Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading

There’s a certain kind of book I’d like to write that regular readers to this site know all about by now; one that explores fantastic works of fiction for the truths they offer readers and for the ways in which they relate to life as it is lived. I’m always keeping my eyes open for books that already do this kind of thing and they are few and far between. There’s lots of critical works available on literature, and lots of books about reading, but not many try and do something really accessible but also interesting with the ideas that fill the pages of much loved novels. So imagine the curiosity I felt on learning about Maureen Corrigan’s book, Leave Me Alone, I’m Reading which is all about relating reading to living life. Corrigan is a book reviewer on NPR and a university teacher too and has a lovely, easy writing style that combines the very best of thoughtful, considerate reviewing with the helpful analytic skills of the good lecturer. Knowing that this was exactly the kind of book I’d like to write made me read it with far more of a critical eye than usual but you know what? I loved it from one end to the other. Corrigan does a wonderful job of showing us how much interest, fun and insight there is to be had from taking reading to the next level.

Corrigan’s approach is fundamentally autobiographical. An avid reader who has always made a living from reading, she looks back over some of the key moments in her life and understands how books have been involved in them, either by encouraging her to take chances, by distracting her from emotional turmoil, or by shaping her moral universe. There’s a wonderful section on what Corrigan calls the ‘female extreme-adventure tale’, arguing that women have as many adventures as the male counterparts in literature, only the landscape they must travel is different. Endurance, stoicism, perseverance are the qualities that women must bring to the fore to withstand the toughest trials of life, and Corrigan turns to novels like Jane Eyre, Villette, Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Anna Quindlen’s Black and Blue for literary back up. Alongside her discussion of these classic stories, Corrigan tells her own extreme adventure; the adoption of her Chinese daughter. In many ways this was my favourite part of the book because she writes so movingly and so well about the trials, not just of finding a baby to adopt and making the complicated journey to fetch her, but of creating a very different kind of family unit. By the end of this lengthy first chapter I was completely won over by Corrigan’s voice: personal, intelligent, reflexive, genuine.

Subsequent chapters deal with working for a living (including a very entertaining section on the perils and general ghastliness of grad school – I hear this so much in American literature; is it really so terrible?), getting married, remember her father’s efforts in the war and finally, a long and intriguing chapter about being brought up in the close and highly particular Catholic community. What comes up a lot in Corrigan’s personal life is her somewhat troubled sense of moving away from her roots. Like the good girl she clearly is, Corrigan doesn’t want to upset anyone by being too different, but her life choices have inevitably made her unreadable to her mother (primarily) and to her religious upbringing. There’s an interesting comment she makes in the introduction about her fondness for the semicolon:

‘The semicolon is my psychological metaphor, my mascot. It’s the punctuation mark that qualifies, hesitates, and ties together ideas and parts of a life that shoot off in different directions. I think my reliance on the semicolon signifies that I want to hold onto my background – honestly, without sentimentality or embarrassment – and yet, also transcend it. I come from, and still partly reside in, a world where most people, including my own parents, didn’t, and still don’t, read or hear what I have to say about books because they are oblivious to NPR, The New York Times, and all the other educated middle- and upper-class outlets where popular conversations about culture and literature take place.’

Having a Jewish husband and a Chinese daughter doesn’t exactly help Corrigan to fit in when she goes back home either, although as is so often the case, these differences provoke curiosity and wonderment, but not estrangement. And so it’s interesting how often Corrigan returns to her theme of rehabilitated concern for her own differences. It’s not that she worries any more, she tells us, just that she could worry, perhaps she did worry, maybe those worries sneak in anyway and renewed contact with family and old friends put them to rest once more. I found it particularly intriguing that this managed anxiety surfaced most obviously in the chapter on her Catholic upbringing, where the message she got taught was never to complain, to remain stoic at all times, to submit to faith, to struggle on regardless. It made for very interesting reading to watch Corrigan making the best of what she clearly experiences as tension between the expectations placed on her by her background and the life she has carved out for herself. Sometimes, I have to confess, I longed for her to break out of the straitjacket of resolute cheeriness and lay her anxieties out for the reader, but I gather from her that this isn’t the American (Catholic) way. All this made me have ever more respect for Corrigan as a lovely person, but I wondered how much storytelling relies upon the exploration of suffering, even if uncertainty and pain is ultimately overcome. I preferred the way she discussed the adoption of her daughter, where she felt her anxieties were more permissible, more acceptable and therefore more able to be aired.

But none of this detracts in any way from the sheer pleasurable readability of this book. I felt more involved in the stories Corrigan was telling, keener to keep reading than I have with conventional fiction on occasions. She manages the transition between life and literature brilliantly, never overstating her case, and I appreciated the way she chose both classic and genre fiction to discuss (a lot of her academic work is with hard-boiled crime fiction). There’s a wonderful, warm inclusiveness to Corrigan’s book that welcomes in every kind of book, every kind of reader and recognizes the power that brings them all together. She certainly shows us how many possibilities there are for fascinating books that explore the simple love of reading, and contributes one of immense charm and intelligence.