Love and Loss

April A-to-Z: must-read books

The Screaming Room (1987)

By Barbara Peabody

USA

A superior novelist has a good sense of the emotional landscape of their work and takes the reader on a balanced ride, alternately building then dissipating tensions. This book is instead a roller coaster with far more downs than ups. There is no balance here because this was not written by a superior novelist, but by an inexperienced writer; a mother whose child has succumbed to AIDS. This is in fact her diary.

This happened some years ago, when AIDS was new to North America, not well understood, and generally received as a death sentence. The story is told with fearless explicit honesty.

I grew to love these people and was deeply hurt by their experience. For a couple weeks after reading it I had to regularly remind myself that I had not actually known these people; that they were not counted among my friends and loved ones. And yet, I will never forget them.

Nothing I can say could oversell this book’s impact. It’s emotionally devastating; so much that perhaps I should not even recommend it. And yet I do and without hesitation. For all the hurt there is a great reward which is hard to express. I think my capacity for empathy was greatly nurtured from this experience and that is a precious thing in a world that needs so much more of it would we survive this species' reckless adolescence.

This is a must-read book for anyone with a heart.

K is for Krishna

April A-to-Z: must-read books

Bhagavad Gita and its Message (1995)

By Sri Aurobindo

(1872-1950) India

Aurobindo Ghose was an Indian nationalist raised for significant periods in England before revolting against their occupation of his homeland—through passive resistance in public, but privately in militant form. While jailed for prosecution in connection with a failed assassination attempt (for which he was eventually acquitted) he made that greatest use of solitude which brings about revelation and enlightenment.

As a guru and yogi, he built an ashram which exists today as an intentional community; one which attempts to guide its population according to its founder’s teachings.

For a long time I wished to visit Auroville because the messages which I gleaned from Aurobindo resembled my own understandings about life, humanity and evolution more closely than those of any religion or philosophy I’d ever heard, and at that time I yearned for the companionship of those with like minds.

Reading his English interpretation and treatment of Hindu holy book Bhagavad Gita was a thrilling emotional experience because I read things which I had been experiencing but which I had never spoke or written of to anyone, nor ever read or heard about before. I finally had some affirmation; some evidence that I was not entirely alone, even if the source was more than two thousand years old and its translator dead (or rather, he left his body, according to followers) for more than fifty years. The book however, had just been published in 1995, finally edited posthumously from a great volume of drafts.

If you have ever redefined for yourself, the nature of truth; ever been so humble as to abandon all your beliefs, knowing they had to be flawed, and started all over again; ever came to regard causality and perspective with a new reverence, ever pondered the prevalence of illusion in society and in your own mind, ever looked inward with great courage; ever been so staggered; knocked off your feet, by the miracle of your own existence – any of these experiences… then this book, and possibly other treatments of the Gita, are a must-read.

Some short passages which moved me very deeply:

While the actions are being entirely done by the modes of nature, he who's self is bewildered by egoism thinks that it is his "I" which is doing them.

The mind is restless and very difficult to restrain; but it may be controlled by constant practice and non-attachment

When thy intelligence shall cross beyond the whirl of delusion, then shalt thou become indifferent to scripture heard or that which thou hast yet to hear.

The sages who have united their reason and will with the divine renounce the fruit which action yields and, liberated from the bondage of birth, they reach the states beyond misery.

The enlightened man does not mourn either for the living or the dead.

J is for Joy

April A-to-Z: must-read books

14,000 things to be happy about (1990)

By Barbara Ann Kipfer

(1954-) USA

No plot, no characters, no themes, no chapters, no conflict, no dialogue, no metaphors, no climax, no rising and falling tensions, no point of view, no flashbacks, no foreshadowing. Only a single list of things… 612 pages long.

Doesn’t that sound like the pet project of a stay-at-home mom? Interestingly, Kipfer has a Ph.D. in Linguistics and works on research projects involving dictionary use in artificial intelligence.

But how does one perpetrate literary criticism upon such a thing? It’s so generic that it invites every reader’s unique interpretation (I guess that’s true of any book, strictly speaking).

