that annotated and dogeared paperback.
Next, I encountered the book at Occidental College, inspired by a beloved professor who immersed us in the grand triumvirate of American letters: Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Faulkner.
My treasure, though, is a 1930 edition that resided on my parents’ bookshelf throughout my childhood. Beneath its faded blue fabric cover, caressed by lovely art deco endpapers, are 259 delicate, slightly yellowed and nostalgically fragrant pages. The first paragraphs of the foreword frame Hemingway as a yetunproven talent, pondering whether “he will equal in breadth what he already possesses in intensity.”
More recently, my son and I listened to William Hurt narrate the audio version of the book as we traversed the Midwest on a college-bound road trip. Discussing the Lost Generation with a new generation renewed my bond with this timeless classic.