Wax On, Wax Off

Way back when -- in high school -- I used to butt heads with English teachers when it came to interpreting a given text. In my little mind, I found it outrageous to try to read too deeply into the written word. It made me uncomfortable and annoyed to assign any meaning that may or may not have been originally intended. Most of the time, my argument was something to the tune of "Couldn't the author actually mean what he says?" and "Why must we assume everything is symbolic?"

The whole reading comprehension thing plain old escaped me and I have the SAT scores to prove it. Plus, a stubborn attitude and unwillingness to resort to Cliff's Notes (like most of the kids on the honor roll) probably didn't help me out much.

So, now that I'm older (and working on the wiser), what would I tell my sixteen year-old self about interpreting a text?

Well, for starters, I'd tell her that she was absolutely right to question her authority.

Next, I'd let her in on a little secret that those silly teachers were inexplicably keeping to themselves. It's not that we have to assign meaning to other people's words, it's that we get to. It's our privilege as readers to chose to stay on the surface or dive down as deep as we can go. Once the author has put it out there, the words become ours to understand through the filter of our own experiences. If we want to think about the era during which the text was written, well that's entirely up to us. If we don't feel like to considering possible symbolism of a fig tree, then screw the damned tree already.

Last night, I started reading The Fellowship of the Ring for the first time (yea, yea, the first time, I know). This edition has a foreword by Tolkien in which he addresses this issue of the reader's interpretation of his words. He actually gets quite defensive that these books are not allegory to the World War II era (when he wrote them), as many people have extrapolated. Then he makes a point that I wish I'd known how to articulate in high school.

Tolkein states that "an author cannot of course remain wholly unaffected by his experience" and "the ways in which a story-germ uses the soil of experience are extremely complex." Then he refers to his own experiences during World War I, which affected the entirety of his adult life. Basically, he's rejecting the assumption that a book is allegory for the day in which is written as limiting. It doesn't mean that it cannot be, at times, but it is certainly not a rule of reading (take that Dr. Fussell!).

The part of the foreword that sat me straight up in bed is his comment that readers often confuse "applicability" with "allegory." Aha! There it is!

This is why Shakespeare can be so wonderfully and shockingly relevant, even in the twenty-first century. Human nature hasn't really changed all that much for the last several centuries, has it? The way we treat each other and the things we do to one another are just as beautiful and just as shitty as they ever were. The stories written about them, however are almost always applicable to one reader of one era or another. The only things that really change are the circumstances, the scenery, the outfits.

Tolkein has forever endeared himself to me with his stubborn stand that the trilogy isn't allegory, goddammit. A little bit on the defensive, stubborn side, but also willing to allow the reader to have their own experience with a text...so long as they know the author might or might not have wanted it that way. He and I would have been great friends.

Twenty Minute Tuesday

For weeks now, my teacher has been exceedingly patient with my non-production of short stories, or even pieces of stories (I'm too sheepish to share the 10 million, unrelated sentences that I've started). He's been giving me all sort of fantastic suggestions and plenty of encouragement, but still I have not gotten off the pot.

One of the more confusing recommendations, for me, is to try reading books from a writer's perspective. Meaning, try thinking about how I might write the scene differently, what different choices would the characters make if this were a tale of mine, etc. Also meaning, pay close attention to the various characters and see if I can pick up on their distinct personalities...it's not as easy as one might think to write a story wherein not every character is coming from the same point of view.

Anyway, I was pretty sure this would fuck up the joy of reading for the rest of time, and I don't think I put much effort into reading like a writer. Until this weekend, that is, when I became engrossed in Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card (a fabulous read, by the way, highly recommend it, but a book report this is not).

Somewhere along the way, I began to actually see how the author cleverly lets the reader know -- and gets us to care about -- each character through simple, unexpected actions and dialogue. Their vulnerabilities, their strengths, their dialects, everything is of that character, that person. And, in theory, it's so damned simple. How does this person answer a phone call differently than that person? How do they react to the choices of another and why? Personalities, turns out, are not fiction, they're reality; and I have experience with personalities.

Hopefully this is the mini-breakthrough I was waiting for. Of course, my relationship with the theory of writing a story is a whole different matter than my discipline to sit down, hash out an actual set of characters and let them lead me where they need to go.

I have two responses to these reading/writing revelations:

1. Hallelujah for this new awareness to bring to my reading. The best part of it all is that reading like a writer has not ruined stories for me, it's enhanced it exceedingly. This is beyond exciting (don't forget, it's the little things!).

2. Per my teachers sage advice: I am not on a timeline, I am not in a writing race, it is OK to feel scared, overwhelmed, crazy, intoxicated, unsure. But it wouldn't hurt to jump off that cliff and find out what...or who...waits for me below.

Laughter

It took an hour to get from home to high school -- a tedious drive through commuter freeway traffic even though we hit the road at by six o'clock in the morning. For the entire six years we did the drive to that school, we always listened to the Mark & Brian on the radio. Nothing like a couple of wacky morning DJs to start the day off right.

By the time I was a senior in high school, I finally had my driver’s license. Sometimes I was even allowed to make the drive with Annika, who just started going to that school as a seventh grader. One morning, as the two of us crept off the freeway and up the hill into La Jolla, Brian was in the middle of the most terrible impression of Ricky Ricardo. The fact that he sounded nothing like Lucy's husband only made it funnier the longer the bit went on. Before long, we were struggling to catch a breath we were laughing so hard.

It was so much fun to get absorbed into a laughing fit with Annika. Our eyes would go all squinty and our faces would go red. Being sisters, we pretty much shared the same sort of silent, hysterical laughter: lots of rolling backwards and forwards with our mouths wide open, a few strange noises accompanying the combination of gasps for air and uncontrollable stomach muscle contractions, tears shooting out of our eyes and across our faces. If you didn't know we were laughing, you might think we were choking.

Laughter.

What a gift, and Annika knew how to use it as a child. Unrestrained, long and genuine. And contagious enough to last all day or break us out of a sisterly fuss. The gift left her, somewhat, when the cancer treatments showed up. She even said so herself, from time to time, that the chemo might have taken away her sense of humor. Her brain just didn’t function the same way anymore. I'm not convinced she lost her sense of humor altogether -- we certainly shared a few belly laughs as time went on -- but I do know that level of laughter didn't come as effortlessly, nor as often, the longer she lived with pain.

Today, something I heard on the radio that reminded me of the morning where I could barely drive because of our laughter. It’s a memory that only she and I share. It’s a memory that gives me the gift of my little sister: happy and free and pure.