Comfort reading, part one

The sense I get from meansomething's lovely comments on the subject is that books of consolation are essentially comfort reading, much like comfort eating - something done for consolation in a time of grief or sadness. (Interestingly, while I think comfort reading would escape the societal disapproval that comfort eating often garners, fillyjonk at Shapely Prose had a post recently about how if comfort eating actually comforts you in a time of serious loss, maybe that's a good thing.) In any case, meansomething kindly tagged me for her very first meme:

Books of Consolation

Name five books you read (either present or past tense read) when in need of consolation.  They can be fiction, nonfiction, poetry or other.  Tell why.  Also please note if any of them is a book you would recommend sending to a sad friend.  Tap five people to respond.

I will do my very best, but I'm not sure I'm quite reflective enough to have a good answer, partly because she specifies that she's looking for something other than pure escapism, which is what I tend to turn to for comfort reading. This will also probably reveal how plebeian my literary tastes are. Here goes:

1. The Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder (with illustrations by Garth Williams, please! no stupid photos of Michael Landon or Melissa Gilbert!). I reread these every few years regardless of sadness or dissatisfaction, but then, the books of my childhood are one of my highest forms of escapism.
   
   I realize some people might dislike these books; they do contain some terrible elements - primarily Ma's conviction that "the only good Indian is a dead Indian," but also things like the idea that golden hair is automatically the most beautiful, the gender expectations - but they're usually presented as issues with which the characters struggle, rather than dogmatic truths. Ma hates Indians, but Pa doesn't agree with her, and in most arenas (according to these books), Pa is always right. Laura is also fascinated by Indians - which, granted, exoticizes them and casts them as the Other, outside of the advance of modern American Progress with a capital P (though Laura's kind of ambivalent about Progress, too), but at least acknowledges, somewhat, that they exist, are people with the ability to be kind and generous, and face dilemmas brought about precisely because of American Progress. Laura fetishizes Mary's golden hair in a kind of scary way, but she's the heroine, with whom the reader is supposed to identify, and she doesn't have golden hair - so it can't be all that great. And while Ma often appears in the properly feminine role of civilizer, Laura, who is a tomboy, struggles with the expectations for her gender and identifies much more with Pa. You could see this as a rejection of the feminine and reinforcement of Pa's patriarchal role, but you can also see it as Laura's attempt to create a new feminine identity in a changing world. (I suspect if I were a western historian I'd have more to say about the series' portrayal of the frontier, but since I'm not, we can leave that out.)
   
   So, um, back on track: why does Laura Ingalls Wilder console? Well, because I first read the books as a kid and loved them and have been reading them since, so they take me outside any specific moment in my life. But also because while there are sad moments (Jack's death kills me every single time), they're incredibly hopeful, optimistic books in a way that I think authors would have a hard time recreating today without looking naive or hokey. Hard work pays off. People are generally good. It's possible to make something bigger and better out of your life. (Although the final book, The First Four Years, which Wilder wrote without the editorial assistance of her daughter and which was found and published only after Wilder's death, is much less reassuring - it gives a much more realistic sense of how grinding and terrifying life on the "frontier" must have been - and makes clear the extent to which the earlier books really are fictionalized, made into reassuring narratives rather than presenting historical fact.) 
   
   I also find it really interesting that I have the Little House books on my list and meansomething has Little Women on hers - I grew up in Little Women-land, and in school, we read and studied it (and the associated trappings) constantly. I do love the book, but for me it became obvious and overdone - Wilder was a great counterbalance to the Alcott-mania in town. A grad school friend of mine from Iowa, however, had the same reaction to Wilder that I do to Alcott ("not the wonders of the frontiers AGAIN"), and loved Alcott in the same way I do Wilder. So now I always link them in my head. I wonder what narratives play similar roles in children's literature in other parts of the country? Is there a "southern" kid's lit narrative, or a "Californian" one? (Maybe Huck Finn or Tom Sawyer for the south? but I realize I think of them completely differently, since they showcase boys (ick!) (just kidding!). And the only "Californian" narrative I can think of is Island of the Blue Dolphins, which I love, but isn't anything like Wilder or Alcott. Hmm.)

