Bookstorm

The problem with being a lifelong bachelor is that you fall in love too easily.

That's not an exact quote, but I've spent weeks trying to recall where I read it. I've glanced repeatedly at the list of books I've read since moving to Florida, and I've paged through several more books that I haven't yet read, thinking that maybe I came across that line while looking for something to tide me over, at least until I was able to bring myself to start Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote.

And then, the other day, I suddenly remembered where it came from (or at least what inspired it): Margaret Atwood's Bodily Harm.

I don't remember much about that book, other than Atwood's impressive evocation of the nineteen-eighties (I was born in 1981, so my memories of that decade don't really begin until six or seven years later), but I've spent so much time obsessing over that particular line, knowing that it carries a certain weight for me. The passage has a troubling and strangely illuminating truthfulness to it. Finally, I thought, an explanation for my admittedly superficial tendency to get attached to the women I've slept with.

I've never been in love with a particular person--at least not in the way that love is most often understood--so much as in love with lust. With hindsight comes introspection, if not clarity of vision, and lately I've been pondering past relationships--if I can bring myself to call them that--with blush-inducing embarrassment. Often, I'd sleep with a woman, only to find myself hopelessly infatuated with her. Lust, as facile as it may be, is a sort of love, I think, with its own power, with its own ability to start a tide of emotion that, at least for me, is all but impossible to ignore. I've always taken pride in my ability to wallow in a bleak cynicism that's made it relatively easy for me to ignore my own insecurities, but I'm beginning to realize that "emotional sarcasm," as I like to call it, can't hide the fact that I fall in love very easily.

Maybe consistent bachelorhood has a lot to do with it. Or maybe I've simply been replacing love with lust--an easy mistake. Several years ago, a good friend of mine told me, "You wear your heart on your sleeve." I was stunned at her assertion, not so much because of the statement itself, but because of her ability to read me so easily. She and I still keep in touch, through e-mail, phone calls, and, since I've been back in Florida, occasional visits to her place of employment. She's changed a bit over the years, at least on the surface: she no longer wears contacts that make her eyes green, she's more tan than I've ever seen her, and her hair, while no longer worn in the curly, unkempt Julia Roberts style that she knows I love, is darker--several weeks ago, she told me that she's actually a natural brunette. I like to think that she's changed for the better--of course, I'm biased--but I'm certain that she's still the same person that, to some degree, I fell in love with so many years ago.

Seeing her can be hard sometimes, and while I'm perfectly content to remain "just friends," my slowly-changing outlook is giving way to a sliver of hope.

Despite its imposing length, I find myself reading Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote pretty slowly. It's such an enjoyable book--the most enjoyable book I've read in months--that I'm willing to let it spin out over the next few months. My reading is loosely scheduled--I often pick up a book and, judging by its heft, make plans to read it within a few days or a few weeks--so it's nice to read something without my self-imposed deadlines. Some books seem like mere interludes between the ones I really want to read. I often pick up thrillers with low expectations and a certain level of disdain--"Maybe this will be the most preposturous thriller I've ever read!"--but I've realized that, rather than just having a stack of books, I like having good books to look forward to. And I don't really lament the time lost reading a shitty book; if I'm parched after reading a thriller, a classic or a so-called "literary novel" (a term I confess makes little sense to me) goes down like a long drink of cold water.

I have Ernest Hemingway, Umberto Eco, Orhan Pamuk, and Nathaniel Hawthorne waiting in the wings, but lately I've been thinking about Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections. It's been three years since I last read it and I don't really have fond memories regarding the experience. The book infuriated me beyond reason, to the point where I was hurling it at walls and screaming obscenities about the characters. The book was almost unbearable because of its realism. Maybe I didn't like seeing myself and my own family reflected in the author's cynical pathos. Or maybe I was frustrated with Franzen's "tough love" treatment of his characters--he seemed to delight in seeing them at their worst while remaining distantly sympathetic.

Whatever the reason, I found my old copy of the book--battered, water-stained, and dog-eared, with FUCK THIS BOOK scrawled, in permanent red marker, across pages 287, 289, and 291, respectively. I don't remember much about the book, except for my own episodes of blind fury, but I'm tempted to read it again, if for no other reason than to find out if it'll rise in my esteem.

Depression is a funny thing: I'm convinced it's (almost) always self-fulfilling. Or maybe the irony lurks in how it's become such a common diagnosis, for teenagers especially, but also for millions of adults, despite the fact that it's still a taboo subject in many circles. But a part of me takes a strange sort of pleasure in the knowledge that I disappoint so many people. Of course, I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm only human, as they say, but I often wonder if I've really given any thought to such a simple, albeit clichéd, statement. I tell myself that I'm perfectly comfortable with my imperfections, and maybe on some days I really believe that, but lately I've found myself questioning my own reflections: I wonder if I'm more annoyed with being forced, through therapy, medication, and so-called "treatment plans," to finally come to terms with something I've long dealt with, or if my annoyance lies in the realization that part of being human means being able to admit that sometimes you can't deal with things on your own.

