Comfort books

We know what comfort foods are. They usually are the kind of meals Mom used to make — vegetable soup, meatloaf, baked chicken, macaroni and cheese, whatever.

But what about comfort books? Can there be such a thing? I think so.

In one sense, these are books that thrilled us in our youth, books we return to, at least in our minds. Sometimes we may actually want to sit down and read them again. With luck, these books still have the same impact, or at the very least remind us of the impact they once had. I know of a man who tried to collect all the books he read as a child, or that were read to him, preferably in the same editions he remembered from his boyhood.

In another sense, at least for some of us, books give comfort in themselves. The very presence of books might do this. Preferably they are your own books, although libraries and bookstores might help, as well.

A. Edward Newton

I came across the following quotation from A. Edward Newton, a noted collector of books: "Even when reading is impossible, the presence of books acquired (by passionate devotion to them) produces such an ecstasy that the buying of more books than one can peradventure read is nothing less than the soul reaching towards infinity ... we cherish books even if unread, their mere presence exudes comfort, their ready access, reassurance."

Books, Newton suggests, give comfort even if unread. I am sure that is not true for everyone, or even for most people. For some of us, however, it is very true. Some people find comfort in the art on their walls or in family photos or in various trophies and souvenirs from their lives. But for some of us who understand what Newton meant, books do the job by their very existence.

Little things

In Mattagash, Maine, winter is like a weight that presses you down, holds you there until you think you can't breathe anymore. You just seem to black out, and when you wake up, it's spring again.

Cathie Pelletier, The Weight of Winter

For much of Cathie Pelletier's long 1991 novel The Weight of Winter, the title describes what it is about. The entire novel takes place before Thanksgiving, meaning that for most people in the Northern Hemisphere, it isn't even winter yet. But winter comes early to northern Maine, and already there are several deep snowfalls and days of bitter temperatures. Winter comes to Mattagash long before the calendar says so.

Pelletier's novel roams from one set of characters to another, demonstrating how winter weighs them all down.

If the story has a main character, it would probably have to be Amy Jo Lawler, a middle-aged woman who lives with her mother. She has neither a job nor a husband or children. She feels that her mother, Sicily, is even more of a weight on her than winter is. She wants to put her in the nursing home where Sicily's best friend lives. This might free her to find work and perhaps to develop her affair with a married man.At the very least, the two of them would not have to reman so quiet in her bed late at night.

Meanwhile Lynn Gifford does have a husband and children, but Pike is an abusive drunk whom she still loves in spite of it all. For her children, one son in particular, it is not so simple.

And then there is the Crossroads, the bar where Pike does his drinking and which local busybodies want to close down.

Yet if the novel has a theme, it is probably not so much the weight of winter — most of what happens here could happen in the summer just as well — than with another character's comment late in the book: "There ain't no murders and bombs and hijackers. That's why them little things is so important. When they're all strung together, them little things make up the whole of some people's lives."

Pelletier's novel makes me think of the old song Little Things Mean a Lot.

Reading on the run

We are doing our reading on the run snatching time pledged elsewhere.

Jerome Weidman

Ideally reading is something we reserve time for. Some read to relax, such as just before going to sleep at night or when they are vacationing on a beach or on the deck of a cruise ship. Others prefer to read when they are most alert, most able to fully understand what they are reading. The best students do this.

Jerome Weidman

Most people — or at least most people with books in their homes that they hope to read — probably identify with the comment by Jerome Weidman quoted above. We do "our reading on the run, snatching time pledged elsewhere."

I have seen drivers with books in their hands while they wait at traffic lights. I read in doctors' waiting rooms and while waiting for my food in restaurants. We grab moments here and there so that we can read without interrupting our busy schedules.

One of the appeals provided by thrillers is that it is literally difficult to put them down.  Reading the next chapter and then the next becomes more important than "time pledged elsewhere." Most other books are easier to place lower on our agendas.

I wrote book reviews for most of my career, forcing me to into the habit of setting aside time for reading each day. In retirement I still maintain this discipline, or at at least I try to. Yet even now, with so few things actually on my agenda, I still often feel that I am reading on the run. There's always something else one could be doing.

The man after Lincoln

Countless books have been written about Abraham Lincoln. Very few have been written about his successor, Andrew Johnson. Yet Johnson's presidency also had an immense impact on American history. As Howard Means says in the closing words of his 2006 book The Avenger Takes His Place, "His failures are still with us."

The title comes from a poem by Herman Melville. The couplet reads, They have killed him, the Forgiver —/The Avenger takes his place. Johnson's attitude toward Reconstruction was expected to be, and probably was, quite different from what Lincoln's might have been. Chances are, however, even Lincoln at his merciful best would have had a difficult time not making a mess out of what was left after the Civil War — an impoverished South, a vengeful North, freed slaves who had no place in a still-divided nation.

