“The Life Well-Read - Wall Street Journal” plus 1 more |
| The Life Well-Read - Wall Street Journal Posted: By ERIC ORMSBY![[READING4-fpo]](http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/RV-AB591_READIN_G_20110209233235.jpg) Estate of André Kertész/Higher Pictures, New York. A photograph by André Kertész from his 1971 book 'On Reading' (Norton, 80 pages, $29.95). In the year 987 an obscure bookseller in the city of Baghdad put the finishing touches on his life's work, a huge book that contained descriptions of the thousands of books known to him. Ibn al-Nadim called his masterpiece the "Fihrist," a word that simply means "catalog" in Arabic. But this was not a mere inventory. Ibn al-Nadim listed no book that he hadn't personally seen and touched. And he commented on the books, often inserting wry observations or diverting anecdotes. It was an immense accomplishment. The "Fihrist" systematically lists title after title in 10 elaborate chapters—six devoted to Islamic subjects, four to "foreign sciences," from astronomy to zoology, with Aristotelian philosophy and logic thrown in for good measure. Ancient Greek philosophers rub shoulders in his pages with Muslim thinkers. For Ibn al-Nadim these writers stood in an unbroken continuum of thought. All were, like him, passionate devotees of the word. DetailsPat Conroy Susan Hill Bound to Last: 30 Writers on Their Most Cherished Book. Read This Next: 500 of the Best Books You'll Ever Read Though Ibn al-Nadim says little about himself, his "Fihrist" is a strangely personal book. He lived and breathed books, and he created a universe of them, perhaps the first attempt at the "total library" that Jorge Luis Borges would imagine 1,000 years later. And in fact, a line extends from the medieval Muslim bookseller to the great Argentine poet and fabulist. Both consumed books and were consumed by them. They didn't just read books; they ingested them. Both were what might be called "bibliovores." Most writers will admit that their inspiration comes as much from the books they've read—especially the books of childhood—as from life itself. "One book is no book," proclaimed Adolf von Harnack, the great historian of early Christianity and later the director of the State Library in Berlin. Books beget other books, and sometimes writers are moved enough to pay tribute to the books that formed them. Books about books—bibliographical autobiographies, as it were—form a distinct literary category. Many rely on the earliest memories. In his essay "The Lost Childhood," Graham Greene remarked that "perhaps it is only in childhood that books have any deep in flu ence on our lives." The reason, he thought, was that "in childhood all books are books of divination, telling us about the future." Is this why, as we get older, we turn more and more to books about the past? Greene doesn't say. Marcel Proust felt the same about his early reading, noting that "there are no days of my childhood which I lived so fully perhaps as those I thought I had left behind without living them, those I spent with a favorite book." An interesting feature of such reminiscences is how strongly they depend upon the physical nature of the book. The printed book's physicality presents a challenge to e-books, however convenient they are. We tend to remember the look and heft of a book that we fell in love with. Will we feel the same about the ghostly glimmerings of a monitor? In his superb "A History of Reading," Alberto Manguel caught this aspect of old- fashioned reading to perfection: "I too soon discovered that one doesn't simply read 'Crime and Punishment' or 'A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.' One reads a certain edition, a specific copy, recognizable by the roughness or smoothness of its paper, by its scent, by a slight tear on page 72 and a coffee ring on the right-hand corner of the back cover." A group of recent books confirms this sense of books as palpable, almost living things. In "My Reading Life" (Doubleday, 340 pages, $25), best-selling novelist Pat Conroy has written his autobiography through the books that have shaped him since childhood. The works he has loved most—from Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With the Wind" to the poetry of Dylan Thomas—still nourish his imagination; this isn't only because Mr. Conroy is quite mad about words—he jots down every new one he encounters—but because his most cherished books are bound up with the unforgettable individuals who nurtured and influenced him. The author's portraits of these formative figures are compelling. He evokes, by turns, his genteel, book- loving mother; his brutally abusive father, a Marine pilot and the model for the titular protagonist of his novel "The Great Santini"; his sardonic teacher Gene Norris, who became a friend for life; and the cranky school librarian for whom he secretly bought half-gallon bottles of bourbon—purely for "medicinal purposes," of course. Mr. Conroy brings each figure pulsing back to life before our eyes, and in his range of characters he touches on almost every aspect of the literary life, from library and classroom to bookstores, editors, publishers and agents—not forgetting poetry readings, where poets "could make language smoke and burn and give off a bright light of sanctuary," as he puts it with a fine dash of bombast. Mr. Conroy is good too at