Elephants Can't Read

Day 238, now, briefly, of the "What aren't you reading?" project, thanks to Henry Miller and his list of Books You Will Never Read.  Bob has already answered that question, clarifying that a book he will never finish is Elephants Can Remember, by Agatha Christie, because 1) he says, quoting the article, it was "full of errors and poorly plotted" 2) she appears to have been suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's when she wrote it, as is her main character.

Bob also points us to this NPR story about Christie, and the quantitative evidence of more indefinite nouns in this book--words like "thing," "anything," "something"--and fewer precise nouns, and the Nun's Study, which tracks dementia in the writing of a population of nuns.

If you click the link to read the story, you will also see two photographs of origamic brains.  One is labeled a Healthy Brain, the other a Brain with Alzheimer's.  I would just like to point out that an optional caption for the Healthy Brain might be Slightly Scrunched Origami Brain and an optional caption for the other might be Smashed Origami Brain Collapsing Because Somebody Sat On It, just to make clear that a tightly folded brain is actually a good thing.

OK, it's true Alzheimer's does run in my family, but I don't say "thing."  I say "thingey."  I also say "out the wazoo" a lot, to indicate abundance, and this is nowhere mentioned in the article.

Mystery Dance

Day 237 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and Dorion Sagan has been reading Erewhon, by Samuel Butler, in search of a core text for an undergraduate liberal arts curriculum and in search of Butler's book-within-that-book, The Book of Machines.

Yes, I am still reading the current issue of The Common Review, and this is in his article "Samuel Butler's Willful Machines: The Lost Wisdom of Erewhon," but I started reading it without paying attention to the author.  I loved the funny, personal style, and then got overly excited when he mentioned--calling it "his nonclassic"--The Books in  My Life, by Henry Miller.  Apparently Miller made 3 lists: Books You've Read, Books You Will Read, and Books You Will Never Read, and, frankly, that sounds like fun, but, as you know by now, my brain is slightly scrunched origami.

Then the article mentioned philosophy, literary criticism, sheep farming in New Zealand (Butler's day job), and evolution, and I flipped back to find out who the author was.  Dorion Sagan! That guy who co-authored Mystery Dance: On the Evolution of Human Sexuality, with his mother, Lynn Margulis, my favorite cell biologist.  I loved that book!

Two things thrilled me about this article, in addition to all the things I learned:

1)  Dorion Sagan folds in all sorts of tidbits of knowledge, like blueberries into pancake batter, so his brain must be a) stained blue and/or b) origamic, like mine.

2)  Samuel Butler was funny and serious at the same time, also like me.

So I am deeply comforted, delighted, brain-scrunched, and eager to seek out Erewhon and The Books in My Life.  If I find the latter, you know I'm going to ask you, "What are some books you will never read?!"

Print Matter

Day 236 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and Leslie Haynsworth has been reading and re-reading Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte, since she was 10 years old, as I learned from reading her essay "Unbecoming Jane: Jane Eyre as Alter-Ego Gone Wrong" in the latest issue of The Common Review.

This is one of the print magazines I receive in the mail--some are subscriptions I maintain, some are gift subscriptions.  A note to poets and writers who read this blog: I know we cannot afford to subscribe to all the literary magazines to which we submit, but I try to 1) order a sample copy and 2) subscribe for at least a year if the magazine publishes me, in good faith and to help support that literary venture.  If I can't subscribe, I try to order some extra copies of the issue I'm in to send to writer friends who might submit or subscribe.  All this fluctuates with my budget, as does my ability to buy books by poets I want to support.  Sigh...  But I am trying to do the right thing!

Haynsworth's essay is delightful.  She recreates that first wonderful reading experience, at 10, that awakened her to this wild and romantic world.  And then she recreates her first college reading experience of the same book, during which she had to reconsider everything.  It's marvelous to see how she handles the challenge, and the interpretations and re-interpretations that she finds necessary.

No wonder this is a perennial.  People keep grappling with it, at all ages, and through cultural ages.

What is a book you've had to reconsider?  Loved, loved too much, learned to hate, learned to love again?

The Book of Books

Day 235 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and Sarah has been reading The Smithsonian Books of Books, by Michael Olmert, for her job.  At Babbitt's!  Sarah is my excellent co-worker at the store, my boss when the boss is away!

She has also been reading Book Finds: How to Find, Buy, and Sell Used and Rare Books, by Ian C. Ellis.  I think you know why.  And she has passed both of them on to me.  As soon as I read them, I will be smarter about books!

The Smithsonian book is gorgeous--white cloth boards, red leather backstrip, red ribbon bookmark--heavy, and comes in a slipcase.  It is full of history, images, descriptions, book terms, and those delicious facts and details I love.

Books Finds is full of practical information, Sarah tells me, which will be good, but some of it is geared toward the moneymaking strategies, etc., not all of them pertinent to a vintage bookshop like the one we work in.  She skimmed some in that book, as will I.

I took a couple of the Newberry Library courses on bookmaking when I worked there (one of my many and varied book/literature-related jobs when I also worked as a freelance writer and actor).  I learned about folding large sheets into signatures and how to marble paper for the endpapers, etc.  Wonderful!

The endpaper above is from a Virginia Woolf book that can be had at Persephone Books.

Home & Motorcycle Maintenance

Day 234 of the "What are you reading, and why?" project, and Fred is reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig, because his 16-year-old son was reading it.

"My son picked it as a book to read for his Honors English class and I said I'd read it too. I read it about 30 years ago but forgot most of it. The author, Robert Pirsig was a University Professor at U of Minnesota, I think, and doctoral candidate at University of Chicago when he was diagnosed as clinically insane in the early 60s. This book is the true story of his motorcycle trip with his son and two others about 6 years later. He tries to come to grips with his mental illness by describing the process by which he went insane - an intellectual process that takes the reader through a couple thousand years of philosophy. I think my son almost went insane by the end but he grappled with the issues pretty well for a 16 year old. Glad that book is over so I can start reading some Dean Koontz....."

It's lovely when someone emails me about the book, because then I can quote him/her!  

"Yes, you can quote me," said Fred.

I emailed back that I remembered the motorcycles and the philosophy but had completely forgotten the insanity.

"The insanity is the major point of the story. Pirsig went insane trying to develop a philosophy that could encompass both Classical and Romantic views (according to his definition of them). As he talks about this struggle during the book you see that he is starting to show signs of going insane again. At the end you aren't sure if he has turned back into his former self (and gone insane) or has merely incorporated that self into his current personality (and is therefore more whole than he ever was). "

Fred was very patient with me.  I see from the Wikipedia article that Pirsig was purposefully alluding to Zen in the Art of Archery, by Eugen Herrigel, a book I loved.  (It is not, I think, about insanity.  It is about learning not to focus on the goal/target/one's desire to hit it but instead to learn how to use the bow and arrow, and to focus on that in each moment, and rather literally let go of the arrow, gently, with beautiful form.)

Today I got a call at work from a woman, a stranger to me, who heard my poem on Poetry Radio today, "A House in Carlock."  She said it gave her goosebumps.  I was so honored and thrilled. 

Then another woman called with a research question, who had heard me on the radio in an interview about the cemetery walk!  So a lot of people heard me on the radio today!  But I was at work, so I missed me.

Which is very Zen of me, perhaps.  And slightly insane.