Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Page

There’s a scene in Woody Allen’s 1986 masterpiece film Hannah and Her Sisters that, for me, may just perfectly encapsulate what I love about the power of books.  In it, the characters Elliot (Michael Caine) and Lee (Barbara Hershey) are wandering among the densely-crowded aisles of one of those divine used-book stores in New York.  Elliot has an endearingly nervous crush on Lee, his sister-in-law.  He so wants to convey his true feelings for her but can’t quite find the words.  Then, as he stops at one shelf, he pulls out an anthology of poems by e.e. cummings, offers to buy it for Lee, and implores her to later read cummings’ “somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond.”

As a 17-year-old boy living in Meridian, Mississippi, watching the film on VHS (it didn’t play in our local mass-appeal movie theatre but thank God I was able to rent it), I was enraptured not only by the film as a whole but by that scene in particular.  And it wasn’t just Elliot’s oddly sweet flirtation with Lee nor was it simply the swooning romanticism of cummings’ poem that lodged Cupid’s arrow deep in my heart.  It was also the heavenly vision of those rows upon rows upon rows of shelves crammed so tightly with books that they seemed to have spilled out into the stacks of even more books piled high on the floor.  In a place like that, I imagined, you might never know what serendipitous treasure you might discover.

The allure of literature has frequently been central to the plot in numerous other films as well, including those made for children – not the least of which was Wolfgang Peterson’s fantastical 1984 gem The NeverEnding Story, which itself was adapted from the late German author Michael Ende’s 1979 book of the same name.  Even J.K. Rowling’s juggernaut Harry Potter series of novels has long enthralled children even while being adapted into the films, and it has often been credited with introducing a whole new generation to the excitement of reading where previous efforts left youths cold.

To my mind, there’s something comforting about holding a book.  It’s a tactile pleasure to feel the lightness or the heft, to see the tattered edges of a used book jacket (or the crisp, glossy cover of a new one), to savor the distinctive smell of a dusty old used tome, to flip through its pages while absorbing all the enriching literary treasures that lie within.

Actually, this passion I hold dearly for books may somehow have been destined to be.  My late maternal grandmother worked at the Meridian Public Library in the 1940’s.  Her own daughter – my mother – worked at the same library, starting in 1981, for many years in a much larger, more modern building.  I practically “grew up” in a public library.  I have many fond memories of my mother taking me to work with her on Saturday mornings, and of spending full Saturdays browsing and sitting on the floor among the stacks reading books while she worked. 

Even more awesome was the fact that my mother would also regularly check out books and bring them home for me. As I got older, the selections included those by my favorite author at the time: Stephen King.  My own mother freely encouraged my voracious pre-teen and teenage reading appetite with heaping helpings of Stephen King!  How freaking cool is that?

You just can’t get all that from a Kindle, an iPad, or a Nook.

On Friday: “Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Page – Part 2”