Ah, Books

When I was a 14-year old twit, my best friend and I began to mimic the affectations of the stuffed shirts who regularly got As on their Latin tests as we hunched in the back, hoping not to be called on.

“Ah, books!” Doug would exclaim, imitating Dennis Ryan’s owlish stare of superiority.

“Ah, life would be an empty library without books!” I’d thunder. I was Janet Browne, that hideously smart girl who actually seemed to like to study.

“Ahhh, books!” We’d shout, jamming our fingers into our jowls in imitation of our Latin teacher, the most intellectual member of the teaching staff.

I guess you had to be there. From this distance it’s at best jejeune. But if there’s anything I enjoy, it’s reversing myself decades later. Accuse me of flip-flop if you will, but today I’m here to follow up on Sumo‘s post of yesterday on the reading of books. The reading of them in the USA is down. Those who read often opt for romances and religious tomes.

I registered my advocacy and objections in the comments section, then went to bed, where I listened to the last of George Eliot’s Middlemarch. Since I injured my shoulder in part by reading in bed, I’ve taken to listening to books when I go to bed… Lulu’s own little bedtime story-time.

Ah, books, indeed. I’m writing today to try to warn my sister Sirens that to ignore the important writing that is done in this day, as in any age, is to contribute to the silencing of voices that have struggled to find themselves in the first place. If the market will only bear Harlequin wanna-bes and the ravings of happy Christian help-meets, don’t expect for the next bright voices of coming generations to be discovered, let alone nurtured

Many of the books I have recently read have taken an act of courage to live and write. Reading Lolita in Tehran documented a women’s reading group, a haven in the Islamic revolution that have left both men and women oppressed in that sad republic. Persepolis, a masterpiece of graphica, again takes us into the Islamic Republic of Iran to glimpse actual lives in the midst of that change. And where would we be without the voices of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker to inform us and to challenge us? Many of you have yet to read the sweet irony in Grace Paley’s stories. Sample “The Loudest Voice,” a hilarious tale of a young Jewish girl who alone in her class has the vocal range to serve as the narrator in her class’s Christmas pageant.

Ray Bradbury’s focus in Fahrenheit 451 is on television, whose industry was in its infancy. But he was also mindful that technology could be used to fragment thought, rather than to enhance it. The society that he depicted was filled with zombies—people drugged, seduced by both chemicals and sensation. And society, of course, didn’t want the nasty business of having to sort out its ideas. It was confusing!

So today I write to invite you to vacation in the worthy state of confusion that is the thinking life. If you don’t want to junk your TV, at least extend its life by giving it a rest. There isn’t so much that is great that we can afford to miss out on the first-rate writing that is happening around us today. We can meet people we would never otherwise meet, and their words and ideas can enrich our own perspectives.

So read. Or listen. Lots of the people who come into our library check out books on CDs and tape—they have long commutes or mindless tasks from which to be rescued. We have a four-hour drive today, and Water for Elephants is going to keep us awake.

Read, listen, think, and raise hell. Do it because corporate America is looking for an excuse to dump these troublesome writers. Don’t think that the big boys wouldn’t rather have you perched in front of Desperate Housewives or one of those so-called reality shows rather than reading Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. It is the earnest wish of the very people we despise that we succumb to the numbing influence of consumerism and bad theology.

Ah, books, indeed!