Subject: early days
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Sun Sep 24 2000 - 04:25:36 GMT
Sooner or later, Eryk, on every 'literary' listserv
the discussion gets round to the age & circumstances
in which the members first encountered the works
in question. And the Bishop has now set the ball
rolling with memories of his own childhood which
must surely arouse a wistful envy in the hearts of many.
They certainly do in mine.
At the age of ten, my own reading had not yet reached
the 'cat sat on the mat' stage. In rural Ireland in those
days of the 'Emergency' (World War II to you), life
was hard enough. We subsisted mainly on turnip tops
& blighted potatoes boiled up in some peat water
with a couple of fish heads thrown in as the token protein.
Avitaminosis was inevitable & with it came a terrible
slowing of mental development. The adornments of
civilisation like reading or music were far down our list
of priorities. Only our religious faith passed by word
of mouth had a place. To this day, very few of us can
read without mouthing & tracing the words with our fingers.
Our only fuel at that time was the turf dug from the nearby
bog - which was usually too wet to burn. So, in the night,
our way of keeping warm was to huddle together in
as large a group as possible & as far as we could get from
the wind blowing under the cabin door, myself cuddled
under my mother's shawl as we listened to her recite
the Rosary.
You can imagine the reception Holden Caulfield would
have received in such surroundings - if we could even
have imagined such a creature.
So it's perhaps understandable when, in my early forties,
I could at last make some kind of sense of the written
word, that I was overwhelmed by Salinger. After that
first encounter it was Salinger, Salinger, Salinger, day in
day out. I would plod around the fields muttering
to myself phrases like 'all that David Copperfield crap'
in what I hoped was a New York accent - & laughing.
When others laughed, I naively assumed it was in sympathy.
This went on for many years. Then, only a short time ago,
this gangling American anthropologist from the University
of Georgia appeared in our village. As one of the more
amusing local sights I was, inevitably, introduced to him.
He was much taken with my strange obsession & made
many recordings of me holding forth on my central -
indeed only - intellectual interest. He told me he was
going to make me famous. I would be mentioned in all
the best journals & at all the best seminars.
Eventually though, with that conscientious need of
Americans to enlighten & improve the lot of primitive
people, he began dropping hints, little doubts here & there,
that my adulation might be misplaced. All too soon
the old certainties were crumbling. Just as my poor suggestible
mind had been swamped with enthusiasm, now it was
overwhelmed with disillusion. The happy, confident love
of the writer that I had enjoyed for so long turned
to an embittered sarcasm about the man & all his works.
My natural cheerfulness gave way to a grumpy sourness
& every remark I made was a smart one. The village turned
sadly away.
Then, the scholar moved on taking his notebooks &
tapes with him & leaving me isolated & bewildered,
an alien to my own people.
There you go, though. That's the way of the world.
I apologise for the length of this account - but it may,
I hope, shed a little light on the history of my relationship
with the sage of Cornish.
Scottie B.
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