IN THE CROSS-CUTTING OF MEMORY...
I LEARNED EARLY ON that there were many things about the written word which dazzled me. I would read in parked cars while riding with my parents, in my back yard when I finished mowing the lawn, inside a tent when I went camping, in those jagged hours between dawn and getting up for the day and eating breakfast and going to school. I was enamoured by Frank Yerby, and African-American historical novelist, who wrote The Foxes of Harrow when I as ten-years old, and The Golden Hawk when I was twelve; the Italian/English novelist, Raphael Sabitini, who penned memorable epics filled with adventure and romance, with titles like Scaramouche and Captain Blood, when I was fourteen; as well as Graham M. Dean, who delighted my mind with novels of lesser note, like Herb Kent, West Point Cadet and Slim Evans and His Horse Lightening when I turned fifteen; and became completely absorbed by a writer born in North Dakota when I reached sixteen; a man whose daughter asked him one day, "Daddy, why do you write so fast?" And he answered, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!" His name was Louis L'Amour and he wrote about Hopalong Cassidy and a family named the Sacketts and Son of a Wanted Man and The Broken Gun, and other great adventure stories of the wild-wild west. Other than playing the game of baseball, the written word knocked my socks off...
...So the older I got, the more I read, and the more I read, the more bounteous my mind became, humbled by the writings of Ulysses and The Great Gatsby and Of Mice and Men and Fahrenheit 451, with names like Jane Austin and Harper Lee and Mark Twain and Charlotte Bronte and Miguel De Cervantes and Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald; and I then became hooked with the reading of contemporary stories by Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe and Jonathan Coe and John Cheever; as well as journalists like Murray Kempton and Jimmy Cannon and Robert Ruark and Westbrook Pegler; I carefully read every word that Jimmy Breslin wrote in the New York Herald Tribune, hoping that one day I, too, could write like that. In the best of all possible worlds, of course, this would have continued on forever.
And then they came, ennobled at first, even informative, folk like Edward R. Murrow and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite and Frank McGee, who began to appear on our televisions sets, updating us on what was happening in the nation and around the world, and we Americans put our books aside to give them a look and a listen.
It took awhile before the others began to bob-up like dead fish in a polluted sea, several decades, as a matter of fact; the yahoo crusaders, wonks and dweebs full of superficial snark, informing us that they were fair and balanced, that we were not smart enough to understand the truth of what was happening around us. The power of mass media had now arrived in the form of bully tyrants like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity; telling us that they had the fixins' to fix everything, with heart-stopping reality about what the future may hold if we made the wrong choices. On the flip side, we were then urged to lean forward by the hot air specialists over at MS NBC, with the always grouchy Chris Matthews and ever giddy Rachael Maddow, beseeching us to smother the personal chaos that O'Reilly and Hannity were spouting, to subordinate it, erase it, because they wanted to douse us their own interpretation of straight stuff. Obviously, in spite of the specifics, this great glob of bum steered information from either side consumed us.
So we allowed our reading habits to diminish and watched the buffoons on the tube more frequently, newspapers vanished, bookstores became filled with commissars of opinion instead of literature full of adventure and love and daring thoughts, and long-form investigative journalism began to disappear. In this bleak house, nothing else mattered except being right and dismissing anyone one the other side. Not laughter. Not love. Certainly not the simple pleasure of reading a book on a summer's afternoon.
There was no longer room in this dark vision for an Emily Dickinson or Jack London or John Steinbeck on the list of best-sellers; that was now reserved for the likes of Glen Beck and Ann Coulter and Donald Trump. The written word was now devoid of fantasy or magic, no awe in the presence of human beauty, no desire for spiritual union. We read nothing of decent husbands and loving mothers, of families that have triumphed over poverty, of those with intelligent hearts and pride in tact.
Yet, there remained folks out there, in the millions, who wished to read something other than this fiercely correct world of rules and anathemas; those who liked to dance at the midnight hour, or listen to the blues, or feel the awe of just having a full-out heart-busting good time; who were never attuned to an airless, sunless world with out joy or wonder or fantasy or enchantment.
In the end, however, every tyrant fails, and perhaps that means we can all get around to switching off the tube and return to reading finely-spun classics again; or just spend a dandy afternoon with Louie L'Amour, by flipping through The Cherokee Trail or The Comstock Load...
