Why Bother Reading?

How many “shoulds” do you have on your reading list? If you’re like me, the list is longer than a cross-Canada trip on a Greyhound. No matter how many titles I get through, the list always outruns me.

Recently, I did something radical and destroyed the list. I even passed some of the books along. They had been patient for years on my shelves, awaiting a lover, and it was only fair to let them go. If it were meant to be, we would find each other when the time was right.

I am taking a break from my internally-imposed reading quotas. For about a decade I’ve worked in the front lines of book retail where books rush in and out of my life. I am a firsthand witness to the precious impossibility of reading everything I have ever wanted to. I’ve had to accept that this will only happen in Heaven. If eternity is paradise, then it is a library with no due dates, late fees or closing hours. In paradise I can read all the books in the world, and favourites like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History I can read over and over again.

A friend recently asked me why I bother reading at all. Literacy is a highly championed cause, but why? Over and above the obvious- that we can read and write and function in the workplace and decipher menus or cable bills- why read? Time spent reading could be traded for TV, sex, shopping, sleep.

I’ve always felt these things to be hours robbed from my reading time. Reading is socially and academically accepted, expected, respected. But who’s to say that these hours aren’t better spent with my family, or knitting, or learning regional Mexican cuisines? The friend had read deeply when he was younger. Our mutual love of books was one of the introductory factors of our friendship. Now, he said, he had no time for long analyses of people who weren’t real anyway, not when a click of the mouse could reference for you any fact you ever needed. I felt betrayed to hear this. I thought I knew you.

Buddhism teaches that attachment is the source of all suffering (a tidbit thanks to one ‘streak’ of reading. Don’t you also read in topic stints? There was the year I read about Africa, and then a few months on constellations. There was ‘award nominee and winner’ year, full of prize-winning ‘shoulds’. There were periods for Bradbury, Paglia, ‘exorcist’ novels, and a line-up on environment issues. ) Attachment to my books and impossible reading lists has indeed been a source of turmoil, despite the hefty rewards.

I can argue how much it may have been worth that turmoil- how much passion I have uncovered from the human heart in all its guises. Still, I was always facing a to-do list that could never be done, and storage units stuffed with so many volumes that I could barely find certain titles when I needed them.

I would never, ever give up reading, but I resolved to release some of my attachment to its lofty importance in my head. If something more impressive came my way, I would devote less time to my first love. I would release the long lists that I could never expect to fulfill, and simply choose what I was most drawn to at the time, if and when I was.

Since that day, I finally read Memoirs of a Geisha. The day was filled with more time, and fewer stacks of half-read books: this new sparseness revealed her, dusty and alone on the shelf. Memoirs had been on my ‘list’ for many years. At the bookstore, it was embarrassing for me to tell customers that I hadn’t yet read it. I had been in the mood many times over those years to read Arthur Golden’s instant classic. But competition was fierce, and by chance, this one had always gotten left out.

Now, with roomier shelves and fewer obligations, I was able to see this book. How politely and demurely she had waited for my attention, just like the geisha inside. I love books that are filled with secrets, and soon Sayuri was telling me in exquisite detail about a life I knew nothing of.

Writing has always been an intimate act, above and beyond its necessity to impart instruction. This is where the importance of reading lies. Writing is more than a sum of its parts- ink or hardware, paper, information. Writing is about getting to know each other, a window. It’s about how someone you have never met sees the world. It’s about how passionate and corrupt and crazy and stupid and intelligent we are, have always been, how diverse and yet similar in our light and darkness. “I love fiction, strangely enough, for how true it is,” wrote Barbara Kingsolver.

Perhaps you do not care to know how Jung or Annie Proulx thought, and find the words of Christ irrelevant. And lovely though it may be, you do not care to know of poet Esta Spalding’s world. Perhaps Atwood never made you curious and the Brontes were a bore. Maybe the adventures of Nancy Drew or the ramblings of Brit-bloke Adrian Mole are of no significance. You never wondered what the hell is up with modern ‘art’ or wondered how bad marijuana could possibly be.

But perhaps there is a world outside of myself and my own perceptions. Perhaps this world is 5.99 billion times my personal perspective. And perhaps it is quite interesting out there, a veritable freak show. It’s wild and crazy, with heartbreaking hypocrisies and incredible feats of human accomplishment. Magic and mystery and medicine and God.

I remove any and all academic arguments from my pursuit of literature. With no veneer of intellect or education, of historical or social status, literacy has spoken to me freshly again. I’m curious, or nosy: I want to know what’s out there. I read because I’m alive!

And of course, like so many of you, I am a reader because I am a writer. I want to leave a record for others. It’s a form of archeology. I can show you a vivid and colourful life, I can show you scars and adventures and the landscape of northern Ontario. The records are there: some have been made public in journals or websites. And some are still stacked in crates, or in electronic files, poems that have not yet and may never find a home.