But I'm learning. It's torturous and even humiliating, but I've passed the point of caring--or, more accurately, worrying about--judgment. It's my party and I'll cry if I want to, but that often involves dragging others into my oppressive black hole. But this has been going on for so long that I'd forgotten how to care about things like cause and effect. Like Josef K.'s nightmarish experiences with the bureaucracy from hell, my regular mood shifts have become cycles so common and vicious that I've gotten used to them. I no longer question them and they never catch me by surprise. In fact, I'd almost convinced myself that depression makes me happy.

It's a little exasperating, as well as amusing, to realize that, fifteen chapters and 299 pages in, I've lost all interest in Barack Obama's Dreams from My Father. I'd been flying along, not really caring about the book or its themes but seeing no reason to stop, when the story sagged under the weight of a lengthy treatise on--well, I don't remember exactly, but I think it had to do with the state of blacks in the Chicago projects. I made it safely past that part, with a reasonable effort to contain my frustration, but I didn't quite get over it. It sticks in my mind, not necessarily because it was out of place (which it was) but because of its sheer tedium.

I might blame my lack of interest on my indifference to the book as a whole, but I'm more tempted to blame my mood. I more than halfway through the book--which is essentially the point of no return for me--but last night, for reasons I can't explain, I suddenly found Obama's prose to be irritating. He's often given to overwriting, but he has a calm style that doesn't really draw attention to itself--it's neither good nor bad--and while I've gotten used to the scattershot nature of the story, I found myself wondering when he was going to get to the point.

I suppose, in the end, my patience simply ran out.

With less than 150 pages left, I'd planned on finishing the book by the end of the weekend, but that's becoming less and less likely. I've started Michel Faber's The Crimson Petal and the White--I love the narrator's sarcastic, comic tone--and my four-year-old nephew, whom I haven't seen since he was five months old, is flying in on Saturday night. I know next to nothing about toddlers, but I've already been drafted to keep him entertained on Tuesday. A little voice keeps telling me I'm already in deep shit.

I'm optimistic, though. I may actually survive the experience. I've got Mom on speed-dial and I'm already rehearsing my incessant pleas for help.

I've been thinking a lot about maturity when it comes to reading--the idea that reading, like growing up, is a relentless push forward, a continuous search for something divine, something that finally reveals whatever truth we may be searching for at a particular point in our lives. Mood may be a large part of how we choose our favorite books--of how we discover those "life-changing" stories or poems--but, on a deeper level, I suspect that many of our favorite books are chosen not simply because of quality, but because they happened to coincide with a certain time in our lives.

It's one thing to remember reading a book, if for no other reason than because of its good or bad qualities, but quite another to remember it because it marked a turning point, either in our lives or in our reading experiences. Metaphors are highly personal, often inexplicable, and even primal. Reading as life--or as bookmarks for certain points in our lives--may not be as trite as it first seems. Memories can be cathartic, sometimes to the point of embarrassment, but dwelling on them can be a learning experience in itself. For the reader--or at least for me--that experience can be amplified by the presence of that one book that whispers, "I was written for you."

A confession: I haven't been keeping up with literary news lately.

Looking back, I'm rather astonished at the amount of time I spent culling articles from the Internet. More often than not, I'd come up with duds--interviews with authors I wasn't interested in, reviews of books I had no intention of reading--and my sifting steadily became more exasperating than enlightening. On a deeper level, I think the shift in my blogging style signified a weariness with blogging in general. My interest in literary news has always been passive at best. I wasn't blogging for myself so much as the small readership I'd slowly built.

Despite this blog's title, the book bits have taken a backseat. This wasn't intentional, but since I've been writing in legal pads and essentially cutting off my lifeline--the endless parade of links and essays and terse summaries--I've had no other choice but to actually write something. It's easier than I would've imagined, even if the inspiration is sometimes lacking, but deciding whether or not I like what I've written is something completely different.

Pointlessness and occasional irrelevance is the new tone around here--I drafted a post about a longed-for porn collection that an ex-girlfriend had thrown away when I was in college--but that's something I've always enjoyed. I don't write with any sort of intention, but maybe that is the intention. I've almost convinced myself that I can make this work, that I can make blogging a bit more cathartic, but to my way of thinking, that involves making myself vulnerable. I'm perfectly aware of my failings, but at this early stage, I haven't quite decided how far I'm going to take it.

I've finally started Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It's bleak, depressing, and brimming with loneliness. I love it.

Ms. Choi was the first teacher I ever had a crush on.

She was my eighth-grade language arts teacher, twenty-six years old, with shoulder-length brown hair and a penchant for walking barefoot around the classroom. She had a warm, cheery personality coupled with the kind of approachability not usually found in teachers: she genuinely cared about her students, but she also came off as a social butterfly who always knew about the latest trends. Back then, Nirvana was the number-one band, Clueless was the number-one movie, and The X-Files--Ms. Choi's favorite--was the number-one television show.

