I was talking to my brother John yesterday about how my thinking about I, Claudius had led me to thinking about what was when, and making a time-line of when various influences entered my life. Some can be dated broadly, but few precisely. I know Tolkien entered my life when I went to see a play adaptation of The Hobbit, in 1972, which led me to read the book when I was in middle school, but which year in the three year span was it? I'm guessing 1975-1976. I can date Star Trek to when I was in Fourth Grade, so 1973-1974. This was when it was first in reruns. What about Planet of the Apes? I don't think we saw the first film when it came out in 1968. So when and why? It was in the air; maybe we even came to it from the MEGO dolls; maybe it was from one of the many sequels, or maybe the movie had been run on TV by then. Movies came to our little town theater a little later than to the big cities; we seldom saw big films like Jaws or Star Wars until some time after they premiered, so who can say when, exactly. And those were big franchises, new minted, or almost new. What about something like The Wizard of Oz, which was archeological in its presence, the movie way before the book (as far as my life went)? And other things, especially books, which were much more personal events and had no recognizable public advent. A timeline task that could not be accomplished with any precision and only a bit of personal satisfaction. But still somewhat fascinating to me; many things sank deep into me when I was young and became part of my evolving self. And as C. S. Lewis once noted, "one keeps on tracing what are now quite big things in one's mental outfit to curiously small sources."
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