What you learn when you smuggle books out of the library:

“Mersault spoke of a ‘mournful solace,’ and finally there was a name to describe the atmosphere in my house. I tested the phrase on my best friend, Rosie Murray, one afternoon as we walked home from school. “How’s your grandmom?” she’d asked. I said she wasn’t getting better, then announced: “The house is filled with a mournful solace.” Rosie frowned and said, “I never know what you’re talking about, but that sounds bad."

-Denise Gess – “The Most Important Book I Read” – on, The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Synopsis: Pi Patel, a boy with profound curiosity, creativity, and spiritual appetite, grows up in an Indian village where his father owns and runs the local zoo. The major features of Pi's boyhood are the zoo animals, religious practice (his enthusiasm leads him to adopt both Christianity and Islam and practice them simultaneously alongside his native Hinduism), and the political unrest of 1970's India. When Pi is 16, his parents decide to emigrate to Canada, and book passage on the Japanese cargo ship which is also transporting the bulk of the zoo animals to American zoos. Four days to sea, the ship sinks inexplicably, and Pi finds himself adrift in the Pacific for many months, with an adult male Bengal tiger his only companion.

Enthralling, no question. Delightful, even. The above is so brief largely because I wouldn't want even to attempt to capture the spirit of the thing. It made me smile out of sheer pleasure.

But there's one significant problem, which I've observed to be common to many modern tales of protracted survival - where are the big questions? Pi has lost everything and everyone; survival is unlikely; life has been extracted from the context of the universe.

What is the purpose? What is the meaning of life? Where is God? Who is God? What is God? Is there God? Why has this happened? Why am I here?

These are the questions that face human beings in those times when crisis has eliminated all the distractions of life beyond subsistence. But Pi never expresses such thoughts in his narrative, a fact that is made even less plausible by the exaggerated religious fervor attributed to him in childhood. "I want to love God," young Pi tells his parents, attempting to explain his adherence to three world religious at once. So how does he relate to God in his months adrift? Martel makes passing mention of regular prayer and spiritual crisis, but for the most part, the faith and religious passion that were so central to the development of young Pi as a character vanish with the sinking of the freighter.

I can only speculate as to the reason for this failing - I know nothing of the author, his background, or his spiritual perspective beyond what I surmise from the postmodern expression of the book. But I suspect it's the result of a common lack of understanding, at present, of the spirituality of "organized religion". To any person of genuine faith, Pi would never ring true. One who had sought God in the way Pi was portrayed doing in the early chapters could not satisfy his spirituality with only an emasculated ritual of Mass and Salat when he found himself so utterly alone. He would be angry, like David. He would be demanding, like Job. He would be asking the big questions.

I hear you, ladies.

I hated childhood and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.
-Anne Tyler

Some say life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
-Ruth Rendell

On Books (3)

Via Tiny Little Librarian:

"Wonderful place, the library, where books and their accompanying escapism are free and ostensibly educational. If you eat to escape your moods, or shop, or have sex or drink, everyone says you have a problem. Read a book, and they think you're smart."

-from Dating Without Novocaine by Lisa Cach

Clean Filth

Bridge to Terabithia wasn't one of my huge childhood favorites - I think I must have been born too much city-mouse to connect characters who purport to be real country people (as opposed to idealized country people from another century). Opening a book with a phrase like, "hot as popping grease" is not the way to this Bibliophile's heart. So I have no concrete plans one way or the other to see the lately released film. But it looks like all the copies of the book (including the audio versions) are checked out of the Suburban Selfimportantville Regional Library System, which I take to be a good thing.

I recently spoke to my mother, who works as the head children's librarian at the Rustingham Public Library. Apparently, a woman came into their children's room in dismay over Bridge to Terabithia - the book - which, recall, was published thirty years ago. "I can't believe a book like that won an award! I mean, someone dies in it!"

Alright...