Here’s my take:

Within the list there are things:

we can be grateful for,

delicious things,

pretty things,

quirky things,

comfy cozy things,

things we can be proud of,

inspiring thoughts,

little every day things,

celebratory things,

surprisingly subtle little details,

things that never occurred to you,

and things that make you say, what the—huh?

Okay, so maybe there are some themes.

This book is a must-read for any middle-class North American who is feeling like life is not what it should be; or not treating you well.

There’s a little magic as you get into the rhythm of the list. A little window opens up and lets the sunshine in, and you start to feel pretty grateful; pretty lucky, to have such a life of privilege and human magic. It reminds us to appreciate the little things.

Perhaps the great usefulness lies in reading things and having to ask, why would that make me happy? And as you figure out why, you’re reminded that we have so many reasons to be happy, and that they eclipse our reasons not to be. And these are great reminders.

Warning: if you are a foodie like me, do not read on an empty stomach or you are in for a little torture.

A passage:

• A stream of consciousness list
• pajamas at breakfast
• reed-fringed lagoons
• seeing the moon rise  
• the feel of a rug under bare feet
• sweet fresh corn and tender baby green lima beans drenched in cream
• the “snuggle right in” feeling
• a lake catching the last flecks of sunlight coming in over the pines
• the position of your head as you bite into a taco
• shadows cast by shutters against shiny white walls
• a small music box that plays The Blue Danube and a tune from La Traviata
• moderation
• starting to make things happen
• a baby’s first tooth…

I is for INGSOC

April A-to-Z: must-read books

Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)

By George Orwell

(1903-1950) England

Doublethink… “War is Peace”… “Freedom is Slavery”… “Ignorance is strength”… “Who controls the past controls the future”… “Big Brother is Watching You”… telescreens… The Ministry of Truth… fictionalized history… the melding of super-states…

Orwell describes lives of absurd charade and control systems which contemporary thinking people realize so closely mimic our genuine living experience. We seem to know it and yet we don’t even dream of putting a stop to it. We seem to know that these principles have always dominated the world’s civilizations; monuments of heartless greed. Perhaps we just can’t imagine what good would come from revolution; how would the new power manage not to resemble the old? Or is it just that we are far too cozy to consider the discomforts of revolt – happy enough with our middle-tier slavery thanks to the under-appreciated luxuries bought for us from our bottom-tier machine slaves, and from the not-yet depleted boon of our unsustainable rape of nature’s resources and from exploitative global economics?

I read 1984 as an early-adolescent about the same time I read Fahrenheit 451 and The Running Man and only interpreted them as fascinating stories. I did not appreciate their cautionary relevance. Oddly though, my unconscious would not let me forget them. For many years following I constantly dreamed long epic dreams where I was fleeing the authorities in futuristic worlds where I sensed that everyone but I had gone insane. And I only interpreted them as interesting dreams. But those dreams kept these books, and similar others, in the back of my mind.

It seems to me now, that all Orwell had to do was take away the temporary comforts of exploitation and the environment of Nineteen Eighty-Four is precisely the mathematical forecast of our evolution of society. I think that his dystopian circumstances only look absurd because the suffering has been made appreciable with the material bleakness of their lives. How different is Orwell’s absurdity, in principle, from that of our own reality?

This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about their grandchildren, or someone else's.

Some praise for Orwell and Nineteen Eighty-Four which I find particularly interesting:

“Orwell’s Courage and Integrity shine from every page”—Daily Telegraph

“Orwell described the compromised lives we recognize as our own”—Andrew Motion, Observer

“He saw through everything because he could also see through himself. Many writers and journalists have tried to imitate his particular kind of clarity without processing anything like his moral authority”—Peter Ackroyd, The Times

“A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age”—Irish Times

A passage:

   It was even possible, at moments, to switch one’s hatred this way or that by a voluntary act. Suddenly, by the sort of voluntary effort with which one wrenches one’s head away from the pillow in a nightmare, Winston succeeded in transferring his hatred from the face on the screen to the dark-haired girl behind him. Vivid, beautiful hallucinations flashed through his mind. He would flog her to death with a rubber truncheon. He would tie her naked to a stake and shoot her full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. He would ravish her and cut her throat at the moment of climax. Better than before, moreover, he realized why it was he hated her. He hated her because she was young and pretty and sexless, because he wanted to go to bed with her and would never do so, because round her sweet supple waist, which seemed to ask you to encircle it with your arm, there was only the odious scarlet sash, aggressive symbol of chastity.

