adler warren

 

 

It is my belief that fiction provides the soul of education and allows us to attain a deep understanding of what makes us human. 

 

My childhood love for reading has deeply influenced the course of my life, starting at a very young age when my parents bought me a set of books called My Book House. It was a beautifully produced 12-volume collection that first introduced me to nursery rhymes, and as I grew older, to fairy tales and eventually Shakespeare. I loved those books, but unfortunately, I don’t know what happened to the original set my parents had given me.

mybookhouseseriesLuckily, one day during my adulthood, I was browsing through Marshall Field’s in Chicago when much to my amazement, I found My Book House. I was so excited to rediscover the books that I immediately purchased them, allowing me to share a fragment of my childhood with my children. I loved those books so much and I’ll bet the barn that they had a profound influence on my career choice to become a novelist.

I also fondly recall the moment I entered the hushed, sacred precinct of the Brownsville Children's Library in Brooklyn where I grew up in the mid-1930s. Ever since then, I’ve been a passionate advocate for public libraries. My most profoundly joyous memory is walking through the crowded, noisy, aroma-filled atmosphere of Sutter Avenue, between rows of pushcarts selling anything edible and wearable, on my way to that vine-covered magic castle of books. It was like crossing a moat from the reality of a contemporary world of struggle and strife, to a paradise of storytelling, which opened infinite possibilities and aspirations in a young boy confronting a strange and scary future.

Most delectable was the homeward journey, back over the same route, but this time heavy with the anticipation of reading the books I was carrying in my arms. I think I cleared the library shelves and read every book of Bomba the Jungle Boy, The Hardy Boys, and Allies Boys. I lived with the illusion of stamped library cards piling up, until I had read every book designated for my age group. I think I got pretty close.

My love affair with reading inspired my dream to become a novelist by the time I was 15. After high school, I went to New York University and pursued a degree in English Literature, where I was introduced to the roster of great American novelists, becoming bewitched by the works of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald. My freshman English professor, Dr. Don Wolfe, inspired me, and I later went on to study creative writing with him at the New School, along with Mario Puzo and William Styron. Throughout the years I’ve had many careers, but even when I was working a million jobs to make ends meet, I always made time to write and frequent the library—I could not stop doing either.

adler undertowI didn’t end up publishing my first novel until I was 45, when luck and hard work finally came together. After enduring a seamless series of rejection, a brilliant man walked into the advertising agency I was running at the time and he asked me if I could promote his books. He then asked me what my fee would be. I was intrigued, and with careful consideration, I told him that if he could get his publisher (Whitmore Publishing Company) to consider my first novel, there would be no fee. And that’s how I published my then titled novel Undertow.

It is my belief that fiction provides the soul of education and allows us to attain a deep understanding of what makes us human. Life, past and present, is a story, our story, and it springs from the imagination of those who have dug deeply into this mysterious well of truth to speak to us, inform us of the joys, perils, and insights of the human experience.

As a writer of the imagination and a reader of works of the imagination, I believe it has given me insight, understanding, and greater comprehension of the human condition on all levels. It has taken me out of the living moment into the mind and motivation of others, both past and present, and showed me a path to empathy and potential wisdom. Perhaps, I like to think so.

Warren Adler is the bestselling author of 50+ novels, hundreds of short stories, plays and essays including The War of the Roses, Private Lies, and Random Hearts (which was also a hit movie). 

This "Writers on Reading" essay was originally published in "At the Scene" enews September 2017 as a first-look exclusive to our enewsletter subscribers. For more special content available first to our enewsletter subscribers, sign up here.

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