by Isaac Asimov
Library
Once I could read, and as my ability to read improved rapidly, there turned out to be a serious problem. I had nothing to read. My schoolbooks lasted me just a few days. I finished every one of them in the course of the first week of the term and thereafter was educated for that half year. The teacher had very little to tell me.
My father bought a candy store when I was six and the store was filled with reading material, but my father wouldn’t let me touch it.
He felt it to be trash. I pointed out that the other kids read it, and my father said, “So they get trashy brains and their fathers don’t care. I care.”
And I chafed.
What to do? My father got me a library card and, periodically, my mother would take me to the library. The very first time I was ever allowed to go somewhere by myself was to the library after my mother grew tired of talcing me.
Here again, happy circumstance took care of me.
Had my father had the time, and had he been of American culture, he would surely have guided me in greater detail than that of merely protecting me from the ephemera he sold in the candy store. He might have directed me to what he considered good literature and, without meaning it, have narrowed my intellectual horizons.
However, he couldn’t. I was on my own. My father assumed that any book that was in a public library was suitable reading and so he made no attempt to supervise the books I took out. And I, without guidance, sampled everything.
By the purest of circumstances, I found books dealing with the Greek myths. I mispronounced all the Greek names and much of it was a mystery to me, but I found myself fascinated. In fact, when I was a few years older, I read the Iliad over and over and over, taking it out of the library every chance I could, and starting all over again with the first verse as soon as I had completed the last. The volume I read happened to be a translation by William Cullen Bryant, which (looking back on it) I think was a poor one. Nevertheless, I knew the Iliad word by word. You could recite any verse at random and I could tell you where it would be found. I also read the Odyssey, but with lesser pleasure, for it wasn’t as bloody.
Now here’s the thing that puzzles me. I don’t remember the very first time I read a book on Greek mythology, but I must have been very young. Could I, or could I not, tell that they were made-up stories and not the truth? The same could be asked of fairy tales (and I read every volume of fairy tales in the library). How does one know these are just “fairy tales”?
I presume that in ordinary families children’s books are read to children and the child is somehow made to understand that bunny rabbits don’t really talk. I don’t know. Oddly enough, I don’t remember how it worked with my kids. I didn’t read to them very much (being so self-absorbed) and I don’t recall specifically saying, “This is just a made-up story.”
Of course, some youngsters are frightened of witches and monsters and tigers under the bed and all the dreadful things they read about, so they must accept them as true to begin with (and, if sufficientiy unsophisticated, into adult life as well). I never was frightened of such things, so I must have known right from the start when tales were simply fiction—but I don’t know how I knew.
Of course, I might have questioned someone on the matter, but whom? My father was entirely too busy in the candy store to be bothered, and my mother (past the ability to read, write, and calculate) was completely uneducated. I had the uneasy feeling that I mustn’t ask them questions. And I certainly didn’t ask my peers. It would never occur to me to consult them on intellectual matters. The result was that I was left to myself and ended upright—except that I don’t remember how that came about.
In fact, despite my excellent memory, there are innumerable things that are of the greatest importance to me that I do not remember and that no amount of scrambling through my childhood can make me remember.
For instance, when I was quite young I got hold of a volume containing the complete works of William Shakespeare. It can’t have been from the library, for I have a memory of keeping it for a long time. Perhaps someone gave it to me.
I remember, with perfect clarity, working my way through The Tempest, which was the first play in the book, even though it was the last Shakespeare wrote (and the only one in which he made up his own plot). I remember, as an example, how puzzling the word “yare” was. Shakespeare used it to give an impression of sailor lingo, but I never saw it before or (I think) afterward.
I remember enjoying A Comedy of Errors and Much Ado About Nothing. I even seem to recall enjoying the Falstaff scenes in Henry IV, Part One. In short, I liked the comic scenes as one might expect. I also remember disliking Romeo and Juliet because it was too mushy.
But now comes the part that drives me crazy. Did I, or did I not, try to read Hamlet or King Lear? I have absolutely no recollection of it. In fact, I cannot remember when I read Hamlet for the first time. Surely, there must have been a moment when I read it, or at least began to try to read it, for the first time. Surely I must have had some reaction. —But no, nothing. A blank.
It raises a whole series of problems, when you stop to think of it. When did I first learn that the Earth travels about the Sun? When did I first hear of dinosaurs? Presumably, I read about this and other matters in books on popular science for youngsters which I obtained in the library, but why don’t I remember saying, “Oh, my goodness, this whole Earth is speeding about the Sun. How amazing!”
Does everyone else remember when they first heard of such things? Am I an idiot for not remembering?
On the other hand, is it possible that once you firmly accept something as a youngster, you wipe out your earlier state of “not knowing” or “wrong knowing”? Does the memory function of the brain simply clear the earlier stuff? There would be usefulness to that, since it would surely be harmful to live under the childish impression that bunny rabbits talked once you found out they didn’t. I’ll accept that, and decide I’m not an idiot.
