Until this morning, I'd forgotten the extent to which books influenced me as a child.
When I was little, books weren't just a pastime for me, they were...bodily organs? When I was reading a Little House on the Prairie book, there was something fundamentally different about me as a human than when I was reading Beezus and Ramona or one of the Betsy-Tacy books. The kind of book I was reading temporarily reshaped my...something. My brain? My soul? I was still Me, but I was Me as if I were living in the late 1800s in the Dakotas/1950s Portland/Deep Valley around the turn of the century. The words of my thoughts would change; the plans I had for my days would change.
It was like inhabiting a different version of myself. It was inspiring and refreshing. It was nice to get a break from being Regular Me and become a Book Me—like the seasons changing. We're all a little excited when the seasons change because it's something different. We wear the clothes we haven't worn in a while, do the activities we remember from years past. It's just different. That was what being a Book Me felt like.
It also made me try out different ways of living. When I read some books, it made me set my alarm early and get my chores done right away. When I read other books, it made me a more responsible big sister—even a little tired of the childish antics I'd employed the day before.
The Book Mes that I became were always very...respectable, which is so surprising to realize because I never actually cared about being respectable. I was always more interested in thieves and rogue heroes. The characters I wrote stories about were never "respectable." However, when I would wake up as a Book Me, it was always a Book Me who got things done and held her head high and spoke clearly and wanted to be efficient and good.
I'm baffled. Somehow, counter to everything I think and have thought about myself, I must've found "good" characters the most compelling and worthy of being emulated.
Of course, that's exactly why we want children to read good literature. We want them to be inspired by the good and right. We want the good and right to be so compelling that it molds children into better people.
I guess I just never realized that it actually WORKS.
I was suddenly, vividly reminded of Book Mes today as I read an Agatha Christie novel over breakfast. I wanted to keep reading, but I had finished my food and thought, in a very Gudgeon-the-butler sort of tone, "Yes, well, one doesn't always get to do what one wants, does one?" and I got up and started clearing the table. It was pretty easy to make myself do it, and that's when I realized with a shock:
For the first time maybe in years, I'd become a Book Me again. I'd become a brisk, dutiful, mildly cheerful servant who knew what life entailed and had quite made peace with it. I felt like I could do my day, when just moments ago the tasks before me had felt a little dark and heavy. I had had the vague impression that maybe I was going to try to get out of as many things as I could.
But that impression wouldn't have occurred to the servants and noble people of the Agatha Christie novel, and so, when I became Book Me, the impression evaporated for me too.
I've read hundreds of books in the last 10+ years, but I can't remember the last time I became a Book Me. I can tell you for sure that none of the thriller mysteries I've read have transformed me. None of the YA fantasy I've read lately has transformed me. None of those books felt like a bodily organ inhabiting my person and triggering an alternate version of myself.
Even as an almost-thirty-year-old, it's still the old, classic literature that transforms me.
In the words of Ross Geller saying the wrong name again, "Gah, what IS that?"
Is it really that there's something enduring and magical about older, well-written books? Maybe it's the same kind of magic that inhabits the real Statue of David compared to the copy in the Duomo Square. You can feel that. The copy is not the same, and it's downright eerie.
Maybe classical educators really are onto something when they insist that children read old classics. If they could inspire a little wannabe villain like me to get up at 7:00 and sweep, they're capable of almost anything good.
I like the Book Mes so much. I'm going to see if I can hold onto this one, a least a little bit longer.
~Stephanie
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