
The stack bookcase has four shelves that easily separate one from the other. The glass doors slide up and over the encased books. Given to me as a birthday present long ago by my wife, the stack bookcase houses my collection of poetry.
Good books, poetry and otherwise, snatch us out of this world and throw us into another. Hand a reader a good book, and that reader, man, woman, or child, will sink so deeply into the magic of the page that they are as cut off from their surroundings as if shipwrecked on a desert island. Good books also take us away from ourselves while paradoxically thrusting us more deeply into ourselves. We watch a character in a film—James Bond, for instance—and we may want to become like James Bond. When we read about James Bond, however, we indeed do become him. Our imagination operates differently when reading. Everyone who has read a novel and then watched a movie based on that novel recognizes this sensation. We associate with Bond in the film as a simile, but in the book as a metaphor.
Good books, poetry and otherwise, snatch us out of this world and throw us into another. Hand a reader a good book, and that reader, man, woman, or child, will sink so deeply into the magic of the page that they are as cut off from their surroundings as if shipwrecked on a desert island. Good books also take us away from ourselves while paradoxically thrusting us more deeply into ourselves. We watch a character in a film—James Bond, for instance—and we may want to become like James Bond. When we read about James Bond, however, we indeed do become him. Our imagination operates differently when reading. Everyone who has read a novel and then watched a movie based on that novel recognizes this sensation. We associate with Bond in the film as a simile, but in the book as a metaphor.
How, why, and when my own love affair with books began I cannot tell. On the day I entered First Grade—Boonville had no kindergarten then—my mother picked me up from school. Later my friends, siblings, and I would walk that half-mile to the school, but on this day Mom came to get me. When we arrived home, she asked me how the day had gone. I remember stomping across the carport, saying with great bitterness, “They didn’t teach me to read!”
For months, you see, adults had told me I would learn to read in school, and I suppose I expected it to happen on Day One.
In those days we learned our letters, words, and sentences from the ubiquitous Dick and Jane Readers, whose look-say methods—“See Spot run” and “Oh, oh, oh”—many critics later demolished. Unhindered by this method, by third grade I was borrowing books like mad from the bookmobile that parked during the summers in our driveway because we were at the end of a street. Particularly influential by this stage in my life were the Childhood of Famous Americans series, which described the adolescence of famous Americans. Now the series includes such figures as Mr. Rogers, Christopher Reeve, and Teddy Kennedy, but then the collection focused on famous politicians, soldiers, women, and entrepreneurs. Many of these books, modified over the decades, remain popular today. The Hardy Boys, a bit of Tom Swift, Classic Comic Books, Boy’s Life, the local paper, hunting and fishing magazines in the barber shop, the World Encyclopedia purchased by my parents when I was in sixth grade, a series of books from American Heritage Magazine: I devoured these and anything else I could get my hands on I read.
Oddly enough, high school and college precluded random reading, a situation that remains true today. Because of academic demands, students read from textbooks and other assigned volumes, and so come to associate reading works like Crime and Punishment or John Adams with study and essay papers. Surely some of these students lose their zeal for reading at this point. I remember when I dropped out of graduate school, one of my first thoughts was: “Well, now I can read whatever I damn well please,” and I proceeded to do so at breakneck speed.
From that point on, books became more than just a tremendous pleasure: I wanted to write, and lacking the guidance of other writers or graduate school programs, I turned to authors as my teachers. Thomas Wolfe, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Anne Tyler, Raymond Chandler, Evelyn Waugh, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Anthony Burgess, John Kennedy Toole, and so many others guided me through my lessons in fiction, while writers like Jason Epstein, Joan Didion, Judith Martin (Miss Manners), Christopher Lasch, and many more instructed me in the art of the essay.
When asked what book he would take if he were shipwrecked on a desert island, G.K. Chesterton famously replied, “Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.” That was good for a laugh, but what most people don’t know is that he then added Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers.
All readers have favorite books, and most readers would have a tough time selecting one book for an extended stay anywhere, desert island or prison cell, two week’s vacation at the beach or a week’s confinement to a hospital bed. Too many choices, too many loves, like having a dozen children and picking a favorite. You might do it, but the regrets would be incalculable.
Suppose, though, a kind judge allowed you to take a dozen books, enough to fill up a grocery store milk carton, for a year of solitude on that island. Even here the choice involves a triage of regrets: “You go, you stay behind, you I’ll think about.”
Anyway, here with a brief description are my dozen selections. Bear in mind that if asked tomorrow, I would undoubtedly change out half-a-dozen of these volumes. Only the first two would unequivocally find a place on every list:
For months, you see, adults had told me I would learn to read in school, and I suppose I expected it to happen on Day One.
