A tweet led me to the seed of this entry, a quote entitled READ ALOUD by George V. Higgins:
"You can get what you need to write (as opposed to what you need to make a big nuisance of yourself at cocktail parties) by shutting yourself in a room by yourself for twenty minutes a day and reading aloud from E.B. White's CHARLOTTE'S WEB, and going on from that to other works of skill, until you begin to see, by hearing how much the choice and arrangement of the words contribute to the impact of the story, even when no sound is uttered in its reading."
I have recently become a fan of audio books, especially for long drives alone or when I find an acclaimed work that for some reason or another I can't finish in book form. I am a big time E.B. White fan so rather than listen to myself read aloud, I decided to revisit CHARLOTTE'S WEB on a CD from the library. Within a few minutes, I was in a "faux" 21st century state of shock. Fern had a doughnut for breakfast and Avery brought a gun, an air rifle, on the school bus! I can't imagine an editor today allowing this scenario to pass for publication. Avery would have been sent to Juvie, after his school was put on lock down for bringing an unconcealed weapon to school. Mrs. Arable's parenting skills would have been brought into question for feeding her children doughnuts for breakfast even though a baby pig had disrupted the normal routine. Still there is an innocence to this situation viewed as "incorrect" in our current cultural climate. I had reread this book in the past ten years but somehow this scene slipped by me. Hearing the words magnified them, made me pause in way I hadn't with book in lap.