I.
Apparently, there is a case to be made for reading fiction. You are surprised by this, I am sure. I read this week in the New York Times the following piece by Annie Murphy Paul:
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It is with chagrin, of course, that I recognize fully the reasons why studies like these may be necessary and entirely relevant. Remember, it was only weeks ago that we were informed that going to college is snobbish. So, it stands to reason that Paul can begin her commentary as such,
". . . the old-fashioned virtues of reading novels can seem faded, even futile."
I admit that I am old-fashioned and, yes, I did go to college and, snob or not, I have long seen that our culture has drifted away from most of the things that are slow and meandering sorts of pastimes, the kind that do not bring instantaneous gratification. Of course, the argument can certainly be made that this is a matter of perspective when it comes to reading a good book. I almost immediately find pleasure and thrill and delight as I read, but it does take time to finish a book, which is more and more something that few among us think we have to spare. There is also, of course, the growing (or has it been there for some time?) perception in our country that being well-read or literary in any sense is not necessarily a personal quality to which one should aspire or admit. See my previous comment above regarding college. I, on the other hand, would prefer at least a few more leaders and lawmakers who were readers and writers and thinkers. No, there is no requirement or wish that we all be brainiacs, but there is something to be said, I think, for intelligence and aptitude and perceptiveness. I understand the difference between elitism and elite-ness and I tend to think that it is quite patriotic and distinctly American to strive for the latter. But, I digress.
Paul discusses a number of studies that have considered the effects of reading fiction on our brains, the results of which corroborate what we readers have intuited for our entire reading lives, the idea that <gasp> reading enables us to better understand the world around and us and the people in it.
"Indeed, in one respect novels go beyond simulating reality to give readers an experience unavailable off the page: the opportunity to enter fully into other people's thoughts and feelings."
"Scientists call this capacity of the brain to construct a map of other people's intentions 'theory of mind.' Narratives offer a unique opportunity to engage this capacity, as we identify with characters' longings and frustrations, guess at their hidden motives and track their encounters with friends and enemies, neighbors and lovers."
I am the father of a daughter who is also an eager and devoted reader. I have seen from the earliest years of her life the effects of reading on her mind. She reasons, she empathizes, she connects issues, she thinks through. I can tell from her questions about books she has read and from our discussions of them that she is able to consider different and opposing viewpoints through her experience of and her understanding of a variety of characters. Thus, the following point also did not come as a revelation to me.
"A 2010 study by Dr. Mar found a similar result in preschool-age children: the more stories they had read to them, the keener their theory of mind -- an effect that was also produced by watching movies but, curiously, not by watching television."
The article clarifies the second part of that quote, of course, and perhaps the clarification is a reach, but it does make complete sense that children can better learn and become equipped for encountering the many and complex layers of human nature the more they hear and read stories.
II.
I regularly check out audio books from our local libraries as a bit of a reading diversion. I am a shameless Bob Edwards Show devotee and his radio program is the first thing I tune to as I leave the house each morning. But, of course, there are other times throughout the day when I am in the car and there also may actually be times when I am not as interested in whomever Mr. Edwards is interviewing or necessarily in the topic at-hand and an audio book is a handy bit of entertainment for the journey.
I rarely listen to novels on audio, preferring instead to seek out things that might not require as much of my focused attention. I am supposed to be driving, after all. Also, most audio fiction is "performed" and I can do without the different character voices and sound effects and dramatic orchestral arrangements. So, I avoid these, with one exception. I am a closet fan of historical thrillers, Steve Berry being by far my favorite author in this category, and I consider this part of my reading life a bit of a guilty pleasure. I have read one Berry novel as well as one of the Dan Brown novels in printed book form, but it is a general rule of thumb to reserve these books for a special in-car-only category. Call it silly, and it is, but this has become one of the quirky ways by which I organize my life.
Anyhow, other than my penchant for the likes of Steve Berry (see The Templar Legacy, The Alexandria Link, The Venetian Betrayal, and The Charlemagne Pursuit, among many others), I generally stick to the realm of non-fiction for my audio book listening. I have "read" a number of memoirs and political books through my car's CD player, but the audio book category can also provide opportunity to discover books that I would otherwise completely ignore, as I tend to suppose that I would not find as much pleasure in actually reading a written copy of most of these books. Among them would be my latest audio book, The Pun Also Rises, by John Pollack.
As a reader, words and language are of particular interest to me. I am a lover of crosswords and word scrambles and other such challenges. The origins and roots of words and phrases are also a fascination. Pollack's book is a fun exploration of what I consider to be one of the gifts that language gives us, the capability to find multiple and playful meanings in words and phrases. Do not think, though, that this book is simply a catalog of eye rollers and groaners. Pollack delves pretty deeply not only into the history of puns, but also into the rise of the modern English language, the physiology of hearing and comprehending the spoken word, and the surprising importance of puns to our linguistic and cognitive development.
