The first time I read I shocked everyone, including myself. I had lived in a succession of foster homes until I was five, had never gone to school, in fact spent most of the time in bed recovering from one illness after another. Then one day my adopted mother was reading the newspaper and when she put it down I saw the big bold headline and puzzled out what it said.
I never had children’s books, the only time I was exposed to them was at a dentist or doctor’s office, when I became enamored with Curious George, especially The Man with the Yellow Hat, my first father figure I suppose. I also read Dr. Seuss books there, and, while I liked them, I much preferred Curious George.
Shortly after I was adopted, my grandparents gave me my first books: Robin Hood and Hans Brinker, both of which I loved immediately (Robin Hood slightly more) and are the only books from my childhood I still have. My two favorite books from that period were an adapted version of Pilgrim’s Progress, and a book called Yankee Doodle’s Cousins, which was about all the various American mythical heroes (Paul Bunyan, Stormalong, Pecos Bill, Iron Joe Magarac, Johnny Appleseed, John Henry, and Tony Beaver, among others).
My adopted mother had a substantial bookcase in the vestibule, with books by Saroyan, O’Hara, and Thurber, among many others I don’t recall. While I perused the three authors mentioned from time to time, they didn’t inspire me. This in addition to The Bible (KJV), which I loved.
From that point on, for a while I became obsessed with biographies, mysteries, and folk tales (from the Myths and Legends Series) of various countries (most likely because of Yankee Doodle’s Cousins), particularly the British Isles. All this in addition to my fanatical, poring over the various Dell Sports publications each season for baseball, football, and basketball, memorizing names, teams, and statistics. I had also discovered Catcher in the Rye hidden away in my parent’s dresser drawer, after being told specifically never to read it. I hadn’t ever heard of it but that of course piqued my interest, and I didn’t see how a book about a catcher could be all that bad. I was hooked from that point on, and read it as many times as I could, after purchasing my own copy, of course.
My high school years had a promising beginning; I was going to a public school for the first, and I suppose as part of my orientation I was sent a suggested reading list, and while Cather, James, and Agee (for some reason that name stuck) were OK, it was Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel, that really knocked me out. I noticed the title right away but not knowing the author tried the others first, but it was Wolfe who really captured my interest. After high school I would go on to read everything about him and by him, and now describe him as the Dylan Thomas of fiction. Unfortunately, the reading fare for the rest of the high school curriculum was standard: Ethan Frome, Silas Marner, Tale of Two Cities, Our Town, Scarlet Letter, etc., and my interest in “literature” waned.
It wasn’t until my senior year that it came back – in spades and permanently. All the credit goes to my high school English teacher Mrs. Adams (nicknamed “Ma” by miscreant friends and I may have even referred to her as that, not knowing any better) who, though long deceased, will always have a special place in my heart. One day in class she played one of those Caedmon poetry records, this one of Dylan Thomas reading not only his but other poems. I particularly remember his rendering of a refrain in a Yeats poem: Oh my dear, Oh my dear – haunting, lilting, and that was it for me. I was hooked, I fell in love with poetry. Later that year I discovered Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind and thought I was all that – deprecating more traditional poets in a class essay while saying my new discovery was the only way to write poetry. Typically, Mrs. Adams praised it as the best essay in the class, but later patiently pointed out to me all the “traditional” quotations embedded in Ferlinghetti’s poem, as well as the many allusions to writers past and present, a lesson I took to heart, sheepish at my bellicosity, not even realizing that it didn’t matter, that she was so happy one of her students finally got it. I began trying to write poems of my own, and even had some limited success, though I showed them to nobody.
After graduating high school, my father having died my senior year (no coincidence that I was turned on to poetry going through the emotional upheavals I was), I was pretty much left on my own, with no hope of or little interest in going to college in the foreseeable future. I had to get a job, which I did, and when I was able to reconnoiter, I decided that if I wasn’t going to college I could at least self-educate myself, which I did, as thoroughly and systematically as I could.
