My father's bookcase (pt. 2)

Melville Cooke, Freelance Writer

AS I reminisced on the genesis of my passion for reading, it occurred to me that my outlook on life and whatever moral code I live by have largely been shaped by the novels from my father's bookcase. Sure, I went to church every Sunday and I read the Bible studiously during the sermon. But I was reading Kings, with all its battles and blood, and Songs of Solomon with all its lyrics and lust. They were a far cry from the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount.

There was a Western-sized book called All But My Life about a British racing car driver named Sterling Moss. The centre had a few pages of photographs, mostly cars and tracks, and a cartoon that I will never forget. A man in striped pajamas and open-faced helmet, sitting up in a hospital bed, was being chased by an ambulance. The bed was making good progress, as it had an engine strapped to the head and the patient was steering with a pulley system. "I see young Sterling has gotten out again," a man on the sidewalk observed. He had crashed in a race, obviously, but what struck me was that he kept plugging away. He never won a Grand Prix and said that if, at the end of his career, he found himself the runaway leader of one, he would pull over, stop and allow somebody to pass him. He said it would be better to be the best driver to have never won a Grand Prix than to have won only one.

The title came from Sterling's statement that he had given motor-car racing all but his life. It must have been that book and others like it which made me believe that a person, especially a man, must find a special purpose in life and pursue it. Stemming from that, even if the person does not reach the highest level of achievement in that field even if he does not succeed at all, I believe it is the effort that counts for a life well lived.

I first met Morris Cargill's writing in that bookcase, not in The Daily Gleaner. I read Jamaica Farewell at least 10 times. There was another book, which I read somewhere years after was written by John Hearne only or Mr. Hearne and Mr. Cargill. In the opening pages a woman killed a man by plunging a syringe full of something (heroin?) into a blood vessel in his penis as she held him blissfully immobile by the glans with her vaginal muscles. I was about seven or eight at the time I read that. What did I learn about women from that? Hmmm. Anyway, back to Jamaica Farewell.

I learnt that a person can tackle serious issues without taking themselves too seriously, that humour does not mean silly, and laughter is the best medicine (Readers Digest serves up a couple doses regularly). This was years before doing Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest with Mr. Lowrie at Munro, which reinforced the feeling.

Also, I read about my country from someone who loved her, and Cargill's final page, when he was crying after saying goodbye to his mother for what he knew would be the last time, is sadly, very appropriate. He was about to migrate and the tears blurred the bumper sticker on a car in front of him. It read: "Will the last person to leave Jamaica please turn out the lights."

In a hard-cover collection of stories, the title of which I cannot remember, there was a story about a man who desired land with all his heart. He found himself in a situation where he could get all the land within an area he could walk around from sunrise until the sun set on a particular hillock. If he failed to be at the top of the hill by sunset, he would get nothing. He set out, determined to get himself all that he could, and kept diverting to include that stream, this paddock, the other trees. The sun started to go down and, running for all he was worth, he reached the finishing point just as it went down. And while he was being congratulated by the adjudicators, he fell down dead.

"How much land does a man need?", the story's title asked. "Six feet from head to tail was the answer." Enough said. From James Michener (Space, Centenniel, Poland) came the zest to think big and collect bits of history. From Louis L'amour came the curious notion that right will always prevail, the good are the strong (not that it seems to be working in Jamaica) and women must always be respected even if they do not respect themselves. Strange, for a set of novels which glorified the cowboys, who were a part of white America's murderous, rapacious treatment of the country's original people, but I learnt that much later.

The novels also taught me that a great part of the pleasure in sex is giving pleasure. I do not know how well I have applied that lesson. The theory is very different from the practical. However, I knew what a clitoris was, what it did and what to do with it ­ in theory ­ from early. Those letters to the doctor in the Outlook asking for directions baffle me.

PS: It was amusing to see the JLP's reaction to the PNP's intention to use supposed financial whiz septuagenarian Eddie Seaga's financial woes as part of its campaign strategy. They thought it would be divisive. So when they were cavorting to TOK's Chi-Chi Man, to the extent that Mr. Patterson felt forced to make a statement that he was not a homosexual, that must have been a wholesome and unifying tactic. Moral of the story: if you are made of glass, don't throw stones below the back pocket.

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