Okay, that was way more about one set of books than anyone needs to read - I think I'll stop here and finish the meme another day or no one will ever work there way through to the end of the post!

Comments

[lifexhistory]

Funny. I did love Alcott and Wilder (I always remember the maple ribbon candies in the snow). But I think the books that seem more "comforting" to me were the Anne of Green Gables books.

[JustMe]

i am *so* with you! though little house does compete with anne of green gables in my mind, though i can't always read anne because i am so jealous of her relationship with gilbert, sad i know.

[deeni]

The Little House books yes. But L.M. Montgomery even more so. All of the Anne books, the Emily books, the stories, other novels.

[Dance]

There's a column at Jezebel where a woman re-reads her way through the books of our childhood. Just found it recently. Don't click the link unless you have some time to spend.

[meansomething]

Dance, I love the Fine Lines column too! And NK, thanks for responding--and with a classic childhood re-read, too. I can see how growing up in Alcott-land would take her books out of the realm of consolation reading. Truth is, I had a set of Alcott as a child (Little Women, Little Men, Jo's Boys, Eight Cousins, Under the Lilacs, Jack and Jill) and read and reread them all many times. I think part of the comfort is that all these books present a tribe of extended family in which there's always someone to help you up when you're down. Loved the Wilder books too, although I must admit that it's a bit different coming back to them as an adult, and revisiting them with the Snork Maiden can be an uncomfortable experience for the reasons you mention, even if also full of teachable moments. Anyway, I hope you get a chance to talk about more of your comfort reading, and feel free to focus on escapist books if that's what works for you!

[Mommyprof]

I recently re-read the Little House books with my own daughter. It made for a lot of discussion on the nature of virtue - like the ideas that a little lady gives away her doll or half her cookie without question and never loses her temper. What standards!

[jo(e)]

Oh, I still read the Little House books. And the Anne of Green Gables books. And all the Alcott books.

But I think the Betsy-Tacy books are at the top of my list of comfort books.

[Jackie]

I grew up in Maryland, but the entire LM Montgomery catalog is still the definition of comfort reading to me. I also loved the Alcott books, even the non-March ones.

[Historiann]

Great post. I've also been re-reading the Little House books with a four year-old, and am discovering all sorts of new dimensions that escaped me as a 7-8 year old the first time around. Aside from the Wayne LaPierre-approved message that no one should leave home without a gun, the thing that strikes me about Pa is what a failure he is. While he's clearly the most talented and charismatic family member--he's the guy you want if you want to butcher a hog, build a house, dig a well, or whatever--his wanderlust gets the family in trouble time after time, which means that the family is always struggling and having to start over from the beginning. His Eagle Scout skills ultimately are outmatched by his lack of horse sense, which is really tragic. This may be the story of the frontier for white, native-born Americans--men whose dreams were bigger than their means, and the women and children who got dragged along for the pointless ride.

Finally, like lifexhistory, I was always entranced by the "Sugar Snow" chapter in Little House in the Big Woods. I tried making that maple syrup candy, but ended up pouring it on the 4 year-old's arm and burning hir pretty badly (although just a small spot was affected.) And, to make matters worse, the candy didn't work! So I'm like Pa: a failure, victimizing others for my dreams!

[New Kid on the Hallway]

historiann, yes, exactly! I've thought that, too - it seems clear that Ma is many ways the more accomplished one of the two (although some of that also seems to be class-based), and misses "civilization" terribly, but she also follows Pa through all his schemes. I think that yes, there's a real theme throughout the books that questions the glory of the frontier, despite celebrating all the wonderful "virtues" in instills. (Though I also think that once the Ingalls settle in DeSmet, Pa becomes something of a town leader, if not necessarily a wealthy one.) (I think I've read these books way too many times...)

meansomething, yes, the supportive family stuff in both those sets of books is hugely comforting. I think I liked how in both cases you had the nuclear family of parents and kids, but other family weren't nearby, because that's what my life was like growing up (when I met people who lived in the same town as their cousins I found it very odd - I come from a peripatetic background, I guess).

