Open Writing

Summertime, and they say the living’s easy; but defining “easy” depends on who you ask. The Marx Brothers said it’s “Duck Soup,” one of their movie titles and a slang expression for “easy,” because few dishes are easier to prepare than water, AKA duck soup. Human soup is another matter altogether.

A recent NY Times article by Gretchen Reynolds explored why young swimmers have worse respiratory problems than similarly aged and active soccer players. Studies in the European Respiratory Journal and the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that most elite swimmers they examined had inflamed lung tissue or “airway hyper-responsiveness in which the bronchial tubes twitch or spasm excessively in response to cold air and other stimuli.” Some estimate that “one-third of all elite swimmers have full-blown asthma, 80 percent of which began after they took up swimming.”

A visit with Michael Cox, head of the FNSB Parks Department, convinced me that the borough’s pools are safely maintained and operated. Other communities may have problems if their indoor pools are over–chlorinated and under-ventilated. Then, Reynolds wrote, “When chlorine mixes with proteins in the water, such as shredded skin or hair, creating chloramines … These toxic byproducts tend to settle just above the water’s surface – where swimmers breath.” Reynolds adds that swimmers training hours daily in sub-standard pools may be affected but “casual swimmers don’t seem to face much risk.”

Taking it easy with a good book is safer, though what constitutes good reading is also debatable. One reader’s favorite work of literature is another’s monumental bore, while fun escapist reading’s often scorned as “trash literature.” My mind changed about that when a library school classmate, one of the brightest people I’ve met, admitted dedicating an evening each week to romance novels. Responding to my dismay, she pointed out her romance books were fast, stimulating reads that were intellectually undemanding, with unvaryingly happy endings.

The American Heritage Dictionary’s definition of “trash” includes “Worthless or offensive literary or artistic material,” and it’s of uncertain origin, perhaps coming from the Norwegian “trask.” My friend read “good” books, too; she just found the formulaic nature of romance novels comfortable, as do readers of science fiction, mysteries, westerns, and other “trash” genres. Nothing’s wrong with that. Just because a book fits into a genre doesn’t demean it, but while Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series is indisputably great literature, it’s sometimes dismissed for being merely historical fiction.

Are Stephanie Meyer’s “Twilight” series of paranormal-romance vampire novels trashy? Steven Levitt, author of “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything,” wrote last January that he was “absolutely amazed” to learn that “Twilight” and its teen-thrilling sequels were the top four bestsellers simultaneously, selling a combined four million copies in December alone. Levitt picked up a copy and said “I was somewhat disappointed with the book,” he wrote, adding “an outside observer would laugh at that description, given that I read it in less than a week” and had ordered the other three novels in the series. “The seductive thing about the book,” he writes, “is the way that Meyer creates an alternative vampire universe that is embedded into our own world, where the reader ends up liking the vampires more than the people.”

Regardless of the book, reading transports the imagination like no other diversion if it’s written engagingly. Books like “Harry Potter” and Twilight” are converting the book-shy into avid readers – national surveys show that teens are buying 25% more books than a decade ago. If kids’ reading and comprehension skills improve, who cares if they’re reading cereal boxes or “War and Peace”? The same mental muscles are being flexed.