Interesting things to ponder.: seanan

Interesting things to ponder.

This fascinating article in the Baltimore City Paper talks about the books we loved when we were twelve, and how they never ever leave us. It opens with a quote that really resonates with me:

"A girl I once caught reading Fahrenheit 451 over my shoulder on the subway confessed: "You know, I'm an English lit major, but I've never loved any books like the ones I loved when I was 12 years old." I fell slightly in love with her when she said that. It was so frank and uncool, and undeniably true."

I have found books that I love every year of my life. I am a person who reads, I've been a person who reads for almost my entire time on this planet, and I go through a lot of brand new books every month (often to the chagrin of my budget). And yet...

The books I go back to, the books that comfort me when I feel bad, the books that lift me up when I'm feeling down, are largely books I encountered between the ages of nine and twelve. I'll go up one level on that, since that was also the period of my life where Xanth and Dragonlance reigned supreme: they're the books that emotionally moved me between the ages of nine and twelve. Tailchaser's Song. The Last Unicorn. IT. The Stand. War for the Oaks. There are others -- oh, there are others -- and so many of them source back to that same stretch of time.

I'd argue that you can fall in love with the way an author uses language, as much as a specific use of language, and that it's also at its most powerful when it happens between those ages. Hence my total inability to get over my love for Stephen King (not that I really want to). Hence the comic geeks of the world and their insistence on viewing whichever death of Jean Grey happened during their 'imprint years' as the only real time she died. (Personally, I'll take any of her deaths, as long as she promises to stay dead.)

I'd be curious about how universal this is. But is strikes me as being something that's very true for a lot of us, and somehow manages to be practically invisible at the same time. Pretty cool.

markbernstein

November 27 2008, 04:45:10 UTC 8 years ago

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Oh, yes, if not universal, certainly widespread. I believe it was Asimov who said that the Golden Age of Science Fiction is twelve.

That ten to twelve age range is when I first encountered Heinlein, when I first read A Wrinkle In Time, when I was first moved by, even if I didn't fully understand, Sturgeon. Certainly this was also roughly when I first read Asimov, and Clarke, and Kuttner, and oh so many others, but those first three are my Trinity.

November 27 2008, 04:46:23 UTC 8 years ago

Oh, and I was thirteen when Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams blew my comic-loving mind with Green Lantern/Green Arrow.

seanan_mcguire

November 27 2008, 16:51:46 UTC 8 years ago

Twelve/thirteen was when I picked up my first issues of this little comic called New Mutants. All the rest is mournful X-history...

kyra_neko_rei

November 27 2008, 06:56:17 UTC 8 years ago

Ahhh, Heinlein. Nothing quite like the realization one is obtaining sexually-explicit literature from one's parents' bookshelves.

November 27 2008, 16:52:27 UTC 8 years ago

Heinlein and King were the only authors I was forbidden to read. The result? Undying love for the one I managed to sneak under the covers, and undying 'yeah, whatever' for the one I didn't hit early enough to imprint on.

November 28 2008, 01:39:11 UTC 8 years ago

*giggle* Best way to ensure a child will love a certain book: forbid it, and it automatically becomes that much more fascinating.

My parents didn't forbid anything, although Mom did express dislike/disgus/dissuasion for one single pulp-fiction quasi-romance thing set in preColumbian Central America, plenty of torture and death in it and after I bought it (she might have given in and bought it for me) I rescued it from the garbage can several times. Heinlein and King I scavenged from my dad's collection (books scattered all over the house means nothing is missed much for a few days), and then at some point went to the library for a few more of King's and the bookstore for the rest of Heinlein's.

There's definitely something about encountering "adult" concepts presented matter-of-factly in books. I know I got big-eyed and all over seeing characters talk about sex and have sex in the pages of normal, as opposed to romance, novels. Swearing, too. The first King book I read was Needful Things, and it blew my mind at the time I read it, much more than all the incest and "free love" mentality in the Heinlein books. I'm not sure why.

netpositive

November 27 2008, 14:38:39 UTC 8 years ago

That ten to twelve age range is when I first encountered Heinlein,

Whereas I didn't try to read Heinlein until late in college, and was scarred in entirely the wrong direction by _Stranger in a Strange Land_. [I'm not being facetious; it really did give me a negative impression of a number of things.] *mumble* years later (coming up on 2/3rd of my life, yipes), perhaps I should try to reread it. I have so many more walls to throw it against now. ;)

November 27 2008, 16:53:20 UTC 8 years ago

I have found that some books, I just wasn't 'ready' for when I first read them. The Dead Zone, for example, has absolutely become a better book as I got older. That said, once I develop a prose allergy, I never get over it. Ever.

November 28 2008, 01:41:53 UTC 8 years ago

Yeah, Stranger in a Strange Land is the only Heinlein book I've gotten sufficiently annoyed/bored with to stop reading. My first was To Sail Beyond the Sunset, and then Time Enough For Love, and I like them, although I don't agree with everything.

November 27 2008, 16:51:16 UTC 8 years ago

Asimov was an incredibly smart man.

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Interesting things to ponder.

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