A few months ago I came across this passage from the introduction
to a one volume English translation of Wistawa
Szymborska's Nonrequired Reading:
I am old fashioned and think that reading books is the
most glorious pastime that humankind has yet devised. Homo
Ludens dances, sings, produces meaningful gestures, strikes
poses, dresses up, revels and performs elaborate rituals.
I don’t wish to diminish the significance of these attractions—without
them human life would pass in unimaginable monotony and, possibly,
dispersion and defeat. But these are group activities, above
which drifts a more or less perceptible whiff of collective
gymnastics. Homo Ludens with a book is free. At least as free
as he’s capable of being. He himself makes up the rules
of the game, which are subject only to his curiosity. He’s
permitted to read intelligent books, from which he will benefit,
as well as stupid ones, from which he may also learn something.
He can stop before finishing one book, if he wishes, while
starting another at the end and working his way back to the
beginning. He may laugh in the wrong places or stop short
at words that he’ll keep for a lifetime. And finally,
he’s free—and no other hobby can promise this—to
eavesdrop on Montaigne’s arguments or take a quick dip
in the Mesozoic.
I reprise it here, in part, because I am reminding myself
that—in what I view as shadowy times getting shadowier—there
is something to be done against the shrieking din of this
impending "inevitable" war whose prosecution by
a group of cynical and arrogant men is additional evidence
of the oligarchic governance that is in place this fragile
democracy.
Winter for me is decidedly a season of discontent. That others
of my species can gain some joys from this dark and cold time
is yet another cause for pursuing the issue of human quintessence.
But not today. (As you might guess, large sections of my memoir
Delayed Satisfactions are devoted to this compelling
subject.) The allure of skiing and ice fishing and woolens
(even cashmere) and ruddy cheeks and whatever else are signs
of the bounty of this quadrant of the year, escapes me. And
beyond that, as a resident of New England, I still cannot
understand how my fellows seem to go into either catatonia
or some hardware-store spending spree at the mere whispered
mention of a snowstorm. That is, if anything were ever whispered
anymore.
One might conclude this would be a time of year when it is
most likely that an avid—perhaps ravenous—reader
such as myself would hunker down and let loose the dogs of
inquiry and curiosity or whatever pack of instincts and drives
keep them surrounded by and preoccupied companions of a textual
gender. Not so for me. Though I am not sure how my time is
accounted for, it seems that I actually do more reading in
the Spring and Summer (perhaps the longer days, more light…).
In any case, I have been thinking about my literary diet
for the first two months of the year. Exaggerating to make
a point, if I didn't read another (good) book for the rest
of the year, I would still feel like I had done pretty well
already. I have only read sixteen books (perusing the latest
issue of Book
Magazine, which contains the clever idea of focusing
on readers, and they list one reader who claims to read thirteen
books a week.) Almost all have been challenging, instructive,
and in some instances, moving. Best of all, I feel as if I
am avoiding various doses of anxiety and revulsion that I
felt victimized by when I watched television and the insidious
and idiotic information it transmits.
Colum McCann's Dancer
(a novel based on a character named Rudolph Nureyev), Brian
Hall's I Should Be Pleased To Be in Your Company
(a novel of the Lewis and the Clark of that famous early 19th
century expedition), TC Boyle's Drop City (a novel
about a 1970 commune) and Will Self's Dorian (a self-described
imitation of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray)
are all very different books that have in common (for me)
the connection to some purported accepted reality or real
person(s). In Self's book, that reality is certain social
set of the late '80s and early '90s. In addition to being
well-crafted stories, these writings spurred me to thinking
about the fiction/non-fiction fault line. The results of that
thinking remain mute and inchoate at the moment perhaps ready
to burst out in some Tourette's-like verbal spasm at some
dinner party.
Ray Shannon's Maneater, The Defection of A.J
Lewinter by Robert Littell, Soul Circus, the
newest book by George Pelecanos, James Carlos Blake's hot-off-the-press
Under the Skin, and Michael Thomas' Hanover Place
were all fast-paced narratives that categorizers tend to place
in the genre-fiction niche. Despite the disparaging words
that one author I talked with recently had for so-called genre,
I found quite a lot to recommend these books. Maneater
is funny in that sidereal way that Elmore Leonard amuses.
It's about Hollywood, which has its own built-in amusements
and which, again, Leonard made good use of in Get Shorty.
George Pelecanos brings back Derek Strange of Strange Investigations
and crusades for some rational gun control as he patrols the
gang turf of the District of Columbia. Baker's Under The
Skin takes us back to the Texas-Mexican Border around
the period when Pancho Villa was whooping it up and being
chase by a gringo army and others. Part of the story line
did remind me of Jim Harrison's novella Revenge—which
is not a bad thing.
Three books were emphatically deep forays into the interior.
The inestimable Frederick Busch's
A Memory of War tells of the disintegration of the
life of a middle-aged psychotherapist. Did his mother bear
an illegitimate half brother? Is his wife having an affair
with his best friend? What happened to the young patient he
was treating who became his lover and then disappeared? All
questions in the service of story that riveting. First novelist
Kristen Waterfield Duisberg presents a twenty-eight-year-old
woman in The Good Patient who seems bent on various
methods of self-abuse and destruction for over half her life.
Her husband is frantically concerned and her latest therapist
hangs in with her while she tries to grasp what has happened
in her life. And Sherwin Nuland's Lost In America
is a wrenching and harrowing account of growing up with a
disturbed and disconnected immigrant father in America in
the '40's and '50's. Dr. Nuland, in his late thirties, found
himself in a deep depression that required his hospitalization
for a few years that led to him almost being lobotomized.
This is a clear and honest memoir and I think important as
a model of emotional honesty.
So, as I review what I have read to date in 2003, I am pleased
to see that I have not succumbed to any kind of programmatic
impulse. That is, besides reading the Woodward hagiographic
Bush book, I have avoided the growing bibliography on the
Bush Presidency. I have read no books on Islamic fundamentalism
or who took my cheese or Chicken Soup for Dummies. The reading
goes on in the intuitive and scatter-shot way it always has.
That probably explains why it is still fun after all this
time.
A few years ago, Lewis Lapham closed one of his Harper's
essays with the following quote from T.H. White's Once
and Future King. It is a thought that grabbed me then
and it still resonates for me today and I think, everyday:
The best thing for being sad...is to learn
something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may
grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake
listening to the disorder in your veins, you may miss your
only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil
lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser
minds. There is only one thing for it then—to learn.
Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only
thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never
be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of
regretting.
Untitled #7 by Robert Birnbaum