A life in reading - Steven Conte
Posted by: Steven Conte
1 December 2008
The significance of reading has changed for me over the years; or to be more precise, new reasons for reading have settled over earlier ones in sedimentary layers. This week I plan to summarise various phases of my reading life (though I’m happy to chat about any aspect of reading or writing).
Like many bookish people I was read to as a child – in my case by my mother. From the beginning I experienced reading as an act of love, and a passion for story naturally followed. (It’s not surprising, perhaps, that love of one kind or another is a central theme of the vast majority of novels.) A favourite book of mine from those days was The Sailor Dog by Margaret Wise Brown, which begins with the following immortal words:
“Born at sea in the teeth of a gale, the sailor was a dog. Scuppers was his name.”
On the corresponding page, Scuppers is depicted in a mackintosh and rain-hat at the helm of a sloop in ferocious seas (apparently whelped and weaned and sent straight up on deck). These days, I love dogs as avidly as books, and my mother has a Labrador retriever named Scuppers.
In a daring narrative move, the second page of The Sailor Dog recounts the hero’s puppyhood in a single sentence: “After that he went to live on the land”. The rest of the story tells of Scuppers’ adventures as he reclaims his maritime heritage, and it occurs to me now that my subsequent reading – and for that matter my writing – is in part a search for fleeting moments of tenderness such as those experienced during my first contact with books.
“Born at sea in the teeth of a gale…”
Author with faithful hound, Meddles
December 2, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Thanks for your comments, everyone. Christi, part of the answer to your question (about my attraction to WWII Berlin as a setting for my novel) lies in my second post. My first, mercifully unpublished novel was set in Tasmania during the Franklin Dam dispute of 1983 (more on that tomorrow), but when I came to write The Zookeeper’s War I was still struggling with the fact that in many ways my upbringing in a boarding school wasn’t typically Australian. Like the Americans, our fiction is often about vast open spaces, so that even if a story is set in a city there is always a notional possibility that the characters could move on rather than deal with their immediate problems - to “strike out for the territories” as Huckleberry Finn eventually does. My personal experiences were all about confinement and entrapment, a more typicaly European dilemma, and when I lived in Berlin for three months as a 20-year-old I found the atmosphere of enclosure utterly compelling (this was 1986, and the Berlin Wall was still intact). The zoo idea came a few years later when I read about the wartime bombing of Berlin, including an account of the bombing of the zoo. It was such a powerful image to me of the suffering of innocents, and the idea for the novel grew from there.
Steven
December 2, 2008 at 11:27 am
I loved dog books as a kid too. Spot was a favourite, and Cliffard the big, red dog! Most of my childhood reading memories are from when I was a little older though - Roald Dahl is an enduring favourite.
December 1, 2008 at 8:57 pm
As a librarian I often think that Little Golden Books are often underated. They have such a diverse list of titles and generally they contain all the original illustrations. I still have a battered copy of the Ugly Duckling somewhere. I remember being so touched by the pictures, which from memory were washed out water colours. As sad as they made me feel, I was always uplifted at the end when the duckling turned into a beautiful swan. I’m still a sucker for a happy ending too.
It’s interesting what reaches us as children. I read to my 3 year old daughter every night and as much as she has her favourites (Charlie and Lola, Maisy etc) she can still be open to reading different titles. At the moment we are reading lots of Christmas stories and I am also trying to interest her in my childhood favourite - Paddington Bear. She’s not buying it too much but she’s humouring mummy a bit, and we read it at least once a week! I’m very conscious of encouraging her to have a love of reading, I think it’s one of the greatest things I can teach her. I also want to give her childhood memories just like the ones you have shared with us Steven, and my parents gave me.
December 1, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Hi Steven. I really related to your description of reading as an act of love. My busy working mother always took the time to read to my brother and I. I felt it was the only time she was ever still! I never appreciated the dedication of that nightly vigil until I became a mother, and then a working mother. But on the upside, it is fun to have an excuse to reread all the childhood classics read to me; Winnie the Pooh, James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl makes the best read aloud books, how great are the Witches or Revolting Rhymes to perform with gusto), Harry the Dirty Dog… I have a particularly fond memory of an edition of “Little Red Riding Hood” that had a holographic cover, that was hi-tech back then - it made the woods look particularly menacing.
I have to agree with you that I still read to capture that early excitement. How I would love to pass that on to my kids!
I am reading “Zookeeper’s War” at the moment, and really enjoying it. Can I ask what the attraction of WWII Germany was as a setting, and the zoo, what inspired you?