What's your Relationship to Your Personal Library

 

                                                    Do you have a personal library?

I would imagine that anyone who reads this blog regularly would have a collection of books he or she keeps around. I do. Why do we keep them around? In my case, I am not much of a rereader. Yet many of my books, even ones I’ll probably not even open again, and even forget I still have, I will never part with. Sometimes I’ll happen on one of them when taking down some other book. I’ll remember how old I was when I found it. And where. And sometimes even the way the sun slanted through the shop window when I first saw it. I remember also the joy, or relive the shock, or suffer still the sorrow I felt when I first read it.

Friends and loved ones have come and gone in my life, many of them as wrenching losses, others as luminous additions, but through it all my books alone have known me and stood beside me. They’ve lived through every one of the varied addresses I’ve known over several decades. To lose this book, or that, would be to lose my only link to the memories of who I used to be at that time of my life. No other object could possibly launch those precious memories for me.

            As I stand facing my shelves of books, I sometimes wonder at their cumulative power in stating who I am. They reflect the neural pathways of my brain. Taken together they represent my mind. I have no overriding arrangement to the order of the books on my shelves. If I have many on one topic, they’ll probably stand together.

        But just suppose I placed them in the order in which I read them. Couldn’t I then trace along the shelves the evolution of myself as a thinking person? And not just my ideas, but couldn’t I also trace the history of certain subtle emotions as they arose and grew and took shape in my heart? And if that is true, that I could trace the history of my heart, and my mind, is there a point at which my moving finger could stop and I could say: “There, this is where I became who I am”?

            Would it be the most recent book I read and placed there? Or did I fundamentally become the person I am some time long ago, and all the additons are merely accentuations?

            Such heady stuff.

Do You Have a Personal Library?

Richard Brautigan in 9000 clicks

One of Brautigan's many personae

                                 by Hugh Gilmore

            What an ordeal. I just finished a very long, tedious, but quite fascinating book whose final, inevitable paragraphs made me quite sad. Once I committed to writing about it, I felt like saying, "I am Lazarus, come from the dead/Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all...” (after T.S. Eliot’s  “Prufrock”). Though I’m not sure that I can.

The book is William Hjorstberg’s 880-page biography-down-to-the-last-scrap-of-paper, “Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan.” It was originally published around this time last year. It took me three weeks of daily reading to finish this book. And I never particularly cared for, nor was interested in Richard Brautigan, as poet, novelist, icon or man. And to make matters harder, I read the book on my Kindle.

Do you know what it is like to read an 880-page book on a Kindle? For one thing, the “page” is too small and confining. More importantly, without the benefit of turning a page and seeing a higher page number that helps you mark your progress, the process seems endless. A Kindle indicates the percentage of the total you’ve read so far. To move 10% you must page-click the word equivalent of 88 book pages. At the font size I used, it took about 10 clicks to move 1 %. Close to 900 clicks to move through 10 percent of the book. Two weeks into the book, though I was enjoying it immensely, I wished I were done. I was at 40%. I started pushing. I read at all hours of the day. Last Saturday night I finished. And I was quite sad about how it ended.

Lance Armstrong sued for writing novels?

Is this the face of a novelist?

"It's not about the book: 
  Speculations on Lance
  and fiction vs. memoir 
                       
                                   by Hugh Gilmore

Many people who read a lot of books emphatically do not like reading fiction. Their reasons for this aversion vary enormously but most seem to distill down to this: they want to read a story that is “true.” Sometimes they add the justification that they want to “learn something” from what they read. After all, since life is too short, why waste time on mere entertainment? 

Other readers have said things like, “I was really enjoying that book – in fact, I was halfway through it – when I learned it was a novel and not a true story. Boy, was I disappointed!” I don’t think my brain is working well enough today to even begin to explain the complexities behind such ideas, but I do want to take some time out to enjoy the entire truth-versus-fiction phenomenon. 

I now segue, yes, to the Lance Armstrong hornswoggle-that-won’t-lie-down has now spread to the world of book publishing. On January 22, in Federal Court in Sacramento, according to Bloomberg News, a man named Rob Stutzman filed a formal complaint of interest to the publishing industry. (Stutzman v. Armstrong, 13-00116, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of California [Sacramento].) 

At issue: Stutzman claims that he never would have bought Armstrong’s book, “It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life,” (2000) had he known it was not true. 

What You Missed on Valentine’s Day

The focus of our next Book Festival Program

by Hugh Gilmore

Whether they thought it sounded corny or thought it seemed kinky, a number of people asked how the Chestnut Hill (Phila.) Book Festival’s “Love for Sale” program went last week. I’ll offer some gentle reflections on the event.

For this, our first festival event of this year, we invited both scheduled (volunteer responders to a Local ad) and spur-of-the-moment persons who wanted to rise and say something – yay or nay – about love. The pop-ups had to pay a dollar for the privilege, though. Hence, our wonderfully clever (or awfully silly) slogan, “Love for Sale.”

The Gilmore family took turns pacing, trying to decide whether to get up to speak/sing/tell a joke, mime or stare longingly at some person of our choice. All day long our son Andrew, who makes his living as a comic entertainer, said, “Bah Humbug. This is torture,” reflecting the angst that the single feel in the presence of couples. I remember those days, so I felt bad for him.

All Set for "Gorilla Tour" Book Launch (?)

Last night we went to Cin-Cin restaurant with friends to celebrate Chinese New Year (of the Snake). After enjoying our 8-course feast we stepped outside. Musehouse, where I will have my Book Launch Party for "Last Night on the Gorilla Tour" is only fifty feet away. I pointed out to our friends the amazing discovery that Musehouse had a signboard out front advertising my reading/signing! How flattering, especially in front of friends who "knew me when."

Only, on second look, I noticed that I was billed for Saturday nite....when in actually I was billed for FRiday nite and the people I know who are coming are coming Friday.... A little embarrassing, but then I'm so vain, I'm embarrassed every hour-on-the-hour by something.

Oh boy! I thought, the story of my life: When my ship comes in, I'll be at the airport.

I drove home like a maniac (not fast, but still--like a maniac, the way my mind was racing) and sent a bunch of e-mails to everyone at Musehouse from the President to the janitor, asking for a correction. I have no idea if they changed it. I'm afraid to look.

But, rest assured, you worried readers: I'll be there Friday nite.