It’s true my father was an English professor who inspired my love of reading, particularly the classics. But he also created an ultimate hate of books, one that caused me to abandon them for years.
Without much thought for what I’m about to do, I head into one of the guest bedrooms where I have some boxes packed up in the closet. I’m not one for sentimentality, so I don’t keep a lot of stuff. I’m the opposite of a packrat, so when I moved to Phoenix from Dallas this year, I used the opportunity to de-clutter even more.
But there’s one box I’ve been carrying around my entire adult life, and it has remained sealed the entire time. It seems weird now to keep it closeted away since Clarke has reinvigorated my desire to read.
I pull the box off the top shelf, then carry it over to the bed. There are no markings on it, just brown packing tape that’s peeling at the edges. Without hesitation, I pull it off and carefully open the top flaps. I half expect an army of spiders to come crawling out, but, when I peer in, it’s nothing but what I had packed away ten years ago.
The last remnants of my relationship with my father.
Reaching in, I pull out a stack of books. The paper is yellowed, not because they aged greatly in ten years, but because they were already old when I packed them.
I sift through them, setting them one by one on the mattress. All are classics that were owned by my dad when he was a young man just in high school himself. His favorites, which he read over and over again.
The Count of Monte Cristo.
The Great Gatsby.
1984.
Of Mice and Men.
Lord of the Flies.
Great Expectations.
I’ve read them all on more than one occasion, hoping to ferret out some nugget of information that would help me understand my father. I’d memorized the lines he’d underlined with a pencil, hoping it would provide a connection to him.
Reaching back in the box, I pull out another book—Catcher in the Rye. I can’t help but smile as I remember the look on Clarke’s face when I was able to identify a quote from it. My ability to do so made me realize I had pushed away all of this great literature because I was angry at my dad, but all it did was hurt me.
While I’ve been buying modern works from Clarke’s store, I decide my goal for the upcoming hockey season is to read one of these old classics a week.
I reach in again, retrieving another book. The Canterbury Tales.
My nose wrinkles as I set this one in a different pile. I didn’t enjoy Chaucer the first time I read it, so I know I won’t now.
The next book that comes out causes a throbbing in the center of my chest, so much so I rub at it with my knuckles.
I stare down at a weathered copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Flipping to the first page, I start to read Wilde’s preface, in which he defended the merits of his work.
The artist is the creator of beautiful things.
Sometimes true, but other times not. For example, I hate Chaucer while others find his work sublime.
Whatever.
The point being, when I first picked out this book from my father’s office, which was a converted second-floor bedroom in our house, I was just ten years old. My father was at his desk, reading through mid-term papers, and I’d held it up. “Can I read this one?”
My dad glanced up, reaching for the glass of bourbon he’d been drinking from, and frowned. His words were drunk and slurred. “You’d never be able to really comprehend it at your age. Maybe in a few years.”
That was his answer about most of his favorite books I wanted to read, and when I was finally old enough to read and appreciate them, I found he had been correct. Most of this stuff would bore a ten-year-old horribly, so I’d stuck to books such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to hold my interest.
By the time I finally read The Picture of Dorian Gray and was able to understand and have an intelligent discussion about it, my father was no longer around. He’d already abandoned my mother and me, moving on with a new family.
It didn’t stop me from trying to have a relationship with him. I used the classic books he’d left behind as a means to bridge the gap. I’d call him, excited to tell him about a passage that captivated me, but he wasn’t interested in discussing any of it with me. He’d cleaned his act up. Stopped drinking. Had a pretty new wife and a new daughter he doted on. He had no time for a fourteen-year-old boy who wanted to talk about the social injustices I’d learned about from reading George Orwell or my fifteen-year-old self who couldn’t contain my pride at having finished the gargantuan tome of Anna Karenina.