So no awards for Dickens. Steinbeck. Hemingway. Conrad. Dumas. Hugo. Ibsen. Shakespeare, for heaven's sake.

Christianity Today published an interview with Katherine Paterson last month for the movie release, which included the following exchange:

CT: There's a trend lately to provide books and films for Christian
audiences that are "safe for the whole family." Perhaps your books have been
challenged because they're not necessarily "safe" for children.

KP: Well, don't give them the Bible, because it's certainly
not a safe book. Safety and faith are different things. If you want everything
to be safe, then you can do without imagination. If you're so afraid of your
imagination that you stifle it, how are you going to know God? How can you
imagine heaven?

Indeed.

There's always been a constant stream of meaningless drivel of all descriptions from the media, but traffic has increased lately in the subgenre I've come to think of as Clean Filth. Clean Filth comprises all those entertainments created with no mind to anything but inoffensiveness - ignoring reality, taste, culture, and depth alike. Fun for the whole family. Wholesome. Advocated by those religious media barons who make their fortunes capitalizing on other people's (preferably uninformed) moral indignation.

Not that there isn't plenty to outrage and grieve in the moral baseness of so much of the media today. I do believe that some day world society will have no choice but to acknowledge that such things matter. But other things matter too. In having an eye only to morality - and a limited understanding of morality, at that - leaves portals for so many more forms of damage. There's never a thought to the intellectual danger presented by culture devoid of ideas or meaning, "clean" or otherwise.

Overbooked?

Odd to be blogging about a dream, but I had a bizarre and bookish one last night. Don't recall details, but I was in a cafe having lunch with Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth, and, incongruously, my friend Paula.

Obviously I need to cut back on the caffeine. Or the old episodes of Bookworm.

Library Book Sale

The periodic Friends of the Library book sale took place this weekend at my local branch of the Suburban Selfimportantville Regional Library System. Over the years I've become more and more selective about what I pick up there - I love books, naturally, but if I'm going to lay down my $2 and give a volume space on my shelves, it has to be something I genuinely want to own, and it has to be a decent edition in good condition. Those two conditions, in combination with the typical selection, makes it easier to limit my purchases to a reasonable quantity than it might otherwise be.

What I picked up this time:

• The Scarlet Letter (a favorite - I didn't have a good edition of this)
• War and Peace (ditto)
• A Brief History of Time
• Seabiscuit (paperback - picked up to give to someone I've always thought would like it)

On Reading (2)

“Like all true reader-addicts, I have had to resign myself to two inescapable truths: Life produces so many interruptions that I can’t spend all my time reading; and life is also so short that I can’t read everything that I want to, which is everything.”

-Doris Betts, from Remarkable Reads - 34 Writers and Their Adventures in Reading; essay originally published in the Raleigh News & Observer

When you just can't get enough books

So you're sitting at your computer, reading ebooks and book reviews and online quarterlies and book blogs, shopping for new books and used books, trading books, searching for book discussion guides and posting on book forums, maybe even writing books and, of course, listening to Bookworm...

So what happens when you need to leave your desk for a few minutes?

Hopefully this.

On Reading (1)

“I’ve learned to value, actually to crave, that old privacy that used to be my constant familiar when I read, whether I was still selecting children’s books or making my earliest explorations of the grown-ups’ shelves. Books weren’t surrounded, for me then, by reviews, awards, consensus, zeitgeist, or buzz. I never felt guilty for being the last to discover something, never felt smug or self-improving for reading something difficult. Instead, it was forever only me and a book on a lonely exploration. Me in a secret garden."

-Jonathan Lethem, from Remarkable Reads - 34 Writers and Their Adventures in Reading; essay originally published in the Raleigh News & Observer

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana - Umberto Eco

The plot of this book gives entirely new meaning to the phrase, "a life in books." Yambo, a sixty-year-old Milanese antiquarian bookseller, wakes up in the hospital with amnesia - he can't remember his occupation, his wife, his home, or even his own name. Yet, he can recall word-perfect every book, poem, and miscellaneous quotation he's ever read, and until he's able to regain his personal memories, this literary memory is the only connection he has to his own life.