Johnson was a Southerner — from Tennessee — whom Lincoln chose as his running mate because he was anti-slavery. Yet Johnson's reasons for opposing slavery had little to do with the slaves themselves. He was resentful of those who profited from slavery, the rich planation owners and the industrialists who got rich from the cheap labor. He opposed slavery not because it was unfair to blacks but because it was unfair to whites. When slaves provided the labor, there were no jobs for lower-class whites, like himself. To him, slave owners were the evil, not slavery itself.

Johnson was not without his good points, and much of his press coverage at the time was glowing. Yet he was unwilling to compromise, and his strong biases caused him to make mistakes that Lincoln might have avoided. Even so, America was well on its way to recovery and equality of the races until the 1960s, when another Johnson — Lyndon — screwed things up again with his War on Poverty that set back the fortunes of so many descendants of slaves by making them dependent on the federal government.

Buyers or browsers?

The good bookstore sells books, but its primary product, if you will, is the browsing experience.

Jeff Deutsch, In Praise of Good Bookstores

For those who enjoy shopping, is it the buying that is most pleasing or is it the search for something to buy?

Unlike women, most of whom seem to enjoy looking at new clothing whether they purchase anything or not, most men enter a clothing store thinking only about what they want to buy, whether it's a new shirt or a new belt. They find what they want as quickly as possible, then leave without looking at anything else. Yet in a hardware store or an electronics store, men may be the ones who like to look around at what's new.

Bookstores have both kinds of customers. Some people are looking for a particular book, a best-seller perhaps, but others just want to look at books, whether they find anything they want to buy or not. What's interesting about Jeff Deutsch's comment above is that a "good bookstore" prefers the second kind of customer, the one who comes just to look around rather than the one who comes to buy something and then leaves.

In the long run, the browser probably buys more books. I am a browser, and I buy a lot of books, yet I rarely enter a bookstore with a specific book in mind.

I doubt that many browsers leave a bookstore empty-handed.

Bookstores need to cater to browsers just as most department stores cater to their female customers. 

Hidden genius

The title of Elaine May's biography, Miss May Does Not Exist, are her own words, written as her biography on an album cover. On the same album cover, Mike Nichols, her comedy partner at the time, wrote a relatively long, name-dropping biography about himself.

It is actually a good title for Carrie Courogen's 2024 book about the Hollywood and Broadway genius who somehow flew under the radar for most of her life. Some of May's best work was as a script doctor for such successful films as Tootsie, What About Bob? and Ghostbusters II, for which she insisted she receive no screen credit. May was also a hidden influence on most of the films directed by Nichols, her former partner in comedy sketches that became famous in the 1950s.

When she did get credit, as in the film Ishtar and various Broadway flops, her work was often panned. Staying hidden seemed to work for her.

As if May's frequent anonymity did not make Courogen's work difficult enough, there is the problem that even when May did talk about herself, it was mostly lies. She told different stories to different people at different times. Even when Miss May did exist, the truth about her often didn't.

Yet the author was able to talk to many other people who worked with or knew Elaine May over the decades, giving her book more credibility than its subject might prefer. She paints May as a genius, a perfectionist and a workaholic who was loyal to her friends, and she had many of them despite the introversion that often drove her into hiding.

She was at her best as a writer, although she also drew raves as a performer. As a director, whether in Hollywood or on Broadway, she never considered her work complete. This caused her to shoot so much film that she would spend months in the cutting room trying to make a film short enough to be shown in theaters. In her plays, mostly one-act ones, she would rewrite scenes from one performance to the next. Although her difficult reputation may have been deserved, much of her work, especially Ishtar, was better than its own reputation. And some of her work, especially her early film A New Leaf, was much better than even she would admit.

Elaine May was most prominent in the public eye back when her comedy act with Mike Nichols was seen frequently on television and was a smash on Broadway. Few people still alive  remember that, but Courogen's fine book helps bring Miss May back into existence.

Write for yourself

Let the reader in you influence the writer in you. Put yourself in the reader's place, then write what you'd like to read.

Patricia T. O'Conner, Words Fail Me

Patricia T. O'Conner

Patricia T. O'Conner's advice for writers — write what you want to read — may be the best advice any writer or would-be writer will ever hear. Some writers seem to do just opposite. They write whatever seems to be most successful at the time. Their work seems imitative, unoriginal. They follow a formula. And if what they write is half-way successful, they imitate themselves

I admire writers like Ann Patchett and Jane Smiley, who never seem to write two novels alike. When something catches their attention, they build a story around it. They write the stories they would like to read, and being avid readers, they don't want to read the same story over and over again.

For the past few years I have tried my hand at writing sermons — and sometimes preaching them. I realize now that this compulsion of mine has something to do with the fact that I have been listening to sermons all my life and found most of them forgettable. I wanted to try writing the kind of sermons I would like to hear.

I think a sermon should have something for the mind (it should be intellectually stimulating), something for the heart (it should stir emotions) and something for the spirit (it should in some way make the listener a better person). And it should be something that can be remembered for at least a day or two. Have I succeeded? I do not know. But I do know they are the kind of sermons I want to hear on Sundays.