I Am Charlotte Simmons

Coincidence, I think not. Serendipity is more like it. I am looking at the new book shelf in my local library and what do I see but I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe and even though I am rereading The Hero for this blog I couldn’t resist. So guess what? The books are like bookends on the same subject with the earlier work probing in what seems now to be a very naive way the effect of sports on America while the later work digs in with relish to the very very sloppy American Sport’s Pie that we are all in the process of digesting.

What a trip . . .

Went back to google and guess what, pages and pages of articles on Lampell but no one apparently reviewed his novel. Now I get to go the library and check out the one reference I found to an article in Cosmopolitan.

The Hero

When I googled Millard Lampell, I discovered that he had died in 1997 and was much remembered for his early song writing and protest work with Pete Seeger and a group called the Weavers. I remember them well from the days when the only link I had with what was really happening in the world of the early 1960’s was an am radio that broadcast a folk music show every Saturday morning. The Weavers, Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Kingston trio, and others formed the basis in song for what for many of us became the anti-war and Peace and Freedom movement. But I digress.

At the time I was busy listening to this music and the humor of Mort Sahl and Shelley Berman and Lenny Bruce, I had no idea the author of my favorite book was a part of it all. Possibly, this was because he was black-listed in the 50’s for his refusal to name names in the red scare era.

The Hero

I won’t say this is the first book I ever owned but it is the oldest one I still have out on loan. The Hero by Millard Lampell is a great sports story. And as I see as I begin rereading it for the umpteenth time in my life just as accurate now as it was so surprisingly to me then.

Some thoughts …

I love history romanticised. I wish I could go back to when I read The Burnished Blade the first time and relive it. Like most readers, I guess I hid out by reading. I know I would hide my book behind my textbook. One time my algebra teacher caught me and I still remember the bark of his voice as he yelled out my name. Luckily for me, he was also my line coach for football so when I repeatedly scored barely passing on my tests he gave me a little extra credit so that I could stay eligible. It wasn’t that I didn’t like algebra it just wasn’t history. Or very romantic.

Two Things . . .

I thought about after I finished my reading: All through the telling of the story, the writer took great pains to point out what was the way a properly brought up boy should behave. And how similar this was to my own upbringing in the care of my southern aunt and uncle. I recognize now though that though I’ve always known how to act, it has always concerned me that it does indeed sometimes feel like an act. Like I am an observer standing outside of myself and thinking of all the things I could have done instead.

I am so surprised

Well, imagine my surprise to find that this book, The Burnished Blade, still can take my imagination back in time. I’m at chapter 18 already, and Pierre, the young man who lost his parents at the story’s beginning ten years earlier is about to start a voyage to Constantinople. I had forgotten how much knowledge I gained about the time from this reading. The fact that blood letting was the most common cure for all illnesses has been a fact that stuck in my mind for years. And I think this book I remember reading that actually made me see that there were differences in cultures.

Now as I reread the story and especially after researching several historical fiction sites, I realize that this book definitely fits into the romantic fiction category. But when I first read it, it was the story of the boy’s adventures that I followed and they were not romantic.

The Burnished Blade

It’s the oldest book in my personal collection. Stolen from a library on board a converted troop ship when my family was on our way back from Guam in the Marianna’s. As I look at the book now I still remember the wonder I felt as I read the first sentences. “To travelers destined to die at the hands of bandits, death came silently in fifteenth century France. The weapons of the period did not make a sound.”

Well actually that’s not true. What I felt then and what I feel now as I begin to reread this wonderful book is probably still the same. I read like I eat – fast, devouring each page almost without chewing the images created there. But this writer, Lawrence Schnoonover, knew what he was about. For there in the first page and a half are the elements to drag any young boy’s attention into the moment. Bandits arrows fly, a nobleman and his lady die, and scared young boy like the reader is truly left to wonder why?

As a boy, I loved two kinds of stories, historical adventures and sports. And like most readers, liked best to use what I read to escape into my imagination.

Well, if this works . . .

I’ve wanted to write about the books I’ve read for a long time. It seems that something meaningful is possible if I can do this for myself.