An Odd Couple

On my walk yesterday I passed a table with some odds and ends on it--a couple of mismatched cocktail glasses, an unknown metal object (I'm guessing a kitchen tool), a box of old shirts. On the street in colored chalk someone had written "Take what you like and leave what you can". Of course I stopped to read the instructions. Compulsive readers don't pass by text of any kind, even, or maybe especially, colored chalk on asphalt. I've been that way for a long time. I have burned into my memory the legend "Don't Forget Zee Napkins!" from a billboard my mother drove past many times during my childhood. I don't really want this cluttering up my memory, but there it is. Why didn't I look at something else on the car ride home? I wish I could have, but there were these big words, and I had to read them every time. Another thing I don't pass up is free books and under the table was a box of them. I came home with three: Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck, The Call of the Wild by Jack London and Medieval Literature in Translation ed. Charles W. Jones.

I was going to "save" Travels with Charley for a trip I'm going to take soon. It would be perfect to read while on the road, but the book has as much chance of lasting that long as the last piece of Amish friendship bread on the counter. I begin to nibble. I've never been a Steinbeck fan. He strikes me as a self-conscious show-off, but this only adds to the attraction of the book. "Maybe this will be the one that will help me 'get' Steinbeck," I think. This copy was printed in 1962. It's bound in tan cloth with a little sketch of Charley the poodle on the front corner and enough spots and stains to make it seem loved, but not abused. Right away I'm interested by the truck, the poodle and Steinbeck's excellent prose. I'm released from the book's thrall in Part Two when he begins to quote Joseph Addison. I do have some discipline. I've been rereading Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift From the Sea. I should finish it. I read a little before sleeping. Such different people, Lindbergh and Steinbeck. What if they met? What if they went on vacation together? Two writers, one in a custom camper full of guns and booze, the other on an island collecting shells and thinking about Life. "He says," "She says" scenarios fill my head.

How would packing for the trip go?

He says

I took far too many things . . . tools for emergency, tow lines, a small block and tackle, a trenching tool and crowbar, tools for making and fixing and improvising. I took paper, carbon, typewriter, pencils, notebooks, and not only those but dictionaries, a compact encyclopedia, and a dozen other reference books, heavy ones. Canned goods, shotgun shells, rifle cartridges, tool boxes, and far too many clothes, blankets and pillows, and many too many shoes and boots, padded nylon sub-zero underwear, plastic dishes and cups and a plastic dishpan, a spare tank of bottled gas.

He's having as much fun as boys building a fort.

She says

One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding, how little one can get along with, not how much. Physical shedding to begin with . . . Clothes, first. Of course, one needs less in the sun. One does not need a closet-full, only a small suitcase-full. And what a relief it is! Less taking up and down of hems, less mending, and--best of all--less worry about what to wear. One
finds one is shedding not only clothes--but vanity.
Next shelter . . . No heat, no telephone, no plumbing to speak of, no hot water, a two-burner oil stove, no gadgets to go wrong, No rugs . . . No curtains . . . As little furniture as possible

Yes, one enjoys clothes, hot water, heat, telephones, rugs and furniture but when one is in charge of taking care of it all, one gets pretty darn tired of it and one wonders if the convenience is worth the trouble. But what does she mean by "no plumbing to speak of"? Not having a toilet is just plain going too far.

Next, where would they go? Would they seek company or solitude?

She says

How wonderful are islands! Islands in space, like this one I have come to, ringed about by miles of water, linked by no bridges, no cables, no telephones. An island from the world and the world's life . . . People, too, become like islands in such an atmosphere, self-contained, whole and serene; respecting other people's solitude, not intruding on their shores, standing back in reverence before the miracle of another individual.

It's OK, Anne, lots of mothers have felt this way. Sometimes you just need a break from those dear little miraculous individuals.

