by Mary Wakefield Buxton –
URBANNA —
When one loves to read, one is never alone. Reading is the finest experience in life other than having a dog in your lap because it allows readers to enter the brain of an author. It’s a “one on one” experience and never fails to please, mainly because writers are generally interesting people simply because they are not conformers. Their ideas are refreshing because they are usually not of the common herd.
I also like the fact a reader is totally free to personally interpret the author’s meaning without having someone else telling him what the author is saying. This is basic freedom and therefore reading offers each reader freedom to think for himself.
Authors are usually deeply introverted thinkers and therefore have spent their lives developing their own brain, ideas, and thoughts without someone else “programing” them. Yet, times are changing. Authors may be losing their traditional role in our society as “rugged individualists” and may now be allowing political and religious dogmas dilute their ability for free thinking.
We live in a society today that thrives on “politically correct group think.” It’s sad to me that many writers today are following the pack. Many graduating from journalism schools or creative writing programs at the university level seem to have been “programed” with political agenda (some would call it brainwashed), and I believe such writers are weak.
The first whiff I get that a writer is delivering “talking points” from either left or right wing political groups, I move on. I’m too old to listen to political dogma. If a writer can’t deliver his own original thinking on issues, what gift does he have to give to society?
Speaking of “groups,” have you ever been assigned to a group and given a job and ended up doing all the work yourself? Yes, probably everyone has survived such an experience, at least once in his life.
In most every group there are those who work diligently on a project and those who do not. The latter individual is known as a shirker. There is a special level of hell in Dante’s “Inferno” for those who don’t carry their fair share in group completion of a task.
But I digress. Some of the books I have savored over winter were written by my favorite English authors: Iris Murdoch’s “Message to the Earth,” Julian Barnes’ “The Sound of Time,” “Arthur and George” and “The Sense of an Ending,” short story collections by Graham Greene and biographies of authors James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence.
I also discovered a fine Canadian writer who wrote, “They Left Us Everything,” by Plum Johnson about her life growing up in her dysfunctional family. Her American mother had been a southern belle raised on a plantation outside Richmond and her father was a British World War II vet who had once been a POW. The two were as opposite as two poles and the book was delightful.
I picked up James Thurber’s “My Life and Hard Times” filled with humorous stories of his life growing up in Columbus, Ohio, in the first half of the 20th century. Some of the passages were laugh out loud funny, especially a memory of his economics professor at Ohio State University trying his best to give a football star in his class a passing grade for the week.
Since football players had to have a passing grade in every class every week in order to “start” in Big Ten football games, professors bent over backwards to give that passing grade.
Apparently this football star was not the brightest star in the night sky so the professor decided to give him an easy question to answer in an oral “pass-fail” exam.
“Name any means of transportation that moves produce across the country,” he asked the young athlete to which he received a blank expression.
The professor offered other hints to his student. Finally, exasperated, he actually said, “Choo Choo!”… but that did not seem to inspire the football star with any ideas.
Someone in the class, in an attempt to help, even gave a fine rendition of a train whistle but, again, no success.
Finally the professor asked the student how he got to Columbus from Iowa last September.
“Train?” said the student.
“You pass!” the professor shouted in glee and the entire class broke out in applause. Now Ohio State had a good chance to beat Michigan on Saturday!
What fun to rewrite the comedy of James Thurber! I love reading (and writing) comedy and would do so all day long if I could find time as most everything in life is funny when you start to think about it. And laughter is the best way I know to go through life.
© 2021
