I am at the age of trying to make up for lost time, time that was primarily devoted to the duties required of a man of the 20th century, the hunting and gathering, attracting a mate, raising a family, and of course forging a meaningful career. But how things change; it appears one does not have to work much anymore, just day trade memes and SPACs and buy Bitcoins. Also, now that traveling is more a thing of the past, we of that certain age are left with managing our health and pursuing deferred dreams which, for me, involve mostly writing and piano.
I’ve had little formal training in either. To write, one must, well, write. I’ve done most of that in this blog space, but creative writing, particularly the genre I’m drawn to, the short story, is different. The best training is reading creative fiction, both the short story and the novel and I’ll include drama as, in essence, plays are short stories in dialogue. The profundity of the old aphorism, “so many books, and so little time” is taking on a breathless truth.
Consequently, I try to read at least one short story daily, all with other reading. Recently, somewhat inexplicably, that occasionally has meant returning to novels I read ages ago, ones I might have looked at differently as a younger man. I have also dipped into some young adult literature.
Yes, “YA” as they say in the library world. My parents were not readers and I had no real reading guiding light. In fact, it wasn’t considered “cool” by the crowd I ran around with in my early school years. So, my reading was confined to school assignments and occasionally science fiction. I enjoyed Jules Verne in those days, as well as some of the then contemporary Sci-Fi writers, Asimov, Bradbury. So I never got to read a young adult book. In my defense, YA was not yet a formal category of writing, but there were numerous books that would have been appropriate, had I only known.
Making up for lost time is my mantra. Recently I read the obituary (read them regularly now, wonder why) of Gary Paulsen, just a couple of years older than I, and we shared similar childhood difficulties, his reaction very different than mine: “Paulsen’s teenage years were tumultuous and when things were particularly rough at home, he escaped by running away to the woods where he hunted and trapped animals to survive.” I “survived” by getting out of the house as much as I could and running around with the wrong crowd. I like Paulsen’s approach, but what did I know of surviving in the woods as a NYC boy?
Paulsen captured his wide range of self reliance experiences in some 200 published works, his most famous being Hatchet, the story of a 13 year old who is being flown in a small plane to the northern regions of west Canada to join his father for the summer. So, being the new YA reader that I am, I got the book!
The protagonist’s parents are divorced (mine, unfortunately, were not) and his mother gives him a hatchet as she knows he might find it useful in the woods. Neither she nor he knew that his life would depend on it. Remarkably our young hero, Brian, lasted for two months in the woods with only his hatchet after the pilot of the small plane had a fatal stroke. Brian actually controlled the plane well enough to belly dive into a lake and make it out, with his hatchet.
Reading the book I felt I was starting to make up for my own lost childhood. Needless to say, it is an easy, fast read, but nice pacing, suspense and an opportunity for the reader to project himself into the story. Paulsen uses certain word repetition for effect. I found myself thinking of ways to survive while reading about Brian’s ordeal, projecting my 13 year old self into the story. I remember that person, not a confident boy, and neither was Brian until he was forced to grow up in a hurry and forage for food and shelter, with only his hatchet as a tool It conjured up the unforgettable Tom Hanks movie, Cast Away in my mind (I wonder whether the writer of the film owes some attribution to Paulsen).
I recognized the author’s foreshadowing of the possible resolution to his predicament, the plane being so far off course, in the middle of nowhere. Paulsen plants that solution early on but never mentions it again until the end. And the end of course, is uplifting, Brian becoming a local news item for a while, but, becoming a man in just a couple of months, with a new outlook on life. This is exactly the kind of fiction I should have been reading as a 13 years old, the kind which cries out, ‘read more!”
It takes a “straight man” to get the laugh from the insanity surrounding him. Is the world gone crazy and is “Hank" Devereaux Jr. the only sane person in the book, in spite of his behavior for which he is persecuted? When I originally read it I laughed uncontrollably, but now, in a later stage of life, I see this work as philosophical as it is funny. Ocumen’s Razor, which Hank claims to be guided by in figuring things out, keeps getting twisted by human interactions.
I originally read it when I was about the age of the protagonist. Then, I identified with him. Rereading, it is still funny but more meaningful than I remember, a great balance between poignancy and hilarity. Plus there is some stunning writing. The following could have been written by Updike: "Basketball is a beautiful game for a tall, graceful man like me. At times I'm overwhelmed by its beauty that I lose touch with reality. When my shot is falling, when I'm moving across the lane and back out to the perimeter for my jumper, I forget my age and position in life." (That would be in his 50's, a tenured professor at a mediocre Penn. college.).
Without getting into the details of plot (and there are many characters and subplots), this tale of small-town American university life, brings us through Hank’s midlife crisis as the temporary chairman of his University’s English Department, or as his friend Tony Coniglia puts it, “…youth is the Season of Deeds. The question youth asks is: Who am I? In the Season of Grace we ask: What have I become?”
It is a hilarious labyrinthine path that leads us on Hank’s journey through the remnants of his “Season of Deeds” to his “Season of Grace,” a concept he still rebels at: “…I conclude that if William Henry Devereaux Jr. is less than ecstatically happy…it must be because he has not fully accepted his good friend’s invitation to join him and Nolan Ryan and Dr. J., and Nadia Comaneci, and all the others who have lost their best stuff, in entering the Season of Grace.” And yet, he is relatively at peace at the end, especially after a surprisingly effective kumbaya conclusion, all the characters coming together, a celebration of life, the humor and the sadness all connected by our friends and families. And that’s what it’s all about, isn’t? We’ve got Company!”