I therefore assume that I eventually read and appreciated Hamlet so much that the memory function of my brain simply settled down to the easy belief that I had known it through all eternity. And I suppose I learned things from my books that I adopted not only at that moment but retrospectively too.
One thing leads to another, even accidents. Once, when I was ill and couldn’t go to the library, I persuaded my poor mother to go for me, promising I would read any book she brought me. What she brought back was a fictionalized life of Thomas Edison. That disappointed me, but I had promised, so I read it and that might have been my introduction to the world of science and technology.
Then, too, as I grew older, fiction drew me to nonfiction. It was impossible to read Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers without becoming curious about French history.
My introduction to ancient Greek history (as opposed to mythology) came about, I believe, because I read The Jealous Gods by Gertrude Atherton (thinking it was mythology, I imagine). I found myself reading about Athens and Sparta, and about Alcibiades, in particular. The picture I have of Alcibiades, as drawn by Atherton, has never left me.
Again, The Glory of the Purple by William Stearns Davis introduced me to the Byzantine Empire and to Leo III (the Isaurian), to say nothing of Greek fire. Another one of his books, the title of which I can’t recall at the moment, introduced me to the Persian War and to Aristides.
All this led me to history itself. I read Hendrik van Loon’s book on history, then decided I needed stronger stuff, so I remember reading a history of the world written by a nineteenth-century French historian named Victor Duruy. I read it several times. This was all miscellaneous reading and I can’t even begin to tell you how far it stretched and how silly it must have seemed to others. At one library I attended (I used to go to every one within reach) I found bound volumes of St. Nicholas, a children’s magazine that flourished a century ago. I took out one volume after another—big, bound vol umes each including a year’s worth of monthly issues in microscopic print, and read as
much as I could of them. In those volumes, I came across the serialization of Davy and the Goblin, which I rather frowned on because I thought it an imitation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, but not as good. (There! When did I first read Alice? I can’t remember, but I’m absolutely sure that whenever I read it, I loved it.)
There were also doggerel poems in each issue about a band of innocent goblins who were always having troublesome adventures. The illustration for each was particularly delightful, especially since one of the goblins was always dressed as a stage Englishman (top hat, tails, and monocle) and was having more trouble than all the rest put together.
I skipped a lot, of course, but I read a lot too.
When I grew a little older, I discovered Charles Dickens (I have read Pickwick Papers twenty-six times by actual count and Nicholas Nickleby some ten times). I even worked my way through such unlikely books as Eugene Sue’s The Wandering Jew (attracted by “Jew”) and The Mysteries of Paris (attracted by “mysteries”). I found myself appalled. I couldn’t stop reading, but I was horrified from beginning to end by the picture Sue drew of the poor and criminal. Even now, I shudder when I think of it. Dickens’s pictures of poverty and misery always had the leaven of humor, which made it more tolerable. Sue hammered away.
I also read a justly forgotten book, Ten Thousand a Tear by Samuel Warren, which had an excellent villain by the name of Oily Gammon. I think that was the first time I realized that a villain, not a “hero,” might be the true protagonist of a book.
About the only thing that was almost totally left out of my reading was twentieth-century fiction. (Not twentieth-century nonfiction, which I read voluminously.) Why modern fiction was left out I don’t
know. Perhaps I was attracted to the dustier books. Perhaps the libraries I went to were themselves poor in modern fiction.
That childish bent has remained. I still only very rarely read a piece of modern fiction (other than mysteries).
All this incredibly miscellaneous reading, the result of lack of guidance, left its indelible mark. My interest was aroused in twenty different directions and all those interests remained. I have written books on mythology, on the Bible, on Shakespeare, on history, on science, and so on.
Even my lack of reading modern fiction has left its mark, for I am perfectly aware that there is a certain old-fashioned quality about my writing. However, I like it, and there are enough readers who also seem to like it to keep me from impoverishment.
I received the fundamentals of my education in school, but that was not enough. My real education, the superstructure, the details, the true architecture, I got out of the public library. For an impoverished child whose family could not afford to buy books, the library was the open door to wonder and achievement, and I can never be sufficiently grateful that I had the wit to charge through that door and make the most of it.
Now, when I read constantly about the way in which library funds are being cut and cut, I can only think that the door is closing and that American society has found one more way to destroy itself.
Bookworm
Everything conspired to force me into an abnormal way of life as a youngster—“abnormal,” of course, only if compared to the average way of life of the average youngsters by whom I was surrounded. To me, it was not abnormal. It was desirable. I sat by myself with my books and felt sorry for the other kids.
Mind you, I was not completely isolated. I was not a misanthropic or super-shy “loner.” I am as a matter of fact (I am told this by others) highly extroverted. I am loud, I am noisy, I chatter, and I laugh a lot. (I use the present tense, because I am apparently still like that.) It meant that I could talk to my schoolmates and to the neighbor kids, and even on occasion play with them. However, only on occasion, and this for a variety of reasons.
