Read What You Need

Note: I wrote this post over the course of a few days, so as to give mini-reports along the way to make my book-hopping lack of pattern more obvious. And then this morning I took long, leisurely outdoor time to walk with Sarah and photograph today’s beautiful Thursday world around me.

 

Tuesday afternoon

 

Already I have to resort to paraphrase, because I don’t know what I did with the original quote, but it came from another bookseller in another state, who said, as far as recommending or advising people on what books to read these days, that the thing to do right now is to read whatever it is you need. If you need information, read books of information. If it’s escape you need, read escape. I’d amplify that to say specifically that whether you need poetry or history or religious meditations or humorous essays, science fiction or Victorian gardening texts, whatever books you need are the ones you should be reaching for right now.

 

For me, once again, it’s sometimes one and sometimes another, and I go from one kind of reading to another, skipping between often totally unrelated books with no apology whatsoever. Crazy Horse, by Mari Sandoz, is both informative and beautifully written, as was Isabel Wilkerson’s The Warmth of Other Suns. Wilkerson’s migrants did not find a perfect society in the North, but for the most part they were glad they had made the move, and I devoured that book to the last page quickly, eager to see how their lives turned out. It’s different with Crazy Horse. Since I know there will be no “happy ending” – and there are plenty of tragedies before the end, also – I keep setting that painful saga aside, taking breaks with something easier on the spirit.

Steve Hamilton’s A Cold Day in Paradise, the first of his Alex McKnight mysteries, was a re-reading experience, a little self-indulgence I frequently give myself in the best of times (which these are not). Even when I remember more of a story than I recalled from my first, long-ago reading of A Cold Day in Paradise (first memorably read in a motel in St. Ignace, cover to cover in one night), there is always a lot that I’ve forgotten and that seems fresh and new, whatever the book. 

 

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is a children’s book and generously (and beautifully) illustrated, so reading that story took me only very briefly away from the world of challenging reality and challenging reading. Native Tongue, the first volume of Susanne Haden Elgin’s feminist speculative fiction trilogy, interested me without completely fully absorbing my attention. I would call it a novel of ideas rather than a character- or plot-driven work. But it did offer escape from political campaigns and COVID-19 concerns.

Sometimes the way a book falls into my hands is complete serendipity. Such was the case with Jimmy Carter’s Why Not the Best? But I wrote about Why Not the Best? in my last post and won’t repeat myself here.

 

The Uncalled, by Paul Laurence Dunbar, published over a century ago, was something chosen more deliberately. Familiar with Dunbar’s name because of his poetry (Maya Angelou took her title I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings from a Dunbar poems), I hadn’t realized he also wrote novels. Interestingly, though Dunbar was perhaps the first well-known black American poet, there is nothing of race in the story of The Uncalled – at least, so far. I’m only halfway through this little book.

 

 

And now already I’ve found something else that seems worth reading. My Brilliant Career, by Miles Franklin, made a big splash when its teen-aged author published her novel in Australia in 1901, but then it was out of print until 1966. Despite the book’s initial success, Franklin felt there was no place for her in the new, very male, nationalistic Australian literary world; she was also unhappy with some of the interpretations laid upon her work.

 

Australia – now that’s an escape from my everyday world!

Our brave little reading circle, the one that convened years ago to study James Joyce’s Ulysses together, is now committed to reading and discussing for November William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! Faulkner will be a stretch for me, as I am in general not a fan, but the book covers the same period as Margaret Walker’s Jubilee, so it will be interesting from that standpoint, and I need to challenge myself, anyway, which was this group’s original mission – to read together books we might not have read on our own. 

 

Some (but not all) of us took on Proust one fall, and I’ve been reading him again recently, in French, a few pages at a time. I’m not sure whether to classify Proust “difficult” or a familiar and comforting refuge. He is probably the latter for me. Not an “easy” read, but his writing is luxurious – especially the opening scenes of childhood, both at the grandparents’ house in Combray and in the parks and streets of Paris. These long-ago, faraway scenes carry me away from the present, away from worry and strife -- and isn’t that how we define escape reading?

 

Wednesday morning

 

I finished The Uncalled last night and fell asleep over early pages of My Brilliant Career. Of the former, I can say it is very much a Victorian novel, with only a couple of places that one might, if informed of the author’s life, see something of his own experience as a black man in [that long-ago] turn-of-the-century America. Paul Laurence Dunbar’s parents, I read, were born in slavery, so he and his siblings were the first generation of the family born free, but as the orphan protagonist of The Uncalled, however, realizes so strongly, there is more to freedom than not being held in bondage. The fictional character longs to break away from his guardian’s very strict religious household (where baseball is considered as great a sin as dancing) and her plans to make him a preacher. Like Dunbar himself, young Brent longs for the freedom of the writing life. When a friend in the seminary warns him of that life’s agonies, Frederick Brent listens with no change of heart.

 

“This is your story,” said Brent; “but men differ and conditions differ. I will accept all the misery, all the pain and defeat you have suffered, to be free to choose my own course.”

