Unless It Moves the Human Heart Page 8

  “They’re better than a college education,” says Diana, looking straight at me.

  “So, when the company I worked for sold off its apparel division,” Donna goes on, “I decided to enjoy the luxury of staying home to care for my two babies. In between diaper changes and mealtimes, I dusted off these books and began to read. I learned firsthand from Ben Franklin about his ordeals with civic life in Philadelphia by reading his autobiography. John Locke explained to me his curious theory about sending kids out in the winter cold without enough warm clothing to instill a strong constitution. Charles Darwin described to me his voyages on the Beagle. You might say that in some way my love of literature grew out of my love for my children. I just kept reading more and more books for me and for them, for my professors, and for the hell of it. Eventually, I took to writing.”

  As they recount their early literary experiences, I recall serving on a panel at Alex Haley’s farm in Tennessee many years ago. One of my fellow panelists was Hillary Clinton, whom I’d never much liked because her life seemed so focused and calculated, a wholly political structure. But on this panel, where the participants were asked to describe their first encounters with books, Hillary became a little girl in Illinois, riding her bike to the library. As she told of her first love of books, her face relaxed into a child’s, her voice softened. She was in every way beautiful, and I never thought of her harshly again.

  Diana says, “It didn’t take a particular book to make me want to become a writer. It simply took the act of reading. My mother used to bring me to story hour at the library, where all of us toddlers would listen to a story and then make crafts with tissue paper and lots of glue. At home, she’d read to me from the worn paperbacks she’d read to my older brothers when they were little. At some point during kindergarten, I lay in bed and looked at the pages of The Berenstain Bears and the New Baby. The Bears were mainstays in our home literature. This particular story introduced “Sister Bear,” a name that my brothers were sure to break out when they’d sing “Happy Birthday” to me in subsequent years. I think my mom had read the story to me so many times that I had it memorized. But I looked from the pictures to the words under the glow of the nightlight. Suddenly, in the middle of a sentence, I knew what the words said. I finished the book. I picked up other Berenstain Bears books. I could read those, too. I wrote my first book soon after: a tale of what happens at the Nativity after Christmas Day. The computer paper, bound with a construction paper cover, was light on text and heavy on stick figures. I proudly carried it to school.

  “Now that I could read, I brought home stacks of books from the library. In second grade, I carted around books on the solar system and became a mini-astronomer. I read books that were way over my head—The Diary of Anne Frank in third grade. I knocked off three-hundred-page novels in a day. I raced through series like The Baby-sitters Club and Sweet Valley Twins. I’d get in trouble for staying up late at night and reading. I’d hear my dad coming up the stairs, so I’d turn out the light and hide my book. Usually I was too late.”

  “You must have been way ahead of the other kids,” says Nina.

  “My friend Lena was the only person who could keep up with me,” says Diana. “And we were neck-and-neck. We’d play dolls at each other’s houses, then sit in our own areas of the room and read. And we were both writers: I had a series about a group of girls in Key West, and she wrote about a similar group. I outlined my plot summaries in a little blue notebook. Then I’d wake up on Saturday mornings, sit at the new family laptop, and type. The tales became more elaborate as I grew older: twenty pages, thirty pages, fifty pages, culminating in a two-hundred-page ‘special edition’ story in sixth grade.”

  “Holy shit!” says Donna.

  “Does everyone agree that girls do this more than boys?” Ana asks. “I don’t know how many times I’ve heard of little Dianas knowing they wanted to be writers from the age of three.”

  “Boys are backward,” says Suzanne.

  “All except us boys,” says Robert.

  “It may stem from girls anticipating fewer career choices, until lately,” says George. “Writing was a sure way to make your mark in the world because you were only competing with yourself.”

  “I think little girls are more self-contained. They like the privacy of books,” says Inur.

  “And the romance,” says Ana.

  “Boys don’t keep diaries,” says Jasmine.

  “And there’s the fact that girls are smarter,” says Suzanne. A stiff wind batters one of the windows like a rim shot. We all laugh.

  “You said something about the way writers ought to read,” says Robert.

  “Yes. Because reading is knowledge, and it is possible to have too much of it. As a writer you should know as much as you need to know, but no more than that. Read like a picky thief. Stephen Spender cautioned the young writer to be ‘on guard against the corruption that comes from excessive sophistication,’ which is the same thing Rimbaud meant when he advised young writers to toss away their dictionaries, and find their own language. Spender and Rimbaud are all I need to make this point, which would be bolstered and deepened not a whit if I cited a dozen other supporting sources or quoted them in German. Knowledge to a writer is unlike knowledge to other people. It is valuable only to the point of satisfying the writer’s artistic aims.”

  “You seem to be advocating a kind of ignorance,” says Nina.

  “That’s precisely what I’m advocating. As a writer your ignorance is immensely useful to you. With it you find your own way. If you read too much, you won’t trust your ignorance. You’ll learn everything that is known and nothing that is unknown.”

  “But isn’t it an act of arrogance to dismiss knowledge so casually?” asks Kristie.

