How Reading Formed Me, Saved Me & Opened My Eyes
“I go along with Albert Camus, who famously said, ‘The responsibility of the writer is to speak for those who cannot speak for themselves,’ ” Matthiessen said. “And that’s always been kind of my informal motto.”
Listening to the soundtrack of my life this weekend (Yes. NPR. I am that person.) I caught the above quote from Peter Mattheissen, who died on Saturday, on a replay of his 1989 Fresh Air interview. He was fascinating for many reasons—for instance, when he founded The Paris Review (with George Plimpton) it was tied in with his stint at the CIA, using the magazine as a cover for his spying activities. Then, he moved dramatically to the left politically.
Thus, the above motto.
Camus’ words (via Mattiessen) have been the underpinning of almost everything valuable that I’ve absorbed and learned. I’ve never been a great in-person student, always preferring a self-study pace. The moment I was allowed to travel on my own (which now seems remarkably early—the age of 7) I made many trips per week to the Kensington, and later, Grand Army Plaza, branches of the Brooklyn Public Library. These thousands of books I lugged home formed my very core, my moral code.
“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last.” ― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
Reading made me who I am, and I am grateful that I read more than the comic books to which I was addicted. It was those books I read from grades 5 to 12 that defined my future.
From The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank I learned fear of injustice. From Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith I learned hope and a sense that I could do far more than seemed possible for a girl in my circumstance.
Karen by Marie Killea taught me that we’re not destined by our disabilities. Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky led me to examine guilt. Exodus by Leon Uris made me long to be brave.
Jubilee by Margaret Walker helped me touch the bitterness of slavery; the evil of racism. Reading Martha Quest by Doris Lessing lifted out of the ghetto of girly-world.
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.” ― Oscar Wilde
Reading The Doctor’s Case Against The Pill by Barbara Seaman kept me from swallowing the hormones of birth control pills.
I could list books forever. This week I bought Flash Boys by Michael Lewis, so I could educate myself on Wall Street’s crimes and misdemeanors. The Wizard of Lies by Diana Henriques opened my eyes to how Bernie Madoff got away with his financial sins for so long.
“Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
My novels aren’t written for their moral themes—but I can’t find interest in writing books that don’t chase lies and darkness. Domestic crimes and misdemeanors interest me. I believe they are the underpinning of larger society ills. Violence against women at home and on the street is intertwined. Domestic drama illustrates the germ of what President Jimmy Carter says is the ‘worst human rights violation on Earth’—violence against women.
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.” ― Albert Camus
I don’t know if I can name or declare the worst sins we commit against each other; I do know that it is the power of words (and all other art) that uncover them. Whether it be the columns of New York Times writers Maureen Dowd or Charles Blow, the Op-Eds written by Derrick Jackson or Joan Wickersham of The Boston Globe, Maya Angelou’s poetry, Upton Sinclair’s muckraking, Alex Haley exposing racism and slavery, or Marilyn French breaking open the world of women, it is these chroniclers of life who keep us aware of those thin lines between right, wrong, and all the greys in-between.
“Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth” ― Albert Camus
