Feeding our destruction

Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh, was my favorite book from the time I read it at age 10 until, I don’t know, forever. A couple years ago, I gave it to my stepdaughter when she was about 12 and she couldn’t be bothered with it. Well, I thought, maybe she was too old for it; every book needs to hit you at the right time. I mean, I was not unique in loving this book. My friend and I were both obsessed with it, modeling ourselves after Harriet, walking around with composition books, taking notes on all the people at school, learning, in fact, how to be keen observers and competent writers. I read somewhere that in a town where this book was taught in the school, there was a sudden rash of children caught snooping around, spying in people’s windows. So it has been popular and a great influence on generations. Ok, getting kids to snoop doesn’t sound like a great influence, but what’s behind that is the curiosity about what it’s like to be inside someone else’s skin: it encourages that curiosity which is a precursor to compassion. So when my second stepdaughter hit 11, I handed her a copy. She has to be the perfect age. She even looks a little bit like the girl on the cover. So I waited a couple weeks, then asked her how she liked the book so far. “Boring,” she said. Boring: today’s kid’s greatest condemnation.

Perhaps it is simply that they have been ruined by the page-turning excitement of Harry Potter and its ilk, books which I too enjoy, but which I recognize as being relatively shallow and much more plot than character driven, as Harriet the Spy is. The generation growing up now may be avid readers, consuming novels like they were candy, but they are reading passively. However, the reason Harriet the Spy is no longer attracting readers is darker and sadder than that. This is why I have decided there is no hope for the future. These children are not able to identify with a character who is imaginative because they have not been permitted to develop their imaginations; they are too busy being driven around from one competitive sporting event to another. They cannot even fathom what is going on when she sits down with a friend and plays “town,” a game of simply imagining, because they have never been given a moment’s free time in which to invent something for themselves. Thus, unlike those of us who emulated Harriet, they will be impaired in their ability to understand what it is like to be inside someone else’s skin. I rest my case. The world ain’t getting any better on account of our kids. We have given birth to our destruction (well, I haven’t, I have allowed my womb to remain unused) but in the collective sense… our destruction has been born and we are feeding it.