Daniel Dyer

Daniel Dyer, who has been an educator for about forty years, has written a wonderful account of not just those years but of all his SCHOOLBOY experiences growing up in Oklahoma and Ohio, an unrepentant booklover and the middle son of teachers. Dyer is also married to a teacher-writer, Joyce Dyer (author of two wonderful memoirs, Gum-Dipped::Daughter Remembers Rubber Town[Paperback,2003] and Goosetown: Reconstructing an Akron Neighborhood (Ohio History and Culture).) I've read and greatly enjoyed both of Joyce's books, which is how I came to find her husband's two memoirs. I read both Turning Pages: A Memoir of Books and Libraries and Loss and SCHOOLBOY the same week, and probably have mixed up what's in which book. Indeed there is some overlapping information in the two memoirs, but that was okay.

SCHOOLBOY is written in such a way as to compress those years of teaching into a single day of it, with many digressions and look-backs at his life, all of which I found absolutely charming and relevant. There are sadder segments too, as the author reflects on the decline of his late father, as well as the deaths, many untimely and tragic, of various colleagues and former students.

His tales of his early years in teaching back in the mid-sixties and early seventies struck a chord as I remembered my own poorly-paid teaching job in the same era. The difference was I got out of teaching after just five years. Dyer stayed, and grew to love it - mostly. Because he does talk about strikes and teachers' unions. But he also was deeply involved in extra-curricular duties, especially drama clubs, which he obviously dearly loved and enjoyed. There are also stories of family and friends and personal illnesses and trials which ring true, told as they are with Dyer's unflinching honesty and candor.

And there's a lot in here too about researching, writing and collecting books, which often led to deep credit-card debt. As a person who loves reading about nearly anything having to do with books, I loved this book. Dyer is simply a marvelous writer.… (mais)

I found Daniel Dyer's memoir, TURNING PAGES, to be totally engrossing and utterly delightful, due mostly, I think, to the absolute honesty of his memories of growning up in Enid, Oklahoma and Hiram, Ohio. The book also chronicles the life of philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, a carefully researched and fascinating mini-biography which alternates chapters with Dyer's own story which featured a nearly life-long reverence for libraries. So there is much here about the Carnegie library in Enid that was built nearly a hundred years ago but is now gone, a victim of neglect and 'progress.'

Dyer covers a lot of ground in TURNING PAGES - racism in the south during his 50s childhood, favorite books, teachers and librarians, sexual awakening, family relationships (in an ultra-bookish family), teenage rebellion and more. But what drew me to the book in the first place was the possiblity that here would be a book about books, and I was not disappointed in that regard. Probably because Dyer and I are about the same age, we seem to have read many of the same books, from childhood all the way up into adulthood. He too remembers those orange-covered biographies of famous Americans written for schoolchildren. I remember reading of Buffalo Bill, Kit Carson, and George Washington Carver, and so does Dyer, who became fascinated with not just Carver, but with his biographer, Bontemps. Dyer talks too of Dr. Seuss, John R. Tunis and the Hardy Boys and (gulp) yes, even Nancy Drew. He also knows his classics, and how he was introduced to them through Classics Illustrated comic books. He mentions too some books I missed out on. One, Daniel Nathan's THE GOLDEN SUMMER, sounds particularly enticing, even if it is a boy's book.

Both Dyer's parents were educators and avid readers. The Dyers were in fact a family of readers, and there are book references galore here, something I absolutely loved.

The library of my own childhood was not a Carnegie library, but it was still an enchanted place for me, and I probably visited there at least twice a week throughout my school years. Like Enid's libary, ours was located in the center of town, upstairs over City Hall, in fact. You probably can't be any closer to the heart of a community than that. I remember reading practically everything in the 'children's section,' especially all the animal stories by authors like Kielgaard, London, O'Brien, Curwood, Terhune, Farley and others. Dyer mentions some of these too, if I remember correctly. Dyer also talks about his early-formed habit, or perhaps compulsion would be a better word, of trying to read every work of favorite authors, a practice he learned from a favorite teacher and has continued to follow ever since. While I admire him for managing to read all of Trollope, I don't think I'll ever match that kind of obsessive reading behavior. (I have, however, read most of the works of a distant relative of that writer, Joanna Trollope, which I have enjoyed tremendously.)

So okay, this is a book about books, about libraries, and about Daniel Dyer's life. It also seemed to be a lot about my own life. Maybe that's the mark of a really well-written memoir, one that makes you remember more about your own life. As a memoirist and a booklover, I loved this book. Er, e-book, that is. (Which is my one and only beef about TURNING PAGES. I wish that, kinda like Pinocchio, it were a 'real live book' and not just pixels and electronic stuff, or whatever an e-book is.) But here's my bottom line: if you love books, you'll love TURNING PAGES.… (mais)