My Year on Klikitat Street

 If I were in sixth grade this year, I might have flunked reading. Because I read more books by Beverly Cleary than any other author, and in a leveled reading system that would be a decided misdemeanor.

     It wasn’t a philosophical statement or even a conscious decision to put the sagas of Klikitat Street on top of The Goldfinch in my teeteringly high “to read” pile. I didn’t even realize it until I looked at the year-end statistics on my Goodreads.com account. But I’m not surprised. We read for so many reasons: to challenge ourselves, to inform ourselves, to soothe ourselves. And Cleary’s books are the best comfort reads of all time. I gravitate to them like a sunflower turning its face to the sun whenever I’m in bed with a cold or awake with insomnia or just suffering from a case of jangled nerves. Which, apparently, was pretty often this year. And, ironically, e-books make it easier than ever to enter the books of yesteryear. Most of these are available through eBCCLS.com, my local library.
     My all-time favorite Cleary book is Ramona the Pest. Some argue that fiction's greatest gift is to teach us empathy by putting us inside someone else’s head. Well, how much better does it get than this?

     "'I'm not acting like a pest. I'm singing and skipping,' said Ramona, who had only recently learned to skip with both feet.    
Ramona did not think she was a pest. No matter what others said, she never thought she was a pest. The people who called her a pest were always bigger and so they could be unfair. "

I always loved the part when Ramona's kindergarten teacher tells her "You may sit here for the present," and Ramona sits and waits stubbornly for an actual present, all gift wrapped with a bow. But this time my favorite part was Ramona’s first storytime, when she asks how Mike Mulligan managed to dig the new foundation for town hall without stopping to go to the bathroom.

     "Miss Binney faced the twenty-nine earnest members of the kindergarten, all of whom wanted to know how Mike Mulligan went to the bathroom.

     'Boys and girls,' she began, and spoke in her clear, distinct way. 'The reason the book does not tell us how Mike Mulligan went to the bathroom is that it is not an important part of the story'....Miss Binney spoke as if this explanation ended the matter, but the kindergarten was not convinced....They were surprised that Miss Binney did not understand, because she had showed them the bathroom the very first thing.  Ramona could see there were some things she was not going to learn in school, and along with the rest of the class she stared reproachfully at Miss Binney [who] looked embarrassed..."

But it's hard to choose just one incident, because the whole book is filled with gems like this, mined from the everydayness of life.
     In general, Cleary's stories are delightfully matter of fact. There are no daring escapes, no princes, no unicorns, and no one saves the world. Her genius is for rendering the small, ordinary details of children's lives as compelling to us as they are to those children themselves…and yet keeping it all in perspective at the same time. Probably the most dramatic moment comes at the end of her first book, Henry Huggins, when the original owner of Henry’s dog Ribsy comes to claim him and the children decide that Ribsy should choose between the two boys. And typically, Cleary plays down the drama:

"Ribsy only turned around to chew at a spot near his tail. He bit at the flea, sat down, scratched behind his left ear again, and then stood up. The boys kept on yelling.

With a tired sigh, Ribsy sank down on the sidewalk, put his head on his paws and closed his eyes. The children groaned.  
   “Don’t go to sleep now, Ribsy!' begged Henry, who was so scared his hands felt cold and damp….

Slowly Ribsy stood up and after a backward glance at the stranger, trotted eight squares down the sidewalk toward Henry….he sank down with his head on Henry’s foot and closed his eyes again.

Ribsy had chosen Henry!

The children cheered, but Henry couldn’t say a word. He knelt and hugged Ribsy.

     ‘I knew he’d choose you, Henry!’ crowed Mary Jane. ‘I just knew it all the time.’”

And of course, so did we.
     Cleary's work is full of what Brenda Ueland, my favorite writer about writing, praises as “microscopic truthfulness” in her classic If You Want to Write. This is no accident. In Cleary's autobiography, A Girl from Yamhill, Cleary, who was a longtime children’s librarian at the Portland Public Library in Oregon, writes that she was inspired to write her books after a little boy asked her “Where are the books about kids like me?” and she realized she had none to give him. Henry Huggins subsequently came out in 1950, rooted firmly in the lives of the boys and girls she saw growing up all around her. Even Klikitat Street, where most of her characters live, is an actual thoroughfare, running between North Alameda and North 68th streets in Portland. It's a fully recognizable world where children are curious about going to the bathroom and dogs have fleas.
     Part of the charm of these books, however, is their datedness. We are in fullblown midcentury modern mode here. There are no playdates on Klikitat Street and never a mention of “stranger danger.” Sports are the only extracurricular activities. There are no electronics, only occasional mentions of TV, and children are turned loose to entertain themselves in the neighborhood. For example, the kids themselves make the decision of who will get Ribsy, with no adults involved. It seems like a more innocent time, though it isn’t all idyllic: Henry's dismissal of his loyal friend Beezus is often especially sexist and annoying. Everyone seems to celebrate Christmas and in the same way; there are no black, Latinos, Asians, Muslims, or Jews in the neighborhood. But unfortunately, this is probably true to the period too.
     The one sop to unconventional families comes in Otis Spofford, which I hadn’t read before this year. Otis has a single mother and lives in an apartment, not a house, unlike the rest of Cleary's kids. Reading between the lines, young Otis may have a touch of ADHD. When he gets bored, which is often, he wants to "stir up a little excitement." He especially enjoys ruffling the feathers of one Ellen Tebbits, who is prim, proper and well behaved, and also gets her own book. Otis’s mother is the proprietor of Spofford School of Dance and consequently Otis hates all things dance-related. That's why he's so happy when he gets to play the front half of a bull in a class presentation about Mexico instead of joining in the dance. But when Ben, the toreador, puts on airs, a boy like Otis just can't resist poking him in the rear with a lifelike bull horn. Every teacher will recognize Otis. We've all had one. He's very annoying. And you can't help loving him.
     What will I do next year when I run out of Beverly Cleary books to re-read and I have a tooth out, a problem at work, or I just can’t sleep? I’ll probably start all over again. Sixth grade reading levels be damned. ✪

