Noel Anenberg

"When did I become a writer?" There was no one date. I stammered when a boy. Stammered out of fear for a brutish explosive father and a desperate hysterical mother whose moods both changed at the speed of thought. I was constantly afraid I would say the wrong thing. Words did not come. Writing and reading with comprehension were beyond reach. I first read and understood a novel when on river patrol in the Mekong Delta during the Viet Nam War, Herman Wouk's "Winds of War." Wouk's Navy commander, Victor "Pug" Henry became my first literary hero. Through great novels and plays I came to know and feel close to heroic fictional characters before I developed the capacity to trust real people. I kept my distance to protect myself. I did not trust myself, I did not trust anyone. I was alone. I found and took succor from my deepest most trusted friends who populated the great classic novels I read. Dickens' characters, David Copperfield, "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show." In William Synge's Irish play, "The Playboy of the Western World," Where Peegan Mike tells Christy a boy throttled and intimidated by his thuggish father "You should have had great people in your family, I'm thinking, with the little, small feet you have, and you with a kind of quality name, the like of what you'd find on the great powers and potentates of France and Spain...and you a fine, handsome young fellow with a noble brow...it's the poets are your like--fine, fiery fellows with great rages when their temper's aroused." My temper was aroused, vindicated. And the first line from Leo Tolstoy's splendid novel, Anna Karenina, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." I was no longer alone. Simply put, writing is the singular path I am fit to walk, words are the only clothing that fit well. It has been through literature that I have found another path, a path to love, light, and life.