Mommyprof, the self-sacrifice in those ideals is staggering, isn't it?? I think in some ways it was good for me to read that as a kid (being a pretty selfish type), but yeah, amazing. Although I think because it was set in such a distant time/place I could always ignore the ideals when I felt like it. ;-)

It *would* be strange to read through these with kids now, though, I'd imagine.

You know, I don't think I ever read all the Anne of Green Gables books (though I did think of them when writing this) - I know I've read the first one, but I think that might be it. I kind of missed the window for falling in love with them, I think - I enjoyed the first one, but never tracked the others down.

And jo(e), I'd forgotten Betsy-Tacy! I haven't read those in years - I can remember exactly where they were in our local library...

[Michelle]

I'm not sure about the context here because I didn't read that comment, but I'll offer as far as reading candy that recently (in my hiatus of the mo) I've read Nicholas Sparks and even John Grisham, both of whom write cheesy, cheesy shit. It's all about the distraction.

I read Little House to my boys, but I couldn't get through that dog scene without bawling.

[Dame Eleanor Hull]

For the California of my childhood--not the period of Alcott/Ingalls--there are the books of Zilpha Keatley Snyder. Although she's still writing, her earlier books capture my era.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Oh, wow, ZKS! I don't think I've read anything of her except The Witches of Worm, which I liked quite a lot, but found pretty depressing (I think I was a little young for it the first time I tackled it). Talk about a book NOT offering the supportive family thing... I should read that again.

[k8]

Hmmmm. I first read Little House as an adult and I was absolutely appalled. But, I also understand how it can be comfort literature to those who read it as children - but then, I remember reading an essay by a native american woman who described her mortification when her elementary school teacher read the book aloud in class (the parts about the dirty indians) and the way her classmates treated her after that.

Sometimes it is important to remember that these books can cause harm. If you're interested in that perspective, Debbie Reese has two posts about Little House at her blog about American Indians in children's literature:
http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2006_09_13_americanindiansinchildrensliterature_archive.html

http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/2008/02/american-indians-in-fact-and-fiction.html

Oyate.org is also a great resource in this area. While I don't care for censorship, the Books To Avoid link contains some interesting essays.

I remember loving Caddie Woodlawn as a child. While I respect that memory, I don't know if I would give it to a child without having a discussion about representations of indians in the text.

[k8]

Oops, apparently those links didn't go through. Well, if you go to the url for the blog itself, she has a column towards the bottom of the page listing links for books mentioned at the blog. Both Little House posts are there.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

Yes, I can see that the books would hurt people; they'd definitely have to be accompanied by discussions of the representations of Indians if you were reading them/giving them to children. And they do completely erase the colonialism behind the Ingalls' moving into "Indian Territory." I'm not remotely in a position to argue that Native Americans shouldn't be offended by what's in them, and I can see how being an Indian child in a classroom in that situation would be hurtful.

What I do find interesting, though, is that opinions about Indians are actually quite contested in the books - I don't think it's a straightforward "Indians are dirty and bad" message. (Which isn't to say that's not the message that some people present in/take away from the books, or that you can't use the books to send that message. But I don't think it's the only message.) The one moment I can think of when Laura thinks the Indians smell bad, it's because they're wearing fresh skunk skins (having just hunted them), not because they're lazy or slobs or inherently dirty. The way the book presents that, I've always read it not as "Indians are dirty" but as a recognition of different ways of life between frontier folk and Indians (I can't imagine the frontier people smelled very good at the time!). Ma believes the Indians are dirty, but I don't know if that's the same as the books saying that they are dirty, because I think the books question a lot of Ma's opinions.

But again, I'm not an Indian person hearing that read in a classroom, either. So I'm not remotely saying that everyone will enjoy these books or that they *should* find them comforting. I'm just explaining why they work that way for me.

(The thing is, most historical literature - whether for children or not - has to be understood/explicated in the context of its time. Which isn't to say "it's all good and what are people worrying about?". It's just to say that classics like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, or Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Robinson Crusoe, or The Merchant of Venice all also have examples of racism, or are informed by the racism present in those societies. Personally, I wouldn't say that means they shouldn't be read - though I can understand if someone else would disagree. The historian in me thinks they're important, though, no, probably not as books to raise your children on.)

