If I was in charge of creating a headline for this inaugural installment of my Cavalier Daily column devoted to all things literary, I would have titled it, "Lost in the Funhouse." This is not just a suggestive nod to the title of a short story collection by the zany post-modernist John Barth but to the kind of emotional environment atmosphere I find lacking among many of my peers when it comes to reading.
As head of management here at Bookmarks, I find myself vexed with my current situation. And what true-hearted book columnist wouldn't -- torn between the visceral entertainment of reading a book and a social atmosphere that seems to shun reading as an activity for the reclusive and anti-social? But if this column has any particular goal, it is to illustrate just how enjoyable and entertaining the act of reading is, to invite you into a funhouse of reading in the hopes you'll soon become lost.
Where has all the fun gone when it comes to talking about reading? We analyze the ins and outs of novels, poems, short stories and plays with scholarly severity. We pick them apart like surgeons hunched over an anesthetized body in an effort to find the hidden symbols and metaphors. It has come to my attention that recently this whole business of literature is nothing but seriousness. Even my academic study of English, with its grades and research papers, takes on at times a somber tone.
I think back sometimes to those feverish reading days of my youth and a bedroom stacked high with tilting skyscrapers of comic books and rows of paperback novels like something out of an M.C. Escher print. Those were the pitiful days of Michael Crichton, Stephen King and movie tie-in novels. I didn't think reading could get any better than that.
A few years later, I expanded my literary horizons, and it did. Yesterday my reading was done in a corner of the family room couch or outside on the back porch. Today it's done in silent study carrels and shadowy corners of library stacks. While the latter certainly provides a better environment for silence and concentration, I find myself wondering when readers stopped becoming publicly active and fled underground like a flock of Morlocks.
Your humble columnist yearns for those days and perhaps these words you're reading now (unless you've already made the wise choice and flipped to the Sports section) are a way of rescuing them or at least postponing their demise for as long as possible. I've been a reader for all my life. I fool myself into thinking I've read it all, even though I haven't and never will. My reading tastes have evolved and (at times) devolved with a speed that would knock Darwin's head off his shoulders.
But whatever the dilemma of the week may be, I always try to remember those exuberant bookshelves of my youth and that contradictory feeling of solitude and interaction that always comes from picking up a book. It's like I've escaped and returned home all in the single turn of a page.
Before we all go inside, I should probably point out the requirements for entering into this reading funhouse. Here's my favorite example: there's a "Twilight Zone" episode with Burgess Meredith as the last remaining survivor of the human race living in a library. This fervent reader is so consumed with the prospect of eternal, uninterrupted reading that when his reading glasses fall and break on the concrete steps, he screams in eternal agony. Or maybe he whines, but screaming in agony sounds a lot more passionate, doesn't it?
If such a hellish fate were to befall you, if the prospect of a life without reading would drive you to the depths of televised insanity, then welcome to Bookmarks my friends. Throughout the year you'll find a blend of book reviews and personal pieces written from the point of view of a rabid reader (think a hungry mountain lion with a little more froth around the lips.) We've got plenty of time to be serious about literature in class; this, folks, is about fun.
So, indeed, let the funhouse open! Don't all crowd at once; form a nice single-file line. No need to rush -- here at Bookmarks there's always a comfortable couch, a good light-source and plenty of reading material. Just try not to get lost.
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