I'm not sure if this is true of any other profession, but teaching kills names for me. What I mean by this is, let's suppose I have a student named X. X happens to be one of my favorite names ever. I have, in the past, considered naming a future child or even a character X. But the student I have named X is...well...a jerk. Now that name is ruined for me forever. Whenever I hear the name X, I no longer think of bouncing babies or cool characters--I think of that jerk.
Now, here's the problem for today.
I'm well into An Abundance of Katherines. And the writing's brilliant. And the characters are brilliant.
But the main character, Colin, is exactly like someone I know: a great big whiner who spends most of his life complaining about his lack of a girlfriend. Colin isn't exactly like that--there's more to the character here than the trait that I compare to this real life person--but there's enough of the real life person I know in Colin that the two are starting to merge in my mind like an annoying blob of whine. Which is starting to ruin the book for me.
Does that ever happen to y'all?
7 comments:
There's something about the name "Beth" :)
OK, just kidding.
When naming one's own children, totally anyone you've had any kind of negative experience with in the past comes to life and ruins the name. I'm not sure I've had it merge too much with a character in the book though.
This is actually a first for me, too...maybe because I recently had to interact with this person who aggravates me so much. So he's fresh on my mind, at the same time I start reading a book about a character with the same central problem...
When choosing a name for our child, my wife and I abandoned the name we had wanted for years, because my mom used that name for her dog. Ha ha.
Justus--My mom was going to name ME Sally, but my dad named the dog that, first! I'm really glad the new dog got there before I did!!
Ha ha. No offense to Sally, of course.
I'm sort of the opposite way. When I meet cool people, I try to steal their names for my future pets. So, if anyone ever notices that my dog has their name, they should consider it the highest compliment.
Davin--I name my dogs after characters in books. My current pet, a big black Lab, is named Sirius after (who else?) Sirius Black from Harry Potter.
When I kept fish (in my college apartment days) I named them after Greek Gods.
I am such a nerd.
Post a Comment