   The Hate rose to its climax. The voice of Goldstein had become an actual sheep’s bleat, and for an instant the face changed into that of a sheep. Then the sheep-face melted into the figure of a Eurasian soldier who seemed to be advancing , huge and terrible, his sub-machine-gun roaring, and seeming to spring out of the surface of the screen, so that some of the people in the front row actually flinched backwards in their seats.

H is for Heroes

April A-to-Z: must-read books

The Hobbit (1937)

By J. R. R. Tolkien

(1892-1973) England

I can’t imagine there’s anything left to say about Tolkien’s epic saga, comprised of The Hobbit, and the six books (traditionally published in pairs) which make up The Lord of the Rings story.

There is something timelessly wholesome in reading Tolkien. If R. L. Stevenson can be regarded a grandfather of pirate lore then Tolkien is certainly the grand master of fantasy. His vision of Elven, Dwarven and Hobbit cultures have ever remained the staple interpretations; a mythology model from which thousands of subsequent authors begin.

There is a marvelous magical potential inherent in these works as a whole: One reads The Hobbit; a perfect simple adventure quest story, as a pre-teen or young teen, and then Lord of the Rings; complex and multi-themed, as a young adult. They are then forever more re-readable and forever unite the reader’s childhood and adult perspectives. Let’s face it, there is a childish component to fantasy and imagination (however noble they may be), and like Bradbury, Tolkien is a valuable agent to adults endeavoring to keep that childhood link alive.

The Hobbit is a must-read for any young person (or young-at-heart) with any love at all for fantasy-adventure, or who has yet to discover that love!

A passage:

   “Moon-letters are rune-letters, but you cannot see them,” said Elrond, “not when you look straight at them. They can only be seen when the moon shines behind them, and what is more, with the more cunning sort it must be a moon of the same shape and season as the day when they were written. The dwarves invented them and wrote them with silver pens, as your friends could tell you. These must have been written on a mid-summer’s eve , in a crescent moon, a long while ago.”

   “What do they say,” asked Gandalf and Thorin together, a bit vexed perhaps that even Elrond should have found this out first, though really there had not been a chance before, and there would not have been another until goodness knows when.

   “Stand by the gray stone when the thrush knocks,” read Elrond, “and the setting sun with the last light of Durin’s Day will shine upon the key-hole.”

   “Durin, Durin!” said Thorin. “He was the father of the fathers of the first race of Dwarves, the Long-Beards, and my first ancestor: I am his heir.”

   “Then what is Durin’s Day?” asked Elrond.

   “The first day of the Dwarves’ new year,” said Thorin, “is as all should know the first day of the last moon of Autumn on the threshold of Winter. We still call it Durin’s Day when the last moon of Autumn and the sun are in the sky together. But this will not help us much, I fear, for it passes our skill in these days to guess when such a time will come again.”

   “That remains to be seen,” said Gandalf. “Is there any more writing?”

   “None to be seen by this moon,” said Elrond, and he gave the map back to Thorin; and then they went down to the water to see the elves dance and sing upon the midsummer’s eve.

G is for Gunslinger

April A-to-Z: must-read books

The Dark Tower Series (1982-2012)

By Steven King

(1947-) Maine

The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed.

Steven King wrote these twelve words in response to Robert Browning’s nineteenth century poem, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came. At the time he had very little idea where he was going with it, except that, in his own words: “it was time to stop goofing around with a pick and shovel and get behind the controls of one big great god a’mighty steamshovel, a sense that it was time to try and dig something big out of the sand…” And so begins the novel, The Gunslinger.

More than twenty years later, after publishing more than two dozen books; seven from the Dark Tower series spaced patiently among them, King brought that project to resolution with the series’ title novel, The Dark Tower (2004), satisfied that it indeed would suffice as his personal magnum opus.

That initial ambition surprises me though, as it came on the heels of his epic Lord of the Rings-inspired novel, The Stand, which remains one of my favourite reading experiences of all time. But King was ambitious. His earliest works swiftly progress in scope, complexity and impact. He knew the Gunslinger idea was special and I think he didn’t want to conclude it before he’d realized more of his potential as a storyteller.

