on the legacy of my mother, who read to me

With a mother like mine,  I could hardly have become anything but a reader and a lover of books.  It was her love for literature that enlightened my path. Although she slipped through the cracks of her very British education, she went on to become an actress, performing several plays a week in repertory theatre-  and she always remembered one particular teacher who had recognized that spark in her.  It was Naomi Lewis, who went on to become a well regarded book critic.  What Naomi Lewis did for my mother Judy, she then passed on to me, along with her passion for words, and particularly her love of Shakespeare.

Some of the things she taught me, I will jot down here as they occur to me. First, if you find a writer whose work you admire, you should read everything you can by them, and in that way, become an expert.

If there is a poem that you love, commit it to memory. You will then have a little poetry library in your head, and you can draw upon it whenever you want. Judy encouraged me to learn Shakespearean sonnets by heart - and as a result I have them forever. If I'm sitting in traffic, or the dentist's office or wherever I may be - I can pull one up, and savor it.  I have tried to encourage my own children and my students to do the same.

Judy had me read Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress - when I was about twelve or thirteen. I could hardly have been expected to understand the art of seduction! But she had me work out what it was he was trying to do in that poem, and to appreciate how funny it was - and how clever.

She also read to us in the evenings before we went to bed - The Hobbit was one of my favorites and The Secret Garden was another.

When we moved to the United States, and I wasn't challenged as much as she thought I should be in my English classes, Judy encouraged me to keep a little notebook with the books I had read - and to write something about them, as a kind of record.   Maybe this was the beginning of my book reviewing life.  Armed with the critical skills she had taught me, as well as a hyper sensitive "bullshit" detector, I went on to evaluate scripts for NBC, to write book reviews and yes, also a few books of my own.

It was because of her that I realized the things I was missing in my high school education.  I made it a point to read such things as Dante's Divine Comedy and Machiavelli's The Prince - in my spare time because I felt I couldn't consider myself educated unless I'd read these classics.

Getting an A on a book report wasn't what impressed my mother.  Sometimes she read my A papers and said I could do better.  Just because you know this will get you an A, doesn't mean it's good enough, she admonished. I know you can write with more depth.

Then there was the Elizabethan Companie she directed in Hingham Massachusetts - a huge part of my young adult life - straight into my twenties.  My father had been a professional actor in London, and he was a big part of these productions - as was my future mother in law Alice, herself a professional actress - and my dearest friend Walter Van Dyk - and his brother Felix, and Bronwen Crothers, and Sarah DeLima - all of these people went on to professional careers. And all those productions  we mounted -there were so many - from She Stoops to Conquer to Blythe Spirit, to Twelfth Night, Cherry Orchard and everything else in between.  My mother Judy is the one who made these happen.  She was a cultural force - and what better way of internalizing literature than performing it for an audience?

And of course there was also her love of the Bible - King James version, of course - which both my parents  read weekly - as did I.  The beauty of the prose in that translation - the economy and poetry of it, has for me embodied the spirit of the Word, and sustained me all my life.

"How did you get interested in reading Brideshead Revisited?" she asked me in a recent phone conversation. She was remembering how I had done a huge project on it in high school well before it became popularized in the TV series.   "You suggested it to me, of course!" I reminded her.

So it was only natural when I had children of my own, that I read to them every night as well - the whole Narnia Chronicles of C S Lewis, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman - and with my daughter Rosalind (named, I might add, for Shakespeare's heroine) Charlotte Bronte's  Jane Eyre and The Professor.

I still have this card she send for Rosalind's first birthday.

This is what she wrote inside.  "I had to get this... it's my idea of heaven I think! It also suggests the shape of things to come perhaps with you and Rosalind."

And has it ever!  My daughter Rosalind, Judy's grand daughter recently completed her D Phil at Merton College in Oxford - on French Enlightenment Literature.   A more avid reader or expressive writer you could hardly hope find.