Debra Adelaide - The Innocent Reader: Reflections on Reading and Writing

About The Innocent Reader

Books are impractical companions and housemates: they are heavy when you are travelling, and in the home take up a lot of space, are hard to keep clean, and harbour insects. It is not a matter of the physical book, it is the deep emotional connection that stretches back to my early years. Living without them is unimaginable.

These collected essays share a joyous and plaintive glimpse into the reading and writing life of novelist, editor and teacher of creative writing Debra Adelaide.

Every book I have read becomes part of me, and discarding any is like tearing out a page from my own life.

With immediate wit and intimacy, Adelaide explores what shapes us as readers, how books inform, console and broaden our senses of self, and the constant conversation of authors and readers with the rest of their libraries. Drawing from her experiences in the publishing industry, the academic world, her own life and the literary and critical communities, she paints a vibrant portrait of a life lived in and by books, perfect for any student, bibliophile, editor, or simple: reader.

Contents

Introduction

Someone Elses Pages

At work one day, years ago, I collected my printing from the shared printer. Back in my office, I realised that the first few pages did not belong to me: another document had been left in the tray. My eye was inevitably drawn to a name on the first page, which was that of my mothers maiden name, Speedy. An unusual name in any context, but more so here, I thought. I scanned the page to discover that it contained an account of a well-known nightclub, the Ace of Clubs, which my mothers aunt, Dora Skelsey, ne Speedy, ran with her husband Bill in Sylvania in the 1950s. This was nearby another venue they had also operated, with great success, Oyster Bills. I have one vague memory of visiting the Ace of Clubs as a very young girl. It was on a hill overlooking the Georges River, and it featured what seemed the most exotic, grotto-like pool adorned with shells. In the early days of their marriage, both my parents worked occasionally at the Ace of Clubs. I still have a cocktail shaker and beer glass dating back to the clubs heyday.

It turned out that these pages were from the draft of a commissioned history of the Sutherland Shire, which one of my colleagues was writing. It was his co-author who was preparing the chapter about the entertainment and nightlife in the Shire. When I explained about the family connection, this author asked if she could visit my mother and her cousin, to glean some more information and look over photographs, a couple of which eventually made their way into the book.

At the time this seemed only random to me, a fortuitous coincidence enabling the authors of that history to obtain more insight into the Shires club life in the 1940s and 1950s, in which my great aunt and uncle had played such a prominent role. Now, however, I tend to see such things in a context, where stories are not all so under our control, where they seem to have lives of their own. And while it is true that as an author you have control over your words, your sentences, your everything, it is also true that to be an effective author you need to learn to let go, to relax your control of the story, to let it take over, find its own way, go where it needs to go.

Books have a life of their own. Every reader knows this and every author who does not keep this in mind at some stage of the writing process is being nave, or dishonest. After an author finishes with a book it goes out into the world to be claimed, interpreted, and indeed written by its readers. It is the reader who makes the story, not the author. As Ursula K. Le Guin once said, the unread story is only little black marks on wood pulp , not yet a story, but the reader, reading it, makes it live .

The actual physical book can also have curious agency. I once stayed in a hotel where each room featured a wall of books, all hardbacks and all looking like they had been obtained from second-hand stores. In my room, I took down one of the more recent titles. Mainly, I was attracted by its green dust jacket, but it was also on the sort of niche book-related subject matter that interests me, typesetting, though this was very niche, being confined to female typesetters of Edinburgh, early twentieth century. I kept this book, and it was not stealing: I relocated it from the bookshelf of that room to my bag, replacing it with a title of my own that I had finished reading. And I ended up giving it to someone else, as I had finished with it, and her interest in this subject was even keener than mine. Such is the almost alarming efficiency of Google, I am able to type this topic into my search bar and now find the exact title and details of this book. It is called Britannicas Typesetters: Women Compositors in Edwardian Edinburgh , by Sian Reynolds. I have forgotten most of this book, but it provided me with a tiny seed that much later germinated into part of my fourth novel, The Womens Pages .

On a trip to England I was on a train heading back to London, having visited relatives in Sussex. Like me, the man in the seat diagonally opposite read steadily, and as the train pulled into Paddington Station I noticed that he closed his book and tucked it into the corner of his seat. He then rose, picked up his bag and exited. It was a deliberate action, practised, unselfconscious, as if he were a character straight out of an Alan Furst novel. I watched him step out of the carriage and walk away on the platform, and only then when the carriage was empty did I take the book. Feeling furtive all the same, just in case some railway book police might appear and confront me, I slipped it into my own bag without even looking at the title. But I knew that this other passenger had left his book for me, or someone like me. Extraordinarily, the book turned out to be a novel by Alan Furst. Feeling as if I were participating in some spy drama, after I had read it I also left this novel on a train for another bookish commuter.

Back when I was young and money was tight and books precious, back when I saved up to buy a bookunimaginable nowI could never have given away any book, and certainly not so much as considered just taking one for myself. Now I can and do give books away, but it is always a wrench, even those that I have not especially liked. Every book I have read becomes a part of me, and discarding any is like tearing out a page from my own life.

A friend is buildingno, creating, for it is a work of art, a sculpturethe most beautiful and elaborate community library bookcase for the front yard of his home. People will pass by, take and leave books, and the whole neighbourhood will be enriched. In fact, its very existence will be a way of assuring everyone around that this is a neighbourhood, a community. We see libraries like this all around the place: glassed-in boxes on street corners or in parks or at peoples front gates, and I love this idea though cannot bring myself to do it. I know without a doubt that I will agonise far too much over which books to leave out, and if people leave books I like I will keep them. I will do what I always do: regret every book given away, and covet every one discarded by others.

But this collection of essays is not about books, it is about what they represent, for the book itself is worth nothing. Books are impractical companions and housemates: they are heavy when you are travelling, and in the home take up a lot of space, are hard to keep clean, and harbour insects.