evoking the poisonous atmosphere of literary conferences, such as the one at which the poet Adrienne Rich had him and all other male participants ejected from a workshop to the concerted hissing of the female attendees. To his credit he treats such episodes of bigotry as comical rather than sinister. Mr. Conroy has a big, rather booming authorial voice. He isn't given to shows of false modesty, describing himself as "a born novelist" and declaring that "words call out my name when I need them to make something worthy out of language." He also has a distinct penchant for grandiosity and the syrupy sublime, as when he writes about Thomas Wolfe, whom he admires inordinately, that he "kept the howlings and incoherences and bawling" in "the moonless wastelands of sleep when the ores of greatness move through the soft cells of all artists." A little of this goes a long way—and Mr. Conroy is no advocate of littleness. Still, it's not as off-putting as it might seem. This is a book of passionate enthusiasm; there's something gargantuan in Mr. Conroy's appetite, both for the books he loves and for the people and the places associated with them. And he is admirably indifferent to the fashionable, defending and praising Wolfe and the poet James Dickey—both virtually forgotten—and even the oft-maligned "Gone With the Wind" with unabashed gusto. Nothing could seem farther from the book-fueled magniloquence of Mr. Conroy than the deft, suggestive, almost feline approach of the outstanding English novelist Susan Hill to her most treasured titles. Yet "Howards End Is on the Landing" (Profile Books, 236 pages, $15.95) is an autobiography of sorts too. While Mr. Conroy traces his life through books to the present, Ms. Hill restricts herself to a single year. One day, searching for her copy of E.M. Forster's novel "Howards End," she stumbled upon scores of her own books that she hadn't yet read. She resolved to read through as many of them as she could in a year and not to buy any new ones. The result is a quirky, unpredictable bibliographic prowl through the various nooks and alcoves of her home—leaving aside only the scholarly books belonging to "SP": This is the "Shakespeare Professor," her husband, Stanley Wells. The books that Ms. Hill is on the prowl for are those that give unexpected delight. Unlike Mr. Conroy, who writes only about books he admires, Ms. Hill has her own hierarchy of readerly preferences. Every serious reader will recognize these. There are the universally admired authors whom Ms. Hill simply cannot bring herself to like; chief among them, perhaps surprisingly, is Jane Austen. Though she has read and re-read Austen's novels, she simply doesn't "get the point" of them; she feels the same way about George Orwell, who bores her hugely. Then there are the books that she ought to have read but hasn't, books that she knows she will never read, from Joyce's "Ulysses" to Proust, with Thomas Mann along the way. Yet their volumes remain on her shelves. There are titles whose mere presence confers dignity on a bookcase. In her ramblings, Ms. Hill is taken aback to find that these unread, never-to-be-read books have somehow "quietly gravitated into the sitting room one by one, to sob and huddle together for warmth." One of the pleasures of Ms. Hill's account lies in its serendipity. Because she refuses to organize her library, she is forever being startled by what she finds there. When a well-meaning friend offers to put the books in order, she is appalled: "How can she not understand that if I let her do such a terrible thing as organise my books, I would never find what I was looking for again? Worse, there would never be any wonderful surprises, as I look for X and Y but, mirabile dictu, find Z, which I thought I had lost years ago. Never the marvellous juxtaposition of a biography of Marilyn Monroe next to 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.' " Ms. Hill may not "get" Jane Austen but she has plenty of other enthusiasms, from Virginia Woolf to Ian Fleming. Like Mr. Conroy, she is passionate about authors who have been inexplicably neglected, including the incomparable novelist Barbara Pym—quite unlike Jane Austen though often linked with her—and the great modern English poet Charles Causley, absurdly relegated to the forlorn category of "children's poet." Ms. Hill knew Causley well, and her portrait of him in his final loneliness is deeply moving. Indeed, so skilled is Ms. Hill at bringing her books, and their authors, vividly before us that by the end of her year of reading we come to feel that her book-brimmed house is itself a lively presence, not so much haunted as animated by these familiar spirits. In "Bound to Last" (Da Capo Press, 225 pages, $15.95), 30 contemporary writers tell of books that have had an enduring influence on them. Though Sean Manning, the editor, admits his fascination with e-books, he acknowledges that it's "the tactile sensation of turning a page, the sight of my bookmark inching along night after night," that has proved unforgettable. For Ray Bradbury, who contributes a foreword, it was the conjunction of Halloween and reading Edgar Allan Poe that sparked his "love of real books." So too with the other contributors: Most are novelists, with a sprinkling of visual artists and a single poet, but all tend to recall the exact circumstances of their