  “Arrogance or self-confidence, depending on one’s temperament. The truth is that writers do not look up to their sources of learning. They look upon them as equals, and that even includes the man of little Latin and Greek. Writers are not passive recipients of knowledge, which accounts for most of us having been very bad students. Of course, Diana is an exception.” She sticks out her tongue. “Instead of sitting back and taking it all in, treat the learning that has gone before you as ripe fruit that has been waiting for you to pluck it. In fact, it has.”

  “The trouble I have with reading too much is envy,” says Jasmine. “The best writers make everything look so easy.”

  “But it’s not easy,” says Nina. “We all know that. So how does one make it look easy?”

  “Through work.” I give them Alexander Pope: “ ‘True ease in writing comes from art, not chance / As those move easiest who have learned to dance.’ ”

  “You just come up with that stuff?” asks Sven. “Like a Bartlett’s?”

  “You know how kids can sing all the words of every song they hear on the radio? That’s how I am with literature. Love it, learn it.”

  “I think you know too much,” says Sven.

  “Yeats has a quote like Pope’s,” says Robert. “ ‘If it does not seem like a moment’s thought / all the stitching and unstitching will be for naught.’ ”

  “Robert knows too much,” I tell Sven.

  “Okay,” says Jasmine. “But I still feel more removed from the great writers than akin to them. And I sure don’t see myself as their equals. Whenever I read a passage that bowls me over, I think, ‘I could never do that.’ ”

  “You may think that. But the passage remains in your mind nonetheless. Because you’re a writer, everything you read that you like will stay with you. It’s just how it is. Eventually you’ll steal it. And I’ll tell you something else—that by incorporating a great writer into your work, you are actually saying, ‘I could do that.’ ”

  “I don’t recall the first book I read that made me want to write,” says Veronique. “As a child, I found it very difficult to read on my own, so my mother read to me all the time. I loved animal stories, Lassie and Lad, Black Beauty, My Friend Flicka, Trumpet of the Swan, Charlotte
’s Web, and Bambi, which is actually a thick, detailed book, unlike the movie. I loved The Last of the Wang-Doodles, Call of the Wild, White Fang, Sounder, and there were countless others which I don’t remember. One evening, when I was eight, my parents were entertaining a few people and I remember sitting down at a desk and trying to write a few short stories. That was my first attempt. Later, in sixth grade, I tried again to write a story. I have kept a diary on and off since I was ten, a project started by my fifth-grade teacher. In my twenties, I wrote a very bad play, and in my thirties, I wrote my first novel, not very well executed, but I still like the idea.”

  “Were your schooldays like Diana’s?” Kristie asks.

  “I was never very good in school. I lacked the confidence to believe I could write one day,” says Veronique. “Until recently, it seemed like an unattainable dream. Now that I’m part of the MFA program, I actually feel that I’ll be able to complete a good piece of work.”

  “There’s no doubt about it,” I tell her. “What about you, Suzanne?”

  She looks up with a helpless expression. “How could someone barely able to read ever hope to become a writer? My answer was Helen Keller, though I felt a powerful impulse to write before I read her autobiography. I lacked both the method and the nerve. In third grade, I realized my reading ability was different from that of my classmates. Whenever my eyes traveled the land of books, without warning, letters would reverse themselves abruptly, nose-diving off the page, preventing me from locating where a sentence started or ended. The rote practice of reading aloud confused me completely, further eroding my already meager confidence. I could never finish a paragraph. Today’s educational system would likely place me in the ranks of those suffering profound forms of dyslexia, but in New York’s public school system of the 1950s, I was dismissively labeled a ‘slow learner.’ Sentenced to spend eight years in PS 138’s back rows, it took me hours to get through just a few pages of the simplest books.

  “But Miss Keller’s book convinced me for the first time that I would be able to write. Through touch and vibration, she opened a universe of written expression to me. When her teacher placed Helen’s hand on her heart, demonstrating communication beyond words and symbols, I felt that I too might be heard. When I read of Helen’s indomitable determination, in her own words—‘those who bear their burdens as if they were privileges’—how she was able to write without sight or hearing, I was inspired. Only a powerful emotional connection to certain authors’ narratives pulled me through. What Ms. Keller began led to my counting Anne Frank, Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and Emily Dickinson among newfound friends.”

  “Did your folks encourage you?” asks Jasmine.

  “Progressive downward spirals caused our family to move into ever more dangerous neighborhoods,” Suzanne says. “Several of our apartments overhung decaying storefronts on streets where crooked buildings pushed together meant cheaper rents. Libraries were quiet places of refuge. Solidly faced buildings of brick, they were always warm and well lit. Order imposed by Dewey’s decimals, coupled with furniture smelling of Murphy’s oil soap, gleaming bathrooms with scrubbed tiles, sparkling mirrors and fresh paper towels, were all proof their welcome was sincere. Since books were kryptonite to the rest of my family, as soon as I learned our new address, I would send a letter to myself. In the post office, depositing the envelope in the metal mouth marked ‘In Town,’ I was never sure I could move my hand out of the mail slot before the cover snapped shut and took off my fingers. I waited for that card with each mail arrival as if it were a passport, positive proof I was a member of the community of thinkers.”