Yambo returns home to immerse himself in the life he's created, the life he's been living for over thirty years, which is as unfamiliar to him as a stranger's. After a time, his wife advises him to visit the country house where he spent much of his childhood, hoping that a return to earlier surroundings may help to trigger the return of the memories Yambo needs to regain.

This is where things get funny. Yambo returns to his childhood home, desperate to remember the realities of his life, to remember anything that has actually happened to him, anything other than what he's read in books. Accordingly, he settles in and spends several weeks...reading old books. Really, though, this isn't as self-defeating as it sounds; Yambo hopes that by revisiting his book-memories in the place where they were originally formed, he might be able to re-connect the verbal to the vital. He visits the attic and pours through the pulp-fiction and adventure stories of his childhood, the nationalistic propaganda of his Mussolini-era gradeschool readers, the magazines and comics of his early teen years - all the time in search of the elusive "mysterious flame," the visceral flicker of recollection that's somehow more real than encyclopedic.

Through this process, Yambo rediscovers the physical and cultural trappings of his childhood (interesting to any reader without a personal connection to Fascist Italy), but learns little directly about himself and his family. The reader discovers more about the real Yambo through his responses to the exercise - through the process by which he attempts to reconstruct his own biography from the "biography of a generation" he's creating through ephemera. Along the way, there's much to consider about the perils of losing one's heart in one's head.

More than half way through the book, Yambo discovers evidence of an adolescent romance (this isn't a spoiler - my edition divulged this information on the back cover) which Eco clearly intended to alter the course and focus of Yambo's journey. The history of the mysterious Lila promises to be the key to Yambo's puzzle, if only he can uncover it. This plot device, however, was not as effective as it might have been. For one thing, it was introduced too late in the quest-tale to be convincing as a driver. It also changed the tone of the narrative and Yambo's attitude enough to make the characterization feel discontinuous. Perhaps the influence of the Lila episode was meant to be evident in Yambo's character throughout the book, but his portrayal changes after Lila is introduced, and the reader who's become attached to the Yambo from the first half may not make the transition comfortably.

Bottom line: Not Eco's best; however, the character sketch is fresh and interesting, and the river of both high- and pop-cultural references flowing throughout the book is satisfying, even charming.

Friday at Big Box Books

I own a good number of books (though not nearly as many as some), but I don't buy all that many, at least not new. The abundance of library book sales in the Suburban Selfimportantville Regional Library System has plenty to do with that, I suspect. But on my way home this afternoon, I stopped by my local Big Box Books to reward myself for recently meeting a personal goal. I scored a great deal on nice editions of three of my early favorites, Gulliver's Travels, The Wind in the Willows, and a collection of stories and poems by Edgar Allan Poe. I'm looking forward to the rereadings, especially of The Wind in the Willows, which was one of the first novels I ever read, and which I haven't picked up in close to 15 years.

While shopping, I noticed several posters advertising something called, "The Paranormal Romance Book Club." Have to wonder...isn't all romance somewhat paranormal?

A Holiday Interlude

George Washington was a gentleman,
His birthday is tomorrow.
He filled his country's friends with joy,
His country's foes, with sorrow.
And so my dears, his grateful land
In robes of glory clad him.
George Washington was a gentleman.
I'm glad his parents had him.

from "Washington's Birthday Eve" by Ogden Nash

From Mansfield Park

The most lovable thing about Austen is her self-referential irony: "Family squabbling is the greatest evil of all, and we had better do anything than be altogether by the ears." (ch. XIII)

This probably describes more people than not: "Never happier! - never happier than when doing what you must know was not justifiable! - never happeir than when behaving so dishonourably and unfeelingly! - Oh, what a corrupted mind!" (ch. XXIII)

On the wages of misguided feminism? "The game was hers, and only did not pay her for what she had given to secure it." (ch. XXV)

"The enthusiasm of a woman's love is even beyond the biographer's." (ch. XXVII)

"He had suffered, and he had learnt to think, two advantages that he had never known before." (ch. XLVIII)

Observing Snow

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rain-storms and did my duty faithfully.