Then, as now, I was quiet and shy to the point of awkwardness and often given to blushing, especially when Ms. Choi tried to get me to talk to girls--"You should say hi to Ashleigh Anderson--she really likes you." Ms. Choi had an influence that made her "cool teacher" status well-deserved, but more than that, she was also the one who fed me a steady diet of books to read. She had a small bookshelf behind her desk and I would often ask her, in my small, high-pitched voice, if I could borrow one of them. She happily lent me Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret--a book that, after finishing it, we both agreed was more for girls than for boys--and William Golding's Lord of the Flies. I can't say that I completely understood Lord of the Flies, and Ms. Choi warned me that it was geared more towards high school students, but that didn't put me off. Teachers had given me some tests the previous year and found that I was already reading at the college level.

It was also Ms. Choi who awakened my inner writer. During a short story unit, during which I read Richard Connell's "The Most Dangerous Game" and Ambrose Bierce's "An Incident at Owl Creek Bridge" for the first time, Ms. Choi had the class write his or her own short story as part of the final grade. 12 Monkeys was my favorite movie back then, so I wrote a story involving time travel, nuclear holocaust, and a group of Nazis attempting to transport Adolf Hitler from the 1940s to some point in the distant future. I got an A for that story.

Years later--I was probably sixteen or seventeen--I bumped into Ms. Washington, who had been my eighth-grade social studies teacher (and, not surprisingly, another one of my favorites). We spoke for a bit and she informed that Ms. Choi was teaching high school and that she used my first short story to show her students "how it's done."

I don't claim to know what I was doing when I wrote it, nor do I remember much about that story, but since it was for Ms. Choi, I think I can say, with confidence, that I gave it my best effort.

I love irony: it's a lot like the little Chinese girl from second grade who used to embarrass me by chasing me around the playground, puckering her lips and telling me that I'm handsome and that I love her. Back then, girls had cooties and boys were always smarter, but a part of me enjoyed being chased around the playground, always trailed by her shouts and her charms. Her name was Bernadette and I think she latched on to me because we had the same jet-black hair and similar Cherokee backpacks: mine was black and hers was pink. Yet it wasn't until third grade--the year Ms. Rockette read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 to the class--that I finally learned the truth of Bernadette's perception, the beauty of irony, and the rather long memories of the opposite sex.

"Brandon, you had the biggest crush on me last year. You were stupid enough to kiss me."

And therein lies the beauty of it all: I don't recall ever kissing Bernadette and she was certainly being sarcastic, but like the best kind of irony, she'd exposed an embarrassing truth I hadn't wanted to confront. I'll never know if she liked me in return, and hindsight doesn't always guarantee clarity of vision, but the cynicism I've nursed all these years tells me that she probably thought I had cooties and that girls were indeed smarter than boys.

I usually find nonfiction to be a bit of a slog, but I'm very much enjoying David McCullough's 1776.

My doctor has put me on a higher dosage of Lexapro: instead of the ten milligrams I was taking several years ago, I'm now on twenty milligrams. The side effects are kicking my ass--nausea coupled with the kind of restlessness that makes me feel as though I've had several shots of espresso. Follow that with several cups of coffee--part of my usual morning routine--and I have the sense that the world moves too slowly for its own good.

I'm finally ready for the last installment of the Harry Potter series. I finished J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince late last night--a 259-page marathon filled with Horcruxes, Inferi, and Death Eaters. It's been a while since I read the previous book--four years, at least--so there were times when I was hopelessly lost, but considering that the seventh book comes out in a month or two, I shouldn't have any problems picking up the thread once more.

Reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince reminded me of how attached I am to the characters and their storylines. I actually felt a wave of nausea--or maybe it was because of the Lexapro--when a major character was murdered. This only worsened my restlessness: I put the book aside and paced around the house and patio, cursing both Ms. Rowling and the murderer.

I'm already sleeping pretty badly and finishing Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince didn't help. I tossed and turned, as they say, and needlessly checked my cell phone, mulling over vague prophecies and Unbreakable Vows.

Yes, I think I'm ready for Year Seven.

I've started writing my posts in yellow legal pads. I don't have much time for the computer these days and, moreover, I've always found it difficult to write at a keyboard anyway, perhaps because it makes things a bit impersonal. I haven't decided if writing my posts longhand is the way to go. I'm pretty self-conscious about my writing--who isn't?--so most of the paper winds up in the garbage. Needless waste, some would say, though I've found that writing by hand can be cathartic, even if I'm usually less-than-pleased with the results.

My reading has been pretty varied lately. In addition to the usual fiction--I've been playing catch-up by reading J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince--I started David McCullough's 1776 and Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. Admittedly, I haven't made much progress with the last two books--the Harry Potter book, like all the books in the series, has a way of making me put everything on hold--but I expect to make leaps with them by next week.

Of course, I'm the kind of self-deprecating person who rarely lives up to expectations. I've become obsessed with reading James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. Don't ask why.