Monday, March 18, 2024

Home decorating

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

Henry Ward Beecher

During COVID, most interviews shown on television and even some news commentary took place in homes, usually in front of a bookcase. In part, this was done to give an impression about how smart and well-read the person talking was. In some cases, the books were those written by that person. But more importantly, a bookcase just made a good background. It looked good on camera.

Similarly, many photographs taken of people in their homes are posed in front of bookcases. This is especially true of authors and scholars, but it's something that works well for anyone. In fact, it even works for nonreaders.

Many people who rarely read books choose to decorate their homes and/or offices with books. Some books seem to be sold expressly for this purpose. How many people actually read those finely bound classics that seem to be meant more to be seen than read? Barnes and Noble still sells attractive, relatively inexpensive classics now out of copyright. Whether read or not, such books certainly make a good impression. The eyes of clients and guests are always drawn to these displays.

Needless to say, books dominate the walls of my own home, and I wish even more of my walls were covered by books, even though I do love the few pieces of art I have hanging there instead. But my books — those I've read or hope to read — are there to pleasure no one else but me.

Friday, March 15, 2024

Life at the bottom

I stuck with Patrick deWitt's first novel, Ablutions (2009) to the end because I love his later novels like French Exit and The Sisters Brothers, but it is a disappointing and disgusting book. The author tells us more than we want to know about humanity at its worst.

The novel — deWitt calls it "notes for a novel" because it consists of short glimpses of characters and events rather than a straight narrative — tells of the regulars at a Hollywood bar. Most of these people have either hit bottom, are on their way down or still wrongly believe they are on the way up. They all drink too much and take too many drugs. This includes our unnamed narrator, who gets free drinks as part of his compensation for working there.

Their drinking, drug taking and sex acts in the back room are described in detail. The narrator's wife leaves him for another man. He begins stealing money from the bar. His life goes from bad to worse.

Yet the novel is a confession, of sorts. The title is a religious term referring to "washing one's body or part of it," a cleansing. And that is sort of what the reader wants to do after reading it.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

No excuses

A writer never has an excuse for not working.

John Mortimer, Where There's a Will

I developed an ulcer and other digestive problems during my years as a newspaper reporter and editorial writer. Even weekends were not free from worry. Then I became a copy editor, trying to improve the work of other writers, and I rested more easily. My work never went home with me.

John Mortimer
So I know very well what John Mortimer, a lawyer and an author, is talking about in the comment quoted above. Writers can always work. No excuses. A pen and paper are almost always nearby. Writers can carry notebooks when they travel. Writing can be done in the mind, as well, and even in dreams. Some of my best ideas still come to me in the shower.

And so writers have no excuse for not working. Ever.

And this, Mortimer observes, can lead to guilt. "It's true that guilt follows a writer wherever he goes, an unnecessarily faithful dog, always yapping at his heels," he says. Get to work. Get to work. Get to work. The yapping goes on and on.

Writers experiencing writer's block must feel doubly guilty. Their ideas won't come no matter how hard they try to produce something worthwhile.

Monday, March 11, 2024

Talking with the dead

There is a small town in western New York where spiritualists gather each summer to communicate with the dead. They have been doing this for well over a century. Just driving through the town, as I once did, can be a bit spooky, although that may have been my imagination.

Christine Wicker was a religion reporter for the Dallas Morning News when she first visited Lily Dale. She ended up returning summer after summer, getting to know many of the spiritualists who live there or visit there. The result was her 2003 book Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead.

Many well-known people have visited Lily Dale over the years, from Mae West (a believer) to Harry Houdini (a doubter). Wicker first went to Lily Dale as a doubter, then found herself shifting back and forth from one camp to the other. She calls it "the Lily Dale bounce." Something strange happens that makes you think spirits may actually be communicating with living people, but then something happens (or doesn't happen) that makes you think the whole thing is hooey.

Wicker bounces back and forth throughout her book. Training to become a medium herself, she discovers she has a gift for reading the pasts of other people, a gift that leaves her when she leaves Lily Dale. She sees tables dance and mediums say amazing things that have no logical explanation, while she finds that so much of what these mediums say is utter foolishness.