(I should also add that I'm thinking of the way that Indians are portrayed in the entire series, which is - for a children's series - relatively complex, and *not* just in the one book Little House in the Prairie, which people now tend to take as representative of the whole series, but I don't really think it is. There are specific moments in Little House in the Big Woods, On the Shores of Silver Lake, and The Long Winter that portray Indians positively, and there's an incident in one of the books in which Laura's uncle describes being kicked off of Indian land by the US government and acknowledging that he/his group didn't have the right to be there. And I also think Laura's character implicitly questions many of the assumptions about Indians in the books (for instance, once she asks Pa why the Indians have to move west, and Pa says it's because that's what Indians do; but I don't think the book presents that as a satisfactory answer - Laura has to accept it because children don't question adults, but I don't think she buys it). I'm *not* saying these moments make up for the others, just that historically, I think there's a lot of interesting stuff going on. Granted, though, no, it's not stuff that would work as a childhood narrative for Native Americans the way that it worked for me.)

[k8]

Oh, I know. And I totally get why people are attached to these books and others like them. I admit that I didn't like Laura as a character. Part of that had to do with her wanting a "papoose" like she might want a doll or some other toy.

I remember also being shocking by what a shrew Ma was (as a character). From what I understand, in real life Wilder's mother was pregnant on that trip and Laura was really rather young. I have to wonder if this affected her perceptions of the events too. And can you imagine being pregnant and having your husband come home one day and say "hey, were packing up and moving out tomorrow to go to a place where there are few people and probably no doctors." Yikes!

And I do know that the one book is the worst of the series. It's funny, though. I first read it in a children's lit. course for my MLS. All of us who read it for the first time were horrified while most of those who read it when they were young were still fond of it. Many of them got very defensive when it was criticized, as if it meant we were criticizing their childhood or upbringing. I think there's a difference between reading it, enjoying the parts that are "comfort literature" and still being able to analyze/critique the other issues in the text and sentimentalizing over the book, unable to handle any critique of it (and I've seen this happen a lot with this series in particular). It's a funny thing with children's literature - people give their children and their grandchildren the books they loved. While this creates wonderful generational connections, it also leads the fact that, as one example, Little Black Sambo has never been out of print. I'm not equating that book to Little House, but it is the same principle in terms of continued popularity. I remember my grandparents having a copy of a collection of brer rabbit stories. And I loved Babar, but now when I see that picture of Babar in the jungle with the cannibals, I can't help wincing.

Sorry this was so long. There is always a tension in all of this for me. I work in English and have the theory background to treat all of this very abstractly, but I also have library training which deals more with how people interact with books.

[New Kid on the Hallway]

No, I totally get that - it makes perfect sense. Children's literature is something people want to pass on to their kids and it can totally perpetuate uglinesses. And I laugh at people being defensive about the books they read when they were young, because I think, look at me, I'm so balanced, I can critique the Little House books (patting myself on the back) - but I read the Lord of the Rings books from adolescence on, and loved them, and when the movies came out, a friend of mine started reading them and thought they were awful - boring, and pretty sexist. And I was all like, What do you MEAN - they're brilliant!!!!! So I'm sure a lot of me is just doing the same with the Little House books. ;-)

The blurb on the back of the LH books (at least of my copies) has some rhetoric about the sturdy values of the frontier and how they've made America great, blah blah blah, and that really makes me cringe (no matter how much I like the books). So yeah, I think the series can serve some distressing purposes. And the Little Black Sambo thing makes clear to me again how much I can be brainwashed by the books, so to speak, because I never read LBS and it holds NO appeal and I can't understand how people can defend it - but that's probably the pot calling the kettle black (even though as a historian, I think all these books are interesting for understanding how the people who wrote them thought. Which is different from comfort reading, of course!).

(The papoose thing is really weird - I don't know what to do with that - apart from the obvious ickiess - except that sometimes little kids get weird obsessions. I think Laura's a more sympathetic character in the other books, and especially in the first book, when Wilder gets across really well a lot of the things that little kids get upset about, I think, so if you read it as a little kid, you can really sympathize with her.)

(Sorry to go on so long in return!)