Living as Read
I’ve been personal librarian to a dear friend for almost a year now (don’t worry – I think he’s been secretly seeing other book purveyors, thank goodness). Barring one book – The Flying Troutmans – all the recommendations are books I’ve read. He has been eager to talk about the books, has thought deeply about why I recommended this book in particular, what it says about him, my knowledge of him, and why I think it would be the right provocation or solace for a given moment. It’s all very flattering, though at the same time, I wonder the degree to which those thoughts assume a kind of call-response – that I have some idea about how my friend might respond, what might tickle his fancy. He always surprises me.
As we’ve discussed the books – during, after – it has been abundantly clear that we notice many different things. He reveres plot, enjoys twists, examines foreshadowing after the fact. He loves characters, explores motivation and is curious about psyche and the dynamics between (most often) flawed individuals. My recollection is either shocking (neither the detail of goings on, nor the particular fleshed-out sense of a character) or I simply absorb different things – the mood; a movement in the portrait of a person; the way the book teaches me to read itself; the hauntings, after. The questions that refuse to be answered, dwelling always in the curl and point of the mark.
Over the course of this year, that has been enriching for us both, I have considered my own reading manner with more care and inquisition. I get sucked in, right at the sentence level (for this reason, reading can be a very truncated process) – it is the poise and fever of a phrase that takes my breath. At the other extreme, I think about the macrocosm of the work, how it dances within the frame of its being, sometimes revealing its arena painstakingly, leaving me exquisitely undone. It is just as Maya Angelou said:
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
The real joy in recommending books has been the extra dimension that my friend’s attention lends to my own – the book, between us, continues to live. Perhaps that is the simplest motive for any book I share: I want it to go on living.
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The season is changing swiftly. I can smell Autumn’s promise in the air. But I am not ready. I’ve been in limbo these many months. When I bought a van, to calls of ‘what will you do when it turns cold?’, I thought I’d be heading out to Europe, the Greek islands or Malaga, to catch a more temperature winter. Or that I’d park the old girl up and head to Argentina, encounter Cordoba in the beauteous Spring. But the universe had other designs for me, and I’m still waiting for two front teeth (before Christmas, everything crossed) before I can embark on an adventure beyond these shores.
The change has been hard on me; my body is revolting. I feel the cauterization of shorter days, notice (for the first time) the mores of people that want to secure their winter squeeze. The clouds seem heavier, dropping lower, bearing down on my shoulders. I’m reading the days like I read books – the mood, the radical demand to redress one’s point of view, the profound beauty of a particular utterance. Winter’s approach seems like the time to turn inward, to regroup. And so those moments of people speaking up, stepping out – they matter. They sparkle.
I have been intending to return to the US for some time now. Every time a loose plan has formed, something has come along to disrupt it. Now it’s taken on a veil of unreality – the thought of being again in Prospect Park admiring fireflies, or in the belly of Football Factory watching Wednesday, or at a Friday night Olio… they are mirages. The thickness of the descending season is hard to see past.
The way that I read can surely shine a light along this murky path. My reading life – my life – is peopled not by dropped anchors (folks move on, as do I), nor structured by actions (least of all those supposed markers of progress; marriage, birth, promotions, possessions). It is instead a potent cocktail of feelings, that by definition come and then go. The feelings that don’t leave are not feelings at all: they are monstrous constructions of a threatened self. And these soupy stories are what I need to release. In order to fly, I must become light.
As with the books my friend has been reading, my return to them has not been a rehash, nor a return. It has been an enhancement – the brilliant coda that extends my perception just a little. This is what I hope for a New York redux, that I can approach it as a re-reading. Because if one thing is certain about the ways in which I forget, it’s that reading a book again will never be the same experience as the first time. Some new delight, even on an old corner, is possible.