For the Love of Books

Photo: Illiers-Cambray, setting of the first (of seven) novels that make up Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (or, In Search of Lost Time), from the book's Wikipedia page.

The premise of this book: The editor, Ronald B. Shwartz, sent a message to 115 authors, asking them to respond via letter or phone.  His prompt: "Identify those 3-6 books that have in some way influenced or affected you most deeply, 'spoken to' you the loudest, and explain why--in personal terms.  All books, whether 'Great Books' or not-so-great books--books of any kind, genre, period--are fair game."

Many greats--in literature, the arts, the sciences--responded.  Kurt Vonnegut's was the most memorable to me, but here also are Russell Banks, Dave Barry, Art Buchwald, Jonathan Harr, John Hawkes, John Irving, Susanna Kaysen, W.P. Kinsella, Caroline Knapp, Elmore Leonard, Doris Lessing, Norman Mailer, Frank McCourt, Arthur Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Grace Paley, Robert B. Parker, Robert Pirsig, Mario Puzo, Neil Simon, Oliver Stone (Did anyone know that he published a novel awhile ago?  Has anyone read it?), William Styron, Gay Talese, John Updike, and Geoffrey and Tobias Wolff--just to name a few.

Which titles were mentioned the most?

Surprisingly--to me, anyway--the title mentioned the most, by far, was Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.  It was not close.

The others, in order:

Moby-Dick by Herman Mellville
The Bible
The Brothers Karamazov by Leo Tolstoy (or Tolstoi, which I prefer, as a T206 fanatic)
Ulysses by James Joyce
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoi
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
William Shakespeare's Collected Works
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Most of the selections were idiosyncratic, but there were still a few Hemingways, Austins, and others in there.  Most books we've heard of before were mentioned two or three times.  Those in the list above were mentioned at least six times, at most ten times.

But it was an interesting read, and not very taxing.  It didn't take a lot out of me, which is good, since I've had a headache to drive me insane for the past week or so.

Highly recommended, if you're curious at all about what made an impression on these writers--and why.

I thought it might be interesting to pretend that I am relevant enough to get asked this as well, and so that'll be a blog entry to come.  When I post it, please feel free to write your own list of 3-6 books--and the Why, if you're so inclined.  Do so here, below, if you wish.

After Reading A Pushcart-Nominated Horror Story, etc.

"Everything, All At Once, Forever" by Michael Wehunt

One of the best things about reading short stories is that they're (duh) short.  This one was just four pages long (on my computer screen anyway) and very well-written.  Very emotionally-draining and depressing, too, but don't let that sway you from reading it for free, here.  (Read it; it took just five minutes, if that.) So the cool thing about this story, besides the story itself--which I'm told is strongly based on an episode of The Twilight Zone from the 80s--is that it was nominated for a prestigious Pushcart Prize.  These prizes are usually given to stories from established writers of mainstream or literary fiction, so for a "literary horror" story to be nominated is quite an achievement.  If you get the chance, go to Wehunt's website here, and look at all of the short stories he's had published in 2013, and earlier.  I won't lie; made me more than a little jealous, especially since he was published in magazines that have rejected politely declined some of my stuff.  And for the record, I don't know the guy at all--not on Goodreads, or LinkedIn, or anything.  I just liked his story, and am glad that a genre writer got nominated for a Pushcart.  Now if he wins...

"The Emperor of Ice-Cream" by Wallace Stevens

A very short poem of just 16 lines (two stanzas of 8 lines), and world-famous, I thought I'd give it a shot again, because the last line (the title) of the two stanzas always confused me.  ("The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.") But I'd forgotten why I was confused, and maybe now that I'm old, and not a confused English major of 20 or 21, and I had a vague memory of the poem being about how temporary life is, I figured I'd get it this time.  Which I did.  Or, I think I did.  Here it is, if you'd like to see for yourself.   And, it's okay if you don't get part of it.  Try to resist reading online about what the poem means.  Such things are often correct, yet still written by stuffy or boring professorial-sounding people who take the life out of all things great.  I'd rather you not get a little of it, but like it for reasons of your own, then get all of it, but be turned off from poems because of the elitist-voiced explanations.  (I'm reminded of the teacher who fired Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society, standing in front of the class and saying, "What is poetry?")  Exactly the opposite of what Williams' character did, for the same reasons I'm saying here.  Reading poetry is like reading Joyce's Ulysses, or some parts of the Bible: it's the self-revelations learned upon the journey of reading and self-discovery that really matter, not what someone tells you something means--even if they're right.

"Ulysses" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

This one's a little longer--70 total lines--but written so well that it should be quick reading.  You can read and listen to it here, if you're so inclined.  It ends with a line that, I think, Churchill made famous--"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield"--as the British were getting bombed by the Germans in WWII.  Anyway, it was next in the anthology I was browsing through, and I remember it was a dramatic monologue, which I like because they're quick and easy to read, though a little longer than my preference for poems.  (Poe famously said that all good poems are short--and then wrote some really long ones.)  I liked this one because it says that just because you're old, that doesn't mean you're done.  (The poem is geared towards someone much older than I am, but still.)  My favorite lines from it (and I should have them put up on a giant poster somewhere):

How dull it is to make a pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
...
Death closes all; but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,...
...Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the Western stars, until I die...

(Me again.)  That's one thing I never understood about some people: How they can stand being bored.  How they maybe don't get bored because maybe they're not interested in much to begin with, so they don't know the comparison.  I rarely sleep or remain still, which is not always a good thing, but at least I know that our time here is not infinite, and I don't want to waste a moment not being interested in something. I just don't understand how some people just aren't curious.  Why is it okay for some people to do nothing, all the time?

James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway--and Dan Simmons

A friend of mine is leaving Sunday to go overseas for a few months, so he and I hung out for awhile tonight.  Where would two writers hang out on a Tuesday night with the salt and sand trucks haunting the roads and with both guys short on money?  Borders, of course!  Since his birthday is Saturday, I figured, Why not get him some books and then go out to dinner?  So what do you get an educated guy who's passionate about literature and writing?  James Joyce's Ulysses, the granddaddy of literate, educated, passionate writing.  C'mon, it took a landmark obscenity judgment in 1933 to allow its distribution in the U.S. at all, and the last 30 pages is one sentence--and much of that is the evocation of a young woman's stream-of-consciousness and lustful thoughts.  (One wonders if it would have been as big a deal had it been a man's lustful thoughts.)

Then I heard he'd never read Joyce before, so I got him Joyce's Dubliners, too.  I have to admit that the real treat of that volume is the short story, "The Dead."  As brilliant as Ulysses, in a much more compact and different way.  The last image of snow and ash-like substance is genius.  Lastly, because he'd never read Hemingway's short stories before, I bought him a complete collection of Hemingway's short stories, the Lingua Vica Edition, or something close to that.  A friend of mine, who works there, sang the praises of "The Killers," and mentioned its obvious effect upon Quentin Tarantino, which is a leap I will also take.  I preferred "Hills Like White Elephants," which my friend said was horribly overrated.  He was denounced by another friend of mine who works there.  This latter friend is the husband of my 6th grade teacher, because this state is like that.

After buying him these classics, I bought myself Dan Simmons' Drood, and another, earlier book by Simmons.  All of this cost me under $20 because I used my better half's 33% coupon, plus a 15% coupon I found in my wallet from a survey I did for Borders, plus another 15% coupon I found as I was leaving the house.  I took the survey for that one and used it just in the nick of time.  The remainder was paid for by a $30 gift e-card from a friend of mine--Thanks, F.!--and the final tally for me was under $20.  I hope to have the time to read these two books sometime in the next 9 months.