If there has been a theme for this month, for me it has been caring.

Caring as in feeling anxiety and frustration when, for example, through a series of unfortunate events my younger son Braxton put a gash in his chin, requiring seven stitches—and then managed to reopen the wound the day after the sutures were removed.

Caring as in dreading the implications of an upcoming conference scheduled to address the fact that my older son Joseph no longer fits in at the center where he has spent the last few years. (I’ll say more about that later, when I know more. But right now the situation does not sound good.)

It’s human nature to feel some variety of care, about one thing or another, on an ongoing basis. I care just as much about my daughter Susannah as I do about her brothers, but these days (as far as I know) her life proceeds with little turmoil, or at least she’s able to handle issues as they arise with minimal interference from her mom and me. She brings me an algebra problem from her homework or she asks for a few bucks, and then all is well. These issues are neither urgent nor dire, and—also much appreciated—are easily solved. So far. I know not to take that blessing for granted.

In my life, the most acute examples of caring have come in connection with my role as a parent. Beyond that, life presents an endless menu of other potential concerns. Some of those opportunities merit more focus than others, but living means attending to them all in some fashion. Likewise, caring about an issue can lead to situations in which I can’t avoid noting a lack of care given it by other people.

We could all provide examples. Here’s one. An autism research center in Canada contacts me from time to time for input to support the various studies it runs. Most recently, they sent a questionnaire to be filled out by the developmental professional who works with Joseph. It came with a postage-paid return envelope, and consisted of a few sheets of questions with multiple-choice answers. The therapist accepted the package and said she would do it, for me (as if I were the beneficiary)—and then dropped the ball.

The study itself is a small matter from our point of view, in that the outcome is unlikely to affect Joseph’s life, but it’s disturbing to see a certain consistency in the professional’s failure to take that request seriously. Going back quite a few years, her colleagues have had a similar response to every request I ever brought them. (I allude to that here.)

The month’s theme probably got its start a few weeks ago when I reread a novel by Daniel Quinn. In a way, that story dramatizes a variant of an issue that’s at the heart of What About the Boy?: Life can present you with a problem that calls for a serious response. You can care very much about providing that response, even to the extent that providing it becomes bound up with your concept of who you are. If you can be satisfied with the extent of your own response (as I am at the moment with my responses to Susannah), all well and good. Disappointment begins if you think it would be appropriate for someone else to take a similar interest.

“And are you a writer?”

This polite question was asked of my wife years ago, when I introduced her to my professor at a party. That professor’s byline frequently appeared under stories in The New Yorker, her first (of many) novels was coming out, and since the party was for her creative writing class, practically everyone around us aspired to similar success.

As it turns out, Judy did not write. But she had a ready comeback.

“No,” she said. “I’m a reader.”

Where indeed would writers be without readers?

The point is often made that a writer must also read—preferably in many genres—in order to stay up to speed with what others are doing. To some extent, the way a story is put together or the way language is used in it is a response to that context—not a final answer, of course, but one more statement in an ongoing conversation. That’s why, in my own first encounter with the above professor, she’d asked what authors I was reading. I mentioned Gogol and Tolstoy, but she shook her head impatiently. “Are you familiar with any current authors?” she asked.

“Well,” I said slowly, “I’m also partway into something called The Death of the Novel.” I named that one reluctantly, because it was very weird. I didn’t know how she’d react.

Actually, she liked that answer much better. “Ronald Sukenick is about as contemporary as you could get!” she said happily. (This was in the mid-70s. Thus far I wouldn’t say that Sukenick’s work has withstood the test of time as well as those others. I could go further and say his kind of experimentation was not the sort of thing newbie writers such as myself needed to be emulating, right out of the gate. Nevertheless, writers have to venture beyond the classics, and indeed beyond whatever material they find most comfortable. The more we stretch, the more we learn.)

A book like Sukenick’s is probably intended specifically for other writers. Most books are not. A reader of a book like What About the Boy? may pick it up as casually as any other small purchase, and will most certainly put it down again if it fails to connect. Such readers represent the true test of a book’s worth. Imagine the gratification I experience when a reader feels moved to contact me out of the blue—as when a woman in Atlanta wrote to say that WATB had spoken to her, even though she had no children of her own. Likewise, I was thrilled to receive a phone call one evening from the daughter of a deceased author, who’d written a memoir somewhat like mine many years ago.

On the other hand, thus far, few contemporary writers known to me have read WATB. (At least, they’ve had little to say about it.) Perhaps they think its focus on disability removes it from the body of works that constitute contemporary literature (those dealing with romance, murder, war, betrayal, globetrotting, growing up, etc.). Or perhaps the notion that it belongs is my own conceit. Determinations like that occur on a plane beyond my understanding.

In my view, writers and readers alike exist in a loosely connected community. We communicate with what we say and don’t say. In writing my memoir, in reviewing the works of others, in responding to occasional requests for private critiques, and in taking questions on call-in radio shows, I hope to contribute value to this community.

As always, feedback on that is very welcome.

I read this charmer for the very first time last night when putting my little guy (Joseph’s (much) younger brother) to bed. What a pleasant surprise!

Up till now, if asked to pick a favorite Seuss title, I’d have gone for The King’s Stilts, mainly because of memories of having it read to me as a child. (We still have an early edition of that classic, which might be worth some money if only my sister and I hadn’t marked up the pages.) Dr. Seuss’s better-known creations are great fun, too. Last spring my 12-year-old did a school report on him, from which I learned such interesting trivia as the origin of his first title, And to Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street: It was suggested by the rhythmic sound of the engine on a ship he was riding home from Europe.

Anyway, with the continuing presence of so many examples in our house, I’d thought I was reasonably up to speed on the Seuss oeuvre. Discovering surprising new material at this late date has a way of making me stop to reconsider. Offhand, I can think of one other that has such a clear moral lesson–Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose. This is not to say that lessons necessarily make a story better. It’s OK to enjoy something for its own sake, and there’s even a Seuss quote to that effect. But right now I find myself receptive to a little more.

No doubt the excitement has something to do with the story’s relevance to a theme I gnaw at with many of my blog posts (this one, for example), i.e., trouble and the disappointing results of our efforts to overcome it. Of course, I also immediately recognized the Wubble chap, who confidently promises to deliver our suffering main character to a utopia but instead ends up multiplying the hardships. That same guy is scheduled to give a speech tonight on prime-time TV. The lure of such characters resembles that of the lottery, and I think all of us feel it at least a little from time to time.

Hence the value of a story like this for folks of all ages.

My son has a habit of demanding that I read the same books again and again every night, so that, from my point of view, we’ve completely worn out some first-rate stories (The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, The Velveteen Rabbit, etc.). Right now I hope he’s up for more of Solla Sollew.

(I originally posted this review on Goodreads.)