Last Sunday was Easter, which got me thinking about Mr. Mayo and reading aloud.
Mr. Charles Mayo, my 6th grade teacher--the first male teacher I had ever had--discovered he could gain control over his class of 40 obstreperous 11 year olds by a simple expedient. When we got too rowdy he simply said, "Well, then I don't have to read 'Green Pastures', today. I can simply not read it," and instantly disorder transformed into obedience.
The best part of every day was when Mr. Mayo read "Green Pastures," doing all the Negro dialects (it was "Negro" then) and we were enthralled.
Twenty years later, when I read to my own kids, in their bedroom, just two miles from that classroom at Bannockburn Elementary, they also calmed down, and sat in their bunkbeds, with me in the chair across from them, reading their bedtime stories. Sometimes the 5 year old sat in my lap, so he could see the pictures, if there were good ones.
The boys really liked their bedtime stories, just as I relished Mr. Mayo's readings.
We went through Greek mythology, Norse mythology, which had giants and monsters and swords, Aesop's fables, and then we started the five book series by C.S. Lewis, which my wife had bought at Barnes and Noble, the Narnia series, with "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe."
I think we had got to book five when, one night, I had to stop reading out loud and read silently a page ahead and the boys became indignant.
"Why'd you stop reading?" they asked. "Read!"
But I was now two pages ahead.
"Read! What's wrong?!?"
The five year old, always the more emotional, was red faced standing up in his lower bunk and the seven year old, who could read himself, was in a funk, too.
They caused such a ruckus, my wife appeared in the door: "What's wrong?" she asked.
"He won't read to us! He's reading to himself!"
She looked to me for an explanation.
"Well," I told her, "They killed Aslan, the Lion, the king of Narnia."
"So?"
"Well, he's all laid out on the stone alter like thing, and we all really liked Aslan," I explained, "And we didn't see that coming, but that's all right. But then we get to the lion resurrection."
"The what?" the kids demanded.
Resurrection meant nothing to them, thank God.
"And so?" my wife now had her arms folded and steam was coming out her ears.
"So, we are mixing government with religion here," I said.
"He wont' read!" the five year old expostulated.
"I mean, we had the lion put to death in 'West With the Night,'" I said, "But that lion had moderately eaten Beryl Markham, and he stayed dead. This lion is about to rise again."
"In this room, the First Amendment does not apply," my wife said slowly, as if talking to a very slow child. "Look at these kids. Read the goddamned book!" She then turned on her heels and slammed the door behind her.
By this time the five year old was in tears. The Seven year old, always the mordant one, expected injustice and simply lay down and turned his back to me.
So, I read about the resurrection of Aslan and all that.
Years later, the power of reading aloud rose again. I had published a book which was deservedly ignored and died a quick death, but then, for reasons known only to God and the publisher, got sold to a books-on-tape company and I heard, for the first time, something I had written read aloud. It was then I could understand why my books never sold. They were pretty awful. The Broadway actor thought he was reading for some soap opera, and they had piano music in the background, just so you'd know when the sad parts were coming. I was driving down the road and nearly puked.
But then someone told me the same book had been recorded by Books for the Blind and was available at the library. I hustled right over and got the tape.
The guy reading had a voice like gravel rumbling around in a tank, and he read the book like it was some hard boiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler. The way this guy read the book, it was ten times better than what I had written.
It was really astonishing, what a guy could do to a mediocre book by simply reading with something called talent.
I started listening to books on tape wherever I drove and it was wonderful. "West with the Night," which I had read to the kids artlessly was even more fantastic, read by a woman with a British accent.
But the best reader of all was John LeCarre, reading his own stuff, doing all the voices and he didn't even have to tell you who was talking because you knew the voice for that character. He had no peer in reading aloud.
I don't know if people read aloud any more.
Maybe it's a lost art, but it is an art, most def.
Mr. Charles Mayo, my 6th grade teacher--the first male teacher I had ever had--discovered he could gain control over his class of 40 obstreperous 11 year olds by a simple expedient. When we got too rowdy he simply said, "Well, then I don't have to read 'Green Pastures', today. I can simply not read it," and instantly disorder transformed into obedience.
The best part of every day was when Mr. Mayo read "Green Pastures," doing all the Negro dialects (it was "Negro" then) and we were enthralled.
Twenty years later, when I read to my own kids, in their bedroom, just two miles from that classroom at Bannockburn Elementary, they also calmed down, and sat in their bunkbeds, with me in the chair across from them, reading their bedtime stories. Sometimes the 5 year old sat in my lap, so he could see the pictures, if there were good ones.
The boys really liked their bedtime stories, just as I relished Mr. Mayo's readings.
We went through Greek mythology, Norse mythology, which had giants and monsters and swords, Aesop's fables, and then we started the five book series by C.S. Lewis, which my wife had bought at Barnes and Noble, the Narnia series, with "The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe."
I think we had got to book five when, one night, I had to stop reading out loud and read silently a page ahead and the boys became indignant.
"Why'd you stop reading?" they asked. "Read!"
But I was now two pages ahead.
"Read! What's wrong?!?"
The five year old, always the more emotional, was red faced standing up in his lower bunk and the seven year old, who could read himself, was in a funk, too.
They caused such a ruckus, my wife appeared in the door: "What's wrong?" she asked.
"He won't read to us! He's reading to himself!"
She looked to me for an explanation.
"Well," I told her, "They killed Aslan, the Lion, the king of Narnia."
"So?"
"Well, he's all laid out on the stone alter like thing, and we all really liked Aslan," I explained, "And we didn't see that coming, but that's all right. But then we get to the lion resurrection."
"The what?" the kids demanded.
Resurrection meant nothing to them, thank God.
"And so?" my wife now had her arms folded and steam was coming out her ears.
"So, we are mixing government with religion here," I said.
"He wont' read!" the five year old expostulated.
"I mean, we had the lion put to death in 'West With the Night,'" I said, "But that lion had moderately eaten Beryl Markham, and he stayed dead. This lion is about to rise again."
"In this room, the First Amendment does not apply," my wife said slowly, as if talking to a very slow child. "Look at these kids. Read the goddamned book!" She then turned on her heels and slammed the door behind her.
By this time the five year old was in tears. The Seven year old, always the mordant one, expected injustice and simply lay down and turned his back to me.
So, I read about the resurrection of Aslan and all that.
Years later, the power of reading aloud rose again. I had published a book which was deservedly ignored and died a quick death, but then, for reasons known only to God and the publisher, got sold to a books-on-tape company and I heard, for the first time, something I had written read aloud. It was then I could understand why my books never sold. They were pretty awful. The Broadway actor thought he was reading for some soap opera, and they had piano music in the background, just so you'd know when the sad parts were coming. I was driving down the road and nearly puked.
But then someone told me the same book had been recorded by Books for the Blind and was available at the library. I hustled right over and got the tape.
The guy reading had a voice like gravel rumbling around in a tank, and he read the book like it was some hard boiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler. The way this guy read the book, it was ten times better than what I had written.
It was really astonishing, what a guy could do to a mediocre book by simply reading with something called talent.
I started listening to books on tape wherever I drove and it was wonderful. "West with the Night," which I had read to the kids artlessly was even more fantastic, read by a woman with a British accent.
But the best reader of all was John LeCarre, reading his own stuff, doing all the voices and he didn't even have to tell you who was talking because you knew the voice for that character. He had no peer in reading aloud.
I don't know if people read aloud any more.
Maybe it's a lost art, but it is an art, most def.
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