Damien's Reading Biography

I am a slow reader. This is not necessarily fatal to a literature student/teacher, but I think it matters somewhat. It explains my general avoidance of thick texts and long series. It also says something about those thick texts and long series that I did eventually read willingly.

My childhood reading could be thought of as a phase of passive reading. I read what was available at home. There were thin hardcover books from Ladybird, slightly thicker hardcover books from Enid Blyton, a few abridged books, some Mr. Men and Little Miss books (I was bothered by my far from complete collection, because I realised that their book spines, when placed in the right order, form an intended pattern; I could not persuade my mum to buy the rest of the set though), et cetera. Of the Blyton stories, those of the Faraway Tree arrested my attention most fully, and have remained most imprinted in my memory. When I long for forests and woods and picnics and home baked pies, despite neither liking outdoor activities overmuch nor liking pies excessively, I think it is because of books like these.

(In a moment of great folly in 2001 I offered many of my childhood books as donation items for a CIP project to Yunnan. I name it folly because I should never have given away those books, which were a part of my childhood, and also because all my books -- along with others, and anything with English words on them, including several t-shirts -- were confiscated by the immigration officers when we arrived there. These were seized on the pretext that the English words were "Western propaganda". We never saw them again. The officers left the rest of the items in a terrible mess, then accused us of insulting their country by bringing them donated items packed like rubbish. Sometime last year nostalgia drove me to search for the three Faraway Tree books in the editions that I owned as a child. It took me a long while, but I finally have them. Gandalf once told Pippin that "generous deed should not be checked by cold counsel", but he is a kind and wise Istari. I would scold teenage-me for that donation, if I could reach across time and space. Teenage-I would probably react even more aggressively. So it spirals.)

The following ages came and went, and I read what was prescribed to me in school. Animal Farm left a strong impression, and convinced me that literature had something to it. So did the teacher who taught it, and the way she taught it. At some point Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet entered the reading list, with all the air of a text with the birth-right to be on any reading list. I held my now-battered copy of Romeo and Juliet, sat by my study table at home, and read aloud the first pages of the play. I was enchanted by the language. I knew it was "old" literature, "good" literature, even "important" literature, but those were not what seduced me. I was moved by the sound of the words, the rapidity of wit (though I had to read the footnotes to understand much of it), the word play, the condensation of meaning in the verses, and the plurality of meaning in some words and phrases. Oddly enough, I did not go on to like his other plays, nor am I much of a Shakespeare fan. Romeo and Juliet, however, gave me a sense of what can be accomplished with language, and why the study in literature of archaic texts is profitable.

In Junior College I had to read Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and Harold Pinter's The Caretaker. Those were refreshing -- not a word that comes to mind immediately when dealing with plays such as these which are sometimes termed "Absurdist". I started reading about Absurdism and Existentialism, and to my seventeen/eighteen year-old mind, that was the very height of intellectual coolness. (Some years later the older version of me will look back on this writing and laugh at the present me in his turn; so it spirals).

Quite separately (in the sense that the above did not cause that of which I will now narrate) I started my journey of faith sometime in my first year at Junior College. As I attended scripture classes in church I was hungry to read more about my faith. That was the beginning of the phase of religious reading, which lasted for about three to four years. One of the first books I read was Scott Hahn's Rome Sweet Home, and I went on to read a few of his other works and lectures. I bought Memory and Identity by Pope John Paul II, and did not understand it. I still do not understand it. I heard some non-biblical, parable-like stories collected by Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit priest, and found the rest of them in The Prayer of the Frog. I should add perhaps that I also started reading the scriptures, and was picky about which version to use: which has better phrasing, while not compromising on the quality of translation? Which one has better footnotes? If you had met me then and asked, "but do these matter, so long as you are reading the Word of God?" I would probably not have had a very good or complete answer for you. I suspect I still do not, but I will say that our reading of any text is obviously coloured by its peripheral material. In the case of translated works, the translation would surely affect our reading as well. Not to say that I doubt God's ability to write straight on crooked lines, that is. I just suspect he would have a pretty tough time reaching out to me if I had a copy of the bible in Mandarin. I bought the New Jerusalem Bible eventually, and that is my default version (for now).

From a high pile of old books in the church canteen, one day, I picked out a slim volume (recall my aversion to thick books) titled First and Second Things, by C.S. Lewis. That was my first exposure to Lewis. His essays were commonsensical, and theological and philosophical without complicating the issue. I later received as a gift a thicker book of his essays. Some of those essays were as illuminating. Others were scholarly grumbling. The effect of Lewis on my writing was tragic. I attempted to imitate his style of writing for a General Paper essay test that was conducted a few months before the A level examinations, and failed the paper. Nevertheless, I continued reading his works. I read The Problem of Pain, and felt equipped to bring hope to any suffering individual. This youthful naivety wore off quickly; pain is pain, no matter how you explain it. I read The Great Divorce, and The Screwtape Letters, and enjoyed their imaginative landscape. As an aside: I did not read The Chronicles of Narnia until I was in the army.