momentous encounters with a favorite book. Terrence Holt remembers the "leather armchair" in his father's study and the "thin, green-bound volume," full of lurid photos of childhood diseases, that led him eventually to an appreciation of the "calm, magisterial" Merck Manual. The pairings of book and writer are sometimes unexpected. Joyce Maynard chooses the Bible; Francine Prose the tales of Hans Christian Andersen; the Jordanian artist Rabih Alameddine his mother's copy of Harold Robbins's "The Carpetbaggers." Unlike Mr. Conroy or Ms. Hill, who place their confidence in the magic of happenstance, novelists Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark stand firmly in the tradition of Ibn al-Nadim. "Read This Next" (Harper, 432 pages, $14.99) is relentlessly systematic; their 500 titles fall into well-defined categories, such as Love or History or War. This is a brisk and often funny guide, bristling with snap judgments, the snappier the better. Of P.G. Wodehouse's immortal "Carry On, Jeeves" they ask: "Would this be even more fun if Jeeves were a gifted cat?" (To which the only possible answer is—well, not really!) The late David Foster Wallace is praised for having an "Actual Fun Ratio of roughly 1 to 1," while Jonathan Franzen is dismissed as a pretentious "artiste." Ms. Newman and Mr. Mittelmark have no autobiographical ambitions; they tend to be zapped by books and to zap them back. Even so, their very passion gives them away. Like all readers, they end up revealing themselves in the books they love. —Mr. Ormsby's most recent book is "Fine Incisions: Essays on Poetryand Place" (Porcupine's Quill). Lives Dominated by BooksThe Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft by George Gissing: This late novel (1903) is unlike the grittier, more tormented works for which Gissing is known. Henry Ryecroft is a one-time hack writer who has survived for years on a shoe string—going without food in order to buy coveted volumes. In his old age, thanks to a legacy, he discovers an unexpected serenity, in which the changing seasons mingle with elegiac impressions of his favorite books, from crabbed Latin classics to his fragrant copy of Gibbon. The Journals of Arnold Bennett: In these incomparable three volumes, written from 1896 until shortly before his death in 1931, the prolific novelist recorded his impressions of fellow authors, from Stephen Crane to D.H. Lawrence. (Of "Lady Chatterley's Lover" he wrote, "The lechery scenes are the best.") Bennett read not only for pleasure but to learn his craft, and his journals give a privileged glimpse into a long and often discouraging apprenticeship ("wrote nothing but drivel today," he notes more than once). Julian Green: Diary, 1928-57: Green (1900-98), an American born in Paris, became one of the most original and celebrated French writers of the past century. The diaries he kept record his intense spiritual struggles as well as his encounters and friendships with Gide, Malraux, Colette and many others. The bilingual Green ranged easily over the expanse of literature in both French and English, admiring the stories of O. Henry as much as the novels of Proust. "I am not the same person in both tongues," he remarked. The Memoirs of Elias Canetti: Canetti's three autobiographical volumes constitute one of the great narratives of a life dominated by books. The intensity comes not only from Canetti's impassioned response to books but also from his agonizing and protracted struggles with his equally impassioned and overpowering mother. Both are "bibliovores" of the first magnitude, and their clashes have an epic dimension. Selected Non-Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges: In "Literary Pleasure," Borges revealed his childhood passion for old detective novels, Greek mythology and the 1,001 Nights, which he calls "the first serial novel." His touchstone for great books is pleasure, pure and simple. In "The Total Library," he evoked a "vast, contradictory Library whose vertical wildernesses of books run the incessant risk of changing into others that affirm, deny and confuse everything like a delirious god"—a bibliographic apocalypse by the greatest and most original of modern readers. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Critics Poll 21: My Ballot - NJ.com Posted: Published: Friday, February 11, 2011, 8:17 AM Updated: Friday, February 11, 2011, 9:30 AMNot everybody has dark fantasies, or twisted fictions, or sick addictions. But those of us who do would really rather have them remain in the dark. Shine a light (or all of the lights) on the fantasy, and you're liable to ruin what makes it compelling in the first place. If, in your fantasies, you're a terrible monster, a bloodsucker, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're an awful person in real life. It could be the opposite: you could be the sort of person who helps old ladies across the street and shovels your neighbor's walkway after a blizzard. The monster fantasy might be the safety valve necessary to make the rest of your personality work. As long as you're in the dark, you're okay. Unfortunately (and this has happened in our lifetime), people are no longer interested in what you do at the crosswalk or after the snow comes down. They're only interested in what happens after the lights go out. Your public acts are the facade; only your private