In this I was following the example set by my brother who had done the same a year or so earlier. Both of us had been taught in Dutch – and consequently, due to the very regular spelling conventions of the Netherlandish language, had learned to read at a rapid pace. But in the family environment we spoke English (though many of our neighbors were convinced that we Americans were completely incapable of speaking that language), and my parents were habitual readers who frequently purchased books from Britain or America. Which was understandable, as there was so much more to read in English than in Dutch.
Dutch, though a literary koine for several centuries, and having a mass of novels and poetry, is not the most printed of tongues.
Nor, despite my continuing affection for it, the most lovely of sound collections.
Somewhere twixt dulcet and harsh gagging, mostly.
[Sorry, Dutch readers, that’s just a fact. Everybody has an affection for their own native speech, but finds its relatives nasty sounding. So of course you Dutch people think it sounds heavenly, but the rest of us might have reservations.
Consider how sweet Cantonese sounds to the speaker thereof, and how far less so it is to others. And the Cantonese find Hokkien (spoken in the province to the north of Kwangchow) to be an exceedingly vile racket, whereas in my estimation its beauty is different but not inferior to the Cantonese tongue. All languages may seem cacophonous to the non-native.]
AMONG THE CACAPHONES
That my brother and I had learned to read English overjoyed my mother. She started buying us books, lots of books. For my brother, chess and history. Plus Dickens.
For me, historical fiction, and literature suited to readers five or six years older than I was at the time. Her theory was that if it didn’t fit my mind then, I would surely grow into it in due course.
[Unfortunately she believed the same about my clothes – growing into clothing that was far too large was not as easy as it sounds. Remember, this was before fast-food.]
By the end of grammar school I was reading stuff quite unsuitable for a child. Somewhere around fourth grade I had discovered the science fiction my mother had amassed (she was a published author herself), and my father’s mystery novels and scientific textbooks. The downstairs living room, in addition to many of my books, also held shelf upon shelf of English poetry. My mother had been at Berkeley for twelve years, collecting books and degrees – that was reflected on those shelves.
There was so much poetry, in fact, that it wasn’t until the last two years that I lived in the Netherlands that I realized that the Dutch also wrote such stuff – amazing!
I never really did like Coleridge and Wordsworth – the English language seemed sludgy with them, and many other vaunted poets, but really sparkled in Merck, Advanced Engineering Drawing, and most notably the Marine Engineers Manual.
Since then, remarkably, I have become fond of Dutch verse. No, it doesn’t resemble Textbookese at all, why do you ask?
[It’s not just the little technical bits in such works that appealed – those were probably just a minor factor. It was the interesting solutions, and the explanations of how things fit together. I am still using ideas years later that I first found in the Watch Officers Guide. Remarkably, those are especially applicable in a restaurant environment.]
My garbling of scientific terms and other words learned from my reading drove my father up the wall. He bought me the Pocket Oxford Dictionary in hopes I would learn their correct pronunciation. He was to be disappointed – instead I used it to learn many more words to torture, a few of which I still cannot say properly, though I continue to use them.
When I last visited my father before he died, I spent many hours rediscovering the man by exploring his library. He had changed in those years, but much was still recognizable. The reference works and the mystery novels were still there. Wodehouse. Dickens. Nabokov. Newer cookbooks, and many novels I had not seen before. The parameters of his mind were the same.
The one thing notably missing was the Pocket Oxford Dictionary – I left it in Holland when I returned to the States, and he had never needed to consult it. He still had all of his words.
* * * * * * * * *
I have always enjoyed the presence of people who read. Not people who just read for knowledge or usefulness, but those who read for pleasure, or because something intrigues them – the habitually literate.
Such people often have more twisty minds, and quirkier imaginations. Their sense of humour is more interesting, and their opinions are more fully formed.
One shouldn’t just surround oneself with books, but also with the people who read them. ESPECIALLY the people who read them.
They are delicious.
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