Reading & Writing

   One of the vagrant memories that has stuck with me over the years concerns something that happened when I was in grade school. The “Bookmobile” as it was, and probably still is, so quaintly called had come to my school, and class by class the students were ushered through that library on wheels. I always took too long searching the crowded shelves and had to be rushed along. After I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs, though, a subtle but distinct change came over my book selection habits. Where before I had chosen from the standard, slender (and dull) volumes organized by grade, now I began to explore other areas of the crowded vehicle, even those intended for high school students. ERB had shown me how wonderful a really good book could be, and I was determined to find as many others as I could.
     One such day I found a thick, heavy, illustrated (but not abridged or rewritten—the original) edition of Scott’s Ivanhoe. I don’t believe any of the well meaning but often misguided library workers tried to dissuade me, and so I took the volume home to read. Certainly its subject matter—knights and chivalry—was promising. But each time I attempted to get into the story, something went wrong. The magic of reading just didn’t happen. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t make the words fit together one after the other so that they consistently made sense. I was probably ten or eleven at the time, and I decided with disappointment that the book must be “too old” for me. Luckily such experiences, of which there were a few, did not unduly discourage me from continuing to attempt challenging fare.

     I was reminded of this recently when, through the kind offices of John Guidry, I acquired a small stash of new-to-me H. Rider Haggard volumes. When I discovered Haggard during my teens, a few of his titles gave me something of the same sort of experience as Ivanhoe. Because I was older, however, I felt free to wonder if the fault were actually mine, or if it might not lie with the author’s prose. Since that time I’ve probably read two dozen or more Haggard titles, and he’s one of my favorite writers—when he’s at his best. There are other times, however, when the man’s prose is so thick and stilted that reading him is like trying to run through quicksand, or up the side of a gravel pit. Furthermore, my general impression is that the books that gave me trouble years ago are not especially easy reads today.
     Of my newest acquisitions, I found Montezuma’s Daughter so discursive in its opening chapters that I gave up on it. I suppose this was supposed to be part of Haggard’s technique, intended to gain verisimilitude by being as round-about in his first-person narration as real-life sixteenth-century conquistadors would have been (but actually weren’t, if I may judge by my edition of Bernal Diaz del Castillo), but it’s far more than I have patience for.
    Allan’s Wife had the advantage of being short, and the writing seemed a good deal more readable, even if the story wasn’t as interesting as I hoped. (You may remember that Paul Spencer briefly reviewed this book some mailings back, and that it in part concerns a baboon woman. If anything, it’s an illustration of how close an extremely imaginative writer can get to a really good idea and still fail to recognize it—in this case, to create Tarzan . . . or even Balza.)
    I recently also had the opportunity (again, thanks to John) to listen to a “talking book” adaption of She, a novel I’ve long admired and considered to be Haggard’s masterpiece. I’m sorry to report that it did not hold up well at all, and I am left with the decided opinion that Haggard’s intentional archaisms have not served him well. At times, at least, he isn’t merely a chore to read, but also to listen to!

     This occasional failure of the printed word (or of my aptitude with it) can be frustrating, and enlightening. A year or two ago I agreed to participate on a panel at a local science fiction convention, and in preparation for that event I visited a book shop and sought out titles by writers I expected to meet at the convention, so that I could familiarize myself with their work. I was only able to find two such paperbacks. Later that evening I settled down to read them. To my consternation, I found my mind wandering after only a page or two. When perseverance did not pay off, I put the first book aside and went on to the second. But the same thing happened. The words and ideas didn’t seem to connect properly; they didn’t quite fit together into proper sentences and paragraphs. They didn’t flow. I flatter myself to think that I have a fairly good “ear” for language and am sensitive to stylistic nuances; and I know from experience that with sufficient effort I can force myself to read and comprehend virtually anything, though I’m very intolerant of “unreadable” writing. But it certainly seemed unlikely that both books would fit into that category.
    Concluding that the fault must be mine, I put the books aside until the following evening—only to have the same thing happen again! This time I rose and paced the room in annoyance. My eye happened to alight on a copy of the Dover edition of The Pirates of Venus and Lost on Venus. I snatched it up, turned to the opening page, and started to read. If I had the same difficulty with ERB, I reasoned, then the failure of communication must be at my end.

    If a female figure in a white shroud enters your bedchamber at midnight on the thirteenth of this month, answer this letter; otherwise, do not.