I was reading an article in the NY Times yesterday on a Ralph Ellison biopic on TV, and I was surprised to find my college alma mater, Grinnell College mentioned. Like nobody knows where the hell is Grinnell is, or Grinn City as it's sometimes called by people who went to college there, and nobody cares. And there it is, showing up in the February 19 NY Times.

Grinnell is a great small school, student population 1,200, stuck in the middle of the Iowa cornfields. Hardly anyone from Iowa went there. In fact, my friends and I figured out that 30% of the school's population came from NYC and maybe at least 50% came from suburbs on Chicago's North Shore.

I've been thinking about my first love Michael lately and it's a strange coincidence that Grinnell College, where we both met, is mentioned in this article about Ralph Ellison. The Invisible Man is, at leaset it was when we were 18, Michael's favorite book. He begged me to read and I never did. I bought it to please him and told him I read it, but then we never talked about it again. I guess I should read this book after all these years, because it is a great book. The NY Times articles said he never finished another book, and spent the rest of his life trying to create his next masterpiece. Sounds depressing doesn't it?

I was trying to remember what my favorite book was when I was 18 and I so don't remember those days. I kept my journals from my college years and I guess I could read them to see if I recorded it. I doubt that I did though. I know I became obsessed for whatever reason with James Joyce's book of short stories, "The Dubliners" when I was 18, so maybe this book was my favorite. I was also really into Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlett Letter and wanted to have some kind of blazing letter like S for stupid or I for Idiot or U for ugly embroidered on my clothes, but that was a high school obsession and I don't think it counts.