But they may- one day, when you have fewer obligations and a delicious flavour of melancholy unexpectedly enters your world, you might reach for me. When the time is right, my time will come.

Lorette C. Luzajic
www.thegirlcanwrite.net

This was originally published by The Academy Magazine and online at the currently defunct but nevertheless awesome Melange Magazine.

Live Plucky: Adventuring With Nancy Drew

Once upon a time, there was a small girl with a big stack of books. She was barely five years old, but had torn through a zillion Golden Books and Disney fairy tales and was stuck at the cottage with nothing to read. Her folks took her to a used bookstore in Parry Sound, where she picked out about 30 yellow-spined Nancy Drew mystery stories. Within days, she was prowling the swamps behind the cottage for clues, making believe that nearby ghost town ruins were castles. With a notebook in one hand, and a flashlight in the other, the girl made relentless notes on the few characters that populated the lake and woods where she was staying. That little girl grew up to be a writer.

Nancy’s independent spirit and inquiring mind were early influences on my imagination. Her enthusiasm at solving puzzles in her world let me reason that I could do the same. Though I was not jet setting with my lawyer dad to exotic places, creeping up secret stairwells and hunting for treasures in gypsy camps, I lived as if I were. The world opened up for me when I began to investigate it. Nancy led the way into the great unknown and assured me that the world belonged to me. I learned early from her escapades that girls could be strong, smart and pretty.

By second grade, I was drawing up intricate games with maps, plots and charts for lunch hour adventures. With detailed descriptions of ghosts to bust, pirate treasure to excavate, and doorways to enter, I led my playmates through vivid and elaborate thrills. I was always Nancy, of course. One day another girl protested my assumed leadership, saying she was tired of being Nancy’s plump, meek sidekick, Bess. I hotly told her that when she began thinking for herself, designing the story and the maps, and doing things of her own initiative, she could be the leader. This was an early foreshadowing of a falling-out between us 20 years later: I was eventually unable to bear that this girl just couldn’t think on her own and patterned her every hobby, interest and thought after the paths I had forged from my own imagination. Ms Drew taught me that the world has room for many Nancies, but she must create herself and forge her own spunk and daring. Those without imaginative, passionate risk-taking would be left behind in River Heights while Nancy hobnobbed with lurking lake spirits, dancing puppets, and masked intruders.

Though each beloved tale was formulaic, the formula was a winning one- grab life by the horns, speak up for yourself, don’t be a wallflower, meet interesting characters, take risks but use your brain, and drive a blue convertible. Have a hot boyfriend, as well, but never let that be a reason to stay at home by the telephone. Be smart, be witty, be clever, and be curious. Live life fully. Live plucky.

I always wondered how Nancy could be so fearless in the face of adversary. Not one strawberry-blonde hair (or titian, in earlier renditions) was ever out of place even while Nancy confronted the darkest aspects of human nature and the deepest mysteries of the past. Thirty years later, having lived through a maelstrom of horrors and losses and terrors like early widowhood and clinical depression, I learned that beneath her flippant, fierce confidence Nancy was likely quaking in her boots, just like the rest of us, but went on to solve problems anyhow, not waiting for something or someone else to make sense of things for her.

The winning style of detective work here was simply investigation of the world around her. Sleuthing meant the requisite magnifying glass, it meant tunnels and spooks and ruins and secret rooms. But it also meant the library, travel, and lengthy talks with eccentric locals and yokels. It meant getting to the heart of the matter, learning from different people and places along the way. Every mystery involved exploring a different history from my own- or Nancy’s. The Mystery of the Ivory Charm transported us to India, where we learned something about elephant training in the circus. We clambered aboard the Bonny Scot and learned about figureheads and clipper ships in The Secret of the Wooden Lady. We added “cipher” to our vocabulary and learned about Incan ruins and Peruvian history in The Clue of the Crossword Cipher. There’s voodoo, Morse codes, archeological digs in Mexico; we headed to Scotland for some bagpipes, tartan lore, and ancient Gaelic. The Mystery of the Fire Dragon took us to Hong Kong. We discovered rare books, the Cyclops, petroglyphs and geology, France, and larkspur cultivation.

Much has been made of our heroine Ms. Drew’s plucky, feisty charm and how it infused proper, delicate, meek little ladies with the adrenaline for adventure and imagination. Perhaps no other influence in history, including women’s accomplishments in science, spirituality, or art was quite as ferocious- Nancy was the preMadonna, the Yes I Can for so many generations of girls. Since 1930, Nancy’s indomitable, globetrotting spirit has captivated and catapulted young imaginations into greater realms. She taught us that you get right back up if you get knocked down.

The message wasn’t contrived or complicated: very simply, Nancy felt that a vibrant life meant a curious one, where education was important behind the scenes and on the field. In other words, living life meant getting off your ass.

Lorette C. Luzajic