"The Metal Children," and books that change your life

Last night I went to see "The Metal Children," a new play about a YA author who goes to the small town in the process of banning one of his books. I'd been looking forward to this for a while because playwright Adam Rapp is one of my favorites; I don't think this is his best play, but I really liked it and think it shed some particular light on the relationship between authors and readers.

The fictional author in the play, Tobin Falmouth, hasn't even thought about his book in years before agreeing to participate in a debate about it in the town of Midlothia -- but once there, he meets a string of people to whom his book was extremely important. And he's startled to see that something he wrote ten years earlier could have that effect (and at times alarmed, since the book-within-the-play concerns a string of disappearances of pregnant teenagers).

Late in the play he gets around to a long, rambling speech of how the book affected his own life, and it's impressive, but not as much as the moment another character turns to him and says, "Your book read me, Mr. Falmouth." And I sat in the audience and thought, That is so true. If you've had that experience, of reading a book where it seemed like the book knew you better than you knew yourself, then you know what I mean. It makes you want to smile at nothing in particular. And it could make you (as it does in "The Metal Children") behave strangely toward the author of the book, presuming a connection there that the author might not even see.

I haven't had that feeling in a while, but I'm always looking for it.