 

Besides several volumes of poetry, for which he is chiefly known, Dunbar’s only other published book was Tales from Dixie, a collection of short stories featuring African-Americans before and after emancipation. This may be his least sentimental, most realistic work, and I would like to read it sometime. Sadly, the writer died young, only 33 years old, but he earned success while he lived, which is more than many poets, black or white, can say.

 

Not having more Dunbar on hand last night, I curled up in bed with My Brilliant Career but laid it aside to watch “Dark Waters” with the Artist, taking it up again after the movie and falling asleep before getting very far into the story. And earlier this morning, over the first cup of coffee, somehow I became embroiled in old e-mails, clearing out as many as could be deleted, filing others, re-reading and re-living days COVID and pre-COVID.

 

Here at the bookstore now, I’m pleased to have restocked many of Jim Harrison’s fiction titles; Katey Schultz’s brilliant Still Come Home (which every American should read); and to have some charming new children’s books now in stock. October will be the last full month of the 2020 year for Dog Ears Books (let’s be clear: we do plan to be back in the spring!), but it isn’t too early to get some of that holiday shopping out of the way, and I’ll be glad to help with that. 

 

 

Wednesday afternoon

 

Continuing with My Brilliant Career, I am intrigued by the fact that the adolescent author, while complaining of her own fate when times grew hard for the family, managed to recognize her parents’ difficulties, as well, and even to see their life in the greater national context.

 

…Household drudgery, woodcutting, milking, and gardening soon roughen the hands and dim the outside polish. When the body is wearied with much toil the desire to cultivate the mind, or the cultivation it has already received, is gradually wiped out. Thus it was with my parents. They had dropped from swelldom to peasantism. They were among and of the peasantry. None of their former acquaintances came within their circle now, for the iron ungodly hand of class distinction has settled surely down upon Australian society – Australia’s democracy is only a tradition of the past. 

 

I wonder, is My Brilliant Career considered an Australian classic by now – does it still fall short of the Australian male nationalist literary tradition?

 

Thursday morning

The world forced itself upon me last night. The event was the vice-presidential “debate,” and I steeled myself to listen, confident that it could not sink to the level of the presidential candidates’ horror show circus. Fortunately, I am blessed with generally low blood pressure.

 

Everyone listening (or watching, as more probably did) will have a different impression of the performances. My impression of Pence – a cipher in my mind beforehand – was that he is a very slippery, sneaky little man. He pretended great politeness and respect at the beginning of each two minutes allotted him (“Thank you, Susan”) but then talked on past his limit again and again, while the moderator tried to stop him with “Thank you, Mr. Vice-President” over and over. He also interrupted Senator Harris more than once. In short, he was as determined as the president not to be hemmed in by the rules but maintained a surface demeanor of civility and normality.

 

How many questions asked by the moderator were actually answered by either candidate? Once Pence asked that the record show that Harris had not answered a question – this after he, Pence, had evaded countless previous questions! I wish Harris had challenged him on that hypocritical remark, as well as on his repeated admonition to her, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” This was a fiendish ploy, as the very phrase “alternative facts” was invented in the White House to excuse lies told by the president! The vice-president took the administration’s own guilt and painted the senator with it, and Harris let him get away with it!

 

I still have no clear answer on the Democratic position on fracking. I believe fracking should be banned, for strong scientific reasons, but now it seems both parties have decided that fracking is something holy -- if anything, more sacred than a fertilized human egg. Will people be talking about fracking today? Will that issue get any attention at all? For me, it was the most worrisome take-away, other than the revelation of the vice-president’s character.

And so this morning, waking once again to the political take-over of my brain, I fled to Australia with Miles Franklin, and during the day I will no doubt read a few more poems by Jane Kenyon (because Lord knows I need poetry right now and will probably need it more and more in the less than four weeks ahead!), but before the bookstore I spent time in the beautiful outdoors with my dear old dog.

 

I am not, you see, doing a complete ostrich act and avoiding reality or succumbing to an escape addiction, but neither am I willing to let every waking moment be taken over by those aspects of reality that do nothing but heighten anxiety and/or plunge me into depression. I'm no good to anyone like that. Regular reading of other times and places is part of my life, anyway. The difference now is that I do it for sanity’s sake. 

Measured doses – reality, escape – I seek some kind of mental balance. A beautiful, sunny fall morning doesn’t hurt, either.

 

Girl on Horseback

Laurie reined in her horse at the place where the hill dropped away. She sat quietly for a moment looking down at the ghost town that was her home. 

Barbara Corcoran, The Long Journey

As you can see by the cover, the little paperback book shows a girl on horseback, so it merited a closer look. Published in 1970, it said inside. Then the first two sentences pulled me in, and the next paragraph began in a similarly promising way:

Off to the right on another hillside were a dozen little shacks where the miners had lived, and to the left was the long building they had used for a dining and reception hall. 

