Stardate 20030620.1703

(Captain's log): William writes:

I'm 51. I spent the ages of, oh, 15 through 45 reading absolutely nothing but "high literature." Not snobbery on my part, exactly; more like ignorance. I was a classics student and then a classics/honors professor; I was too busy trying to read all the "great" stuff I'd missed in grad school that I didn't have time for "ephemeral" stuff. When I gave up tenure, I got that time. My teenage daughter badgered me into reading the Potter books and darned if I didn't enjoy the heck out of them. They're all quick reads. Well, the later volumes are pretty hefty, but they're page-turners. They're fun. You learn a lot that isn't in the movies. You also discover that the film-makers have done an extraordinarily good job translating the books to screen. J.K. Rowling isn't J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis. What she does with fake Latin rankles me in particular. But she's created some satisfying characters. And it gives me something to share with my daughters.

In the book Life on the Mississippi, Mark Twain spends a great deal of time talking about the time he spent learning to be a pilot. At one point he talks about a case where his master, Mr. Bixby, fooled him into casting the lead in a place where the bottom was deep, just to show him that he wasn't sufficiently confident.

Steamboat pilots learned to read the water. By looking at subtle signs on the surface, they could see whether there were sandbars or sunken snags which could represent a danger to the boat they piloted. They could tell where the current was swift or slow (swift was good if you were going downriver, slow was good if you were going upriver). Sam Clemmons learned these things from Mr. Bixby. But he laments that he also lost something:

Now when I had mastered the language of this water and had come to know every trifling feature that bordered the great river as familiarly as I knew the letters of the alphabet, I had made a valuable acquisition. But I had lost something, too. I had lost something which could never be restored to me while I lived. All the grace, the beauty, the poetry had gone out of the majestic river! I still keep in mind a certain wonderful sunset which I witnessed when steamboating was new to me. A broad expanse of the river was turned to blood; in the middle distance the red hue brightened into gold, through which a solitary log came floating, black and conspicuous; in one place a long, slanting mark lay sparkling upon the water; in another the surface was broken by boiling, tumbling rings, that were as many-tinted as an opal; where the ruddy flush was faintest, was a smooth spot that was covered with graceful circles and radiating lines, ever so delicately traced; the shore on our left was densely wooded, and the sombre shadow that fell from this forest was broken in one place by a long, ruffled trail that shone like silver; and high above the forest wall a clean-stemmed dead tree waved a single leafy bough that glowed like a flame in the unobstructed splendor that was flowing from the sun. There were graceful curves, reflected images, woody heights, soft distances; and over the whole scene, far and near, the dissolving lights drifted steadily, enriching it, every passing moment, with new marvels of coloring.

I stood like one bewitched. I drank it in, in a speechless rapture. The world was new to me, and I had never seen anything like this at home. But as I have said, a day came when I began to cease from noting the glories and the charms which the moon and the sun and the twilight wrought upon the river's face; another day came when I ceased altogether to note them. Then, if that sunset scene had been repeated, I should have looked upon it without rapture, and should have commented upon it, inwardly, in this fashion: This sun means that we are going to have wind to-morrow; that floating log means that the river is rising, small thanks to it; that slanting mark on the water refers to a bluff reef which is going to kill somebody's steamboat one of these nights, if it keeps on stretching out like that; those tumbling "boils" show a dissolving bar and a changing channel there; the lines and circles in the slick water over yonder are a warning that that troublesome place is shoaling up dangerously; that silver streak in the shadow of the forest is the "break" from a new snag, and he has located himself in the very best place he could have found to fish for steamboats; that tall dead tree, with a single living branch, is not going to last long, and then how is a body ever going to get through this blind place at night without the friendly old landmark?

No, the romance and the beauty were all gone from the river. All the value any feature of it had for me now was the amount of usefulness it could furnish toward compassing the safe piloting of a steamboat. Since those days, I have pitied doctors from my heart. What does the lovely flush in a beauty's cheek mean to a doctor but a "break" that ripples above some deadly disease? Are not all her visible charms sown thick with what are to him the signs and symbols of hidden decay? Does he ever see her beauty at all, or doesn't he simply view her professionally, and comment upon her unwholesome condition all to himself? And doesn't he sometimes wonder whether he has gained most or lost most by learning his trade?

I wonder how many professors of literature have been blinded to the simple joys of reading, for the same reason.