Somehow, as a reader, I attended the same wavelength. While The Stand hooked me as a constant King reader, I knew to leave the Dark Tower stuff alone for the time being. And in fact The Stand reading experience was never repeated, and as the things I cherished; King’s particular sensibilities, sense of humour and courageous imagination were no longer enough to defeat the slightly formulaic familiarity which his novels began to impart on me, I turned to The Gunslinger and the Dark Tower series as my fond farewell to the Steven King experience and my last attempt to re-experience the epic wonder of The Stand. Appropriately, I have not read them in succession but over the course of four years, interspersed with other (non-King) books and series of books. It's a delightful reading experience which I'm in no hurry to leave behind.

Though King is hailed as a horror writer, and purveyor of particularly creepy offerings (mostly by non-King-readers, it seems to me), I think you’ll find that fantasy, sci-fi and western elements are all more prevalent here than horror. The story's landscapes transcend time and space, and span the physical and metaphysical, thus different books have different flavours, but are strongly unified by hero characters of great depth.

I’m about to begin book seven, The Dark Tower, after which, I will decide whether to append the experience with his late and presumably optional addition, The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012).

These books are a must-read for any speculative fiction lover. And don’t fret; they’re not too scary!

A passage from The Gunslinger (1982):

“You asleep?”  the gunslinger asked.

“No.”

“Did you understand what I told you?”

“Understand it?” the boy asked, with cautious scorn. “Understand it? Are you kidding?”

“No.” But the gunslinger felt defensive. He had never told anyone about his coming of age before. Of course, the hawk had been a perfectly acceptable weapon, yet it had been a trick too. And a betrayal. The first of many: Am I ready to throw this boy at the man in black?

“I understood it,” the boy said. “It was a game, wasn’t it? Do grown men always have to play games? Does everything have to be an excuse for another kind of game? Do any men grow up or do they only come of age?”

“You don’t know everything,” the gunslinger said, trying to hold his slow anger.

“No. But I know what I am to you.”

“And what is that?” the gunslinger asked tightly.

“A poker chip.”

The gunslinger felt an urge to find a rock and brain the boy. Instead, he held his tongue.

“Go to sleep,” he said. “Boys need their sleep.”

And in his mind he heard Marten’s echo: Go and find your hand.

He sat stiffly in the darkness, stunned with horror and terrified (for the first time in his existence; of anything) of the self-loathing that might come.

The Gunslinger (1982)

The Drawing of the Three (1987)

The Waste Lands (1991)

Wizard and Glass (1997)

Wolves of the Calla (2003)

Song of Susannah (2004)

The Dark Tower (2004)

The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012)

F is for Family

April A-to-Z: must-read books

A Wolf at the Table (2008)

By Augusten Burroughs

(1965-) Pennsylvania

This is a memoir concerning a father-son relationship. How odd then, the cover image: a fork, curled like a claw, bathed in red light. And the peculiar mood at the outset. A reader is inclined to think they’ve stumbled on a werewolf tale. I was skeptical at first, that this was genuine autobiography.

But of course there are men of extreme personalities in the world, and why shouldn’t some of them have been fathers? And why wouldn’t the son of such a man, growing up in strange circumstances, be inclined toward the inwardness, escape and contemplation which would serve him in, and propel him toward, the art of writing.

This book was deeply compelling as it triggered much empathy in me, and it’s conclusion, so subtle but so powerful.

This book is a must-read for anyone who can shed a tear for another, and be grateful for that.

A passage:

   I pulled on the hem of his jacket, his sleeve. I grabbed his cold fingers and yanked them. I said, “Pick me up, pick me up!” Melting snow fell from his cap onto my neck and slid down my back, and this made me screech and laugh and jump in place. My father winced and complained, “Hush, that sound hurts my ears.”

   “Pick me up!” He never did but I said it anyway.

   “Damn it son, please.”

   “I backed away, still fidgeting and twitching with excitement. “Okay,” I said, and allowed him to walk into the house unmolested. Was he heading for the kitchen? Or the living room? I ran ahead of him, tearing across the floor. I made it to his destination long before he did. I hopped in place, up and down, up and down. I just could not stand it!

