by Andrew DuBois
The Tim Robbins character, a naive dreamer, stands before his evil boss in The Hudsucker Proxy ready to pitch the idea he's been working on for a lifetime. He pulls out a piece of paper, unfolds it and holds up a drawing of a simple circle. "You know," he says, "for kids!"
The absurdity of this scene is matched only by its honesty; children find happiness in simple things. Or at least, it never took much to make me happy: building "houses" with a sheet draped over some chairs, jumping on haystacks, and best of all, reading (or being read to). When I was really young, my Mom would hold me in her lap and magically decipher the code that I could not yet understand. Although "literature" may now designate every novel and movie you've ever loved, there is one point on the evo lutionary scale of the reader which is even more affecting than any that might result from formal education. That point is the one at which there is no "literature" or "text;" rather, there is only the "book." It is a secret; those marks tell a story. To tell you that story, someone must know the secret.
The religious overtones here are not accidental. My mother was the high priest, interpreting holy scripture to a one-member congregation. It is thus no coincidence that I formed an alternate belief system around the act of reading, distinctly religious in nature: the centered sacred text(s), the cult of the author and their divine gift (Romanticism's "inspiration"), and the interpreter, whose gift is almost equally divine. My mother must've had a helping hand from God, because by reading she could keep me still. "Saint" Robert McCloskey would especially do the trick; his Blueberries for Sal never ceased to draw a gasp, a titter, or a cheer from my happy lips, no matter how seemingly unornamented the passage:
Little Sal picked three berries and dropped them in her little tin pail... kuplink, kuplink, kuplunk!She picked three more berries and ate them. Then she picked more berries and dropped one in the pail - kuplunk! And the rest she ate. Then Little Sal ate all four berries out of her pail!
It was meaningful because it spoke to me (like Sal, I had a pail, some overalls, and a mischievous streak) and magical because it was spoken to me. Plus, more exclamation points than a Ginsburg poem, read with just enough careful enthusiasm to please but not frighten any seraphim drifting nearby.
It's hard for me to remember now whether the act of reading (as opposed to what was read) lost any magic when I became my own interpreter; probably so, as the act was no longer a mystery. But becoming one's own interpreter, while betraying the secrets, brings with it an early taste of knowledge. It thus seems to me that the point at which one begins to read is the point at which one begins to understand literature not only as a medium of entertainment, but also of self-improvement.
Even if I was conscious of books' potential, I resisted. My mother finally offered to give me a quarter for every book I read. The deal, I discovered, was not much of a sacrifice on my part, as there were plenty of books that I could imaginatively read myself into. Living vicariously through Ralph S. Mouse in Beverly Cleary's The Mouse and The Motorcycle was one of my first attempts at amusing myself with words. Like me, "Ralph never knew what to say when people told him he had grown," and he rode his motorcycle as seriously as I rode my bicycle. Keith, Ralph's human friend, was a boy much like me. Lest I wonder about language barriers between the two, Cleary explained, "neither the mouse nor the boy was surprised that each could understand each other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language."
My understanding of language was unsophisticated, and I had hardly drawn any lines between the metaphorical and the literal. Just as action flicks become an orgy not only of violence but also literalism (Arnold saying "I let him go" after dropping a pr isoner off a cliff; Keanu noting that a villain "lost his head" after a decapitation), so are kids books a destruction of metaphor. The point at which children begin to formulate a more "adult" understanding about the literal and the figurative is the point at which Amelia Bedilia books become funny.
Most kids who read generally make the transition from Beverly Cleary to Judy Blume and I was no exception. However, I think I made it too early. In third grade I tackled Then Again, Maybe I Won't, the story of Tony Miglione and his adolescent problems. Of course, I usually didn't know when she was dead-on, seeing as I was still in elementary school. Forays into the "big kids' books" had their disastrous results - Mrs. Wrenn, my teacher, was not amused when I asked what a wet dream was during class. But the book also cleared up a few questions. For example, even third grader boys get erections, but no one takes time to explain what the hell is going on. I would always get them during church service, when we would stand to sing the closing hymn. Like clo ckwork - "Will the congregation please rise . . . " - as if by an edict from God. Since I was bored to tears in church, I made the obvious connection: your pecker got stiff when you were really bored (I thought it was supposed to wake you up). Looking aro und the building, I would try to determine who else was as bored as me so we could talk about something other than Sunday school after the service.
Well, Judy Blume taught me a thing or two:
When I read Joel's paperbacks I can feel myself get hard. But other times when I'm not even thinking about anything it goes up too. I don't know what to do about that. I mean, if my brain is working right it's supposed to control my whole body. Bu t if I don't have control over that part, what good is my brain?
Now that I reread it, I don't see how a kid as clueless as myself figured out anything at all, since Blume never writes "penis" or even a popular euphemism (in a nice touch of irony, the book's dedication is "for Dick"). I guess a third grader is accustom ed to reading for subtlety.
When rereading books I enjoyed as a child I am always delighted by the books my mother read to me, and by those I first read myself. But books like Blume's leave me feeling ambivalent; perhaps there is too much emotional baggage attached. In my mind, t he books that begin to deal with issues that cause problems at later point in my life are now unenjoyable; whereas the "problem-free" books allow me to happily step back into a romanticized childhood. Which proves that while I most often read for knowledg e, I can still read for magic, too.
Go to:
When Everything Was Kinky: Judy
Blume - by Susannah Felts
Reader Response Romance - by Carrie
McLaren