musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear


I have to admit that I’m not a dedicated library book borrower; books seem far too important to simply surrender after becoming intimately acquainted with them. Just as I wouldn’t borrow a dog to bond with and then return it after a week or two to see if I could find something better, a book is mine for life; although I may forget the plot, or the information inside, it has not been wasted on me. For a while, at least, I am the book; it changes things inside me in mysterious ways.

Much as in digestion, what I read dissolves in my head; more likely, though, the messages pupate, and emerge changed and reimagined. I don’t know why that happens, but it does; it’s part of the magic of books, I think.

Only occasionally do I find an author who recognizes just how actively the characters live inside their readers minds; how much they transmute and emerge changed from the chrysalis that is our imagination. For that reason, I was completely taken by a novel by  the New Zealander H.G. Parry, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, in which characters from various books somehow escape into real life. Perhaps because the setting is Wellington, New Zealand (which is one of my favourite places, and where I bought her book), I found myself bewitched and began jotting notes in the margins when I recognized an area of the city with which I was familiar, or a character that still roamed like a lost hiker in my own imagination. And, of course, I pencilled a few notes to myself on whatever scraps of paper were handy to remind me to read some of the character’s  books again.

But I was travelling in New Zealand at the time so I must have stuffed some of them in Parry’s book because, like the book the notes are gone -likely left in the Macdonald’s I was visiting a while later in Dunedin. I was engaged there in a lively conversation with some Otago University students about literature and how it changes us.

They had all read Parry’s book, it seemed, and were interested in what a Canadian thought of the Wellington writer. At the time, though, I was more interested in hearing what they thought of the characters that Parry had thought to include, and I began to write down their thoughts on similar scraps of paper, hoping to turn them into a travelogue, or at least a story I could write when I eventually returned home. I should have written some notes in my phone as I usually do, but at the time I thought that might destroy the mood.

I can remember some things, though; I remember we were discussing whether or not there was a difference between a character in a book, and a character in real life -both existed in our memories, both elicited emotional feelings, and although unlikely, both sometimes seem to possess agency to effect change. That contention elicited excited discussion, I remember, and so I sometimes scribbled down rebuttals to one objection or another as they occurred to me… All of them now lost…

Then there were the emotions some of the characters produced in the reader, and we debated which of those were justified, and which, in light of our widely different ages, cultures, and perhaps prejudices, were justifiable. I began to appreciate what effects hid within the shadows of authorial intent, or were coloured by the notions growing in the  backgrounds of different readers in the group: the different terroirs.

That was exciting, but I have only vague recollections now of the reasons -the rationalizations– for their answers. We all had our favourites from Parry’s chosen characters -mine, of course, was Millie Radcliffe-Dix, a girl detective escapee from a series of detective stories from the 1930s and 1940s and written by Jacqueline Blaine.

But the crowd favourite seemed to be Charlie, a young English lecturer at the university  who is the protagonist (Rob’s) brother. Charlie had always been so involved with fictional characters that he was sometimes able to allow some of them to escape into the real world -many of whom refused to return to their books.

Why was Charlie so beloved of the students with whom I was talking? Well, as Charlie says in the book, ‘There’s no law against a person being made of ideas, intuitions, interpretations and language.’ But his brother, Rob, has other ideas: he tells Millie, ‘No offence, but none of you are real. You’re the accidental products of too much emotional investment in fiction,’ to which she responds, ‘As opposed to what? The accidental products of a biological act?’ Fabulous repartees.

It made sense to the students; it also made sense to me… although to tell the truth, I wasn’t really sure for which side I should argue.

No, what is missing from my recollections of our discussion, is why any particular character other than those, was defended. I’m pretty sure I recorded their preferences -either in the margins, or more likely in the copious notes I made and stashed in appropriate pages of the book. Both the author, but especially the students, seemed so sure of their sources, so reasoned in their opinions that I would have difficulty capturing them again.

I’m not sure my notes, even if decipherable, would be of much use to anyone who found the book, though.

My thoughts were demi-thoughts, chrysalid thoughts not yet born, nor fully developed. I’m not even sure they would be readable -rapid note-taking was a creature of my university days and I am sadly out of practice nowadays.

Interestingly, though, I happened upon an article the other day that deemed even the incomprehensible leavings in a book, as valuable.[i] Sharon McKellar, a librarian at the time at the Oakland Public Library, collected things found in returned library books by her and other librarians, scanned them into the library’s website, and made them available to curious viewers.

Of course she doesn’t include any private information or things which might allow embarrassing identification… But it makes me wonder if my lost book might have ended up being donated to a New Zealand Library and whether people are puzzling over the meanings of my cryptic, hurried notes even as I write this. Well, for anyone hoping I secretly disclosed something of value, good luck, eh? Any value comes from first reading, and then discussing the book. The doodles are worthless…

Still, I just hope that Uriah Heep doesn’t find them and come looking for me…

[i] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/objects-people-leave-behind-in-library-books-180980534/

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gozzter

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