1. Once I was pressed into labor in the family candy store, my hours of leisure were cut down to almost nothing. There was no time for play.
2. Even if, under unusual circumstances, playing could take place, I refused to engage in any play that had any chance of violence, even friendly violence. I was small, I was weak, and in any roughhousing I was the one who got roughhoused.
3. Many games, whether with checkers, tops, marbles, or other objects, were played “for keeps.” The winner got the loser’s objects. Very early, I learned that I wasn’t made to play for keeps. If I lost my preciously hoarded objects, there was no chance of getting them replaced. My father wasn’t going to stake me to indefinite amounts of these gewgaws, and I knew that well. I would only play “for fun”— that is, games in which the glory of winning was all, but everyone kept his own objects. To most people, playing for fun just wasn’t any fun, and I got few chances to play my way.
Looking back at this, it seems rather shabby of me never to want to bet any trivial possession on my skill, but it had its uses. It kept me, throughout my life, from any temptation to gamble. Only once, only once did I fall from this state of rigid nongambling purity. In my early twenties, I succumbed to the temptation to be “one of the boys” and I joined in a poker game when I was assured the stakes would be very low.
Later, riddled with guilt, I confessed to my father and told him I had played poker for money.
“How did you do?” asked my father calmly.
“I lost fifteen cents,” I said.
“Thank God,” he said. “Think if you had won fifteen cents.” He was well aware of the addictive qualities of the vice. This bias against gambling goes even further. It is more than simply not playing poker or betting on the horses. In every step of my life, I
have tried to estimate the chance I would have of succeeding. If, in my opinion, the chances of success were far less than the risk I would have to take, I did not take the risk. This works, if you’re capable of making good judgments, and I apparently have been capable of this. At least, the things I’ve attempted have almost always worked out well, even when, to others, they would seem long shots. If, to me, they did not seem long shots, I went after them wholeheartedly, and almost always with success.
Thus, I have written books no one but an idiot, perhaps, might have thought would sell, and yet they managed. On the other hand, I have always estimated that any but the most trivial connection with Hollywood, however profitable it might seem at the moment, would end in disaster, and I have stayed away from the place. I have never regretted it either.
As you can see from all this, I did not form part of the neighborhood gang, and, as I grew older, I formed less and less of it. Extrovert or not, cheery prattler or not, I was essentially an outsider, and I might easily have broken my heart over it, and poisoned the rest of my life. (I have friends who have led more or less poisoned adult lives because they were outsiders when young.)
But outsideness simply didn’t bother me. I don’t recall ever mourning being left out. I don’t recall ever watching the other kids running about madly and wishing I could join them. Rather, I thought of the possibility with distaste.
You see, I had my books. I would rather read.
I remember the hot summer afternoons when business was slow and my father, with or without my mother, could handle the candy store without me. I would sit outside the store (always available for emergencies) with my chair tipped back against the wall, and read.
I remember that after my brother, Stanley, was born, and I was given the task of tending him, I would wheel him around the block some twenty or thirty times, with a book propped against the handle of the baby carriage, reading.
I remember coming back from the library with three books, one tucked under either arm and reading the third. (This was reported to my mother as “peculiar behavior” and my mother would scold me, for both she and my father had this horror of offending customers. You may be sure that I paid no attention.)
I was, in other words, a classic “bookworm.” To those who are not bookworms, it must be a curious thought that someone would read and read, letting life with all its glory pass by unnoticed, wasting the caref
ree days of youth, missing the wonderful interplay of muscle and sinew. There must seem something sad and even tragic about it, and one might wonder what impels a youngster to do it.
But life is glorious when it is happy; days are carefree when they are happy; the interplay of thought and imagination is far superior to that of muscle and sinew. Let me tell you, if you don’t know it from your own experience, that reading a good book, losing yourself in the interest of words and thoughts, is for some people (me, for instance) an incredible intensity of happiness.
If I want to recall peace, serenity, pleasure, I think of myself on those lazy summer afternoons, with my chair tipped back against the wall, the book on my lap, and the pages softly turning. There may have been, at certain times in my life, higher pitches of ecstasy, vast moments of relief and triumph, but for quiet, peaceful happiness, there has never been anything to compare with it.
School
I liked school. There was nothing in what they tried to teach me, in grammar school and in junior high school at least, that I found formidable. It was all easy and I shone—and I loved to shine.
I had problems, of course. There are always problems. Even leaving out of account the fact that I was not popular with my classmates, I was not popular with most of my teachers either. Despite the fact that I was inevitably the brightest kid in the class (and the youngest), I was also among the worst-behaved. When I say diat, you must understand that the standards of “worst-behaved” were incredibly different sixty years ago than they are today.