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On Books
August 1, 2006    File under: Information Technology

Kevin asked me to answer the following.

1. One book that changed your life?

Of all, if I had to choose one, I'd say it was the Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas. When I was 17 and traveling with a school group in England, I was pulled into a bookstore where, among many familiar titles, I found a slim Everyman Edition of Thomas's Collected, which I bought for two reasons: (1) I liked "Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night," which I'd read in Senior English, and I thought that if it was the single and this was the album maybe there were more such poems within; (2) it had some strange pictures in the back, including on of William Blake's woodcut of the Jacob's ladder (which has been mutilated into some of the graphics for this site) and a still of Le Chien Andalou showing the straight-razor cutting the eye (tasty). Something of a taste for the odd and the perverse and more of a thirst and a hunger for thick language tastier than a barbecue sandwich brought me to purchase that book, which was, I believe, the first book I purchased of my own interest and volition and with money over which I had sole possession. It turned out to be the first book I read entirely on my own, without tutoring or coersion, and the first book I managed to understand on my own, though I still don't understand every little thing in there. Basically, this was the book that taught me to read. I learned that if you ask the right questions of a text you can get a story out of it no matter how it wrinkles its Celtic nose. This lesson would help me later read more poems and things like Ulysses whatever those are. I would also say this book played a major role in my deciding that I wanted to write poems. Then comes all the rest.


2. One book you have read more than once?

Like Kevin, I find myself saying One? both because I've read many books more than once and because I do think, like Kevin, books should be for re-reading as well as for reading. Or, we might say, reading isn't just running through the pages front to back and could take years or decades and could go on for much of one's life.

So, two into this questionnaire, I'm going to refuse the question in a different way and say that I actually have a schedule of re-reading. Every Spring I re-read Leaves of Grass and every Fall it's Moby-Dick and somewhere in between I try to re-read Walden and Emerson's essays, and about 300 poems by Emily Dickinson. It keeps me grounded. I also like to re-read Absalom, Absalom! and If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem! about every other year. Other books I have a tendency to return to are Tristram Shandy, Irving's Sketch-Book, A. R. Ammons's Sphere, and Larry Levis's Elegy.

Most recently I re-read on the same day David Wojahn's Mystery Train and Joshua Marie Wilkinson's Lug Your Careless Body Out of the Careful Dusk.


3. One book you would want on a desert island?

Probably Moby-Dick as it's a story and an anthology of most of what I love about early 19th-Century America. Otherwise Leaves of Grass.


4. One book that made you laugh?

Moby-Dick. Funniest book every written. Seriously.


5. One book that made you cry?

Without Sanctuary, edited by James Allen.


6. One book you wish had been written?

A Compendium of African-American or Black Comedy from Before the Civil War by Richard Pryor.


7. One book you wish had never been written?

Black Beauty, which somewhere along the way lost its subtitle "Torture Device to Be Used in Fifth-Grade Reading Class."


8. One book you are currently reading?

The Singing Fish by Peter Markus. You should, too.


9. One book you have been meaning to read?

Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler.


10. To whom would you pose these questions?

Adam Clay, Shanna Compton, Gina Franco, Zach Schomburg, Mathias Svalina.

Posted by Jake Adam York at August 1, 2006 11:00 AM



COMMENTS

We have similar reading habits. While I don't have a specific schedule, I read Invisible Man and Leaves of Grass at least once a year. I read Moby Dick twice last year, but mostly because I was writing an essay on it. Interestingly, the second book of poems I owned was the Col. Poems of Dylan Thomas and I wrote a linguistics essay on "The Conversation of Prayer" last semester.

Somewhat related, Debra Fried recently informed me that if I want to die a happy man I should read a Henry James book every year. I guess if I take that advice and I live as long as I hope to, I'll reread several of his books.

Posted by: Kevin at August 1, 2006 5:52 PM