  “Amazing,” says Ana. “Wonderful.”

  Inur’s turn. “In high school,” she says, “at the end of the school year, all the lockers had to be cleaned out. Locker clean-out was organized by grade. Seniors, who were on the first floor and wore the coveted blue blazers, went first, while freshmen, who were easily spotted on the third floor in their maroon blazers, went last. During locker clean-out, the trash overflowed with loose-leaf binders and spiral notebooks still filled with the year’s notes. Some kids were brazen enough to discard textbooks. Whatever didn’t make it into the trash was left on the floor. I would roam the halls afterward to see what was left behind. I found four copies of Hamlet, three copies of Night, and two of Macbeth. My greatest find was discovering a copy of A Streetcar Named Desire. At the time, I was unaware of who Tennessee Williams was, and what A Streetcar Named Desire was about. All I cared about was finding out who was the shirtless man on the cover. Was he an actor? Was he the author? But more importantly, did Marlon Brando still have that body, and was he single?”

  “Yeah!” from the women.

  “Okay, Robert.” I point to him. “You started all this. What do you think the connection between reading and writing is?”

  “Oh,” he says. “I just wanted to hear from the others.”

  “No, you don’t. Spill.”

  “Well,” he says, “since I labor in both the dungeon of daily restaurant drudgery and the mines of weekly journalism, most influences on my work operate in the metaphysical arena of addition by subtraction. I read a lot of commentary on food and sports, and then make a daily novena to Sister Regina della Cucina, patron saint of cooking and concision. So far, so good. I was a precocious reader as a child, urged on by the intellectual aspirations of my college-educated mother, and the severe rule (and equally severe rulers) of the Little Dominican Sisters, who lacked charity. It was expected of my mother’s children that we would read ‘above grade level’ from kindergarten onwards. When I was in the seventh grade, test results showed I read like a twelfth-grader. Armed with this information, I asked if I could take Marybeth Keegan to the movies by myself. I quickly learned the difference between reading like a twelfth-grader and being treated like one. I wrote poetry as a kid, probably because it seemed easier than fiction. The nuns were delighted, and this only served to solidify my reputation as a sensitive child.”

  “Which you still are,” says George.

  “Maybe,” says Robert. “But on the whole, I would rather have been a juvenile delinquent. I frequently turn to poetry at day’s end, in spite of Wallace Stevens’s exhortation that poetry, like prayer, is best enjoyed in the morning.”

  Kristie looks at me. “What about you? Was there an author or a book that got you going?”

  “Not a book. But a moment.” I tell them about my grandfather, my mother’s father, who had gown up as an artist in Berlin. When he brought his family to America, the only work he could get was as a sign painter—elegant hand-painted signs for stores and other businesses in the Bronx, where he set up shop. He would ride the Third Avenue El to and from work, returning to my grandparents’ tenement apartment on St. Mark’s Place in downtown Manhattan. But at least twice a week, he would stop at my parents’ apartment in Gramercy Park before returning home. He would come to read me stories when I was three or four years old. Or he would tell me stories he made up, sitting at the end of my little bed. My grandfather, whom I called Patta, looked like a gentle patriarch, with white hair, high cheekbones, and mirthful eyes.

  “One night he sat with me and said nothing. I asked him, What about my story, Patta? He said he was tired that night, and would I tell him a story instead? ‘But I don’t know a story, Patta,’ I said. He said, ‘Sure you do. What did you do today? Tell me that story.’ It happened that on that day one of the mothers of the neighborhood had taken a bunch of kids to Palisades Park in New Jersey. So I told Patta what we had done at the amusement park—the water rides, the cotton candy. I had my first jelly apple, I told him. I narrated my day. He seemed amazed, enthralled. And so I lengthened the story, and made stuff up, about red waterfalls, and wild speeding boats in the shapes of turtles. All sorts of things. And my grandfather’s eyes got wider and wider, and he looked at me as if mine was the only voice in the world.

  “That’s when I learned what power a writer has. I never wanted to give it up.”
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  “What exactly is that power?” asks Sven.

  “I had made my grandfather see what I had seen, with words. The first task of a writer is to make the reader see. And I had done it.”

  “First you indicate that you think that reading is no different from any experience a writer has,” says Robert. “Then you suggest that it’s special and indispensable.”

  “It’s not different from other experiences in terms of what it teaches. You learn from a war. You learn from a love affair. You learn from a book. A year spent in a rain forest is at least as useful an experience as reading a book, especially one about a rain forest. What I mean by reading being differently useful to writers is that it embraces us with our own world of thought and expression, like our mother tongue. Other worlds may be interesting, fascinating, even enthralling. But in none of these others are you wholly free. The artist is the only free person. You are free when you read. You are free when you write.”

  I tell them about a poetry reading I went to in Moscow in the late 1980s. Andrei Voznesensky was the main attraction. There were 14,000 people present, the size of a crowd at an American college basketball game. “Why do you suppose all those good Communists showed up to hear Voznesensky read?”

  “It was a way to be free,” says Inur.

  “It was a way to escape,” says Ana.