Fred Madeo arrived in Ithaca last September to stay. He is the author of a first novel, “The Shout and the Avalanche (The Education of Billy Wonder).”
Magic happens. It happens when we least expect it, like some enchanted evening in the Rodgers and Magi Hammerstein musical, South Pacific, or when one enters for the first time St. John the Divine, or when one first gazes at Michelangelo' s Pieta, or when a boy peers at an ant under a magnifying glass and devotes his life to the study of ants, like Edward O. Wilson.
Yes, magic happens. It happens at times and circumstances we did not prepare for. Of course, I am not talking of sleight of hand magic, trickery, illusion. I speak of that magic which somehow transforms us, seizes us, shakes us so that our head pounds with excitement.
As a l6 year old high school dropout in l937, I found my first job and it happened to be across the street from the New York City Public Library on 42nd Street. I learned later that I could apply for a library card, and one day during my lunch break I walked up the magnificent steps past the two sculptured lions, august looking beasts which seemed its sentinels, and entered its capacious circulation room. I searched the rows and rows of stacks, which were about four feet high, and read names and titles of books I had never heard of.
Then I discovered Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, and for some strange reason, I chose it as my first book from the library. On reading it, I was seized, really seized. I shook, I trembled, my heart tripled its rate, my head swirled as Rodion Romanavitch Raskolnikov (how that alliterative name rolled off the tongue!) walked the streets of St. Petersburgh with an axe underneath his greatcoat and headed towards the pawnbroker's apartment. And, oh, when he took out his blunt axe and brought it down upon old Alyona Ivanovna's head, I could scarcely breathe. But wait, the old woman's sister, Lizaveta, arrives unexpectedly, and at the sight of Alyona's bloody head, she threw up her arm to protect herself. Too late. At that moment Raskolnikov's punishment began, and at that moment I almost had a heart attack---- at sixteen.
Dostoevsky's novel transformed me. I gave up Tom Swift , the Rover Boys, Tarzan, Baseball Joe and pulp magazines. Magic had happened. And then, oh then, I stumbled upon Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel, and had an experience of a different kind. It did not seize, but illuminated me; it helped me to understand what being young was all about, and helped me to realize I was not alone in a labyrinth of youthful confusions. And reading of his love for Laura James, little did I suspect that at nineteen I too would be in love.
The third book I took out was Will Durant's, The Story of Philosophy, and I quickly found it was over my head. I mean, Descartes, Kant, Spinoza? No way! But Durant had a way of drawing the reader in, and he stirred an intellectual side of me I was unaware of then. To this day I recall how Thrasymachus shouted impatiently at Socrates that might makes right! How tickled I was to be in the middle of an argument about the nature of justice! It appealed to my combative nature.
So you see? Magic. All it took was a library card and I was off reading like mad. I read on the subway to and from work, missing my station at times, and causing me to be late occasionally. The effect of those books on me was not unlike Saul's revelation on the road to Damascus, and the world opened up unto me. I grew up to become a teacher, and there was no way my students would leave without my selling those three books---and others that affected me like Native Son, Alice in Wonderland, “The Grapes of Wrath, “ “Oedipus Tyrannos. I wished for them that magic would strike them as it had me, when they are young.
Through books, I became a different young man, and had read far more widely than I would have had I completed high school. Books changed my life, and that is what good books should do. When I was a lad, a book was the holy grail. And for those who think this is a romantic view, I ask: Is there any other kind?
Family Reading Partnership
Ithaca, New York
Phone: 607-277-8602
Email: office@familyreading.org
