Today’s Post by Joe Farace
National Library Week runs from April 3 – 9, 2022. Look for another post celebrating it tomorrow.
Today’s post has little or nothing to do with photography but has everything to do with libraries, reading and books, which are a passion of mine. If that doesn’t interest you. I’ll be back Tuesday with a photo-oriented post. if it is of interest to you, please read on…
As far as I can remember—and I have a good memory—I’ve always been an avid reader. I don’t remember much about First Grade other than that my father took me to my first day at the same Catholic elementary school he and my mother attended… and crying. That reaction to school is something I never got over until I attended the Maryland Institute, College of Art.
Another thing I remember about First Grade was that I already know how to read. One or both of my parents taught me how to read using the local newspapers, the Baltimore Sun and Baltimore News Post, before it became the News-American. Oh, I didn’t know how to pronounce or even what some of the words meant that I was reading, so I made up my own pronunciations and definitions of what they sounded like or meant. It was during a reading lesson in class when I first encountered the word “faucet.” This was a word I’d never heard at home but the book had a drawing of something we called a “spigot” and so when it was my turn to read part of the book aloud I simply substituted the word “spigot” whenever I encountered “faucet.” The nun teaching the class never corrected me because she knew we were just a bunch of poor kids and made allowances.
I remember Second Grade best because the young nun that was teaching us did something that literally and figuratively changed my life: She took our class to a public library. (above left) This was not your typical modern field trip where all the kids pile into a bus and sing songs. This school couldn’t afford transportation, so we walked. Hey, it was healthier too. But when I strolled into the library I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was like Oz. I had never seen so many books. The only books in our home was Richard Henry Dana Jr.’s Two Years Before the Mast and, I think, a Bible. At some point I tried reading Dana’s book but it was too complex for my young brain. In 1946, the book was made into a movie starring Alan Ladd and directed by John Farrow but I’ve never seen it.
The only time I had the same kind of feeling was much latter in life when Mary and I were visiting San Simeone and I walked into Hearst’s library much as I did at the Clifton Park Branch of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. The big difference was I walked out of the Baltimore library with a small stack of book written by Jean De Brunhoff about Babar the Elephant. At San Simeone I ended up setting off their alarms and got yelled at. I loved those Babar books and ended up reading every one the library had on their shelves and right this minute, I’m glancing up and to my right and looking at a small Babar figure on my own book shelf. In the process of reading those books, I developed an abiding affection for elephants as well as for Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library system. I have many fond memories of visiting Enoch Pratt’s one-block square downtown branch (at right) while in High School. It was and remains a shrine to my love of books. And I equally love the local Parker Colorado branch library that has lots of books and is staffed by knowledgeable, helpful and nice staff members.
Book Club Pick of the Week: Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
I just finished reading this book and was mesmerized by it unlike any other book I’ve read since Steven King’s 849-page epic 11/22/63. I loved that book so much that after reading the library’s hardback copy I bought a paperback version and read it again! Before the Fall, seems to have had a similar in its effect on me and like King’s book I was sorry to see it end. I’m glad Mary bought me a copy so I can read it again.
Before the Fall was the winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for Best Novel and the 2017 International Thriller Writers Award For Best Novel. Ostensibly it’s a thriller or a mystery, although, I think, it lacks the structure of either genre. It is a simple story about the crash of a private airplane leaving Martha’s Vineyard and flying back to New York City and its two unlikely survivors. The mystery is what or who caused the crash. The book includes a cast of well-formed and non-stereotypical characters including some that might seem familiar but also one that nobody could have seen coming. (No Spoilers Here.) Along the way, the book looks at modern media and its relationships with politics, wealthy American’s lives, modern art and peeks into the social strata of New York City, revealing exactly what I, as an adopted Westerner, think it’s really like.
Hawley is the creator and writer of the TV series Fargo and other than his gift for writing realistic and compelling dialogue that drives the story forward, Before the Fall has nothing in common with the first three seasons of that show. I haven’t seen season 4. Yet not only do his characters feel like real people, reading and experiencing the craft and creativity of his words on paper is one of the reasons* I became a writer. At times his writing feels poetic but at the same time it’s never self conscious or pretentious. It’s almost as if Hawley himself is love with the writing process and is enjoying the hell out of writing these words. For writers, Before the Fall is a Master Class in language. For the rest of us readers. It’s a great story and an intriguing read that is, to beat the cliché over the head, really hard to put down.
*There are three reasons why I wrote the 37 books that have been published so far. I decided to write a Book Club post about what they are in the future; OK, in two weeks. I once told an editor of my most recent books what these three reasons were and she asked, “what said that?’ I told her: “I did.”
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