The Necessity To Speak

Sam Hamill wrote the Necessity to Speak, an essay I had to read for English class. I must say, after reading the essay, many tangled thoughts filled my mind. I had to pause, then like opening your eyes from a lengthy nap, I drowsily tried to untangle what I had read. Sometimes readings like this make me disoriented, too many observations and words in my head like a giant gnarled ball of string. Sometimes it’s easier to throw that old ball of yarn into the waste paper basket then to actually sit there and untangle the mess. It then dawned on me, “that is what Sam Hamill is writing about,“  although not in such simple context.

Denial is a sick thing. It can destroy a person from the inside out and it can eat at you like a slow death. Sam Hamill’s essay made me look at some of the hard truths, myself, and so many choose to deny. Sometimes it is easier to turn your back and pretend things aren’t really there, like the man on the corner begging for change, or the small child who approaches you with a heavy basket full of roses, trying to make a dollar. Do we actually care that he gets beat when turn out backs to him, crushing the dream of filling his 50 per day quota? Do we actually notice that the man begging for change is a disabled vet, who, at his best, was a leader and a loyal member to a brotherhood that would have never predicted he’d be homeless and cold on the side of the road one day?  “And we go on living close lived lives, pretending we are not each personally responsible for the deaths we buy and sell. ( Hamill page 546) We pretend that our own lives are our world, and everything beyond what we see and live on a daily basis are like the stars. Occasionally we will see them glowing, and may comment on them from time to time, but we never really see them. We don’t know what makes them shine or fade, and once they are all burnt out and no longer there, it’s as if they never were.

Sam Hamill’s essay was about so many things, the easiness of masculinity and how it can consume so many lives, mostly women. It was about the cycle of abuse, the cynicism in violence, and the embarrassment we feel from emotion. I can’t disagree with any of these things, but mostly this essay, to me, was about denial. If we pretend something isn’t there, does it dissipate?  “We don’t want to know what the world is like, we can’t bear very much reality.” (Hamill page 546) After all, painful true reality is nothing nice. We all wear rose colored glasses to some degree in our lives. I believe Hamill wanted us to find strength in his words and conviction in not turning our backs to things that happen right before our eyes. As he said so simply, and yet so foreign to so many of us “We are all impoverished by our silence.” (Hamill page 551) I couldn’t agree more.


image taken from The Poetry Foundation

The Good Reader

What is a good reader? Vladimir Nabokov had a very strong and precise opinion on what makes a good reader. After all, Vladimir Nabokov was one of the most imaginitive and accomplished writers of the century. http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/02/lifetimes/nabokov.html He said “….the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary and some artistic sense.” Having three out of four on Nabokov’s list, I would certainly consider myself a good reader. I must agree with Nabokov when he said “A good reader should notice and fondle details.” I believe reading to be a personal experience that a reader must have, getting lost in the pages of a distant world, leaving, for that brief moment in time, your place of reality, and escaping to a place the author has painted so vividly for you. A good reader absolutely notices details and appreciates every word the author has laid out.


I believe Nabokov was telling us, that we, as readers, owe it to the author, who has worked so hard to lay out a beautiful masterpiece, an art of words, to open his or her book with an open mind. Not a mind clouded by preconceived notions, or a hasty disposition. After all, as Nabokov stated, …”writing is a very futile business.” How could we call ourselves a “good reader” if we simply hurry through a book, ignoring the beautiful details, failing to picture the scene the author is creating, and trampling on the delight of a good story with ill thoughts already in our heads? I have to agree with Nabokov and his passion for wanting us to be good readers.

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