- Henry David Thoreau, Walden

___________________________________________

The northeast's tardy winter is coming fully into its own today, with the first "real" snowstorm of the season. February 14, eh? This is when the locals are generally looking for winter to start winding down. The skiers resigned themselves to a disappointing season months ago, and everyone else is enjoying the reprieve from heavy-duty shoveling for the year. So far, at least. And even now, though conditions are treacherous, we won't be getting the foot-of-snow-topped-off-by-ice-storm that was forecast.

I didn't grow up around all that much snow. My first experience living in real winter began my freshman year at East Hill University* in Oddtown*, New York. Plenty of snow there, as well as a mountainous one-mile trek between dorms and classes. (You know those stories about walking to school uphill both ways in the snow? Ahem.) Fortunately, I discovered the winter to be far more tolerable than summer ever had been in all those tropical and sub-tropical places where I'd spent my childhood, so for now, I'm stuck on the north country. Well, the semi-north, at least. Those places in the upper midwest where you can't go outside with any skin exposed or turn off your car's engine for months at a time don't really appeal. And to think there's a whole country north of there...

My parents weren't snow-initiated either, until they moved to Rustingham*, New York, while I was in college. Rustingham enjoys copious amounts of lake-effect snow, a largely misunderstood phenomenon which is to the lakeshore regions of the US what rain is to Seattle. Rustingham, however, doesn't get quite as much snow as, say, Buffalo (94 inches per year, average), Rochester, (93 inches, all of which fell last week), or Syracuse (116 inches). Oddtown averages around 70 inches per year, and Selfimportantville, being a seaport, runs only around 40 inches, though out here in the inland suburbs we see rather more.

Of course, some places are totally different. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center:

The greatest snowfall officially reported at the Phoenix, Arizona National
Weather Service Office was one inch. That occurred twice. The first time was January 20, 1933. It happened again four years later on the same date.

Perhaps next year I'll have to write on international snow.

Oh, and by the way, Happy Valentine's Day, everyone. Hope you can actually dig out in time to make your dinner reservations.
_____________________________________

*Place names changed protect my obsession of superficial anonymity, as usual.

Art Appreciation

Via Bookliness is Next to Godliness, something to make the bibliophilic pulse race:

Surprise bibliophile extraordinaire Art Garfunkel has listed every book he read between 1968 and 2006 - nearly 1,000 titles, and fine selections they are. He's also listed his 135 favorites, including Jane Eyre, Notes from the Underground, The Aeneid, Rousseau's Confessions, and The Bell Jar. If you're looking for a model for your own reading life, or even for just a few good tips, you could do far worse than to start here.

(What was Art reading the day I was born? The World According to Garp. Yikes!)

Farewell, Jack?

I just finished reading Jasper Fforde's The Fourth Bear. The two (so far) volumes of Fforde's Nursery Crime series lack the snap of his Thursday Next books - I'm sure some readers would call them "disappointing," but I can't bring myself to use such a grave word to describe something that exists only for sheer fun.

Still, The Fourth Bear was by far the weakest offering in the Fforde lineup. It started weakly, had a few bright spots, and fizzled at the end. In the last 20% of the book, I truly wondered whether Fforde had given up. As if he said, "Hey, this is coming together so poorly that I'll never sell another Jack Spratt book once this is published - let's just get it over with." There were gimmicks and characters from the first Spratt book that mysteriously vanished in this one, and others that suddenly appeared out of nowhere, almost as though Fforde had second thoughts about the details of the series premise. Unfortunately, once a series is started, it's too late for much of that, and the effect in this book is confusing.