Even the mediums themselves doubt much of what they hear in Lily Dale. They themselves are skeptics, she finds, and they take swift action against obvious frauds.

Wicker comes to like these people. She believes that they believe. And sometimes, she admits, she does, too.

Reading Wicker's book makes me wish I had stopped on my way through Lily Dale and had a conversation or two — preferably with the living.

Friday, March 8, 2024

Toughen up

Writers and artists must learn to withstand mockery, abuse and misunderstanding as an essential part of their careers.

John Mortimer, Where There's a Will

John Steinbeck
A few months back ("That's wonderful," Nov. 3, 2023) I wrote about how John Steinbeck's wife said the writer always asked her to read his novels and comment, but what he really wanted to hear, she said, was, "That's wonderful." And that is what we all want to hear, no matter what we do.

But as John Mortimer observes in Where There's a Will, what we want is not what we usually get, especially if we choose a career which, in effect, begs for a public response. He mentions writers and artists, but actors also fit into that category. If you want people to pay money for what you offer, those people have every right to tell you, "That's crap."

I have been reviewing books for most of my life, and I think I have more often written something closer to "that's wonderful" than "that's crap." One reason is that if I hate a book, I usually have the luxury of being able to put it aside and pick up something better. But I am also a softy. I don't take as much pleasure in saying "that's crap" as some critics do, although I sometimes do say it. Honesty is as important as kindness.

Yet writers and other creative people must, as Mortimer suggests, toughen up so that they can withstand the criticism that comes with the territory and keep going. Steinbeck sometimes got bad reviews, whatever his wife said about his books, but he kept writing.

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Seeing things

There is no redhead by the side of the road in Anne Tyler's 2020 novel Redhead by the Side of the Road. It is just a red fire hydrant that the nearsighted Micah Mortimer sees as a woman when he goes running every morning without his glasses.

Yet his vision doesn't really seem to be that bad. On one of his runs near the end of the novel, Micah slows down when he sees a feeble old man open his car door "with one crabbed hand" before getting inside. He can see a "crabbed hand" but not a fire hydrant? But no, Tyler makes it clear that the redhead has more to do with Micah's imagination than his vision. He converts "inanimate objects into human beings" because of his loneliness. He wishes there were a redhead by the side of the road.

Nearing 40, Micah lives alone in Baltimore and manages a one-man computer repair business out of his home. His life is orderly to the point of running at a certain time each morning and cleaning his kitchen a certain of the week.

He has had a series of short-lived love affairs, including one with a teacher named Cass, which ends early in the novel for reasons he fails to understand.

Then Brink, a college boy, shows up at his door believing Micah might be his real father. He is the son of Lorna, Micah's college girlfriend. Micah knows Brink cannot be his son because he and Lorna never had sex together, but Brink reconnects him briefly with Lorna. She explains her version of why they broke up nearly two decades earlier. And that leads Micah to take control of his life, although Tyler's ending may actually suggest just the opposite. Is he taking control or surrendering? And is there a difference?

Much shorter than a typical Anne Tyler novel, Redhead is irresistible.

Monday, March 4, 2024

Eating while reading

There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read — unless it be reading while you eat.

Edith Nesbit, British writer

Just a few days ago, although I have already forgotten where I saw it, I read someone say that reading and eating don't mix. Books are precious, while food is messy. To her, don't eat and read was comparable to don't drink and drive.

E. Nesbit
Edith Nesbit, who wrote children's books under the name E. Nesbit, perhaps to hide the fact that she was a woman, obviously thought differently. To her, combining the two is the height of luxury.

If you saw the food stains on some of my books, you would know whose side I come down on.

Usually I choose older books, usually books with previous owners,  to read at mealtime. My current breakfast book is a library discard, for example. Yet I don't always follow this rule. Recently I read William Kent Krueger's The River We Remember, a clothbound novel I bought new, at my breakfast bar. I believe it somehow escaped unmarked.

Now that I am widowed and living alone, I eat most of my meals in the company of books. Relationships can sometimes get messy, and so it goes with me and my book companions. But perhaps it is this casual, relaxed relationship that can make eating while reading, or reading while eating, such a luxury.

Besides, I can read a lot of extra books this way.