In the following extract from his memoir, Francis Spufford remembers the process of
learning to read, and the enormous importance which books had for him from an early
age.
A Reading Silence
1 ‘I can always tell when you’re reading somewhere in the house,’ my mother used to say.
‘There’s a special silence, a reading silence.’ I never heard it, this extra degree of hush
that somehow travelled through walls and ceilings to announce that my
seven-year-old-self had become about as absent as a present person could be. The
silence went both ways. As my concentration on the story in my hands took hold, all
sounds faded away. My ears closed. Flat on my front with my chin on my hands or curled
in a chair like a prawn, I’d be gone. I didn’t hear door bells ring, I didn’t hear supper time
called, I didn’t notice the footsteps of the adult approaching who’d come to find me. They
had to shout ‘Francis!’ near my head or, laughing ‘Chocolate!’ I laughed too. Reading in
this way wasn’t something I chose to do, it just happened. Though I never framed the
thought then, I was stopping my ears with fiction. There were things to block out.
2 I learned to read around my sixth birthday when I had mumps. I was making a dinosaur in
the school from toilet rolls and pieces of material when I started to feel as if a pump was
inflating my head from the inside. My face became a cluster of bumps, my feet dangled
limp and too far away to control. The teacher carried me home on her shoulders. I gripped
the dinosaur in one hand. It was still wet with green and purple poster paint. After that
things turned delirious. I had mumps; and one by one my sister, my mother, and my
father all caught it from me. It was a long, quiet time of curtains closed during the day,
wan, slow-moving adults, and bedsheets that seemed as big as the world when you lay in
them, each wrinkle a canyon. When I caught mumps, I couldn’t read; when I went back to
school again, I could.
3 To begin with, the first page of The Hobbit was a thicket of symbols, to be decoded one at
a time and joined hesitantly together. By the time I reached The Hobbit’s last page, the
writing had lost the outlines of the printed alphabet, and become a transparent liquid. At
first, it was sluggish, like a jelly of meaning, then it became thinner and more mobile,
flowing faster and faster, until it reached me at the speed of thinking.
i.n…in a…..im..a…h..o..l..e………i.n.t.h.e.g.r.o.u.n.d…..in a hole in the
ground………l…i…v…e..d..a..h..o..b..b..i..t. in a hole in the ground lived a hobbit!
4 At the same time, I couldn’t read quite a lot of the words in The Hobbit. I had accelerated
into reading faster than my understanding had grown. I remember, simultaneous with the
new liquid smoothness, a constant flicker of incomprehensibility. There were holes in the
text corresponding to the parts I couldn’t understand. Words like prophesying, rekindled
and adornment had never been spoken in my hearing. No one ever told me aloud to
behold something, and I didn’t know that the vessels could be cups and bowls as well as
ships. I could say these words over, and shape my mouth around their big sounds. I could
enjoy them. When I speeded up, and my reading became fluent, it was partly because I
had learned how to ignore such words efficiently. I methodically left out chunks. I marked
them to be sorted out later, by slower or more patient mental processes; I grabbed the gist,
which seemed to survive even in sentences that were mostly hole; and I sped on.
5 Books, it seemed to me, could vary more than virtually anything else that went around in
the world under one arm. They infused me with new emotions. They let me try out a
different life for size: a wonderful alternative to my own small, dreamy, medically unlucky
family of four. In Arthur Ransome’s Swallows and Amazon, the brothers and sisters were
robust. Without having to feel disloyal, I could experiment, reading Arthur Ransome with
the idea of belonging to that other kind of family.
6 When I made my choice at the library, I knew I could have under my arm on the way home
on the bus melancholy; or laughter; or fear; or enchantment. Or longing I didn’t just want to
see in books what I saw in the world around me, even if it was described from different
angles. I wanted to see things I never saw in life. More than anything else I wanted them
to take me away. I wanted exodus.
From Paragraph 1
1. a) Explain the way in which the boy Francis became ‘about as absent as a present
person could be’ when he was reading. [2]
Ans: Francis was so engrossed in reading that he was mentally absent even though
he was physically present at that moment.
b) Quote a phrase of two words that tells that Francis was escaping from life when he
was reading? [2]
Ans: Fading away.
From Paragraph 2
2. a) Give three symptoms of mumps which Francis experienced at school. [3]
i) He started to feel as if a pump was inflating his head from the inside.
ii) His face became a cluster of bumps.
iii) His feet dangled limp and it was too far away to control.
b) What does the writer remember about those days at home when he had mumps?
[2]
Ans: He remembered that at home all the curtains were closed, and all his family members were as white as sheets.
Also, he recalls that his family rests a lot as bedsheets are being described as being as big as the world.
From Paragraph 3
3. Explain the progress which Francis made with his reading. [2]
Ans: At first , the words seemed sluggish to him but when he continually read it. All the words become thinner
and thinner making him read even faster. Although, he did not even understand a word.
From Paragraph 4
4. What were ‘holes in the text’ which Francis came up against in his reading, and how did he
deal with them? [2]
Ans: Holes in the text were basically the words which Francis was unable to understand properly.
Therefore, he dealt it by leaving out the chunks to be studied afterwards.
From Paragraph 5
5. For which two reasons did Francis particularly enjoy Swallows and Amazons? [2]
i) Firstly, because in that novel brothers and sisters were both robust.
ii) Secondly, it gave him a wonderful alternative to his family of four.
From Paragraph 6
6. a) Explain in your own words what it was that Francis wanted most of all from books.
[1]
Ans: Through books he wanted to experience the world which he had never seen.
Hence, he wanted an insouciant life.
From the whole Passage
7. Choose the best option which describes the way the following words are used in the
passage.
[5]
1. cluster (Paragraph 2)
a. clump b. bundle c. body d. assemblage
2. delirious (Paragraph 2)
a. coherent b. feverish c. irrational d. depressed
3. thicket (Paragraph 3)
a. jungle b. tangle c. hedge d. shrub
4. accelerated (Paragraph 4)
a. put b. thrust c. roughly d. hastily
5. robust (Paragraph 5)
a. Heavenly b. happily c. joyfully d. peacefully
8. Read the following lines and write the meaning and effect as they are used in the
passage. [4]
(a) ‘Though I never framed the thought then, I was stopping my ears with fiction.
(Paragraph 1)
Meaning:
It means that fictionality of the book was blocking his ears as if he is not reading
it but he is listening to the unheard voices of those alphabets.
Effect:
Its aftermath would be that he will not be able to see what is happening in his real
life. If, he will keep himself unaware from the happenings.
(b) ‘I wanted exodus.’(Paragraph 6)
Meaning:
This indicates that he wants peace, solitude, and tranquility by reading books and
going into his heady fantasy.
Effect:
Its aftermath would be that he will be able to find serene in that non-existent
world. Hence, the books transported him into new worlds and all the reading he
had done had given him a beautiful view of life.
Total Marks: 25
