A NOVEL EXPERIENCE

 

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (07-06-23)

 

     The summer is a great time to crack open a book and lose yourself in world of someone else's making, a place so magical that you never want to come back. That is, until a lifeguard blows a screeching whistle right in your ear at somebody in the pool. DON'T SIT ON THE ROPES! By the way, a pool is the ONLY place where it's not dangerous to sit on a rope. I have my favorite types of music, I'm very picky about films and I only seem to watch television from the '60s, '70s and '80s. But fiction is my chance to get a glimpse of any other culture, gender or social class, at any period of history, and I take full advantage of it every day. My awe of the talent of the novelist is boundless. 

     I'm an avid reader, you might say a voracious reader, because it would be faster for me to actually eat the book than to read it. I'm a slow reader. If I started "War and Peace" in high school I would still be on the first part of the book, and I'd be thinking to myself, WOW, when is there going to be peace around here?

     I have my favorites of course. John Steinbeck can bring you to the depths of despair, and what seems hopeless often represents a choice, a set of possibilities that people navigate either well or poorly. After reading a chapter, doing the dishes doesn't seem quite so bad. If you come over and I have exceptionally clean flatware, you can thank John Steinbeck. Anne Tyler is another one of my favorites. Her protagonists, which she insists are not her, sometimes undergo weighty struggles in ordinary situations that are revealed in anecdotal details and amusing dialogue. She makes adversity fun, as it certainly should be.

     Larry McMurtry has a vast range that not many other writers can boast. He can take you from Texas to Montana on a cattle drive, or maybe you'll be stuck your whole life in Anarene, but by the end of the book you'll have traveled just as far. Toni Morrison will give you some perspective and empathy. Herman Wouk, Gore Vidal and James A. Michener will drop you off in a foreign location or period of history, and pick you up later when you're a little smarter. History is much easier to grasp when there's not a test at the end.

     Maybe you want a fun summer escape. Ellmore Leonard is your guy. He's written so many great crime stories that if you read a few, you'll start thinking like a criminal, perhaps leading to a life in politics. John Irving will make you consider the virtues of wrestling, bears and paranoia more often than is medically necessary.

     Teachers and parents always tell you when you're growing up that you can be anything you want to be, but that's not true, is it? I can't be a Black slave or a teen-aged girl or a Russian spy (If I was a Russian spy I certainly wouldn't tell YOU about it, nor if I was a teen-aged girl for that matter). But within the pages of a book, if you can dream it you can live it, if only for a moment. Maybe you're tired of being an astronaut and you always wanted to be a minimum-wage food service worker. You can read "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair and toil in the unsanitary conditions you've longed for.  

     Here are a few books that I loved, and if you're not familiar with them you can thank me later (and don't listen to an audio book and think you've read them): "The Shipping News;" "Cold Sassy Tree;" "Empire Falls;" "Lincoln;" "Billy Bathgate;" "King Rat;" "Brazil;" "An American Tragedy;" "Rules of Civility;" "Prep;" "Less;" "Jazz:" "Don't Stop the Carnival;" there are so many more I could write a book just of titles. You can let me know your list.

     A good novel requires a certain commitment of time, longer than just, say, skimming through some classified documents to see if there's any juicy secrets you can share with your friends. But for that time you will be amply rewarded. You'll find out about things you never realized you didn't know existed. You'll learn them not by somebody telling them to you, but absorbing them by accident through the eyes of characters lovingly and painstakingly created. I like to think that writing would be similar to what I do, if my words had meaning and made sense. I curled up with a good book last night, maybe for too long, because this morning my hair looks a little weird.