In those days we learned our letters, words, and sentences from the ubiquitous Dick and Jane Readers, whose look-say methods—“See Spot run” and “Oh, oh, oh”—many critics later demolished. Unhindered by this method, by third grade I was borrowing books like mad from the bookmobile that parked during the summers in our driveway because we were at the end of a street. Particularly influential by this stage in my life were the Childhood of Famous Americans series, which described the adolescence of famous Americans. Now the series includes such figures as Mr. Rogers, Christopher Reeve, and Teddy Kennedy, but then the collection focused on famous politicians, soldiers, women, and entrepreneurs. Many of these books, modified over the decades, remain popular today. The Hardy Boys, a bit of Tom Swift, Classic Comic Books, Boy’s Life, the local paper, hunting and fishing magazines in the barber shop, the World Encyclopedia purchased by my parents when I was in sixth grade, a series of books from American Heritage Magazine: I devoured these and anything else I could get my hands on I read.
Oddly enough, high school and college precluded random reading, a situation that remains true today. Because of academic demands, students read from textbooks and other assigned volumes, and so come to associate reading works like Crime and Punishment or John Adams with study and essay papers. Surely some of these students lose their zeal for reading at this point. I remember when I dropped out of graduate school, one of my first thoughts was: “Well, now I can read whatever I damn well please,” and I proceeded to do so at breakneck speed.
From that point on, books became more than just a tremendous pleasure: I wanted to write, and lacking the guidance of other writers or graduate school programs, I turned to authors as my teachers. Thomas Wolfe, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Anne Tyler, Raymond Chandler, Evelyn Waugh, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Anthony Burgess, John Kennedy Toole, and so many others guided me through my lessons in fiction, while writers like Jason Epstein, Joan Didion, Judith Martin (Miss Manners), Christopher Lasch, and many more instructed me in the art of the essay.
When asked what book he would take if he were shipwrecked on a desert island, G.K. Chesterton famously replied, “Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.” That was good for a laugh, but what most people don’t know is that he then added Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers.
All readers have favorite books, and most readers would have a tough time selecting one book for an extended stay anywhere, desert island or prison cell, two week’s vacation at the beach or a week’s confinement to a hospital bed. Too many choices, too many loves, like having a dozen children and picking a favorite. You might do it, but the regrets would be incalculable.
Suppose, though, a kind judge allowed you to take a dozen books, enough to fill up a grocery store milk carton, for a year of solitude on that island. Even here the choice involves a triage of regrets: “You go, you stay behind, you I’ll think about.”
Anyway, here with a brief description are my dozen selections. Bear in mind that if asked tomorrow, I would undoubtedly change out half-a-dozen of these volumes. Only the first two would unequivocally find a place on every list:
- The Bible, preferably the King James translation. (Yes, yes, my Catholic comrades, heresy for sure, but I desire the language as well as the theology). I am familiar with the New Testament, but could soak in the Old Book for a good many months.
- The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Here I’m possibly cheating, but the book exists in a single volume. Again, a selection chosen not just for the stories, but also for the beauty and sweep of the English language. Put me on that island for five years and I might come away speaking like the Savage in Brave New World.
- Mark Helprin’s A Soldier of the Great War. I have read and reread this novel about an old professor, a young technician, and World War I. All men, particularly those between eighteen and thirty, should read this novel. Don’t be daunted by the length.
- The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Synonyms and Antonyms. An absolute necessity, for me, for writing. And if the judge prohibited me from writing, I could read this book an hour a day just for the fun of it.
- The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Over 2,000 pages of poetry and commentary. How could I miss with this one?
- My beaten up forty-year-old Betty Crocker cookbook. Here are basic recipes that even a ninny like me can prepare. The desert island of my imagination, by the way, offers a well-stocked kitchen.
- Anthony Burgesses’s Earthly Powers. Burgess bases his main character on the writer Somerset Maugham, but also makes him a Catholic. A journey through the twentieth century by a master of the English language.
- The Roman Missal, 1962 Version. I don’t attend the Tridentine Mass, but this book would serve as my guide to worship while helping me keep up with my Latin.
- Drinking With The Saints. Did I mention that the island also contains a well-appointed bar? Using this book, I would practice making drinks and tend bar on my release.
- Some coffee table compendium of pictures, like those old Life Magazine books. I’m assuming no computers are allowed on my island, otherwise I wouldn’t need to bring books, and I therefore would want some way of looking at human faces.
- Don Quixote. I read this book long ago in college and remember almost nothing of it. (The basic plot I know from the film.) Like most of the other books here, Don Quixote is a fat volume and would thereby bring days and days of pleasure.
- A travel guide to Rome with, if possible, a basic Italian language booklet included. Here I would rely on my friend Sid to suggest a title. One of my most exciting adventures of the last ten years was a summer trip to Rome. I spent nearly a month there and came to know the city well. From this book I would memorize streets and places, pick up some basic Italian just for fun, and head for Italy on my release.