I LEARNED EARLY ON that there were many things about the written word which dazzled me. I would read in parked cars while riding with my parents, in my back yard when I finished mowing the lawn, inside a tent when I went camping, in those jagged hours between dawn and getting up for the day and eating breakfast and going to school. I was enamoured by Frank Yerby, and African-American historical novelist, who wrote The Foxes of Harrow when I as ten-years old, and The Golden Hawk when I was twelve; the Italian/English novelist, Raphael Sabitini, who penned memorable epics filled with adventure and romance, with titles like Scaramouche and Captain Blood, when I was fourteen; as well as Graham M. Dean, who delighted my mind with novels of lesser note, like Herb Kent, West Point Cadet and Slim Evans and His Horse Lightening when I turned fifteen; and became completely absorbed by a writer born in North Dakota when I reached sixteen; a man whose daughter asked him one day, "Daddy, why do you write so fast?" And he answered, "Because I want to see how the story turns out!" His name was Louis L'Amour and he wrote about Hopalong Cassidy and a family named the Sacketts and Son of a Wanted Man and The Broken Gun, and other great adventure stories of the wild-wild west. Other than playing the game of baseball, the written word knocked my socks off...
...So the older I got, the more I read, and the more I read, the more bounteous my mind became, humbled by the writings of Ulysses and The Great Gatsby and Of Mice and Men and Fahrenheit 451, with names like Jane Austin and Harper Lee and Mark Twain and Charlotte Bronte and Miguel De Cervantes and Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald; and I then became hooked with the reading of contemporary stories by Truman Capote and Tom Wolfe and Jonathan Coe and John Cheever; as well as journalists like Murray Kempton and Jimmy Cannon and Robert Ruark and Westbrook Pegler; I carefully read every word that Jimmy Breslin wrote in the New York Herald Tribune, hoping that one day I, too, could write like that. In the best of all possible worlds, of course, this would have continued on forever.
And then they came, ennobled at first, even informative, folk like Edward R. Murrow and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite and Frank McGee, who began to appear on our televisions sets, updating us on what was happening in the nation and around the world, and we Americans put our books aside to give them a look and a listen.
It took awhile before the others began to bob-up like dead fish in a polluted sea, several decades, as a matter of fact; the yahoo crusaders, wonks and dweebs full of superficial snark, informing us that they were fair and balanced, that we were not smart enough to understand the truth of what was happening around us. The power of mass media had now arrived in the form of bully tyrants like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity; telling us that they had the fixins' to fix everything, with heart-stopping reality about what the future may hold if we made the wrong choices. On the flip side, we were then urged to lean forward by the hot air specialists over at MS NBC, with the always grouchy Chris Matthews and ever giddy Rachael Maddow, beseeching us to smother the personal chaos that O'Reilly and Hannity were spouting, to subordinate it, erase it, because they wanted to douse us their own interpretation of straight stuff. Obviously, in spite of the specifics, this great glob of bum steered information from either side consumed us.
So we allowed our reading habits to diminish and watched the buffoons on the tube more frequently, newspapers vanished, bookstores became filled with commissars of opinion instead of literature full of adventure and love and daring thoughts, and long-form investigative journalism began to disappear. In this bleak house, nothing else mattered except being right and dismissing anyone one the other side. Not laughter. Not love. Certainly not the simple pleasure of reading a book on a summer's afternoon.
There was no longer room in this dark vision for an Emily Dickinson or Jack London or John Steinbeck on the list of best-sellers; that was now reserved for the likes of Glen Beck and Ann Coulter and Donald Trump. The written word was now devoid of fantasy or magic, no awe in the presence of human beauty, no desire for spiritual union. We read nothing of decent husbands and loving mothers, of families that have triumphed over poverty, of those with intelligent hearts and pride in tact.
Yet, there remained folks out there, in the millions, who wished to read something other than this fiercely correct world of rules and anathemas; those who liked to dance at the midnight hour, or listen to the blues, or feel the awe of just having a full-out heart-busting good time; who were never attuned to an airless, sunless world with out joy or wonder or fantasy or enchantment.
In the end, however, every tyrant fails, and perhaps that means we can all get around to switching off the tube and return to reading finely-spun classics again; or just spend a dandy afternoon with Louie L'Amour, by flipping through The Cherokee Trail or The Comstock Load...
What ah extraordinary piece of writing, so right-on it is almost scary.
ReplyDeleteFrank Loach
Am going out tonight to get Louie's The Cherokee Trail, in order to put some much needed air back into my life. Gilbert Raqndaq
ReplyDelete