I will mention two more books from the religious reading phase before fast-forwarding to the next stage. At some point, desirous of more learning, I picked up A Christological Catechism by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J. and Responses to 101 Questions on the Bible by Raymond E. Brown (both are very slim books). Don't let the title of the latter fool you. Father Raymond Brown is a highly accomplished scripture scholar. He holds some twenty honorary doctoral degrees, was appointed by Pope Paul VI to the Roman Pontifical Biblical Commission, and is the only person to have served as president of all three of these distinguished societies: the Catholic Biblical Association, the Society of Biblical Literature, and the Society of New Testament Studies.

The result of reading the work of this very accomplished person was my confusion. Fr. Brown writes well. I, on the other hand, was not prepared for a more academic discussion of theology. On my first reading some of the answers to the 101 Questions seemed unorthodox. It did not help that most of the answers were very short. I later realised that I was probably too worried that my beliefs would be proven wrong. I reread the text, and realised that I misunderstood his mode of answering the questions. The concise nature of his answers was also something I admired belatedly.

Moving on now.

Studying English Literature at NUS gave me the chance to be exposed to a whole range of texts outside my immediate interests and my comfort zone. This was the next big change in my reading: I learnt and accepted that there are texts worth reading that I find little interest in. There are limits, of course. To this day I have not been able to read Woolf with a clear mind and a calm heart. Once, as I was agonising over a paper on Woolf, I cursed her, and called her by Not Nice Names. It was by then probably 3 or 4 in the morning. I heard her voice in my head. How do I know it was her voice, you may ask. Well, I've "heard" God's voice in my head on a few rare occasions; I also know the tone of my conscience. This voice was neither. Woolf's voice manifesting in my thoughts said: "you may dislike my writing, but you cannot disregard the work I did". She was right. I cannot disregard her work against the gender inequality of her time. We made peace, and I completed the essay.

Of course, the range of books in my literary studies also cultivated new interests. I like many of the Critical Theories (in moderation), though I am not so learned in them. I grew more comfortable with poetry through a very important module titled "Critical Reading", and then began to like poetry more and more. I was (and still am) especially drawn to poems by Sir Geoffrey Hill, Louis MacNeice, and Dylan Thomas. Hill's poems, poetics, and critical writings (the few that I read) have shaped many of my thoughts about poetry and, by extension, about literature in general. I tried reading some German poems by Rainer Maria Rilke and Paul Celan -- with the English translation helpfully available on the opposing pages, of course -- and am still trying. In my last semester I took a module focusing on 19C works. Not the sort with the same thickness and weight of George Eliot's Middlemarch, mind you. We had Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, and Kim by Rudyard Kipling, inter alia. The way we read these texts in the module made me more aware of the interaction between textual production and socio-economic, cultural, and ideological forces.

Backtracking a little, I should add that in the semesters leading up to my thesis semester I began to read much more fantasy writing. Many books were thick, or came in a series. I read them anyway, for the first time wishing that the books were thicker, or that more sequels (even prequels) were available. I was particularly interested in mythopoeic fantasy, such as American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock, and Chimera by John Barth. I would also include Ilium by Dan Simmons, though it is not strictly speaking fantasy. Its sequel, Olympos, on the other hand, reads like cobbled together fan-fiction. It is most disappointing. A professor introduced me to the stories of Diana Wynne Jones, and I read quite a lot of her writing. There is still more to be read though. Most recently I finished what has so far been published in the series A Song of Ice and Fire, and hope that George Martin will live to finish the other books. He has a record of missing his projected publication dates. It was to be a trilogy, which has developed into a series of seven books, and there are rumours that there might be a need for an eighth. Good for me, more reading. But that is only if the author lives to finish it. I wish I could quote from The Waste Land to him, politely of course: "HURRY UP PLEASE ITS [sic] TIME".

Fantasy fiction and its mythic elements are a joy to read. Perhaps a simple explanation is one offered by Tolkien in one of his letters:

legends and myths are largely made of "truth", and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.

I have gone on for awhile, but cannot close without mentioning this author: J.R.R. Tolkien. My mum bought me my first copy of The Lord of the Rings soon after the film version's release. I read that and The Hobbit, before going on to read The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales (still somewhat unfinished with my reading of it, but I guess that is one way to pay homage to the unfinished canon of Tolkien's works). I read some other short stories by Tolkien (Roverandom, Farmer Giles of Ham, et cetera). Much later I read a collection of his letters, and his essay "On Fairy-Stories". This essay was published by Allen & Unwin along with "Leaf by Niggle" in Tree and Leaf. In his introductory note to Tree and Leaf Tolkien mentioned that both essays "are no longer easy to obtain, but ... may still be found interesting". As if belatedly to make symbolic reparation on behalf of whatever cruel system it was that prevented a Tolkien essay from being more accessible, I now own three copies of Tree and Leaf. My latest late find is his essay, "A Secret Vice". I will soon read it. If you have not picked up on my enthusiasm by now, I will spell it out: Tolkien's writings have influenced me greatly.

I am a slow reader. If you read anywhere near my speed, this must have taken you ages to read. I cannot imagine why anyone would be interested or persevere through this lengthy narration about me, me, me. But if you have read from start to finished and not skipped parts of it (the way one might cheat a little and skip some of Tolkien's song texts in The Lord of the Rings), then I thank you for taking the time to read and listen. Give a literature student the chance to talk about himself, and you may never see the end of the story. I do think, however, that this is about the right place to end, though without the dramatics of Bilbo at his eleventy-first birthday party.