Starting The New Year Reading

I’ve started out the year by reading about boys and men in trouble. First I read Mark Twain’s “The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer”, a classic I haven’t touched in over a decade. I was surprised at just how much I had forgotten or had thought was Tom Sawyer when it was in fact Huckleberry Finn (on my long list of planned Twain for 2010). It’s such a universal story of being young that even though I grew up in the north over a century after Twain’s characters I recognize many of the strange mannerisms and speech of youth that I hope Facebook and cell phones don’t destroy.

After Tom Sawyer I picked up “David Copperfield”, and am well into it. I debated the merits of either reading it straight through or breaking it up (it is rather long book) with another novel every few days. “Copperfield” was published over the course of nineteen months, from May 1849 to November 1850, so I justified taking my time reading. After sixteen chapters I put it aside for two days and picked up John Cheever’s “Falconer”.

Throughout my life I’ve found myself in trouble for various reasons, nothing too serious, and I’ve only seen the inside of a police station once, as a Cub Scout. We were shown around the booking area and had our mug shots and fingerprints taken. “Falconer” is a short novel about a man that has killed his brother and is sent to prison, where he falls in a deeper love than the one he seems to have ever shared with his wife, explores his memories in the long stretches of time he has, and finds freedom not only from the physical prison, it would seem, but from his own emotional captivity. It was fascinating seeing your typical upper-middle-class Cheever character transported into a place where everyone is equally (mostly) powerless.

I’m going to be reading a chapter or two of “Copperfield” a day, and for my other book (I like to juggle, keeps the reading fresh) I’ve picked up “Then We Came To The End” by Joshua Ferris. I’ve read a few of his short stories and liked them and I look forward to seeing how he works in long form.