What's on Your Shelf?

The New York Times Book Review ran a highly entertaining article last weekend about how much (or little) your book collection defines you in the eyes of others. There were parts of this article that were so obviously, occasionally embarrassingly, true for me (like not being able to date an Ayn Rand lover, chuckle chuckle) that I was alternately cringing and nodding my head in agreement the entire time I read it.

To this day, I find it impossible to resist trying to see what everyone on the subway is reading, though I'm not really sure what this knowledge of the reading habits of strangers accomplishes. I guess I occasionally get a feeling of superiority that last about .2 seconds, though usually it just makes me depressed that there are so many great and entertaining books out there and at least half of the books you see belong to J.K. Rowling or James Patterson. A depressing thought that I'll put off elaborating on until another post (lucky you).

I mean, you can call it snobbery, but a big part of why people like me can't help but judge other people's choices is simply that we really, really love books. We often work with them in some capacity (I'm an extreme case: I was a bookstore employee for many years before I was in publishing and even worked in a bookstore cafe in high school) and have a vested interest in seeing books treated with the same level of love and obsession that we have for them. I care about books the way that more wiser, more compassionate people care about, say, Darfur.

Although I used to think this was a pretty common point-of-view, this essay has forced me to consider that others (even other book lovers) may not feel quite so strongly. I don't want to be, after all, one of those High Fidelity you-are-what-you-like types and I don't think that I am about most things. I could date someone that watches American Idol. I could marry someone that loves country music. But I just don't know that I have it in me to date someone with a terrible/nonexistent taste in books.

Anyway, point being: I invest books with a lot of value and expect others (or, at least significant others) to do the same. I love movies, I love music, but I don't invest them with nearly the same level of value and I thus don't really care as much if my opinion differs with someone.

I guess in the end you choose what it is that you want to infuse with value. People might think that I infuse books with too much of it, but there are countless things that people care a hell of a lot about that I don't really understand. Doesn't, for example, this get at the same values and lifestyle choices that would make a person that values healthy eating and living want to stay away from an unkempt, picky eater like me? Like Sloane Crosley's quote near the end of the essay says:

“If you’re a person who loves Alice Munro and you’re going out with someone whose favorite book is ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ perhaps the flags of incompatibility were there prior to the big reveal.”

UPDATE: I just noticed that my friend Stephanie posted her take on this article yesterday-check it out.

The Do's and Dont's of (Book) Clubbing

Just in case you can never satisfy your Josh-mania, head on over to the "Books & Booze" website to get my take on the "Do's and Don'ts of a successful book club." Most of my advice comes from my experience in the C.R.A.F.T. club in college, a successful book club that crashed and burned on the shores of a multi-week attempt to get through James Joyce's Ulysses.



Still, book clubs, when done correctly, are great fun. I might, however, suggest you stay away from 900 page modernist novels!

Revolutionary Road

There's no getting around it anymore, in 2008 Revolutionary Road is coming to a theatre near you. It's going to star Leonardo Dicarpio, Kate Winslet, Kathy Bates, and will be directed by Sam Mendes. Good cast, good director. Why, then, does this development have me so distressed?I guess I should start by saying that Richard Yates' novel Revolutionary Road is not only one of my absolute favorite novels, but also an extremely important factor in giving me the push I needed to get myself to New York. I read this novel during a cold January in Michigan ( a bleak time indeed, for those unaware) while I was in the midst of ruining my first post-collegiate year with the distraction and anxiety produced by knowing that I needed to get out of my college town as soon as possible. I was still unsure about grad school and undecided about what I was going to do with myself if I didn't go down the path I always assumed I would. So, anyway, that's a long way of saying that I needed something to get me going (wherever that might be).

Without getting really getting into the plot (although please go here to get that kind of info), I'll just say that Revolutionary Road is about the danger of making too many compromises and falling into a pattern of conformity. I know that sounds like really basic stuff, but Yates really puts you inside these characters and makes you seen how bitter and scarred they've become after years spent forever taking the easier, less risky choice. This bitterness is compounded by the fact that they are dreamers, the kind of people that will spend an entire night talking about their great plans and then never follow through. Needless to say, it isn't a comic novel.

So, imagine reading this by yourself in a smoky (but not in a good way) cafe in East Lansing and realizing that you have some particularly strong similarities to Frank Wheeler: the same level of dreaminess, the same kind of snobbery, the same misplaced vanity, the same issues with being too self-aware. It was a terrifying experience! Reading Revolutionary Road was a wake-up call for me; it made me realize that I was at a true crossroads in my life and that if I was ever going to take a big risk, now was the time to do it. Six months later, enboldened by the fear of not taking the chance, I arrived in New York with practically no money, no place to live, and no job. I honestly don't know if I would have done it had I not read Yates' novel.

Back to the movie: I'm sure it will be good, in fact, there's a decent change it will be quite good. I worry, though, (cliche though it might be) that after I've see the movie, the reality I've created in my head surrounding the book will be forever replaced by the reality created by the actors and the set. Isn't this always a let down? In addition, will every copy of the book now be plastered with Dicaprio and Winslet and the "NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE" tag obscuring half of the image? Am I going to lose my special hold I feel on this classic (but not so famous) book? Oh well, I guess. In the end, if it gets more people to discover Richard Yates and his fantastic books, how can this movie possible be a negative?

Comedy Row

Comedy Row comprises the second row of the far left bookshelf of my apartment. I never really intended to create a "row of comedy," it just sort of started happening as I filled up my new bookshelves last spring. I discovered that I had unwittingly collected 6 or 7 P.G. Wodehouse books in the time that I had been in New York, not counting the 5-10 books I still have back in Michigan. Some people collect James Brown bootlegs, I apparently collect Wodehouse.

Even stranger, I realized that in under two years, I had picked up some more books James Thurber (my first comedic love), some Evelyn Waugh (whom I still don't really get), Mark Twain, Dorothy Parker, Steve Martin, Benjamin Franklin and Nicholson Baker (who don't get the credit they deserve for being laugh-out-loud funny), 3 (!) copies of My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell, and more.

This was it for me. I realized I had a chance to create my ideal row of books! If I could only bring one book with me to a desert island, it wouldn't be the Bible or Remembrances of Things Past, it would be Fierce Pajamas, the New Yorker humor anthology. While I could possibly stumble through a half hour conversation about Modernism, I could easily spend an entire night trying to articulate how Mark Twain stays so funny after a century and a half or why there's really nothing quite as uniquely hilarious as one of James Thurber's dog drawings. Comedy, especially written comedy, seems like a mystic art to me, equally as hard as any dramatic work. And, for whatever reason, I've always been more intrigued by comedic questions than dramatic ones.

I guess there's an element of attainability there that I find very attractive; while I find James Joyce's genius inscrutable, I feel as though I could maybe, if I tried hard enough, figure out what makes a piece of writing laugh-out-loud funny. Granted, I don't know that you really can; anybody who's tried to read any sort of academic writing on comedy knows how dry and ultimately unilluminating that proves to be. I don't know that I think "funny" can be taught or learned and there's absolutely nothing worse than meeting someone that tries to tell "jokes." Mark Twain captures this dilemma well...

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3250/3250.txt

Still, trying to crack the mystery has always been a big part of the fun of reading comedic writing for me. It hasn't really worked out, but, much like solving crossword puzzles, I just can't resist the challenge.