books, books, books and a loss of loss

I read an awful lot, though I tend to hoard more books than I actually read. When I die, I’ll most likely be sent to a revision of Dante’s fourth level of hell. I imagine myself in the crowd of other bibliomaniacs like Oprah and Edward VI, all of us pushing giant library carts stuffed with triple-decker Victorian novels and non-sequential volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary shouting, “Hoard them! Hoard them!” and we’ll crash thunderously against an opposing stream of people like Anthony Comstock and Sarah Palin pushing carts full of Harry Potter and The Origin of the Species and screaming, “Burn them! Burn them!” Either that, or I’ll spend eternity at the roots of some giant tree that forever lashes me with its branches, should the pagans be right.

I don’t read as much as some people, but I do spend a fair amount of my time reading something—often things on the Internet, but more often books. I live my life awash in narrative, and I’m fine with that. I firmly believe in the transformative, explanatory and healing power of a good story. Fictions—and all stories are fictions, even those based in fact, perhaps especially those based in fact—are necessary. Fictions bring order to the roiling chaos of our interior lives. Stories are what we tell ourselves and to others in an incessant effort to make sense of everything from the trajectory of a career, to the rise and fall of empires, to the gravitational swirl of planets, toilets and love.

A reader recently asked me how many books I’ve read. The answer is I don’t know, and this uncertain hole sits at the center of this piece. I tend to juggle three or four books simultaneously. Right now, I’m concurrently reading Nabokov’s memoir Speak, Memory; Harry Potter 7, The Deathly Hollows; Jan Bondeson’s A Cabinet of Medical Curiousities; and Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire. I’m about twenty pages into the first, 400 into the second, 150 into the third, and 25 into the last. I also have four other books next to my bed in various stages of neglect: Dicken’s Great Expectations; a collection of Pulp fiction, the all-crime edition; an annotated Dracula (I have three different versions); and David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest, which if I’m going to be honest with myself I may not get through again. Right now.

I will read just about anything but historical non-fiction, sports books and technical manuals. The first bores me, the second confounds me, and the third is like reading English translated into Klingon and then back into English. In the past two months, I’ve finished something like eighteen books (five graphic novels, two memoirs, six novels (three juvenile fiction), three noir novels, a great book on writing, and one book that defies genre on these totally macabre dollhouses that this woman spent her dotage building in order to train cops on reading crime scenes); these are all in addition to the books beside, in, and around my bed that I named in the previous paragraph. Currently, my favorite bed partners are books, which is either a sad state of affairs or not, depending on your point of view and level of friskiness.

I have three bookshelves that stand three feet wide and about seven feet tall. But for one shelf’s worth of space, they are jam-packed with books. I’ve read about 7/10 of the books on these shelves completely or nearly completely. I just got a book in the mail today (David Lynch’s meditation book), one last week (Titters, the 1976 anthology of female humor), and I’m expecting another any day (Michael Chabon’s new collection of essays, which I ordered from McSweeney’s).  If I had to name my top last few books, they’d have to be that weird dollhouse book, The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death; Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and his The Graveyard Book; Nabokov’s Lolita, which I just reread and loved as passionately as the first time I read it twenty-five years ago; and Dark Banquet, this fantastic book on sanguivores by Bill Schutt. If you love leeches like I love leeches, you need this book.

On any given day, I have about sixty books on my Amazon wish list. Unsurprisingly, they’re from a hodgepodge of genres and by a cavalcade of authors. There are books by astrophysicists, and there are books on eighteenth-century coffee house culture. I’ve picked out three books on fashion, four graphic novels, two epidemiological books, a couple on politics, one on robotics and another on the sex-life of insects. There are also a bunch of run-of-the-mill novels.  I have catholic tastes in reading.

And yet, as much as I read now, and as much as I love it, I rarely experience the kind of slip-sliding of self that would occur when I was young. It started when, at about the age of seven, I discovered I could read to myself, and it lasted until my mid-twenties. I would read a book and I would be thoroughly immersed in it, submerged in its narrative thrall as I am in my dreams. I would rise only when called by necessity—the urgent press of pee, the undodgeable phone call, the unshirkable presence of a parent, boyfriend or friend. Then I would struggle through the narrative’s pool back to consciousness; I would put the book down with truculent reluctance; and I would fret until my return.

These days, I don’t suffer that sublime loss of consciousness that I remember from my reading youth.  I don’t know if it’s age or experience or the years I spent in school dissecting writing like an anatomist bent over a cadaver. I don’t know if it’s because I myself am writing more, and therefore I’m acutely aware of every mercurial turn of phrase, of each shifting transition, of each song of syntax, and when or where those turns, transitions and syntactical choices fall flat. I imagine being a writer and reading is not unlike being a musician who hears an orchestra attuned not just to the swell and fall of the symphony but also to the piccoloist who just isn’t pulling his or her woodwind weight. No matter what, I am aware that what I’m doing is reading. It’s a drag.

I miss the great escape that books once gave. I chase that fall from consciousness like I’ve read about heroin addicts chasing their first high. I read consumptively.  I read, in no small part, because I’m searching for that book that once more will give me what I’ve lost: the pure immersion into a seamless story more wondrous, more ghastly, more pathetic, more beautiful, and more real than my own.

Comments

[Jason]

My budget has always limited how many bound beauties I could collect. A year or so ago, though, I found a great idea breathed into being by the electric and distributed breath of the internet: Bookmooch. I wonder if you've heard of it. It's a place where people can share books for just the cost of postage. There are a few book sharing websites, it seems, out there, but I like bookmooch. The only potential problem (and I see it as a benefit of the service actually) is that one has to give away one's own books to receive some in return - kind of a blow to the overstuffed bookshelf ego. But it's cheaper than many used bookstores even!

[Pete]

CG,
I wore out the mag strip on my library card.
Pete

[Beth]

I still experience the utter loss of self in novels, but now only via audio books, when I am driving. It has its downsides though, when listening to Sophie's Choice, I was a pathetic morose mess for the weeks it took to listen all bazillion CD's.

[Germaine]

It makes me feel less alone to hear that the three of the books you last read were juvenile fiction! I feel bashful sometimes about my eclectic choice of reading.

Also, piggybacking on above comment, Bookswim.com is a Netflix-style website---only with books instead of DVDs, obviously. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds promising. (The founder spoke last week at my school; he's an alum. I spoke to him for a little, and he gave me a free month promo. Sweet!)

And my bedpartner of choice? Norris, my laptop. Sometimes a tome or two will make it under the sheets...then it's a party! ;)

[Mike]

Yeah, I'm a check out Nabokov, since I saw his name twice. Thanks for your version of a book club recommendation list.

Mike

[The Underblawger]

Now that I've grown up, I don't feel the "sublime loss of consciousness" very often either. But, I occasionally do reading certain blogs, including yours. I'm intimidated and inspired by your writing.