[lit-ideas] Re: Reading List

  • From: JimKandJulieB@xxxxxxx
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2007 07:02:00 EST

I love this post.  Going to Abebooks now to look for Ross's Kaplan.  . Farson 
sounds intriguing.   "I Heard the Owl Call My Name" was  a favourite of mine, 
but seems no-one lately has really heard of it, much less  read it. Now 
you've made me go to my shelves and see if I still own a copy  of it (too, way 
too 
much, loaning of books w/out keeping track of who the lendee  for each book is 
over the years!).   It was better known when I was in  high school (don't ask 
... when the dinosaurs roamed the  earth).  There used to be, in those days 
(god, I sound old), minor  jokes -- when responding to a loud voice summoning, 
one might say, "did I  hear an owl call my name?" -- and variations thereof.   
I love the  Kaplan mini-passage -- I must hunt that book down for sure.
 
I've never heard/read "naff" before.  I understand what it means from  the 
context, but what is the colloquial culture in which it resides or whence it  
was born?
 
Julie Krueger
 

========Original  Message========     Subj: [lit-ideas] Re: Reading List  
Date: 1/17/2007 10:15:57 P.M. Central Standard Time  From: 
_ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx (mailto:ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   To: 
_lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
(mailto:lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx)   Sent on:    
At one point in my father's stay here, I said out  loud to someone that 
what distinguishes my father from the rest of the  world's fathers is 
his reading list.  Rarely do I run into anyone who  has read the books 
my father recommends.  And yet, they're quite  good.  Here, for your 
edification, is his list:

Negley Farson,  "The Way of a Transgressor."
Margaret Craven, "I Heard the Owl Call My  Name"
Robert Marshall, "The Haunted Major"
Damon Runyon, "The Best of  Damon Runyon"
Leonard Q. Ross, "The Education of Hyman Kaplan"

What  characterizes the list?  Four of the authors were American, one  
(Marshall) was British.  All but one of them (Owl) were published in  
the first half of the twentieth century.  While one book is about  
golf--my father's true passion--what he finds interesting about the  
rest, as far as I can tell, is a kind of humanism, a sense that people  
are delightful in their odd ways and that what we should cherish is  
endeavor, folk trying to get on in life.  In Damon Runyon my father  
likes Harry the Horse, who advises people to go where the big potatoes  
are falling, because sometimes small potatoes also fall from the cart.   
Negley Farson he likes for his embrace of adventure and his stoicism;  
Farson goes to live in British Columbia's wilderness in spite of a  
bacterial infection of a leg bone, something he picked up during the  
Russian Revolution.  Margaret Craven draws out the Scottish  
sentimentality which causes my father to think of my mother as some  
version of Burns' Highland Mary, but Craven also wrote of endurance and  
the power of doing.  Hyman Kaplan is an immigrant tale, summed up by a  
small excerpt:

Mr Kaplan was an earnest student.  He worked  hard, knit his brows 
regularly (albeit with a smile), did all his homework,  and never missed 
a class.  Only once did Mr. Parkerhill feel that Mr.  Kaplan might, 
perhaps, be a little more *serious* about his work.  That  was when he 
asked Mr. Kaplan to "give a noun."
"Door," said Mr. Kaplan,  smiling.
It seemed to Mr. Parkhill that "door" had been given only a moment  
earlier, by Miss Mitnick.
"Y-es," said Mr. Parkhill.  "Er--and  another noun?"
"Another door," Mr. Kaplan replied promptly.

So what is  this list?  Well first of all it's an ancient irritant.  
When I  was growing up and wanted to discuss my latest reading find, 
instead of, "Oh  yes, Graham Greene is good" or "I've never been fond of 
Lawrence," or even  "Who on earth is Bulgakov?" I'd get, "Have you tried 
Negley Farson?"  I  used to think that he'd made the name up.  I mean 
who could possibly be  called "Negley Farson"?

But beyond that it's a reminder that tastes  change.   Each of these 
books once had a very wide  readership.  Some of them are still in 
print.  (My father actually  persuaded a golfing friend to re-print, 
"The Haunted Major" and now I find  there's a "John Updike" edition.)  
One, I see from the internet, has a  "study guide" (owl).  Time, like a 
father, holds us for a while and  then...naffs off somewhere else.

David Ritchie,
Portland,  Oregon

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