Reading From the Midst of Time

Reading:  I can’t remember when I wasn’t reading.  The written word surrounded me, not spoken because I can’t remember my parent’s ever reading to me.  They were busy with other things, like procreating.

Fortunately, my abilities to form letters into words started young.  Yes, I admit it.  I was always a robin, never a sparrow or a finch.  (For those too young to understand this reference, we were always divided into three reading groups.  However, we were all give the same Dick and Jane reader.   Is anyone still reading about Dick and Jane?  The first days of school out would come these bouncy white kids pulling a red wagon or something.  Yes, I read ahead to see if anything really happens to Dick and Jane.  It took one day to read through it and, no, nothing ever did happen.  No wonder kids don’t like to read.)

The best reading is books you select for yourself.  I remember being in second grade and reading through a series of biographies with what-had-once-been bright orange covers, now rather dulled by age.  As I grew older, I felt betrayed by these books because they only told part of the life story, the noble and brave part.  But these people weren’t noble and brave all the time. Where was the rest of their story?  Where was the real person?  Aren’t flaws as interesting as perfection?  Was George Washington the only one to chop down a cherry tree?

At home we had the Herald Tribune delivered, with wonderful comics like Brenda Star.  Did we ever find out who that guy with the eye patch was? During the week, stories about Old Mother Westwind by Thorton Burgess appeared.  Jimmy Skunk, I couldn’t get enough of your shenanigans.

For the most part, my mother didn’t believe in buying books, not when there was a library—a library in the next town over, where she would get her books and rush us through.  Fairy tales absorbed me, except for the Japanese ones that scared me.  Then there were the biographies, where I fastened on Lincoln, read all the books about him available.  “Ben Hur.”  Loved that book.  “Quo Vadis,” anyone?  I still remember losing a copy of Vachey Lindsay’s poetry, to my mortification. 

I got an allowance, not much, which I spent on buying comic books and the Hardy Boys series before I switched to movie magazines.  I loved the Hardy Boys.  I ate up their adventures.  I tried a Nancy Drew book.  It was so lame.  And Cherry Ames, girl nurse?  Let’s not go there.  Suffice it to say that we of the female persuasion were all supposed to grow up to be teachers, nurses, secretaries.  So Cherry Ames has a lot to answer for.

The comics introduced me to the classics of literature, telling the storyline in pictures, of which I would make copies using Silly Putty.  From these I knew I would never enjoy Charles Dickens, and so it came to pass. 

In seventh or eighth grade, I well remember reading “Tom Brown’s School Days” and “Jane Eyre.”  I think I identified because I also felt put upon.  When Jane left school, I found her romance with Mr. Rochester rather ho hum.  Maybe I just lacked a romantic nature.

A series that my mother did own was a four-volume set by Thomas Mann of “Joseph and His Brothers.”  I was enthralled and read through the books rapidly.  I mentioned them to a “friend,” who asked to borrow the first one.  I knew my mother was fond of the set so I was reluctant, but I gave in.

A side note about school dynamics.  This girl’s name was Carol Y—in case I get sued.  She entered our school when we were both in second grade.  There were at that time three other Carols and one Carolyn.  For some reason Carol Y saw me as a perfect victim.  She spent our elementary school years perfecting her mean girl routine.

Our small town went to a larger one for high school, and the only association I had with her was on the bus ride there, though obviously I never sat with her.  Did Carol Y ever return the book she borrow to read?  No, of course not.  Another mortification for me.  But the ending of the story is rather a happy one from my perspective.  She had to drop out of teacher’s college in her first year because she got pregnant and had a baby.  Do I qualify as the mean girl now?

My mother was a great theater goer; she always had copies of the plays of the year, so I took to reading plays.  There was also Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet.”  At some point, as I migrated into high school, I read Jane Austen.  I’m sure I enjoyed her, but I can’t remember any particular emotion associated with reading her, and shouldn’t reading evoke emotion?  Well, okay, maybe pleasure is enough.

“Moby Dick.”  This is a book I have read three times, once for pleasure, twice in college.  I don’t know what people have against it. The writing is inspiring, the story is masterful.  I think people go into reading it with their minds already made up.  Sad.

While high school is basically a blur, I do remember the school library and picking up a copy of “Nisei Daughter.”  I was shocked because no one had ever told me about the internment of the Japanese-Americans during World War II.  I went home and asked my mother did this really happen in the United States of America?  And she confessed that it did.  This was not the only lapse in world events I was subjected to.  My parents also never mentioned the Holocaust.

Another fraught book, get out the hankies, was my paperback edition of “Knock on Any Door.”  I was reading it, waiting for French class to start, when the teacher noticed.  She told me the book was banned.  (A good portion of the school was Catholic, teachers included.)  I must have looked up at her in a hostile way because she backed off.  What an eye opener that book was.

High school/“Peyton Place,” anyone?  Oh, my, how we ravished that book, or did the book ravish us?  We read it during lunchtime and passed it underneath the lunch table, when we got to certain passages obviously, and wow, we were both shocked and excited.

Bringing me to another book that had been banned but was now freely published, “Lady Chatterly’s Lover.”  My mother forbad me to read it.  Really?  There was a lending library in a stationery store in Nyack, to which I trotted and rented “Lady Chatterly’s Lover.”  Yes, I read it.  Did I find it shocking?  No.  Titillating?  Not even that.  “Peyton Place” was much more fun.

Take a wild guess who read “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” after I was through.  Yes, my mother.  I hope she learned something.

To end this blog with the ending of my high school years, let me drag you across the ocean to merry olde England.  Well, first to France and then to England, but we’ll leave the drunken night at Les Halles aside for the time being.  My father had to be in London for some sort of ceremony.  And then we were to explore the English countryside, with my father driving.

First, my father was a horrible driver; second, he was driving on the wrong side of the road; third, he couldn’t find his way out of London, which we circled for the whole day, ending up sleeping in our rental car because the rooms at the inns were full.

What did I do while in fear for my life?  I read. This is where my love of English mysteries comes from.  Agatha Christie.  Sneer not!  I have not only read Agatha Christie, but reread her.  She’s masterful.

I had a whole slew of mysteries I read through during that perilous adventure, all second hand, all bought at various bookstalls.  I devoured them.  Today, although I have ventured far afield novelistically, I’m still hooked on those British mysteries.

Surviving England, I returned to the States about to begin the next adventure of my life and my reading life—College.

More anon.