Mom and Dad Reading
Larkin, Michael (2009-03-24)
>>MICHAEL LARKIN: My name is -- I will look at you.
[Laughs]
>>MICHAEL LARKIN: My name is Michael Larkin and I am a writer and a teacher of writing at Berkley. I guess, a few things come to mind when I think about learning to read and literacy narratives. One of them is just that, in my house growing up, the constant presence of books. There was a whole wall in the house I grew up in, in the living room that was just filled with books. For years, it was a lot of the same books reflecting my parents' interests: my dad's in military history and my mother's in literature. His den and her den, the living room and the family room; pretty much every room except the dining room and the kitchen -- well, even the kitchen had books. I think that, coupled with my parents constantly reading, my watching them reading. We would go on vacations, first night check into a hotel or whatever it was, or a cabin usually -- we would rent it. Everybody would sit down before dinner and pull out the novel or whatever they were reading and just start reading. That is just kind of what we did so it just seemed natural. The thing, I guess, I was most thinking about was my parents bed as the site of literacy, which hopefully doesn't sound too unseemly. 
[Both laugh]
>>MICHAEL LARKIN: But, specifically, my mother reading to my sister and I -- sister and me -- when we were young. I don't remember books when I was a young child, but I do remember her reading, chapter by chapter, night by night, Tom Sawyer, when we were sort of probably late elementary school. I can remember her doing the voices of the various characters. She is from Cleveland; she is not particularly dramatic in her presentation, but anyways it was kind of striking for me to see that because she is relatively reserved. Also, in terms of watching my parents read. My father, still to this day; he is in his seventies now, and from the time I was a  young boy, every night before he would go to bed, if I happened to be up  and I would see him as he had already checked out for the night, on his bed in his tank top  undershirt, the wife beater undershirt -- thankfully he was not -- reading a tome about this thick, on his belly, pillow underneath his chest, with his elbows over it, just reading it. He has had glasses since he was in first grade; he has terrible eyesight. 
That is just the way he read and still reads to this day. 
>>MICHAEL LARKIN: Even then, and now still, will be talking about some subject -- he is a doctor but history is kind of his second love; I think he would  have been a history professor if he hadn't gone into medicine -- he will be talking about the Civil War or  something that is going on in Iraq or whatever. He is like: "Oh, god!" And he will pull out a book like this. "I just read this last night." And he really means last night; it takes him a couple of days to pull through these massive tomes. That has been some of the constants, both when I was young and now as an adult. It just speaks to me of the importance that I tell my students, which is of course that the act of reading, especially when you are young, is so important. And also trying to implicate to them that even if that wasn't their experience that it is sort of never too late to start. Certainly, some of my students have children, to kind of impress upon them that kind of obvious truth. Anyways, that is my story such as it is. All I can think of at the moment.  	
>>INTERVIEWER: That is excellent, wow. It touches on all that good stuff.
>>MICHAEL LARKIN: And this will go online and my dad will see reference to it.