CATCHING THE READER’S HIGH TIDE by John A. A. Logan
“There
is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to
fortune…”
- Julius Caesar, Act 4,
Scene 3
This
may be very true, but it is not quite the kind of tide I have in mind.
That
said, it may be that all the High Tides source from the same Well-Spring.
I
can also apportion these Tidal Phases to certain discrete periods in my own
reading life.
Period
One: Aged 11 years and under – it was during this phase, the primary school
years, that a great deal of varied material was imbibed, much of it forgotten
now, though still present in the subconscious as shadowed form, the great edge
of some dark beast’s ear, the looming shoulder of some half-formed presence.
This period, for me, was in the 1970s. First, all the Peter and Jane books at
school were devoured, from adventures with golden labradors, to sunned gardens,
to the exotic depiction of rockets at Cape Canaveral. Later, all the James
Herriot books. I became, in mind, a vet while reading those books. For a year,
James Herriot’s sane, rational voice, with its humane and animal Yorkshire Dale
pre-occupations, took over a large section of my Highland Scottish mind’s real
estate. Napoleonic history was of interest at this point, too; as well as a supernatural
novel about Cromwellian-era witch-craft which terrified me so deeply that I
could not look under my bed, or reach my hand underneath it, for weeks, one
scene having left such intense fear. By about age 10, Ian Fleming had crept in.
My Primary School teacher, Miss Blood, her real name, noticed I was reading The
Spy Who Loved Me during a class reading session. I was invited to the front of
the class for interrogation, asked if my parents knew what I was reading, but I
must have held my ground somehow, and was sent back to my desk to resume that
early venture into the world of James Bond.
Period
Two: Aged 11-16 – this was when John Steinbeck crept in, via The Pearl and Of
Mice and Men. A Kestrel for a Knave made its mark, or found its mark. Things
took a surge forward, though, with an extra-curricular handing over to me, aged
14, of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. There was genius in the
timing of the event, and the circumstances. My mind sucked the book in like a
tick pulling at haemoglobin. It feels wrong somehow to call this merely
“reading”; the timeless soul is being accessed.
One
Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest hit my psyche with that High Tide momentum, crossed
the blood-brain barrier, healed and hurt as it travelled through, left
permanent artefacts stranded on the beach. There it was, all in one document,
something I knew I would need to know later, if I was to survive.
This
was the rare instance of a book causing a
High Tide in the reader.
It
gave me a benchmark to compare reading experiences to from then on.
This
can’t be faked.
To
catch the reader’s high tide is to achieve a mainlining into the brain, a
direct injection of the literary drug into the reader’s psychic lobes.
I
found Stephen King, and Thomas Hardy, to be quite the hardy mariners during
this period also. The Stand, Far From the Madding Crowd, The Mayor of
Casterbridge…those vessels tacked close to my shores and breached all defences,
flooding in hard upon the cerebellum, hammering in hard and heavy on the rocks
of the subconscious, leaving permanently useful flotsam on the surface, never
mind how much it may have resembled debris to the casual observer.
Period
Three: Age 16-23 – the most powerful, sustained period of high-tide in this
reader’s life to date. In the Jungle of reading, all the plants and trees and
insects and flowers became inflamed, engorged, replete with colour and sound at
this point. It may be because I left school at 16, encountered unemployment,
had the freedom and time to read. The books at the library were free, or were
reasonably priced at Leakey’s Second-hand Bookshop. I started with Orwell’s
1984 and Animal Farm. Almost any title, in fact, that I had heard of, or that I
knew might have been on a reading syllabus if I had stayed on at school past
16. There was a huge hardback collection of the works of D. H. Lawrence. I took
to bed with it, perhaps helped by the alibi of cold/flu. By the time I emerged
from bed, the DNA of my mind had been weirdly and subtly altered forever. Ray
Bradbury was next to catch up on. Then Zen and the Art of Motorcycle
Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. Jung’s Man and His Symbols, and Memories, Dreams,
Reflections.
The
tide was building. Sometimes there was a feeling of anxiety/unsettlement
associated with the High Tide’s gain of momentum, but the channels of the mind
were open, it was doing what it was supposed to do, what it was designed for,
to magnetise from the world those items of knowledge and wisdom, earned and
passed on by others in a chain of transmission going back endlessly.
The mind's purpose: to
recognise, then absorb those panned nuggets of precious metal.
All
of Phillip Roth’s novels were judiciously hoovered up.
Milan
Kundera’s books were pulled into and through the vortex.
Rabbit,
Run and Rabbit Redux by John Updike.
A
Green Tree in Gedde by Alan Sharp.
Flaubert’s
Sentimental Education.
Sometimes
chance would lead me to a book, sometimes a friend, sometimes a mention in a
film, a Woody Allen film in the case of Flaubert.
The
high tide kept forcing the water higher and higher up my personal beach,
knocking over and dissolving my sandcastles, flooding my moats…pushing and
pushing in at me as it seems certain it is designed, one way or another, to
do…until it had me just about where it needed me I suppose, so that I would be
ready to hear when it offered me the next opportunity of salvage rights on a
piece of long-travelled cargo.
I
can imagine something out there watching me that day, to see if I would
recognise the treasure when it hit my shore.
I
think I knew by the worn, second-hand cover, the sharpness of the print, the
list of characters at the front as though this was a play, not a novel, even
though this was decidedly a novel, not a play.
And
the title.
What
other title could it have?
What
other title could there be for the book that was to hit my shore hardest during
this early period of reader’s high-tide?
I
stared at the bluish-purple cover.
The
Idiot, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
Then
I began to turn the pages, and I have been deep, deep, in the dark, dark waters
ever since.
Comments
Before my Dad was a farmer he was a stonemason, like Jude.
Through illness and other circumstances, I missed about half of primary school, and most of secondary school.
So when I left school at 16 university did not seem on the cards. Like you, no-one in my family had ever gone there. Took me until 23, therefore, to get myself onto the 4 year MA(Hons)English course at Aberdeen.
Changed my life too, friendships. travelling outside UK for first time aged 24.
I really identified with that searing sense of injustice/exclusion in Jude's gut too.
After university ended in 1994, though, I sort of returned to working alone on fiction, like I'd done before starting university in 1990.
Which, of course, led to 17 years of writing unpublished novels in the UK, even more of a Jude the Obscure situation.
That would actually cue in "Tidal Phase IV - The Fiction Writing Years"...during which the only way to survive psychologically while writing novel after unpublished novel...even while having literary agents and famous UK authors tell me regularly they "loved" my work (which made it all harder really)...the only way to survive was to accept fully I'd never be published in the UK, or in Space for that matter...and then my reading inspirations gradually became:
THE MASTER AND MARGARITA
A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES
THE LEOPARD
...all books not published during the author's own lifetime...which, over Time I realised was exactly what gave these books their sense of spiritual freedom/liberation/anarchy, almost as though these authors intuited their Socially-Unpublishable-In-Their-Times positions even while writing Page One of those books.
It's an unusual psychology in those Backs-To-The-Wall authors, quite a bit of desolation/despair thrown into the Mix.
Knut Hamsun had it in bucketloads in his novel, HUNGER, too, one of my favourites...but for him it ended in life-changing publication aged 30.
Jude the Obscure had it about Oxford, of course; those being the Gatekeepers keeping him (and his Class and his rural background) Out.
Very interesting blog.
I can certainly relate to not being able to get a publisher in one's own country. The agent bit resonates with me also.
I am afraid I haven't read most of the books you mention.
Regards
Margaret