In 2008 I "temporarily" moved from Minnesota to Florida with an innocence and gullibility that would only be betrayed later. So in 2010, after Broward County finally stamped the approval on my divorce, I moved my "real life" from St. Paul to Fort Lauderdale. That real life had included maybe three to four thousand books that lined floor to ceiling shelves in a library that had the obligatory stuff like leather chairs, fireplace, and high windows. In boxes, that's something like 40 or 50 boxes of books. I don't know the tonnage. I used to call this kind of life "Rome before the fall." The destination, on the other hand, had room for maybe four boxes...and no library. It was just a house with a few rooms. Time to clip a former life.
Minneapolis and St. Paul and Stillwater had (and may still have) a culture of books, book buyers, and a wide choice of antiquarian book sellers and dealers. Fort Lauderdale had almost none. There were maybe two or three book dealers in town. I went to one. Her comment was "I love that you love books but I am going out of business. I can't even sell my own books; I can take none of yours." I ended up donating or recycling an awful lot of paper. That was pretty sad then and is still pretty sad now.
But I still love books. Readers of the blog might be forgiven for thinking that all I do is read research papers and financial economics. They would be right if the look-back is two or three years. But that is an anomaly. And don't get me wrong here. I did not read much in high school. Or college (except for the required reading...which could be up to 500 pages a night). Or even after college. I more or less really started reading at maybe 30 or 35. But I made up for lost time and read everything I could get my hands on for a fairly long stretch as an adult. Hence the Library. Its loss is an irretrievable loss. But we all move on, right?
And now, in my 60th year, the year where my eyes are starting to fail me, what do I have? Certainly not the collected library. That has been donated and remaindered off and recycled and thrown away. I have some stuff left but it is a pale shadow of what I have read and what I like and what I remember. So, what I really have is memory of what I have read because I can no longer browse the stacks. And here as a side note I'll offer this: I recall watching my mother lose her memory to Alzheimers. It struck me then and it strikes me now that loss of memory is the loss of being human and being alive. That is bad stuff, really. So here, in this post, I wanted to think a little bit about the memory of my books. And this is not memory of everything. Because "everything" would be too much and too boring. We need a hook.
Here is a hook. My 15 year old asked me a month ago about what I thought she should read. That is a big question. She is, by the way, one of the smartest people I know...without qualification...except for my other kids...but not excepting anyone else...especially adults. Fwiw, she has been speaking in full articulate paragraph-length, philosophically tinged English since before she turned 1. No, really! You have no idea. She spoke of things like god and morality and the limits of the universe before she was two. This is really amazing stuff. I stand in awe. There are no adults TODAY with whom I speak like that. So I took her question on reading seriously.
But I failed. I could come up with no solid, comprehensive list for a mind like that. All I could come up with is a memory of what I want to call "voice." While I have read thousands of books, maybe 10s of thousands, I can remember almost none of them. Most were junk. What I do remember, however, is the voice of a small list of certain authors. These books represent words that come from other minds, conveyed as black and white letters, that are now "ear-worms" in my head. These are things that, even if I had read stuff 40 years ago, I can still hear in my mind today. The list is small; and manageable. So for her, I wrote a list of my "voice" books and told her, if you-daughter read these -- and you may hate all of them -- you will know a little bit more about me. That was a beautiful gesture that only I will understand.
So here, embarrassingly, in a blog that no one reads, is my list of "voice" books. This is blog as memory and conveyance. Take it for what it is worth. So, in no particular order:
Marguerite Yourcenar - Memoirs of Hadrian - This is a strange book. But her words have stuck. Published in 1951. Mesmerizing. From Amazon: she "reimagines the Emperor Hadrian's arduous boyhood, his triumphs and reversals, and finally, as emperor, his gradual reordering of a war-torn world, writing with the imaginative insight of a great writer of the twentieth century while crafting a prose style as elegant and precise as those of the Latin stylists of Hadrian's own era."
Sybille Bedford - A Visit to Don Otavio: A Mexican Journey - I want to say this is from another planet. A medieval book might be closer in experience but since this is travel essay-ish in the 20th century in a world that no longer exists it feels like it is from another planet. One of my favorites.
Saul Bellow - Ravelstein - I've only just recently started reading a bevy of 20th C american writers. I started more or less with Roth. That was fun. But shifting from Roth to Bellow was a revelation and Ravelstien was a joy. Maybe being 59 helps but still...highly recommended.
Updike - Rabbit Run - I read this 40 years ago with no reference to any of his other work. I can still feel his "voice" in my ear right now. I want to go back and read his other Rabbit works but I also don't want to ruin the memory. Plus it is a little dated now. I have read a fair swath of his essays and am not as impressed. Rabbit, though...
Borges - Ficciones - Haven't read? Should. This is how I started. I once read a book by Chatwin on Patagonia. Then, interested, I read a Theroux book on a train trip to Patagonia. In that book he met Borges, blind at the time. So I started to read Borges. He opens the world of reading to infinity. For that I will forever be grateful. Ficciones is a fantastic starting point. Words in ear.
Nabokov - Let's start with Lolita - There are pros and cons to Nabokov. Some love some hate. His other works sometimes soar sometime not. But the point here is that the cadence of Lolita, for all its oddities and controversies, still bounces around my head.
Checkov - Not Cherry Blossom, his short stories - All of his short fiction I can remember and hear. I have read a ton of russian fiction (unfortunately in english) and this is the one I pick.
