As a teenager I attended an upscale private school where I
did not fit in. In a sea of preppies, I opted for a brooding persona. I wrote
curse words in Sharpie on my high-top sneakers along with song lyrics from
B-sides of obscure British pop records. I had no idea what I wanted to be when
I grew up, where I wanted to go to college, or whether I even wanted to go to
college. I never liked anything.
In junior year I took an elective called Reader's Response.
I sat next to a girl who ironed the pleats of her uniform skirt every night. I
pinned my pleats together with big safety pins that I sometimes removed to use
as earrings.
We had to read 10 books in the course of a semester, our
choice. I liked reading but I could only think of six. The teacher said I should
read The Catcher in the Rye. He handed
me a copy he happened to have on the shelf.
So I started. By the time the class ended, I had lifted out
of my life and landed into Holden's, a boy I alternately wanted to smack and
salute. Kind of how I felt about myself.
I read that book in its entirety without once putting it
down. I eschewed all other homework. I read late into the night. When I
finished, I lay awake, unable to sleep.
The carousel stuck with me the most. It is such a tragic
scene when Holden pays for his sister Phoebe’s seat on the beat-up ride of his
own youth. Poor Phoebe tries talking sense to nihilist Holden. "You never
like anything," she says.
I sympathized with Phoebe yet agreed with Holden. School was
pointless. He and I were trapped together on a road toward an uninteresting
destination. Like Holden I yearned for human connection and authenticity in my
life.
I walked away from that book a changed person. I read The
Catcher in the Rye and my life path became
clear. I wanted to read books and write for a living. Nothing else would do
because nothing else felt true to who I really was. This book started me on
becoming who I am.
As a teacher I never forget the power a single book can have
on a person. It’s impossible to predict what book it will be. I got lucky with
that one intuitive English teacher because the best life-changing book is
hardly ever what a teacher or parent thinks it should be. In my first published
novel How to Be Manly, a teenager’s
whole life shifts course because of a book he steals from a garage sale.
He finds it by chance and it changes
everything.
I teach and write with reverence for the moment when a
student or reader will find reality crashing with just the right book at just
the right time. It happens with the character in my own novel and it happens
with me still now that I am grown.
There is nothing like the book that makes you turn the last
page and look out the window and realize that you are different now. You
realize that your own tragic scenes have meaning. You realize that even though
you still never like anything that maybe you might like a few things. You
realize that while you are still alone, someone once wrote a book explaining
everything you feel and that maybe you are not alone. You have found the book
by chance and now everything is different, including you.
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all
done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of
yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it,” Holden
says.
I still know just how he feels.
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