Movies and books are two of my greatest interests, intertwined as they are as novels are so frequently adapted to the screen. If I really like the movie, I want to read the book.
When Gone with the Wind came to Tyler in one of its many re-releases over the years, I saw it for the first time at the old Arcadia Theater, from the balcony which was seldom open except when the audience was large. Enthralled as I was, I bought the book at Mayer & Schmidt from the lady who ran that little neck of the area’s most luxurious store as her personal fiefdom. I couldn’t say how many times I’ve read it, but I can look up and see the book on the shelf above my desk at this very moment. The dust jacket is long gone, and its maroon binding is weak and stained from the black ink of a leaky fountain pen from both having been toted in my satchel when I was in the sixth grade.
But not all movies are based on Pulitzer Prize-winning novels. Some are based on bestselling novels with little to no literary value. After seeing the movie version of The Carpetbaggers with its Hollywood story liberally peppered with sex (extra points for any knowing that reference), I wanted to read the book written by Harold Robbins. Unbeknownst to me, The New York Times review of the work stated it should not have been printed, rather “it should have been inscribed on the walls of a public lavatory.”
Well, I didn’t get my copy from Mayer & Schmidt. It came from the paperback rack at T. G. & Y., and it went with me to school so I could read the scintillating, if somewhat confusing, book in my spare moments. But I was in sixth grade, and even the unmarried and ancient Miss Hill (who was probably about 45) knew this well above my, shall we say, reading level. She called Mother to let her know what I was reading, and Mother told her not to worry as I would probably ask her about anything that I didn’t understand. In relating this development to me, she didn’t take the book away from me, she just told me not to take it to school.
Before I finished reading The Carpetbaggers, I did need to ask Mother a question. “What’s a lesbian?” Coming out of the blue, Mother stammered out something accurate but incomplete, saying that they were people who are attracted to their own sex rather than the opposite sex. So, for quite a while after that, I thought I, too, was a lesbian.
I went on read everything Harold Robbins had written and managed to find time to read other books like Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls, of which Miss Hill would have disapproved. Throw in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and it’s easily understood why I have long called my childhood reading habits precocious.
By the time I was in my teens, I had discovered Zelda, a biography of Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of writer F. Scott, and soon I finished my sex education via popular culture and was on early 20th-century fiction. I read Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway (always in that order), and Edna Ferber and Sinclair Lewis, with a dash of Dreiser added for good measure. My library card was getting a good workout, and my literary tastes were becoming a bit higher-brow.
Good books are like good movies in that they reveal themselves differently each time we enjoy them based on our own perspective and, dare I say, age. In that revelation, they can speak to us from years ago about the times in which we live as we face issues that are in no way unique to us. So I’ve recently decided to go back to some of those old friends, those old books that I’ve not read in quite a long time, to see what they can tell me about today.
I thought about the ones that are likely to be most pertinent and embarked on a little buying spree this week. Now when I say I like old books, I don’t just mean those that were written a long time ago. I like to read a volume that was printed around the time the book in question was published, wondering who read it first a hundred years ago or so, who read it after that, where were they when they read it, and what did they think of it. Not expensive first editions in immaculate condition, just not quite as tattered as my copy of Gone with the Wind.
It was easy to identify the ones most likely to say something about what’s going on today, so I purchased some of my old favorites, each published over sixty years ago. But when they arrive, which one shall I read first? Which is likely to be most relevant? Who will the winner be?
My first thought was it should be Dreiser—An American Tragedy. Or perhaps Lewis–It Can’t Happen Here. But, no, the winner has to be Katherine Anne Porter. Much of it is right there in the title.
Ship of Fools.