   Finally, when he reached the kitchen or the dining room table, I hugged him. And then those arms of his slid down between us, prying me away.

   It made me giggle. “You’re tickling me!” I shouted.

   I always managed to hang on a little bit longer.

   I always won!

   It was our game and I loved it. Me against the armsandhands to get to him, his solid core part, the middle, the him.

E is for Escape

April A-to-Z: must-read books

The Long Walk (1956)

By Slavomir Rawicz

(1915-2004) Poland

I was a suburban adolescent when I read this tale of Siberian prison camp denizens dreaming of escape. Since then it has become unclear whether this constitutes a true story or not. Doubts have been raised and answers have been given. I don’t personally give a hoot to what degree the chain of events described in The Long Walk align to an actual sequence of experiences or who it was who truly experienced them.

There is undoubtedly fiction in all true stories as there is fiction in real life itself. And in the pages of all fiction there are no doubt truths.  All stories are an assemblage of components of reality.

Regardless, this book is an unforgettable testament to the desperate human struggle for freedom and survival. It is a must-read for anyone who feels like dropped cell-phone calls, rush-hour traffic or unreliable internet represent hardship.

A Passage:

   It was about nine o’clock one bleak November day that the key rattled in the heavy lock of my cell in the Lubyanka Prison and the two broad-shouldered guards marched purposefully in. I had been walking slowly around, left hand in the now characteristic prisoner’s attitude of supporting the top of the issue trousers, which Russian ingenuity supplied without buttons or even string on the quite reasonable assumption that a man preoccupied with keeping up his pants would be severely handicapped in attempting to escape. I had stopped pacing at the sound of the door opening and was standing against the far wall when they came in. One stood near the door, the other took two or three strides in. “Come,” he said. “Get moving.”

   For me this day—twelve months after my arrest in Pinsk on November 19^th, 1939—was to be important. I was being marched off to my trial before the Soviet Supreme Court. Here in Moscow, shambling through the echoing narrow corridors of the Lubyanka between my two guards, I was a man almost shorn of identity, ill-fed, abysmally lonely, trying to keep alive some spark of resistance in the dank prison atmosphere of studied official loathing and suspicion of me. Just a year before, when the Russian security men walked into the welcome-home party my mother had arranged for me in the family house at Pinsk, I was Lieutenant Rawicz of the Polish Cavalry, aged twenty-four, slim and smart in my well-tailored uniform and whipcord breeches and shining riding boots. My condition now was a tribute to the unflagging brutalities and the expert subtleties of NKVD (Soviet Secret Police) interrogators at Minsk and Kharkov. No prisoner can forget Kharkov. In pain and filth and degradation they try to turn a man into a whimpering beast.

D is for Desire

April A-to-Z: must-read books

Mysterious Skin (1996)

By Scott Heim

(1966-) Kansas

This was the first book I read presented in first-person tense from two different characters in alternating chapters. Thank goodness I didn’t throw it aside as was my initial impulse as I stumbled into chapter two.

The two main characters are teenage products of their childhood traumas. One boy’s past is veiled in mystery while the other appears to have taken in stride circumstances no doubt troubling to the reader. So different are the characters I must assume that one author could not have written both from personal experience and yet to Heim’s significant credit, both are brought to life with touching intimacy in this, his first published novel.

In a society riddled with illusions it is the outsiders who have the most difficult paths but also the greatest potential rewards, in terms of accessing truth. This is a story of two such converging paths.

This book is a must-read for anyone with a heart for the underdog.

Some praise for Mysterious Skin, with which I wholeheartedly agree:

“The boldness and invention of this first novel are astonishing… It is an even , well-ordered place hiding gullies and beasts that will ambush its readers and leave a permanent mark on our dreams.” –Matthew Stadler, author

“Eerie, precise, emotionally complex, quietly charismatic, and full of grace…” –Dennis Cooper, author of Try and Frisk

A passage:

                “Merry Christmas,” I said to Neil and Brian. They still stared at the house, stared beyond its glass and wood and aluminum siding, stared at what had happened inside, years ago. Neil’s face was anxious, heartbreaking in its bruised and swollen state. Brian’s face had leached of color.

                I wasn’t part of this. Where else did I have to go but away?