He says

I thought it might be nice if I could invite people I met along the way to my home for a drink, but I had neglected to lay in liquor. . . . I ordered bourbon, scotch, gin, vermouth, vodka, a medium good brandy, aged applejack, and a case of beer. It seemed to me that those might take care of most situations.

I guess if having a conversation with a Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author isn't attractive enough to lure people into his camper, there's always beer.

And lastly, who would wear the pants?

He says

A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror.
For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not a punishment.

I always thought hangovers were caused by drinking . . . but anyway. All I can say is gosh, John, you're quite a guy!

He also says

I am very fortunate in having a wife [actually he had three, but only one at this time] who likes being a woman, which means that she likes men, not elderly babies. Although this last foundation for the journey was never discussed, I am sure she understood it.

Anyway, she was off like a shot to New York City the minute the camper hit the trail. Possibly she needed a break from hauling real men out of the ocean during hurricanes. (You have to read the book to get this one)

She says

This relationship of "persons as persons" was prophetically hinted at by the German poet, Rilke, almost fifty years ago. He foresaw a great change in the relationships between men and women which he hoped in the future would no longer follow the traditional patterns of submission and domination or of possession and competition. . . I wonder if both man and woman must not accomplish this heroic feat. . . Must not [man] also expand the neglected sides of his personality; the art of inward looking that he has seldom had time for in his active outward-going life; the personal relationships which he has not had as much chance to enjoy; the so-called feminine qualities, aesthetic, emotional, cultural and spiritual, which he has been too rushed to fully develop. Perhaps both men and women in America may hunger, in our material, outward, active, masculine culture, for the supposedly feminine qualities of heart, mind and spirit--qualities which are actually neither masculine nor feminine, but simply human qualities that have been neglected. It is growth along these lines that will make us whole, and will enable the individual to become world to himself.

Good luck with that Anne.

E.M. Forster imagined "that all the novelists are at work together in a circular room" in his Aspects of the Novel. I wonder if any writing would get done. All those strong personalities together--it could very well turn into a brawl. In any case, it seems clear to me that certain authors had better not vacation together.

To Read or Not to Read

A book caught my eye at the library recently: How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read by Pierre Bayard. The spine is bright yellow, the word "haven't" is in red, and it got my attention in the same way that Growing Marijuana Indoors caught my attention in a bookstore in Berkeley a few weeks ago. I would probably pick up a book with the title Cooking with Trans Fats with the same mixture of horror and fascination. How does the author justify his position? It turns out that the marijuana author doesn't bother--he goes straight to potting soil. There's no opening paragraph touting the benefits of home-grown pot. I guess if you're buying the book, you already know.

I checked out How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read and took it home and read it, so now I can't follow Bayard's advice, at least about his book. My two sons were very interested in the title, but it doesn't take long to get the irony--you have to read the book to find out how not to have to read books. The possibility of having to read only one more book for life wasn't enough to get either one to crack it.

The basic premise of the book is that no one can ever read a fraction of all the books in the world, or even all the important or even essential books, so everyone, at some point will have to talk about a book they haven't read. The author goes through several methods of talking about books you haven't read. Frankly, I've forgotten all of them already. Bayard is a professor, and probably needs this skill, but I don't see why I do. If someone talks about a book I haven't read, I can always be quiet and listen. And besides, I have plenty of friends who never read anything at all. What I need is a book called How to Talk about Books Your Friends Haven't Read Without Boring the Pants off Them.

One of my professors in college told the class that John Milton read every book in every language that had been written up til then. He may have gotten that story from this statement by Samuel Johnson about Milton: "When he left the university he returned to his father, then residing at Horton in Buckinghamshire, with whom he lived five years; in which time he is said to have read all the Greek and Latin writers. With what limitations this universality is to be understood who shall inform us?" So you can read no books, but learn to act as if you have, or you can read all the books, (there will be no one who can check up on you) and have no one to talk to about them. Or you can do what most people sensibly do: read what you like and not worry about silly books that tell you how to talk about books you haven't read.