The few clever bits, the ones that most summoned the feel and characterization of The Big Over Easy, were good enough that I wished Fforde had been able to bring the rest of the book up to par.

The Big Over Easy, while, again, perhaps not up to Thursday, turned out to be quite neatly written, the plot of which could be easily imagined in any genre mystery, only with a ridiculous setting. Completely palatable to anyone with a taste for Fforde's variety of absurdity (which not everyone has, granted).

Bottom line - if you want to try out Fforde, which I do highly recommed, start with The Eyre Affair; if you connect with Thursday, you might also like Jack.

Thursday will be back in July, but I won't be surprised if we see no more of Jack Spratt. Too bad, I liked him.

(p.s. - If you keep a handwritten book journal, definitely pick up some Fforde. His name is too much fun to write.)

(p.p.s. - Never buy a used car from a Wilde character.)

Stop the Presses!

Something unprecedented in my five-year tenure in the greater Selfimportantville area happened today. I had to drive into downtown Selfimportantville twice... to two different locations... for two completely unrelated events... intersecting both the morning and evening rush hours... and...

I was given perfect directions.

Both times.

Not a single detour.

Not even for construction.

You must understand, Selfimportantville, in addition to being populated by the worst drivers in America, is impossible to navigate. Multiple reasons for this. First of all, the original settlers delegated all the urban planning to their livestock, and never thought to reclaim the responsibility until it was too late. Also, local infrastructure has been consistently under-engineered as a matter of public policy, so on any day most of the city is affected by road repair/expansion projects, all of which will yield results sure to prove as inadequate as the original conditions.

Mostly, though, Selfimportantville is so self important that things like, say, street signs, are considered unnecessary. Why would we need a street sign? All the Selfimportantvillains know what street they're on. They know whether it's one-way or a dead end, and how many lanes it's supposed to have. Who cares about everybody else?

An entirely nonliterary occurrence, granted (unless you consider the fact that I was listening to The House of Mirth on both drives). Yet, a momentous one. I found a building in Selfimportantville on the first try? Perhaps there is hope for humanity after all.

The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life - Steve Leveen

First things first: this volume is unremarkable. So my thoughts will be terse.

After nearly twenty years of selling drool-worthy, top-price-point tools for serious readers, Steve Leveen decided to offer his contribution to the "heritage of works devoted to the phenomenon of reading" (p. 4). The fact that the author claims to have been ignorant of this genre before researching this book is the first sign of, if not trouble, than at least limitation. The author's purpose, if the subtitle can be trusted, is to show the reader, "how to get more books in your life and more life from your books," and in fact he hits the target for a relatively novitiate audience. Though inoffensive and quite readable, this book probably has little to offer to anyone already engaged in the mind-life at any level, or even to anyone who could already be termed an avid reader (even if he's reading mostly trash). How to Read a Book it's not.

Two worthwhile points do stand out:

1. Unabridged audiobooks are divine.
2. You don't have to read everything you feel you ought. Good doesn't have to mean good enough for you. Most people who are susceptable to this sort of thinking do eventually figure this out, and I recall when it first occurred to me. So I don't care for Steinbeck - is it really such a crime to only prefer Faulkner, Hemingway, and Greene? Am I really doing myself so much harm? There are over 97,000 titles in my local (small suburban) library, and many millions readily available in the English language; there's far more really good stuff out there than I could ever hope to read.

As Thoreau advised, "Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."

Christmas in July (2007)

News on guilty pleasures coming this summer:

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - July 21 (U.S. and U.K.)

First Among Sequels - July 23 (U.S. - U.K. release is July 5)

Trying no to perceive the Potter title as uncharacteristically melodramatic, but, after all, we've still got nearly six months to get used to it. I can only imagine the market potential for Goliath-brand horcruxes... Or maybe Snape will get eradicated...