Earlier
this month, I heard a school principal make a good pitch for the value of
mystery novels. I was at E.A. Hall Middle School in Watsonville, talking to
seventh and eighth graders about my own mystery, The McHenry Inheritance, and Olga de Santa Anna, the principal, was
in the audience.
I
forget what prompted her remark, but the gist of it was that reading fun books,
such as mystery novels, is a good way of both learning and getting pleasure
from reading. As an example, she cited her mother, whose first language was
Spanish, and who learned to read English through the novels of Mickey Spillane.
Somewhat
forgotten now, Spillane (1918-2006) was the first hard-boiled detective writer
to become a huge bestseller. I, The Jury,
his debut book featuring detective Mike Hammer, was published in 1947 to
supplement his income as a comic-book writer. It sold six million copies, and he never looked back. All
told, his books have sold more than 225,000,000 copies.
Meaning? Don’t Even Think About It
Critics
hated his books, which they panned for their graphic sex and violence, but
Spillane ignored them and laughed all the way to the bank. In later years, some
post-modern critics tried to find deeper meanings in his books, and, to his
credit, he dismissed them as well. He was a hack who had succeeded beyond his
wildest dreams and was content with that.
Olga’s
remark about her mother, though, took me back to eighth grade. I learned to
read before first grade, by following Sports Illustrated on my father’s lap. A
lot of my childhood was spent with my nose stuck in a book. When I reached
junior high school, my mother, in one of her few failures as a parent, tried to
get me to read Literature — stuff like Moby
Dick and Great Expectations.
It
didn’t work. I much preferred trashy mysteries and sports stories, and mom was
beside herself. Finally, she went to Mrs. Castlen, the librarian at our junior
high school, to vent. Mrs. C. heard her out and finally said, “Don’t worry
about it. Just be glad he’s reading and enjoying it. His taste will get better
as he gets older.”
Perhaps
she should have stopped after the second sentence. It’s true that two great
high school English teachers, Carroll Irwin and Ruth Carruth, taught me to
appreciate and enjoy Moby Dick and Great Expectations, and it’s true that I
subsequently received a bachelor’s degree in English Literature.
The Redeeming Value of Junk
The
college degree in that subject has hardly guaranteed me a lifetime of
well-compensated employment, and it’s an open question what reading the great
books has done for my character and moral fibre. There are no doubt plenty of
people out there who would be happy to tell you that I’m far from a model
citizen.
Would
the world be a better place if everyone read Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo
and Mark Twain? I have my doubts. But
I have no doubts at all about the wisdom of what Mrs. Castlen and Olga de Santa
Anna said.
Learning
to read, and learning to enjoy it — however that may be accomplished — is
always a good thing. Reading is the most fundamental skill of the educated
person, and when it isn’t accompanied by a sense of dread, there’s always room
to move on and acquire new depths. Some will dive in head first, and others
will barely dip a toe in the waters. Mickey Spillane may lead to Henry James,
or maybe to Jim Thompson, but either way the door’s been opened a crack.