thoughts represent the real you. People don't want to know about what you have to say -- they only want to know about what you don't want to say. Exposing, uncovering, unearthing, disenchanting, and demystifying the world has become an obsession for us. Cartographers are mapping everything that can be mapped, including the purported genetic basis of your behavior. You're part of the world; you may even be lost in the world. The unexplored regions in your brain are under scrutiny; because they're dark, they're suspect, fair game for curiosity-seekers. Are you ready for all of the lights to be turned on you? Moralists who have never taken a psychology course in their lives are comfortable calling Kanye West a sociopath. The West of the popular imagination is the charming, talented, high-functioning villain whose dark motivations compel him to destroy everything he touches. He is a public success, but a private failure. Long before the "Monster" video, our criminal profiling of West was complete. A persistent complaint about West's work is that it's all about him: his personality, his desires, his story. That may or may not have been true in the past, but it is definitely not true about My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. This time around, Kanye is rapping about you. Oh, he's the main character, of course; he's an egomaniac obsessed with his own tribulations, and that's not likely to change. But he's sensitive, too, and he recognizes that just as surely as all of the lights are on him, you aren't going to escape the high beams, either. Right now, you're getting profiled. You're on the Internet; you're going to be analyzed. There is intense interest in the private you -- your hidden compulsions, your preferences, the "hard-wiring" of your brain. You're a data point in a sea of informative pixels. Take a step in an unauthorized direction, and you'll screw up the marketer's rubric. Or the government's. Or the rubbernecker sitting next to you. Into this illuminated world steps the rapper, who throws the switch and turns off the lights. He is aware that the hell of a life he leads in the darkness is not a particularly enjoyable or rewarding one, but he can keep the searchlight from burning up his imagination like old film (pornographic film?) exposed to the sun. Again and again, he returns to his main themes, which aren't quite a dichotomy: darkness equals sex, debauchery, comfort, freedom, privacy, room for the artist to stretch out and do his thing. Light is classifying, arresting, destructive, something to run from. Light is an allegation. Kanye is aware of the racial overtones of his transvaluation, but he doesn't belabor them; a true prog-rocker, he refuses to insult his audience's intelligence. He travels fast, because he figures that you've got it, and if you don't get it the first time, he knows his choruses are catchy enough to bring you back again. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy doesn't get hung up on negritude, anyway. Kanye knows that white people are under surveillance, too. He just wants to make sure that you get it that African-Americans have always been associated with the values he ascribes to darkness, and that when we talk about disinfecting, classifying, and mapping, on some level, we're always having a conversation about race. He might use a porn star's itemized bill for services to make his point, and if he can't reach you like that, he probably figures you're lost to him. So West takes his stripper metaphors and pushes the critique toward something that's genuinely Miltonic: here, the forces of light, truth, and accuracy are the destructive ones, and the devils are the good guys. Well, they aren't good guys, because there aren't any heroes in West's world. There are just ordinary people, burdened with extraordinary fantasies, some dark and twisted, but all valuable personal possessions; regular Joes and Janes with irregular thoughts, increasingly besieged, running out of places to hide. Album of the Year Album That's Getting Knocked For No Good Reason Album That's Getting Slept On Because Of The Absurd Need To Compile Top Ten Lists in Mid-December: Best Album Title Best Album Cover Best Liner Notes And Packaging. Most Welcome Surprise Biggest Disappointment Album That Ends The Strongest Song Of The Year Best Singer Best Rapper Best Vocal Harmonies Best Bass Playing Best Drumming Best Rhythm Guitar Best Lead Guitar Best Synthesizer Playing Best Piano Playing Best Use Of A Non Traditional Rock Instrument Best Backing Vocals Best Instrumentalist Best Instrumental Solo Best Production Best Arrangements Best Live Show I Saw In 2010 Most Disappointing Show Best Music Video Scariest Song Most Moving Song Sexiest Song Most Inspiring Song Meanest Song Rookie Of The Year and Hardest Album To Place: Best Cover Most Convincing Historical Recreation Artist You Don't Know, But You Know You Should Album That Felt Most Like An Obligation To Get Through And Enjoy Album That Sounded Like It Was The Most Fun To Make Man, I Wish I Knew What This Song, Or Album, Was About Song Or Album That Should Have Been Longer Album That Was The Most Fun To Listen To Most Overrated Worst Video Worst Singing Song That Got Stuck In Your Head The Most This Year Most Overplayed Song Review your Album of the Year picks. 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