Books and Authors

The other day someone recalled the first book she remembers reading.  Hmmm......  It's been so long, I'm not certain I remember the first book.  I've always liked The Boxcar Children and, if I had my druthers, I'd choose that as the first one I read by myself.  It might well have been, but I just don't remember for sure.  It was one of the first, though.  I have read the book a number of times since, to by two kids more than once and to two of my grandkids, beginning with the third one, too.  The dog's name is "Watch," but we always call him "Watch-dog."  I constantly quiz them, "What's a brook?"  I think there are other books in the series, but I've never read any of them.

I do remember reading books by Walter Havighurst and others, books about each of the then 48 states.  I really enjoyed them, although my classmates must have considered me a nerd of sorts.  Only coincidentally I later discovered that Walter Havighurst was the brother of one of my Amherst professors, Alfred Havighurst. Professor Havighurst taught me British History and was superb.

There were also many biographies, a series I'm sure, of a wide variety of Americans.  They included George Washington, Lou Gehrig, George Washington Carver, Helen Keller, and more.  What I remember most about them is that they were all orange and were kept over by a large window on the back/west side of our cavernous jr high library.  Again, biographies?  Nerd......

Mrs. Pickerell was the character in a series of mystery or science fiction novels.  The one I recall most distinctly was Mrs. Pickerell Goes to Mars.  There were others, too, and I think I read most, if not all, of them.  And, inexplicably, I remember right where the Mrs. Pickerell books were shelved, to the side of the cool nook the library had.

In high school, in many if not each, of our English classes, we had to do a book report each cardmarking period, three a semester.  One teacher was hooked on biographies and had a list of them from which to choose; I assume(d) they were suggestions.  I selected for my first book and report a bio of Babe Ruth, since I loved baseball.  My grade wasn't so hot and I remember the comment, that this wasn't "a quality book."  Not as dumb as I looked, the next book I chose from the teacher's list, a bio of Father Damien de Veuster, the Leper Priest of Molokai.  My grade improved noticeably.  Of course, I never questioned anything then, but have thought of this often since, esp in evaluating teachers.  Who was this teacher to determine what book was a "quality" one?  After all, shouldn't teachers want to encourage high school kids to read as much as possible?  More important, I think this reflected the shallowness of the teacher's own education and/or views.  Who, in the overall scheme of things, had a greater impact on America:  Babe Ruth or Damien de Veuster?  The winner is clear.  But I'm glad I was exposed to de Veuster; who knows if I'd have ever heard of him otherwise.  Still, the teacher's tacit smugness still rankles me.

At Amherst, I read far too many good and great books to recount.  One I will remember, in a 19th Century British Literature course, is John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman.  Now this novel was decidedly not 19th Century, although Fowles was British.  I think I remember it for two reasons.  We had to read it during our week-long preparation for final exams, an inter-regnum of sorts, I guess.  Then, our final exam question was to describe The French Lieutenant's Woman as a 19th Century novel.  And, there was a librarian, perhaps middle-aged and very attractive, if not winsome, at least to us, at Frost who a friend of mine and I characterized as The French Lieutenant's Woman.  Then there was The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was also an inter-regnum book to read, which we had to describe on our final exam as "a religious experience."  No, I don't know how I answered that one!

Recently I read an essay about biographers and their tendencies to gloss over the many imperfections of their subjects.  Perhaps these bios aren't quite hagiographies, but are darn close.  The essayist wrote, "What I find odd is that biographers apparently feel a need to depict their subjects as especially admirable human beings," even if they're not, even if in their private lives they were despicable.  It's as if the authors think they will diminish their own works by portraying the subjects as they really were, the whole picture, warts and all.  But perhaps that has become a characteristic of our times.  For a long time I have maintained that "only good people die."  And look at our growing number of halls of fame--schools, communities, businesses, and more-- and the like and the number of people who are inducted although they hardly are deserving.  Note, too, the faux Nobel Peace Prizes awarded (I purposely didn't write "earned.") to Al Gore and Barack Obama.  We think, perhaps, instead of diminishing the real accomplishments of those who do deserve such accolades, we elevate ourselves by honoring the mediocre--and worse.

And now, out to read--what else?