A Literary Awakening

It's been a lot of fun reading to L lately. She's definitely crossed some sort of literary threshold where books are not just fun things to tear or color on (a threshold N hasn't come anywhere close to crossing), and not just things to keep you from having to go immediately to bed, but things of great excitement and anticipation in their own right. Stacy and I have always tried to spend a lot of time reading to the kids, but up till just recently the attention span has been limited and the interest lukewarm. Heretofore reading has been a great way to cuddle with Mommy and Daddy and to delay the turning out of the lights, but the actual reading part has been pretty much incidental. The story would be tolerable and perhaps even mildly enjoyable for the moment, but you could tell there was only minor engagement and a limited sense of carry-over from one reading to another. Multi-chapter books were somewhat pointless; she would permit them being read to her, but you knew the subject matter of last night's story had no bearing in her mind on tonight's. To stir any signs of real appreciation in her, you used to have to read the same inane Dr. Seuss book for the three-millionth time while trying not to unconsciously verbalize your growing suicidal considerations.

Things have changed dramatically. All of a sudden she is engaged, attentive, captivated and invested. Instead of shuffling around on her bed, hanging her head off the mattress or divvying her concentration up between the book, her covers, the spider hiding in the corner, her brother's behaviour spasms, and the dozens of small doll accessories still lurking in her bed, she is now bolted to my shoulder, eyes fixed on the book, jaw trembling with respiratory responses to the rise and fall of the storyline. Where her chatter used to be an endless interruption of non sequiturs, it is now an endless interruption of interjections on plot twists, setting descriptions and pleas to the characters to heed her good advice. The end of the evening begging for "just one more chapter" still occurs, but now it has nothing to do with dislike for the evening's next event, but now is all about the pain of putting aside the world she had plunged herself into.

I don't know if this change is just the natural progression of age, or because we simply finally found the right, addicting book. It could be either, and likely is some measure of both. A couple of weeks ago I pulled out one of my childhood favorites, Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, thinking it might be time. I was partially motivated in the selection because Stacy has a special fondness for it too: I read it to her once, either while we were dating or shortly after we got married. The opening chapter was met with the characteristic lackadaisical engagement, but with each subsequent chapter I could see signs of smoke, and soon there was a clear flame and then quite a lot of heat. As we plowed through the book, L was awash in concern for the outcomes of the characters and giddy with the thought of edible grass and chocolate rivers. As we wrapped it up I could tell there was that first emotional coming-to-terms with the end of the story that I find so often in my own thinking when I finish a book - a little bit of that sense of loss, of the need to honor the beaten book by a period of almost mournful contemplation before diluting its memory by plunging into a replacement story. We'll talk through Charlie's adventures for another day or so, and then wish him well (I'm sure we'll see him again), and introduce the next adventure. At this point I'm thinking Sheila Burnford's The Incredible Journey might be a worthy undertaking.

As for other literary endeavors, last night I finished My Ántonia by Willa Cather. There is a certain subset of American authors I have always kind of considered to be somehow in the same vein (based on vague impressions of what they wrote and probably with highly suspect reasoning). I included Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, William Faulkner and Willa Cather in that category. Other than O'Connor, I hadn't actually read any of them, but they all seemed to fall into a general American-rural, somewhat Southern or perhaps mid-western type literary space that I knew I should delve into deeper. A couple months ago I read The Optimist's Daughter by Welty, and this time I picked up Ántonia to give Cather a try. The Optimist's Daughter didn't particularly grab me, but I really came away appreciating Ántonia. I finished it around midnight and this morning I'm still in the weird, grieving sort of mood. There's something about that novel's sense of place, its approach to loneliness and the need to belong to a land or setting that really resonated with me, maybe because I have so little sense of belonging to any particular place. (I'm the ultimate transplant.) It is a warm and caring book, bittersweet, but in a sentimental way and not overly tragic, which in this case I really appreciated.

And lastly, in our typical halting and sporadic way, I am reading Stacy The Horse and His Boy in the evenings before we hit the sack. It's been amusing to note that we both could have sworn we read the book at some point eons ago (I remember thinking it was my least favorite Narnia book), but as we read through it now, absolutely nothing triggers any memories. It really is as though we're reading it for the first time. Fortunately the book is not living up to my preconceived notions and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Stacy is loving it too, but I suspect she's a little biased. Stacy has this flattering, schoolgirlish thing about my reading to her. I think I could read her the Bell Yellowpages and she'd get all teary and gushy. I won't complain. There are so few things that get a beautiful women to hang on me. If books work, its a double victory.