I enjoy books that prompt me to consider the nature of Memory. I consider myself a "listener" and a "rememberer," and when I think about those terms, I am thinking about them in relation to the long-term and collective memory of a place and of a people. I clarify my meaning since, it is important to note, my wife would deem laughable my contention that I listen or that I remember much that is of everyday or practical importance, such as where I last put down my cell phone or my keys. I have lately read somewhere that Memory is one of the last remaining functions of our extraordinary human brain that scientists have yet to fully understand -- information that I find utterly fascinating. I am no expert, but if you ask me, and there stands no reason for you to do so, the ways our brain stores and recalls the past may very well be one of the clues to uncovering the secrets and mysteries that make us human and set us apart, in some small way, from the other living things on this planet.
My grandmother who, if she lives to see the coming summer, will turn ninety-one years old this year has recently remarked to me that she spends far more of her time now remembering the past than thinking of the present or the future. She apologizes to me for it, and I beg her to believe me when I say that I do not feel in the least that she should. I have often longed for the time to sit there with her for a long stretch of hours and merely listen as she travels around in those thoughts. A particular phrase from Wendell Berry sticks out for me when I think of her now. In A Place on Earth, Burley Coulter is recounting the last years of his mother's life, when he would sit with her in their front room in the evenings and listen to her stories. Burley says of his mother in those days that "the past has come near to her." I can think of no better words to describe the place in her life where my grandmother finds herself now. Not only that; I am also beginning to believe that being in that place may very well be something about old age to which we can look forward. If I am so lucky as to live to see the age of ninety-one, then I hope I will be able to find pleasure in an ability to put aside trivial cares and worries that plague me now on a daily basis and exchange them for time to simply remember.
What does one remember after nine decades alive? It is difficult enough to imagine the world and our lives ninety years hence, so how must it feel to know that you can look back on such a span of time? How cloudy is a memory after all those many years? Certainly, there are some things my grandmother cannot remember, but there are some things that I cannot remember, and my memory is far younger than hers. Nevertheless, her memory has obviously held onto some things from deep in the past that she sees in her mind with the kind of clarity of the present tense. The same goes for all of us, no matter the length of time we have walked this earth gathering memories. There have to be things we get wrong, details we have missed or replaced with inaccuracies. So, what does that say about our own story and how we tell it to ourselves? What is true and what is not? How much can we trust our memory?
These questions and others were on my mind as I was caught up in my Wendell Berry binge and they were compounded by finishing the book that ended that binge. Returning to my reading list, I picked up The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes, the most recent winner of the Man Booker Prize. It is a personal aim to read as many Man Booker winners as I am able and so, the record of works to receive that honor constitute a separate "sub-list" of reading material for me. I can count on selecting something from that august assembly and finding not only the kind of book that appeals to me, but one that is assured to be of distinctive quality.
I am certain it has happened before, but it does not happen enough for me to recall the last time that a book both satiated me and left me utterly disappointed. I am the type who favors the understated irony and dry, irreverent wit that typifies British humor. That and the quick pace of the narrative made the book difficult for me to put down and I found myself waiting expectantly for the next revelation and plot twist. The ending or sense thereof, I suppose I should say, not only stunned me, but actually left me thoroughly annoyed. In an effort to avoid being a spoiler, all I will say is that I object when authors toy with me. It smacks of arrogance. Make me think, by all means and please, but do not be cute.
That being said, questions like the ones above have stayed with me since finishing The Sense of an Ending, so Barnes succeeded fairly enough on that crucial request of mine. My astonishment upon reading the last page reminds me of finishing The Life of Pi, another winner of the Man Booker Prize. And, in spite of my completely unwarranted dislike of Julian Barnes -- and I sense that he might just as well despise his reader on some level -- his book did prompt me to ask questions of myself that I had not before thought of and for that, I am grateful.
I am on a Wendell Berry binge. It happens from time to time. I will be working my way diligently through my reading list and something -- I never know exactly what, but likely it is a troubled soul or full heart or heavy mind or a lack of serious sleep, something that has pulled me away from myself temporarily -- will cause me to trudge purposefully up the stairs to the little shelf in the corner where my Berry volumes rest. I will open A Place on Earth or That Distant Land or Hannah Coulter and then I will be ravenous for weeks, reading all the Wendell Berry fiction I own and sometimes prowling the library shelves for those that I do not. A binge will begin simply enough. "I'll just read this one," I will tell myself, but then I cannot imagine ever again leaving the world of Port William. I cannot imagine ever again reading something that will move me to tears. I will remember all the books that were on my mind and on my list before my binge and I know that not a one of them will measure up to this. I assuredly will be disappointed. And so, I will continue. Today, I am finishing The Memory of Old Jack. It will be all I can do to not immediately return to page one and begin again. If I had to choose the best introduction to Port William and to the world of Berry's fiction, it would be this book about Uncle Jack Beechum or it would be A Place on Earth.