Bruce Chatwin - On the Black Hill - He is an odd dude. His work is mesmerizing. He has been accused of fraud. He is dead. He was not a writer...but he was. OTOH he had a voice I can't shake. Also his various works led me to other writers so that's good. I also own an unpublished folio of his that is handwritten-dedicated to his wife at the time. It is one of my rarest of "books." I am a fan, or reader as they say.
Hemingway - Farewell to Arms - Well, who wouldn't add H. Cliche? On the other hand I found that this one particular book -- the other was "a moveable feast," none of the others interested me -- has stuck with me. Just saying.
Somerset Maugham - short stories - This guy is out of date. My mother, born in 1920, remembered. I read his stuff as an obligatory read but the colonial Malaysian context -- at the turn of the century plus a few years -- of his work is hard to forget. In 20 years no one will remember at all.
Montaigne - Essays - I once struggled through volume 1. I have not gotten to Vol 2. What struck me is (a) how modern he sounds, (b) how many quotes he throws out from ancient writers, (c) how quotable he is, (d) how hard for me to keep reading, (e) how much I want to start vol 2 but don't (f) how pleasing it is to have his words in my head.
Carlo Levi - Christ Stopped at Ebloli - This is hard to describe. WW2 era Italy. Memoir. A world that no longer exists. A story and voice that I can't ditch. I lost this book and replaced it immediately for a price that could have been infinite but wasn't. Here is amazon: "In the south of Italy, between Apulia and Calabria, lies a land that is barren, desolate, and malarial, where the peasants live out their existence in poverty and in the presence of death. it was here in primitive Lucania, at the start of the Ethiopian war (19350, that Carlo Levi, doctor, painter, philosopher, and man of letters, was confined as a political prisoner because of his uncompromising opposition to Fascism. Christ Stopped at Eboli is Levi's classic, starkly beautiful account of a place beyond hope and a people abandoned by history." highly recommended.
Walker Percy - The Moviegoer - This is another writer that will fade quickly out of the "screen" generation but shouldn't. The protagonist is not me and comes from a world that is not me but I can't shake the me-ness. When he is is forced to go to Chicago and he describes his experience it is more or less like mine in moving to FL. Binx Bolling is forever in my head.
VS Naipul -- Enigma of Arrival -- OK I do not recommend this book. I hated every word of it and never finished it. I made it maybe 2/3 of the way through. Why is it here? Because, like I said, this is a list of ear worms. I will never ever go back and read the last 1/3 but his voice is stuck in my head. A house for Mr Biswas was the same thing: partly read, not finished, deeply remembered.
Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian(sp?) War - I hated every minute of reading this. It took me 18 months and two states to get through it. Otoh, when I was done I actually appreciated every minute. The voice was modern. It brought the ancient world to my doorstep. The story of the Sicilian campaign literally makes me, still, want to weep. Would I read this again. No. Maybe.
Proust - In search of Lost Time - In the early 20th C this is remembered as one of the greats. My guess is that my daughter's generation will have none of that. This is another book where I struggled forever. It took me maybe 2 years. In its original form it was something like 3000 pages. I even tried to do some of it in French but the prose left me in a situation where the subject and object got lost in the sea of french like a drowning man (subject) and a life buoy (object) can lose track of each other in high seas...and then the guy drowns. I would read this again, though. The artist's treatment of memory is to be savored. And not savored like a madeleine because what I recall is that what he, Proust, perseverated on was tea rather than a cookie. But whatever...
Homer - Iliad - Ok, this is cliche, right? But it isn't. I did not read this until I was 40 and then it was a revelation. "Rage — Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles, murderous, doomed" I was mesmerized from the first line. But maybe that was just cuz I was going through a divorce. And, holy crap, it was violent. And affecting. Achilles and Patroclus still wounds and affects me.
Marquez - 100 years of Solitude - Magical realism might be dated but the story and voice I cannot shake. This I will most certainly be read again.
Wallace Stegner - Angle of Repose - Stegner wrote Beyond the 100th Meridian, the history of the 2nd opening of the west and the Story of John Wesley Powell. Angle, fictionalizes the story of hard men doing hard things during hard times in the opening of that west. If you want the feel rather than the history of that era, this is the place.
Here are some other books on my list that I sent to my daughter where they have "voice" I remember...
Sun also Rises. Hemmingway
Songlines, Chatwin
In Patagonia, Chatwin
The Old Patagonian Express, Theroux
The Great Railway Bazar
Emma, Austen
Lettres de mon Moulin, Daudet
Short stories, Maupassant
Short stories, Bradbury
Foundation, Asimov
Rings...Tokein
Travels with a Donkey., Stevenson
Kidnapped, Stevenson
Labyrinths, Borges
Aleph, Borges
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius, Eggers
Travels with Charlie, Steinbeck
Blue Highways, Least heat moon
Gatzby, Fitzgerald (from St. Paul btw)
Death in Venice, Mann
The Plague, Camus
The Stranger, Camus
The Fall, Camus
Don Quixote
Short novels of Henry James
Twain...Misc
Dostoyevsky...misc
Shakespeare...misc (of course) but Tempest
Inferno, Dante
Bible
Baghavad Gita
Ramayana
Kid lit of CS Lewis
Confessions (esp chap 10 ) of St. Augustine
The Marches Rory Stewart
Hayek...misc
Walter Benjamin at the dairy Queen, McMurtry
Midaq alley, Mahfouz
other because there is always "other." Too many. Like stars in the sky.
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