On Reading

Reading has taught me how to love. I don’t mean that it’s taught me my own capacity for adoration or relish, though it has. But that’s another kind of love. That love is simpler, more akin to passion, and there’s less teaching involved. It has an object, and it flirts with passivity, feeding into and from the idea that the lover has no choice in the loving. It’s nice. It’s a love I hope to find again, but that’s the thing: it’s a found love, sticking a toe out looking for quicksand.

I’m talking about a different kind of love. Reading has taught me how to love actively, without object. This isn’t general goodwill, or being nice, or even being selfless. It’s a generosity of spirit and a grace, a radiance that is notable not simply for the light it throws off but also, more importantly, for the glow everything else adopts in its presence. It’s a love learned from This Boy’s Life.

Actually, it’s a love learned from one line before This Boy’s Life. In the dedication, Tobias Wolff writes, “Also my mother thinks that a dog I describe as ugly was actually quite handsome.” It might be the most blunt and tender sentence around. There’s no doubt the dog was ugly – Wolff tells us in three tenses: the dog “was” (past), it's implicit the book following this dedication will say so (future), and Wolff says “I describe [To this day! Still!] as ugly [Ugly!]” (present). But, without bargaining or budging, Wolff gives his mother the floor. While this is palpable love for her, it's also a kind of homage to a was-not-was-to squabble, something that, dog or no dog, we’ve all had before.

Just like that, Wolff takes a dedication (usually eye-glazingly exclusive, personal to the few people on or behind the page and impersonal to the reader) to a memoir (the most potentially exclusive literary form) and makes it inclusive. With one sentence, Wolff invites his mother in, invites the reader in, and even invites handsomer, improved versions of the dog in. There’s love for his mother and love for the reader and love for the dog as others might see it. It’s love grounded but not dependent on any one thing. It’s love without an object. This love isn’t blind – it sees, but acts anyway.

One of the joys of reading is living vicariously through others, being someone else for a bit. But reading This Boy’s Life is different. Somehow, you don’t live through Wolff, you live with him. You remain yourself, but something happens: you get better. Because, just as there are other versions of the dog, there are other versions of the reader. The reader can choose which one to be, and, when reading Wolff, it will probably be the handsomest. Rather than give readers the chance to be someone else, Wolff gives them a chance to fill the corners of their best selves. And every dog is better for it.