My father's mother is the last of twelve children born to a man named Joshua Liddle between 1897 and 1921. It was my first and greatest blessing to have spent a large portion of my childhood with my grandmother, and in that time I came to know all of those brothers and sisters -- even the oldest one -- save for the three who were gone from this world before I came into it. I spent time in their kitchens, I heard their voices, I felt their hands upon my shoulder. Through my grandmother and through those men and women I came to know a world that is becoming lost to memory. It is a world where people gathered what they needed from their land. It is a world defined by the turn of seasons and by work. It is a world that was utterly changed by World War Two, an event of such importance that for those who lived it, it is simply The War. "Where was he in the war?" "Oh, that was before the war." As I write, my grandmother is the last living link to this world among my family. I feel one of her gifts to me was to let me live in it through her memory and through the stories told by all those brothers and sisters. It made me an old soul, but it also made me who I am. When I first read Wendell Berry, I was struck by how it drew me back to these people of mine. He seemed to have written what I felt in my heart, and walking around in his world of Port William was, for me, exactly like walking around the world of my kin.
Andy Catlett is a character who has been given this same gift.
"Yet, as he crosses the road, Andy is aware as always that he approaches a past much older than his own, that he cannot remember. But it is a past that, listening to Old Jack's and his grandparents' talk, he can enter with his imagination, and in that way he has taken possession of it. Since boyhood he has been Old Jack's listener, the student of his memory. And there has come to be a part of his mind that is spacious and old, hung with the elaborately interconnecting web of Port William lineages, containing landscapes changed beyond recognition years before his birth, peopled by men and women and children whose names have turned mossy on their graves."
I have come to know and to love a lot of people who live in Port William. I cannot choose a favorite character, but there are those who I relish reading about -- Burley Coulter, Mat Feltner, Nathan Coulter, Jayber Crow, and, of course, Uncle Jack Beechum. Jack is a man defined by his work and by his understanding that he is only passing through a story that started at the beginning of time and that will go on without him when he is gone. The land, his place, his farm does not belong to him. Rather, he belongs to it and not in a way that is permanent. When he becomes too old to stay alone on the place and to tend to it as it should be tended to, in spite of his grieving at what is passing away from him, he knows that in a man named Elton Penn, who eventually will own the farm, he has done right by the place. He has found someone who also understands his responsibility and for what it is that he must toil. There are many things I love about Old Jack Beechum. He does not waste words or time. He is constantly moving and he has little respect for someone who is not up and about and working by the time the sun has cast its light upon the earth anew.
"Wheeler does not estimate, at least not about what has been earned, and so the form of their business dealings has come to be this terrible argument, which they both enjoy a great deal. 'God Almighty, no!' Wheeler will say. 'Where in hell did you ever get such a figure as that?' And Old Jack will say, 'Out of my head, by God, that knew this business before you was born, and had a hat on it three hours before you was out of bed.'"
No matter how many times I read The Memory of Old Jack, it is still just as powerful a moment each time I read the last paragraph. I am there with the other men late in the day in December as they work together stripping tobacco, and Wheeler Catlett has come to join them. Elton Penn remarks that Old Jack would appreciate the good harvest, the brightness and size of the tobacco leaves, and they begin together a rememberance of "the old boss."
"'Where are you, son? Damn it to hell. It's daylight!' In all their minds his voice lies beneath a silence. And in the hush of it they are aware of something that passed from them and now returns: his stubborn biding with them to the end, his keeping of faith with them who would live after him, and what perhaps none of them has yet thought to call his gentleness, his long gentleness toward them and toward this place where they are at work. They know that his memory holds them in common knowledge and common loss. The like of him will not soon live again in this world, and they will not forget him."
My copies of Wendell Berry's novels are well-marked by pencil strokes underlining passage after passage like the ones above. I have often thought that I should simply take the time to underline entire books. Because, each time I reread one of them, I am struck again by the turn of a particular phrase, a certain metaphor, and just the lyrical prose that Wendell Berry creates. I can feel the rhythm of life in Port William and in the world in the construction of his narrative. And, for me, that is what makes for great writing; when the most powerful things said by a book are not found in the actual words on the page. There is something that lies beneath, something that comes through but is never said, never directly written. The writing itself and the characters are so true, so genuinely brought forth, that the point is made and the most important questions are asked.