The Character Arc, or, Why I Hate Sit-Coms

I'm one of those people who cringes at the very sound of a laugh track. I find it insulting: “What, you think I don’t know when to laugh?” And though I have loved many a sit com, from "I Love Lucy" to "All in the Family" to "Modern Family," I sort of hate myself for it. The problem isn't really the laugh track. It's not the slapstick humor. The problem for me is character arc. Or actually, the lack thereof.
     The most exciting thing about any novel, play or feature film is character development. The theory is that at least one character must change in the course of the narrative; ideally that the main character’s flaws (that is, the need for a character to change) must serve as an engine to the story’s movement, and the subsequent events of the story must then influence the main character, prompting these changes. For example, Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice. Their character flaws, which give the book its title, move along the plot and are changed (though not entirely erased) by the events of the narrative. Elizabeth and Darcy’s respective traits of prejudice and pride block their natural coming together and must be overcome to engineer the happy ending that we, as readers, are awaiting.

     By definition, in a sit-com the characters barely move from their established routines of behavior and only engage in the most glacial, minor arcs of character development. For example, in "Seinfeld," Elaine finds a new job and George gets engaged without ever budging from their essential selfishness, immaturity and lack of insight. If any of them really changed, it wouldn’t be Seinfeld anymore. This is why I dislike sit coms. The sit-com is the anti-novel. If you enter the world of the novel at any point, the characters should have changed, they will be different. You will have missed something. Sit-coms depend on the idea that it doesn’t matter if you miss an episode. How can the character arcs develop in any but the most incremental way if you can miss an episode and it doesn’t matter? Without wanting to be stuffy, I defer to Chekhov, who famously said, “"If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." If this is true of a single prop, how much truer of an episode?
     Fairy tales also lack character arcs, although they do contain problems related to character that must be resolved in satisfying resolution, with the good inevitably rewarded and the wicked inexorably and mercilessly punished--dancing in red-hot shoes, having their eyes pecked out by magical birds, or being melted by a bucketful of water. The youngest son begins the story as inherently good, generous and clever, better than his older brothers. He does not learn to be different. They also do not improve. The youngest son’s outward circumstances change as his behavior and the events of the fairy tale conspire to reveal his inner worth—but he himself does not change. However extreme the makeover, it remains external. Cinderella remains the same good, gentle, devoted, beautiful girl, when she is weeping in the ashes and again when she is twirling resplendently in the prince’s arms at the ball.Which is probably why, although I love fairy tales and will defend to the death their importance to children and to our culture as a whole, I'm not rushing off to re-read The Blue Fairy Book.
     Although not a folk tale, The Wizard of Oz is a modern fairy tale for this reason: no one really changes. The inside joke for the reader is that the Scarecrow is already intelligent, the Tin Woodsman loving, and the Cowardly Lion brave at the beginning of the story—they don’t change, they just acquire the props that allow them to believe in themselves. As for Dorothy herself, she is the same brave, sturdy, cheerful little Midwestern girl from start to finish. She doesn’t change any more than Toto does. The biggest transformation in Oz from page to screen has nothing to do with Technicolor , it’s the introduction of a true character arc: Cinematic Dorothy is running away from home seeking glamor and adventure. Through her misadventures she learns at last that “there’s no place like home.”Now that is a transformation. And we need no laugh track to point it out.
What about you? Do you love sit-coms? Hate fairy tales? Do you care about character arcs? Do tell. ✪

Do you read directions?

I never did before library school and the computer boot camp finally wore me down. Oh, it was hard! It was almost like switching religions, to go from a sunny belief in serendipity to deciding that I could achieve mastery and precision if I tried.

And lo, the faithful have been rewarded: I find myself on the cozy side of the digital divide. That's a phrase you hear a lot of in library school. On one side are those who use computers. On the other are the digitally dispossessed. There's quite a crowd of them; in fact, there are whole countries on the wrong side of the divide. But even if you do have a computer, it's not hard to fall behind.

The other day I helped a friend set up a new e-mail account to replace an old one with compromised security. As I explained to her, having an insecure e-mail account is like living in a house without a door. I still can't decide if it's worse than not having an account at all, which is like being technologically homeless--that's why they call it an address. She's just finished her first formal computer course. Tomorrow we're going to set up her new monitor. Where do you stand on the digital divide?

Have you ever lost your wallet?

Of course you have. Otherwise you wouldn’t want to read my blog. Today I got midway through my Thanksgiving marketing in another town when I realized that my wallet was gone.

Why freak about losing your wallet? It’s happened so many times before and the world keeps on rotating just the same. You know it is probably in your husband’s car or on the kitchen counter stuffed with receipts so that the top flap flaps open like a wide-mouthed frog. And yet it is always a terrible shock. You are not just losing the cards and money and photos in your wallet. No--

Losing your wallet always feels like so much more than just losing your wallet. It’s a statement. It’s an omen. It’s the loose thread that, if pulled, will unravel the fabric of the entire universe or at least your own life. Have you pulled that thread?

When I got home the wallet was on the side of my bathroom sink flapping hello. The universe has not unraveled but my refrigerator is still bare.