                I could have said “I have to leave now,” could have explained “it’s better if you two are alone,” but I didn’t say a word. I raised my hand, fingers scratching the air in good-bye, and spun around. I stood there, my back to them, these two people I’d united at last. Then I began walking. The air made brittle stabs at my face, and I swallowed icy mouthfuls.

                I tried telepathy one final time. I didn’t care about its foolishness. I zeroed my mind on theirs, hoping Neil and Brian would hear, just this once. I love you both.

C is for Consciousness

April A-to-Z: must-read books

Neuropath (2008)

By Scott Bakker

(1967-) Ontario

People have read Neuropath, plot-wise a horror story of sorts, and said it changed their whole perception of the human mind and that it was a very creepy experience. When I read the book, it was a profound joy.

The story is creepy at times, yes, but the meat of this book is not contained in the plot. It is in all the state-of-the-art testimony from the neuroscience community which Bakker shares; the tidbits of scientific learning which suggest rather unarguably that we human beings are extremely mistaken about what we human beings are.

And while he presents most of this testimony in rather a poor light, that we should find these discoveries disturbing, it is possible (and more appropriate, I suggest) to view these discoveries from a much more joyful perspective. For, to know thyself is extremely empowering. To know thyself, or rather, the genuine nature of the human brain, especially within the greater context of the nature of life itself, is to understand the amazing thrilling potential of the human being and our potential effect on the universe, and to understand the great hurdles that have detained us just inches from the starting block of conscious evolution, and to manifest great capacities for pity and forgiveness, and to see much deeper through the veil of illusions which blanket our society.

What Bakker may not realize, is that these discoveries are not new. Poets have described these precise realities for hundreds of years, but in different terminology. As someone who was able to access those poetic ideas only after indulging in introspective self-discovery at great length, it is always joyful to find consolidation in literature, but what a find indeed, to see that the science community is now agreeing wholeheartedly with ancient poets. Now if only they realized it. If only the population at large would realize it. What great change might that inspire?

This is a must-read book for anyone who, like Neo from The Matrix, feels innately that there is something not quite real about the world, or perhaps, about yourself.

A passage:

“The world is on the brink, Goodbook. I’m simply the first to cross over.”

Thomas knew what he was talking about, but for some reason found himself pretending otherwise. “Brink. What brink?”

Neil wasn’t buying. “Is it the kids?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Are they the reason?”

“The reason for what?”

“The reason you moved back to Disney World?”

The confusion, the double-take disorientation, evaporated, and Thomas suddenly felt focused, the way only whiskey and outrage could make possible. “You’re drunk, Neil. Leave them out of this.”

Disney world was their pet term for the world as understood by the masses, one papered over with conceit after comforting conceit. A world anchored in psychological need rather than physical fact. A world with a billion heroes and happy endings, where the unknown was irrelevant and confronting your own weaknesses was the breakfast of losers.

“You know, I find it hard to remember what it’s like living with one foot in both worlds. To know, on the one hand, that paternal love is simply nature’s way of duping us into perpetuating our genes—“

“It’s not duping… Look, Neil, you’re really starting to piss me—“

“Not duping? Hmm. Then tell me, why do you love your son?”

“Because he’s my son.”

“And that’s an explanation?”

Thomas had glared at his friend. “That’s the only one I need.”

“Evolution wouldn’t have it any other way,” Neil had said. “It takes a lot of commitment to raise a child to reproductive age.”

Thomas tossed back his shot, clenched his teeth in revulsion and dismay. What the fuck was going on?

“Because you love your kids,” Neil continued, “you expend tremendous resources on them, you train them, feed them, protect them, you would even die for them. You do all the things that your genes just happen to require, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the harsh realities of natural selection.” Neil frowned, leaned back into the cushions. He hooked his toes on the coffee table. “And that’s not duping?”

“They’re just different descriptions of the same thing,” Thomas said. “Different angles.”

Neil reached out to pour them two more shots of whisky. “I guess you have no choice,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“To rationalize. To set up shop in Disney World.”

Thomas shook his head. “Look. Neil. All this stuff was great in college. I mean we were soooo radical, even in Skeat’s class, mopping the floor with lit majors, freaking people out around the bong…” A pained grimace. “But now? C’mon. Give it a rest.”

