Surprising Finds in a Heap of Books

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

BURLINGTON North Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—7/4/11—Except for the King James version of the bible, textbooks for classes at Deep Gap Elementary School, and several tracts published by Jehovah’s Witnesses, I grew up in a home virtually free of books. With a large family and many livestock to feed, my father had no money for books other than hymnals.

For one or two happiness-making years, Deep Gap Elementary had a small library, a narrow room, perhaps twelve by 20, constructed by closing-in part of a porch and adding a door from the auditorium. Hundreds of books lined the walls and reading tables, and chairs filled the space in between. What a joy it was to enter this crowded space, find the latest adventures of Tom Swift, or a sea story and head home to read.

Just as abruptly as the library opened, it closed, for school officials in Watauga County decided to consolidate elementary schools in the eastern section of the county, a move that led to assigning two grades to every classroom, except one.

That exception was the new library, now converted, by ripping out shelves and replacing tables and chairs with desks, into a classroom for first-graders.

Out with tables and chairs went most of the books during the summer between my fourth and fifth grades. When I asked where the books were, I was told to look for them in a coat closet. They were there, but in a heap, the closet having no shelves, no tables, no check-out system. What a crushing sight.

Not to be deterred from my hunger for more tales about Tom Swift, I started digging in the heap for Tom Swift books. I found a couple, but then no more.

My hunger for fiction had to be sated in some way and, happily, it was when I dug out two wonderful books: the first, Charles Lamb’s retelling of the Odyssey, entitled The Adventures of Ulysses; the second, Sidney Lanier’s recasting of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur for boys.

Fulfilling as Tom Swift had been in satisfying my hunger, his adventures seemed, and were, childish when compared to the heroic deeds of King Arthur and his knights and Ulysses. Giving up Tom Swift cold-turkey wasn’t easy, for I still enjoyed his adventures and the gadgetry he put to use to help him keep pace with his busy world. And I won’t say that I readily gave up Superman comics. Doing fabulous deeds and possessing the power to pull them off greatly appealed to me, daydreamer that I was. The world of Clark Kent seemed a good one, a world where might made right, when he doffed his civvies and donned his Superman outfit. Oh, for a magical cape rather than a discarded bath towel when I leapt from the barn loft door to soar—and splat.

But a new world opened widely when I began reading Lamb’s retelling of Homer. What wondrous adventures of a warrior seeking to go home despite knowing how he’d pissed off a god (Poseidon), who’d vowed to give him a virtual sea of troubles. The angry god kept his word. The god hadn’t taken the full measure of Ulysses, however and, in time, Ulysses returned to the arms and bed of Penelope.

Talk about trials, tests, courage, cleverness, strength, narrative genius, mighty foes, guileful women, battle scenes, manliness, humanity, and unyielding determination: Ulysses topped all the heroes I’d ever met in the books and comics I’d read. Though Homer had been dumbed down in Lamb’s retelling and cleaned up a bit, here was fare that took me far deeper into the forces of life—love, bravery, loyalty, hospitality, bonds of kinship, and love of country—than I’d ever encountered in my reading.

Here was a one-eyed (and stupid) giant, a seductress who turned men into animals, and a woman capable of granting godhood, here was a lad seeking both manhood and his father, and here was a woman true to her man. Who could ask for more variety, who can see a better example of the triumph of the human spirit.

Young as I was, ten or so, I sensed something quite different here from the Judeo-Christian culture into which I’d been born. Something Hellenic began working itself into my view of things. Of course, I was decades away from Matthew Arnold’s classic essay on the differences between Hebraism and Hellenism, but when I finally read it I knew my senses hadn’t lied to me.

I was more at home on Olympus than Zion.

But I was truly too young to realize what greatness I’d come across in thus discovering Homer. As fired up as I was about Ulysses and his deeds. I was even more swept up by King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

What imaginative kid would not be impressed by Merlin, Arthur’s yanking of Excalibur from a rock, the beauty of Guinevere, the many tests of Lancelot, the love of Sir Tristram De Lyones, and the search for the Holy Grail. And all that pageantry, jousting, horses, helmets, and maidens? What a difference from the potato patches and hayfields of Deep Gap, North Carolina, my natal place.

What escapism, I now know but, yet, human passions, aspirations, deceptions, betrayals, loyalty, love, and dedication to a mission.

Lanier’s retelling, even dumbed down for pre-teens, was not easy reading, for Lanier tried to hold on to Malory’s style and word-hoard as far as possible. Even so, unearthing this book along with Lamb’s The Adventures of Ulysses in the dusty heap at Deep Gap Elementary School created a yearning for more literary works, something I eagerly and happily began to satisfy when I found the large and orderly display of books at Appalachian High School in Boone. Among the first books I checked out was Bulfinch’s volume on classical mythology. I was thus launched on a course that led to my teaching of mythology at Clemson University for several years.