Reading Well

I pretty much have to wear my glasses now when I want to read. I can still make the print big enough on my kindle and computer to escape my fate, but the print in the paperback and hardcover books I love is slipping away from me. If I squint and concentrate I can still do it, but it’s not an easeful activity and I’m starting to resign myself to picking up my glasses more often.

I’ve always had an ambivalent relationship with reading. In fourth and fifth grade, I was one of those boys who dreaded when it was my turn to read out loud to my peers. It seemed like a test with no upside—if you read well that was expected and they just went on to the next person, but if you mixed up your words or couldn’t sound one out, everyone knew how clumsy and stupid you really were.

But I loved the adventure stories of Beau Geste, Ivanhoe and others that my father read to me and my brother. We also delighted in going to the library with my mother and returning with as many books as we were allowed. I was thrilled by getting to choose my own books from amongst the many wondrous topics and illustrations. I loved the heft and feel of my own private stack of books which I carefully kept on my lap on the car ride home—obediently not reading until we got home because reading in the car is bad for your eyes.

But reading myself was never as much fun when the pictures diminished and I had to do it alone. That was until I discovered the ‘We Were There’ series, a collection of first person re-imaginations of significant events in American history. I think it was ‘We Were There at the Alamo’ that first hooked me.

From my father, and from some natural and culturally encouraged tendency toward romance and righteous questing, I loved adventure stories. The hero is always set to right some obvious wrong against impossible odds. Through his many trials, he never waivers. His courage and strength are steadfast and he ultimately prevails and is recognized as the true hero he has always been.

At eight years old, I was mesmerized by the lush, violent and romantic movie ‘The Alamo’ which my Dad too me and my brother to see. John Wayne directed it and played my name sake, Davy Crockett. The women and children are spared, but the men carry out their duty of honor and die for freedom and love. At sixty-eight, I’m now rather critical of this one-sided vision of imperialism and misguided violence masquerading as manhood, but to and as and eight year old, with my father’s support, this seemed like a good and true vision of how to be a man.

So I remember taking out ‘We Were There at the Alamo’ from the school library on Friday, coming home from school and sitting in one chair for two or three hours and reading the whole thing. I was swept away. When I tearfully looked up at the heroic and tragic conclusion, I didn’t know where I was. It was a wonderful feeling, but it was balanced by feeling so physically awful and even nauseous from having sat in the same position concentrating on the small type for so long. From then on, I tried not to read so long at one time, but I was hooked on the possibilities.

I always read numerous books at a time now. One that is especially delighting me these days is Wallace Stegner’s classic BEYOND THE HUNDREDTH MERIDIAN: JOHN WESLEY POWELL AND THE SECOND OPENING OF THE WEST. My paperback copy has small print so I always put on my glasses when I dive it to marvel at the vastness of the west and the eternal battle of romance and realism, between principled courage and self-promotion—all filtered through Stegner’s luminous prose, prodigious knowledge and inspiring insight into human nature.

Even in the full flood of springtime, it’s worth putting on my classes and sitting in a chair for—at least for a little while.