It all began with my reading of Brooks’ The Flowering of New England, which began my habit of reading literary surveys (primarily of U.S. writers at the time) and compiling reading lists from them. I would sit in our local public library’s Reference area and spend hours poring over works such as Spiller’s Literary History of the United States, various iterations of Kunitz’s Famous Authors series, and Parrington’s Main Currents in American Thought.
I’m not sure what initially led me to Brooks’ book but that led me to Emerson’s Essays, and next, to the writer whose book changed my life: Walden. I used to read it each season of the year, more than 20 times in total, having much of it memorized. This will never change; though I’ve had other infatuations, Thoreau and his book will always be my favorite.
The next thing I would do was, after making copious reading lists gleaned from my surveys, I’d pick an author and read all of his works: Sinclair Lewis first, Hemingway next, Sherwood Anderson, Saul Bellow, and individual works such as Spoon River Anthology, Rabbit Run, and The World of Apples, and through Dreiser discovered the Chicago group: Dell, Garland, and Lardner, among others, and later Farrell (I’d already discovered Saul Bellow). I also had a dalliance with Black Authors, who were becoming better known, specifically Baldwin and Wright. Poetry-wise, I was concentrated on Blake, Yeats, and Wordsworth. I’m sure there are more but you catch my drift.
After working for four years I decided not only was it was time to go to college I was ready to go to college and was accepted and went out West. As you know, with school, you spend most of your time reading course books, which I found a deterrent to my real reading, but took advantage of my summers to devour books on my reading lists. The major discoveries I made in college were Under the Volcano, Ford’s Parades End, and J.P. Donleavy’s Ginger Man, Beastly Beatitudes of Balthazar B, And the Saddest Summer of Samuel S.; Thomas Hardy was the writer I read exhaustively that decade.
In graduate school I continued my exhaustive reading of individual authors, each winter choosing one writer to read; in successive winters it was Dostoevsky, Hawthorne, and Faulkner. I had the opportunity to go to several schools in the PhD English programs, but decided against it, as I felt it would make me a specialist whereas I wanted to be a generalist. To that end I decided to become a librarian, a field where I would see what was being published to enhance the library’s collection in a certain area (mine was mainly American Lit.), and, of course would have access to books books books, as well as facilitating access to books not in our library.
In my thirties the whole decade was devoted to Thomas Bernhard, particular his memoir Gathering Evidence, and my discovery of Gaddis’ The Recognitions, as well as Berryman’s Dream Songs. Keep in mind I read these books over and over; also became devoted to Moby Dick. It was at this time I decided to write; I’d written a couple of poems I liked (again not showing anyone), and, while poetry was my first love, I decided if I wanted to make a living I’d have to write fiction. How naïve. Even then I remained a dilettante, not really knowing what it took to be a writer.
After my children were born a decade of writer’s block ensued, with only one or two sketchy stories completed, and, after a decent start to my novel, I couldn’t get past a certain point no matter how hard I tried. It was also a fallow period for reading, attempting to read “contemporary writers” to see who my “competitors” were. Again naïve, but all was not lost, at was at this time I discovered Richard Yates. Also influential at this time were story collections of Dubus and Carver.
Finally, on my 50th birthday, I swore I would finish my novel; 5 years, a divorce, and a few dead friends later I did. I’ve since rewritten it as a YA book, wrote a baseball novel in a year, tasked myself to writing a story a month over a year period, which I nearly did, and began a Knausgaard-like hybrid/fiction memoir, of which I’ve completed v.1.
Last year I decided to concentrate on my first love, poetry; I’d only written four prior to that, and now have 15, and am working on 15 others, would like to have a book-length manuscript at years end; also doing some longer fiction but have no idea where it’s going. Just in the past year have I begun submitting on a regular basis and this year have had 6 acceptances of poetry and stories in 3 different ezines, which is gratifying. I’ve pretty much given up trying to be published in the small press MFA affiliated magazines. I don’t write like that and don’t want to. I have the three longer manuscripts at publishers awaiting decisions; don’t expect to hear anything any time soon.
As I’ve said many times, I thought writing would be the hardest part but it isn’t. As long as I keep getting ideas and am writing that’s fine with me. Lots more to tell but for now, this is my story and I’m sticking to it.
