A Life well-read

I have no memory of how or when I learned to read, nor do I remember anyone reading to me, although my mother assures me that she did. She told me that she found me with a book when I was barely four, turning the pages one by one, looking for all the world as if I were reading. Many months would pass before she thought to test me. Much to her surprise, I read the passage she pointed out.

Unlike other children, I never read out loud, apart from those times my mother had me read to family and friends to prove that I could. I do not remember sounding out words, although I know I must have. I watched my own children learn to read. They struggled through the words to form sentences and built sentence upon sentence to finally arrive at a meaning. I do not remember this progression; it is as if I had always had the key that opened the door into those other worlds, allowing me to enter the story as a participant, flowing along with the words in a seamless river of understanding.

My earliest memory is of an old couch on the front verandah of my home, of rain beating a tattoo on the old tin roof and falling through the rusty guttering. There is a lumpy cushion under my head, and a prickly blanket tucked about my body, but I am warm and cosy. My nose inhales wet earth and wood smoke. My physical self curls up on the couch while the me who existed on some other plane fell down the hole with Alice.

When the weather turned warmer, I climbed the old apple tree and sat astride a large branch. With my back to the trunk and my young legs anchoring me to the physical world, I munched on tart apples and toppled into the water with Tom, the chimney sweep. I vowed to live my life as a Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby. Later, I searched my palm for A Star in The Hand, wanting to be the next Hans Christian Andersen.

I progressed through countless books, trying out different characters to see how they fit. I roamed the green world of The Jungle Book, and was shipwrecked with the Swiss Family Robinson, and became a cross between Pollyanna and Anne of Green Gables before Captain Marryat imprisoned me with The Children of the New Forest.

I wept when Judy died in Seven Little Australians, and again for Beth in Little Women. When I reached my teens, I devoured Lorna Doone, longing for a John Ridley in my life. Then I discovered Jane Austen, the Brontè sisters, and Charles Dickens.

Friends and family never had to wonder what to give me for my birthday or Christmas, but my mother worried about me and my obsession with books. ‘Your eyes will fall out of your head,’ she warned. She despaired of me when she found me under the covers, reading by torchlight when I was supposed to be sleeping. So much reading had to be unhealthy, she said.

When desperate for material, I turned to non-fiction but mostly read works of fiction. I often didn’t understand all that I read, but I persevered in the belief that if I read as if it did make sense, then perhaps it would. Usually, it did.

Books and words were as much a part of my life as breathing and eating, and as I grew older and began to read more contemporary works, I thought about the process of reading. What exactly was it? The words ‘fiction’ and ‘story’ are euphemisms for lies, so it follows that storytelling is an elaborate form of lying. Liars work hard to give their lies the semblance of truth and nowhere is this truer than in the world of fictional books. The writers of the books I read seek to convince in order to deceive. They also deceive in order to convince. They establish fictional realities that imitate real life and which contain the semblance of truth.

When I was in my early teens, I realised that much of what I retained from my reading was not the text – I was not blessed with a good memory – but something I, as a reader, created by putting together those parts that seemed to relate to me on a personal level. Books made their mark on me, and I made my mark on them. Through books, I gained knowledge and a way of understanding myself and my position in the world.

At the same time, I came to realise that books were my escape; they were windows and doors, and after passing through them, I could forget my working class life. In the world of the book, I was no longer the eldest of twelve children, and the ever-present noise that fills every crevasse of a crowded house faded, to become the sighing of the wind in the trees or the swell of the oceans in that book world. I could ignore the hunger in my stomach as I fed the hunger in my soul.

Nearing my fiftieth decade, someone I admire – another like me, who reads voraciously – asked me an astonishing question. ‘Do you feel that life has passed you by while you were absent from the world?’ When pressed, she admitted that she was sorry she had spent so much of her time living in her books, that she felt well-read but not well-lived. ‘It worries me that I have spent my life thinking about what life experiences mean, without ever having actually experienced them,’ she added.

I thought about what she had said for some time. After nearly fifty years of reading, I still loved the feeling of being at home in the fictional world, where I know the characters and care about what is going to happen to them. Those characters become real to me, and they continue to live in my mind long after the book is closed.

Up to that time, much of my experience of life beyond my reality had been vicarious so I took on board what my friend had said and began to travel. I had already seen most of what Australia has to offer so set out to explore the rest of the world. I haven’t seen it all yet, but have been to many of those places I have read about, and more. I continue to read as much as ever, but now I can add my own layer of reality to those fictional worlds and characters.

Now in my seventh decade, I can say that I would not trade my reading life for any other and will finish my journey as I began it – reading – and at the end will judge it a life well spent, a life well read.

(An essay, © 1998 and an excerpt from Cardboard Feet, available from Amazon)