Very interesting, Chris. It is hard for me to reconstruct what and why
I read particular books unless something stands out in my memory or
unless I liked something well enough to read several times, A. E. Van
Vogt's /Slan/, for example.
I've mentioned that my grandmother raised me until I was ten. She
thought I should read Westerns, especially Zane Grey. I recall that she
bought me a copy of /Spirit of the Border /for one of my birthdays. In
retrospect /Spirit of the Border, /which was based on the historical Lew
Wetzel who tracked down the half-breed, Jim Girty, may have been the
most violent of Grey's novels. I later wondered why she selected that
particular novel.
I was born in 1934. The first novel I read was /Robinson Crusoe; /which
had an effect on me. I have since then been an "always prepared,"
carrying Swiss Army knives sort of person. Susan, when I met her was
more the "never be prepared" sort. When we would go places, I would
stock the car for emergencies, and she would laugh and scoff while I did
so. :-)
I would have been ten in 1944. I was very much caught up in the war
back then, and read the /Wilmington Press Journal /and /The Lost Angeles
Times/ avidly and cut out maps of of the battles being fought. That's
when I became especially impressed by the Marines.
My mother remarried when I was twelve. We moved into a duplex with the
landlord living next door. He was Mr. Thurlow, a widower, born in
England and living with his sister in law, Mrs Smith. He was a kind man
whom we respected. I don't recall anyone speculating about his living
arrangement. My stepfather bought me my first bicycle when I was 12 and
I rode it a lot. I recall liking Edgar Rice Burrows. I liked his
Fantasy/SF as well as I did his Tarzan.
I didn't read C. S. Lewis, but until I got out of the Marine Corps
(1955) I got my books from the library or a used book store. I never
saw a review. I would select books by rummaging through the book store
stacks and basing my decisions on the cover art.
I didn't discover C.S. Lewis, as far as I recall, until I began
accumulating /The Oxford History of English Literature /when I was in
college/. /C. S. Lewis's /English Literature in the Sixteenth Century,
excluding Drama /was the first book of his that I read. It was
published in 1953, but don't recall when I bought it or read it. Susan
was fond of C.S. Lewis and got me to read many of his other writings,
but his history was the only book of his that I really liked. I read it
two or three times.
I liked J. R. R. Tolkien much better Lewis. I had an interest in
archaeology and Tolkien's /Hobbit /and /Lord of the Rings /trilogy
fascinated me. I probably read them four of five times. (I never
joined a Tolkein club, however. I wasn't _that_ fascinated.)
I didn't read the same books others here mentioned, but I was an
adolescent earlier than most (all?) of you and so had earlier books
available to me. And if some were in existence, I may not have
encountered them. At one time, if the old guy with the little used-book
store didn't have it, I didn't read it. The time came when I realized
how limited my local library was. After that, I quit going there.
After I started college and had a car, I would go to Acres of Books in
Long Beach. They had a reputation for having more used books than any
other used book store in . . . don't remember, maybe Southern California.
I recognize the authors, you mention, Chris, but can't recall whether I
read them or what I thought of them if I did. I mentioned making the
decision not to stay in the Marine Corps and started reading "the
classics" when I was stationed at Twenty-nine Palms, but when the
opportunity arose to leave that unpleasant place and become a rifle
instructor at Camp Pendleton, I jumped at it. At Pendleton one of my
fellow coaches was Bob Bickel. He loved science fiction but preferred
short stories. I preferred novels; so we would read and then narrate to
each other what we had read -- that saved us both having to read a
format we didn't like. Bob's family was in New Mexico; so I invited him
to come home with me when we were on Liberty. He eventually married my
sister.
I had the G. I. Bill, but I also worked on the docks out of the
Teamster's Union. My stepfather got both Bob and I into the Teamster's
Union so we could "swamp," which meant loading and unloading trucks on
the docks. We would sit in the Teamster's Hiring Hall and wait to be
called to meet a truck driver who needed someone to load or unload his
truck in the Los Angeles Harbor. I did a lot of studying while waiting
to be called out, but I also read a lot of Science Fiction. I never
managed to interest Bob in going to college. After graduating in 1959,
I started work at Douglas Aircraft Company. I took classes toward an M.
A. in the evening at Long Beach State and then Dominquez Hills. Bob and
my sister split up at some point and he moved back with his family which
had moved to Colorado. I read other things by then, but resorted to SF
when I wasn't up to anything serious, and then later on resorted to
Detective fiction.
Lawrence
On 2/16/2021 1:34 AM, epostboxx@xxxxxxxx wrote:
On 16. Feb 2021, at 07:09, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:As an adolescent I read predominantly science fiction, 'devouring' 4 or 5 books
Do I think any of these SF novels are "classics"?
a week for years. Of those, I would say some by Arthur C. Clarke classify as
literature. I read David Lindsay's VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS as a young teenager and
it has stuck with me in a troubling way throughout adulthood. (I don't think I
could read it again.)
In early adult life (when, I think in hindsight, my reading was a [close to
pathological?] escape from reality) I discovered C.S. Lewis's incredible
'Ransom' trilogy (which I re-read regularly), John Wyndham (a worthy successor
to H.G. Wells) and Keith Roberts, whose 'alternate histories' I thought very
highly of. I occasionally re-read Wells (definitely literary classics) and
Wyndham; Roberts I had to look up to get the name right. Algis Budrys's ROGUE
MOON made a deep impression on me (enough so to mention it despite some serious
misgivings I have about it now).
There is also a colleague of Lewis and Chesterton who wrote what I would
classify in the 'religious fantasy' genre - I can't remember the name. [Now
I've looked him up: Charles Williams - one of 'The Inklings'; many of whom were
at one time favourites of mine.]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inklings
I find it interesting that I enjoy(ed) engaging with Chesterton and Lewis (and,
back then, Williams) even though I profoundly disagree(d) with their
Weltanschauung [world view] - perhaps because I appreciate having people 'on
the other side' who are intelligent, literate, and have deep insight into 'the
human condition' (even though I think their ultimate position 'wrong').This may
also be because I originally came from 'that side' ...
Recently I've been listening to the 'Short Science Fiction' collections (from
the early and mid 20th century - i.e., with expired copyrights) found on
Librivox. It is interesting to see how far 'behind' those 'visions of the
future' we are in terms of space travel; and on the other hand how we have
undergone certain social and technological developments (especially in
computing technology) to which those authors were completely blind. I find very
little of it that I would classify as literature, but much of it good for light
entertainment - and the occasional 'insight.' (Is the latter enough to make it
'literature', I wonder ...)
https://librivox.org/group/435?primary_key=435&search_category=group&search_page=1&search_form=get_results
Thanks for your postings, Lawrence.
Chris Bruce, in
Kiel, Germany
