Sunday Salon: Tales of Toil

Each Sunday, I am reading a chapter of Maureen Corrigan's memoir, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books, and sharing my thoughts as I go. This is Part Three.

Chapter 2 - Tales of Toil: What John Ruskin and Sam Spade Taught Me About Working for a Living

Maureen could not wait to be an English Professor. She was excited at the prospect of attending an Ivy League school for her doctorate. Only, it wasn't quite what she expected. She was woman, for one, and women, although gaining strides on the equality front, were still not taken very seriously in 1977. The climate was not at all what she expected. There was a definite class distinction, and it was sometimes ruthlessly competitive; many kept to their own specific literary field of study. She had hoped for a more open and inviting experience, where book lovers would take pleasure in fraternizing about books and reading. In reference to her experience in graduate school, Maureen writes, " Books got me into this mess, and books got me through." [pg 67]

My own graduate school experience was much different than Maureen's, but then, I did not pursue an education or career in literature. Sometimes I wish I had, but most of the time I know I chose the right path for me. I knew it the first day of graduate school, as I sat in my first class and was swept up by an overwhelming feeling that I finally found the place I belonged. I did sometimes question my sanity, and once my career was under way years later, I would wonder what I had been thinking, wishing I hadn't quite been as idealistic and caring as I had been. Deeper inspection, however, never fails to make me appreciate the direction I did decide to travel. For all the headaches, I like what I do and feel that I am in the right place. That doesn't mean there are not days I would much rather be working in a bookstore or getting paid to read.

As I mentioned last week, although I am often drawn to novels with strong female protagonists, I have no trouble losing myself in a book regardless of the main character's gender. Maureen Corrigan points to Nancy K. Miller's idea of "'learned adrogony'--that is, the ability to effect a sex-change operation of the imagination, an ability, I, along with millions of other female readers, had developed over decades of reading books mostly featuring male heroes and antiheroes." [pg 64] Of course, "learned adrogony" extends to male readers as well. My husband's love for Sue Grafton's Kinsey Milhone series comes to mind as an example. When I read a book, I most often become a part of the story and am not just a mere observer. I step into someone else's shoes for a short while, feel and experience what he or she is feeling. It doesn't matter whether the character whose shoes I wear is male or female.

"I certainly don't think that we readers only or even chiefly enjoy or understand books whose main characters mirror us. In fact, the opportunity to become who we are decidedly not . . .is one of the greatest gifts reading offers." [pg 70] Being able to relate or connect to a character has long been an important factor in my enjoyment of a book. I have to care about the characters and want to know what happens to them. Still, I most often enjoy reading about people whose lives are different than my own, who live in different cultures, and face challenges that I will most likely never encounter. Their stories and experiences are often universal in a general sense, which is what makes them more easily relatable.

Struggling through her dissertation, Maureen discovered a love for hard boiled detective fiction. Dasheill Hammett and Raymond Chandler swept her off her feet. ". . . you find the books you need when you need them--even if they're not the books you start out thinking you need." [pg 73-74] The more she read, the more Maureen began to see a common thread running through the genre fiction she turned to for escape and the Victorian classics she studied in school. They all seemed to touch on similar social issues, whether intentional on the author's part or not. Today, classes are taught about genre fiction, such as crime fiction. While it is still not taken as seriously as it might be, the significance of genre fiction in our culture is no longer being completely overlooked either, which, I think, is a step in the right direction.

Maureen suggests that one appeal of detective fiction is the working class voice so often used in the telling of a story as is the very fact that of the focus on work itself. It speaks to us because we can so easily identify with it. She goes on to say, "I think a lot of us fans find detective novels so riveting not because we care who-dun-it . . . but because we care about how the detectives do it--how they work." [pg 76] I know this is true for me. I am a master at figuring out the who-dun-it early on in crime fiction novels not because I set out to, but because it is just how my brain works. I take pleasure in reading how characters get from point A to point B and then on to point C. I am curious about the why and the how of it. The process is what fascinates me most, after all, isn't that the meat of any story?

Maureen's experiences in graduate school served to be both a reality check as well an opportunity to explore literature in a new and different way. She stepped outside of her own box and it proved to be very enlightening.

Part One: Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading!
Part Two: Women's Extreme Adventure Stories