Picture two crossroads in rural, southern Tennessee in the 1940's. If you look closely at the picture you might see a small boy walking around a country store owned by his grandfather. The boy asks about the funny marks on the boxes and is told that they are "letters." He asks to be told what that means. He learns his ABC's. When the boy enters school, he learns to read quickly, as if it were something he knew already.
The next picture is of a small house in the industrial Midwest. There is no television, there are no books or magazines; there is a radio in the dining room on a side-board near a pot-bellied stove. Look down near the stove to the floor and you will see the boy, lying on his stomach, legs raised and crossed, reading a book he brought home from school. He is reading Five Chinese Brothers and he reads it over and over, examining the illustrations carefully.
By age seven he is reading the few chapter books from the three shelves that make up the school library. His favorites are books about animals, and he is sad that there a few opportunities to find other books to read. There are no trips to a public library; there are no gifts of books at holiday times. Somehow he scrapes together enough money to buy a few comic books, and discovers there is a series called "Classics Illustrated." He reads about Lorna Doone and Treasure Island and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. When the neighborhood kids get together, he doesn't have much luck in trading.
When the boy is ten or eleven years old, his older sister is assigned a book to read for English class. She brings the book home and leaves it around the house. The boy picks up the book and . . . falls headlong into the romantic world of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. There must have been many words he did not know, but the boy falls under the spell of characters that are as real to him as the next door neighbors. Most likely it could have been any book that was a little advanced for his age, but Little Women evoked a new language, words were being put together in a way that tantalized. The characters seem to jump off the pages into his arms, and he holds them close, especially independent, tomboy Jo.
When I think back about the time I read Little Women, about what it really meant to me, it has less to do with themes, or characters, or style. It is more about the warm feeling I got from discovering something I did not know existed. It was that wonderful feeling of discovery, a feeling that I had just opened a door: that a new chapter in my life was beginning.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It may seem strange to you that I have never re-read Little Women. Perhaps I do not want to spoil those feelings which remain palpable to this day. On the other hand, the second book that changed my life has been re-read many times.
During my junior year in college, I stumbled upon The Charioteer, by Mary Renault, the celebrated author of novels set in ancient Greece. Being gay in the late 50's, early 60's was a full-time closet job. While still trying to date girls, walking them back to their dorms and "making out" before the 11 o'clock curfew, I was a hotbed of mixed-up emotional hormones. And then I read the book.
I do not remember how The Charioteer came into my hands. Set in WWII England, The Charioteer explores various levels of expression of male homosexuality. Yet another "Laurie" entered by life (in Alcott's book, Laurie is the lad who lives next door to the Marches) as he struggles for personal identity and integrity. Renault's portrayal of men confused about sexual/gender identity and its fulfillment, in a time when so much had to be hidden, provoked me to examine the well-springs of my own hidden, fantasy world. The Charioteer helped me explore appropriate connections between love and sex, between the repressive me, and the me I really wanted to be. It gently pushed a 20 year-old young adult to find a key to a closet clothed in shame. Although I walked back through that door occasionally during my life, the door remained unlocked and I knew that it could never be shut tight again.
Senior year, I found him.
The final paragraph from The Charioteer:
Quietly, as night shuts down the uncertain prospect of the road ahead, the wheels sink to stillness in the dust of the halting place, and the reins drop from the driver's loosened hands. Staying each his hunger on what pasture the place affords them, neither the white horse nor the black reproaches his fellow for drawing the master out of the way. They are far, both of them, from home, and lonely, and lengthened by their strife the way has been hard. Now their heads droop side by side till their long manes mingle; and when the voice of the charioteer falls silent they are reconciled for a night in sleep.
P.S. My love for reading and books led to a career in librarianship.