Neil was watching him carefully. “That doesn’t make it any less real, Goodbook.” He gestured to the TV, where lines of Muscovites stretching out into a haze of grey snow shared the screen with talking heads and warm studio lighting. “Just look. It’s ending, just as Skeat said it would. No virulent pandemic, no mass environmental collapse, no thermonuclear Armageddon, just mobs and mobs of people, hominids pretending to be angels, clutching at rules that don’t exist, feeding, fighting, fucking…” 

B is for Buddha

April A-to-Z: must-read books

Siddhartha (1922)

By Hermann Hesse

(1877-1962) German Empire

People will tell you emphatically that this book is about the Buddha. It is not. It is about a man with the same given name (Siddhartha) as the Buddha, who searches for truth and reality by means of his own organic exploration, at a time when some of his peers are literally following the Buddha around. And this distinction is critical because it highlights a factor that is critical to the evolution of individuals (and thus mankind): It may be harder work to be an explorer rather than a student of explorers. It may take longer to establish the learning. But the learning is true because it stems from personal living experience and not from testimony, and as such carries much more weight and more power to change you. Such airy delights as faith and hope and belief may be convenient crutches for those with busy agendas in the world of work, but truth blows them away. There is no comparison.

For those with a knack for observation, for solitude and reflection; those with discoveries of their own, the testimony of other explorers can be a great comfort and a tool for consolidation, and to that end, this book is paramount; a must-read.

Siddhartha faces such similar questions, struggles and perspectives as I have, that I was in tears through most of this book. This begged the question: Had the author himself embarked on a similar journey? Did this story come from his own experience or from learning? From what I’ve read about Hesse, he indeed had a knack for solitude at times in his life, and a penchant for spiritual expansion, but he was also an aggressive student of such matters and a personal associate of Carl Jung for a time.

Reading Siddhartha, I had the feeling it was constructed from academic, not personal, experience (though it still resonated profoundly). But as a writer I know that this could be misleading. My own writing is far from perfect, and though I write from personal experience I know it could be interpreted otherwise.

A passage:

“…I am Siddhartha! And there is nothing in the world I know less about than myself, than Siddhartha!”

The thinking man, walking along slowly, halted, overcome by that thought; and instantly another thought sprang from that one, a new thought: “There is only one reason, a single one, why I know nothing about myself, why Siddhartha has remained so foreign to myself, so unknown. The reason is that I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing myself! I was seeking Atman, I was seeking Brahma. I was willing to dismember my ego and peel it apart in order to find the core of all peels in its unknown innermost essence: to find Atman, Life, the divine, the Ultimate. But I myself was lost in the process.”

A is for Adventure!

April A-to-Z: must-read books

Treasure Island (1883)

By Robert Louis Stevenson
(1850-1894) Scotland

This is simply the ultimate boy’s adventure story; the perfect, quintessential adventure story for boys around twelve or so. That I never convinced any of the boys I started more-or-less mentoring at that age, who are now in their late teens, to read this book (as far as I know), is probably the most resounding failure of my life; nothing short of tragic!

If you know a boy in grade school, You have to get him this book. You just have to!    

Jim Hawkins is roughly that age; perhaps a year or two older, and gets caught up in high-stakes, high-seas, life-threatening, nineteenth-century pirate affairs in a gripping, unputdownable tale! I haven’t read it in thirty-five years and I surely won’t read it again. The details are vague in my head but they radiate a magic which I will not compromise by submitting the book to adult perspectives!

The language of the original version is a bit archaic but remains suitable for brighter, more curious boys, according to tests I actually conducted with live boys!  There are texts with modernized language for those who are not up to the challenge.

Treasure Island is historically notable as the origin of such ingrained pirate lore as X’s on treasure maps and parrots on shoulders. Also it was prodigiously morally complex for children’s literature.

A passage:

In I got bodily into the apple barrel, and found there was scarce an apple left; but, sitting down there in the dark, what with the sound of the waters and the rocking movement of the ship, I had either fallen asleep, or was on the point of doing so, when a heavy man sat down with rather a clash close by. The barrel shook as he leaned his shoulders against it, and I was just about to jump up when the man began to speak. It was Silver’s voice, and, before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world, but lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity; for from these dozen words I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended upon me alone.