It’s tough to outlive a reputation. And even tougher to outlive a reputation falsely earned.
The term “nerd” hadn’t come into vogue during my high school years, around the time of the Punic Wars, but if it had, some may have applied it to me.
The ruse came about because of my friendship with former classmate Wilfred Martinez, who fled from Immaculate Conception School to then-Vegas High. An English teacher I knew at VHS told me she’d caught Wilfred in study hall reading the works of William Shakespeare.
Then she added that what Wilfred had really done was to place a copy of Mad Magazine inside the Shakespeare tome and act as if he were a true scholar rather than a rogue scholar. So while others imagined the ingenious senior to be savoring the iambic pentameter, sonnets and rhymed couplets of the Bard, Wilfred was really taking in Alfred E. Newman’s nonsense.
So I asked myself, “Self, why can’t it work the other way around?”
Accordingly, that week at the I.C. library, I tucked a volume of Shakespare’s plays inside my copy of Mad. Being spotted almost immediately by Sister Mary Thelma, I had the opportunity to explain to her (and all within earshot) that the humor-magazine-girding-a-classic trick was done so as not to appear ostentatious.
And, I pointed out, one shouldn’t judge a book by what’s covering it.
That’s why some classmates surmised I like to read good literature. My trick appeared to work, but in no way did the action imply I was a voracious reader. Sometimes, in fact, I used condensed versions of the classics.
During a lifetime of reading I’ve always resented “preachy” literature, the kind whose didacticism must have a moral and always tries to reform the reader.
In previous columns I’ve railed against censorship and even editorialized about it when a superintendent of a small Texas school district led a book-burning party for one of Rudolfo Anaya’s classics. “Bless Me, Ultima.”
The administrator reasoned that since the Anaya novel included witchcraft (curanderismo), those who read it likely would start their own covens.
It’s disconcerting when others try to decide what’s best for us. And worse than censors are those who not only present sanitized material but who slant it as well.
For years, my membership in various organizations, ranging from press to education and church has meant being on a number of newsletter mailing lists.
For the most part, I welcome periodic literature from these organizations, but sometimes they go too far.
For example, a supplement newsletter that comes with my membership in a teachers’ organization routinely provides us with a slanted (toward us) version of events.
The newsletter distorted facts as presented by the administration and seemed determined to make us members appear as victims. I hate being portrayed as the victim and I loathe even more being told what to think — which is the implicit message in the slanted coverage the newsletter provided.
Now we get this in all forms: church bulletins, fliers in doctors’ offices, virtually any group where people have a stake.
A recent letter to the editor in a metropolitan newspaper cautioned the public, among other things, against “reading literature that ‘might tend to confuse’ us.” Well, big swinging deal. By virtue of our ability to read, we also possess a modicum of judgment, the ability to decide for ourselves what might corrupt our morals.
The recent DaVinci Code controversy is an example. I read a slew of letters to the editor from concerned readers who apparently believed that watching the movie or reading the book is tantamount to selling our souls to the devil. It’s quite reminiscent of the medieval superstitions many of us grew up with, in which our failure to conform would invite and even encourage the deity to “open up the earth and swallow us.”
I read the book and saw the movie. No swallowings yet, but I have a better appreciation of the author’s ability to craft a great plot.