Really! Well, the little ghost town in the book is in Montana, so there are many differences between the settings of Hawkins Dry Diggings, Montana, and Dos Cabezas, Arizona. No adobe in Montana, of course. Instead, summer snow on the high mountaintops, trees on the slopes and across the land, and creeks running with clear water as Laurie heads south to find her Uncle Arthur to let him know that her grandfather, growing blind, needs medical attention.

If she were to make the journey by bus, her grandfather reasons, someone might question a girl that young traveling alone, and authorities would be called in, authorities who might think Laurie shouldn’t be living in a ghost town with an old man, even if he was her grandfather, who would probably think she would be better off in an orphanage. So travel by bus is out. 

Couldn’t he just go into their own nearest town and telephone Arthur? 

“No, no,” he said impatiently. “Telephones are no good. Can’t half the time hear what the other fellow is saying. You’d never be able to explain everything like it’s got to be explained. No, there’s nothing to do, but go there.” He sighed. “I hate to send you on such a long journey and you so young.”

Laurie reminds him that he had plenty of independence and adventures when he was a boy, and her grandfather is reassured. And so he gives Laurie her uncle’s address in Butte, a map, a compass, three gold nuggets, three silver dollars, and sends her off on her horse. 

Laurie has never been to school, never known any society at all other than what she has read in books and in National Geographic magazines, but she knows how to shoot and hunt and live off the land, and she and her grandfather are confident that she can find her way to Butte, no matter how many days the long journey takes. Neither of them anticipated that she would be shot for trespassing while trying to free a colt from barbed wire or that she might meet the devil along the way! Well, maybe not the devil, exactly, but a dangerous and frightening man, all the same, determined to steal her gold nuggets! 

It was confusing to meet so many people, all different kinds of people. Her grandfather taught her that the world was bad, but she finds good people, too — Kicking Horses, the boy who guides her to the trail she needs; Miss Emily, the retired schoolteacher who gives her shelter from the storm; Doc Ashe who tends to her gunshot wound. There is even a much younger girl, lost in the forest, needing Laurie to rescue her. Throughout the book, however, a lurking threat appears and reappears in the form of the crazy man on the mule, devil or not, and the song he mindlessly sings, its refrain disturbing Laurie’s peace of mind even when the man is out of sight. Keeping out of his clutches along her way is essential to reaching her primary goal.

Whatever age the reader, there is something exhilarating and inspiring about a young person setting out alone in the world, and as a female reader I find a girl’s adventures bring me added satisfaction. Among adult novels, Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Once Upon a River satisfies in a similar way. Even the dystopic YA novel Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, with the unforgettable Katniss Everdeen, gives 21st-century readers hope that even in the most horrible future society, wild nature beyond towns might offer salvation for young people willing to learn and live its ways. 

But The Long Journey is a simpler story, the motivation for the girl’s setting off on her adventure uncomplicated.

And I needed the uplift of The Long Journey because I’ve been reading a very different kind of book, another difficult book, taking it in small doses but still feeling overwhelmed. The first words of the title, Amity and Prosperity, don’t sound bleak, but the subtitle, One Family and the Fracturing of America, gives a pretty clear warning. Amity and Prosperity, you see, are not what the family will find at the end of the story. They are the names of two desperate towns, and the author of Amity and Prosperity: One Family and the Fracturing of America, Eliza Griswold, tells the story of one family’s experiences when they and their neighbors sign contracts to allow fracking wells built on their land. I can only read a few pages at a time. What was done to these people — what continues to be done in countries that still allow the process — fills me with rage. I’d love to have people with “Drill, Baby, Drill” bumper stickers trade places with the Appalachian residents who thought their lives would be changed for the better by fracking. People were lied to, deceived, taken advantage of, made horribly ill, wells and land and livestock and children poisoned. What is the hope for the future of these people and their land?

So even while I was enjoying The Long Journey, I couldn’t help having intrusive, skeptical thoughts whenever Laurie and her horse drank from wild Montana creeks. Mining has never been an environmentally friendly way of life, and extraction industries in general rely on dangerously polluting chemical processes. How many rivers and streams in North America are clean enough that one could drink their water even after boiling (which Laurie does only once) or purifying it? What if Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Margo Crane had been on the Kalamazoo River after the oil spill of 2010? Even Katniss Everdeen had only society to fear, not poisoned nature. 

Such a beautiful world! More wondrous than anything ever built by mankind! How can we mistreat it so, fouling our precious, irreplaceable nest?

Blue flag, wetland, Leelanau Township

Postscript, Tuesday afternoon: We were walking around the marina in Suttons Bay on Sunday evening when we happened upon two little girls catching frogs. None of us knew what kind of frogs they were, but now I think maybe these. Anyway, it made me very happy to see little girls catching frogs. They had a big black net and were putting the frogs in a little see-through plastic carrying case. "Do you want to touch one?" I asked if I could pick one up. Very slippery! It tried to escape, but I got it back in the case and asked the girls what they planned to do with the frogs. "Let them go again," they told me. And that made me happy, too. Girls need adventure and freedom in the great outdoors every bit as much as do boys.