Walk While Reading

The other day I mentioned going Christmas shopping with my daughter. I touched on the fact that’s next to impossible for me to go to the bookstore and not come home with a book. I can do it but it takes major willpower. Well that day was no different, I came home with A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor. I found this book used. First time in years I have seen anything by Flannery O’Connor in a used bookstore.

Now you may be wondering why I didn’t mention this in my original post. Those of you that follow my tumblr know I’m married. Although my wife loves that I read, she doesn’t love the fact that I have to buy the books to do so. I use to purchase books bring them into the house when she wasn’t looking and place them into my bookshelf, hoping she wouldn’t notice. Then I started to feel guilty and stopped doing that.

I still don’t tell my wife when I come home from the bookstore with something new. What I do these days is place the books in plain view around the home. She has gotten so good at what’s in my library these days that she can pick out a new book instantly. Sometimes she just hovers around where the new book is placed, staring at it then staring back me. There are times not a word is exchanged just a glance.

I’ve gotten a lot better at not bringing books home at a clip I did in the past. In this latest case, I tried to explain it was Flannery O’Connor. “This is a special find dear”. Response “Oh yeah”. What I’ve learned over the years is don’t hide things from your wife, she will find out eventually. If you have hid it from her and she finds out man are you in trouble. FYI.

D.H. Lawrence circa 1925.

Photo by Nickolas Muray

Told you. Currently Reading….

Book Review

Rabbit, Run by John Updike

When I read a novel I’m looking for a sense of attachment, be it good or bad I want to feel something. I’ve always been a stronger believer if you’re not moved by a book then what’s the point.

You can tell the minute you start reading Rabbit, Run you’re going to feel something by the end of it. In the beginning I couldn’t help but feel frustrated. I remember texting Jon early on saying something along the lines of “What the hell is this book all about, Rabbit just drove to West Virginia and back. What the hell for?” Updike can’t help but test the reader. Urging them to develop their own ideas about its main character.

Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is someone you want to hate. He has a young son and a wife who is expecting. He walks out on them. Rabbit was a high school basketball star in his youth he now sells the MagiPeel Peeler in department stores. After leaving his wife and child he looks for his old coach, who he finds. Through the coach he is introduced to Ruth (my favorite character) a prostitute of sorts. He spends weeks with her before returning back to the life he left to be with his wife while she gives birth to their daughter. Going any further would ruin the book for others.

During the entire reading of Rabbit, Run you feel uncomfortable, pulled down, drained. Although the story is about a husband feeling trapped in a life he didn’t expect for himself. Updike pins you down with with this sense of gloom a darkness that won’t go away.

I put this book down last night and exhaled. I had begged for it to be over and I now understand why. Updike you put me through the ringer. Where this piece of work came from in you is scary, but I understand it. You’re missed. Rest in Peace.

-Casey

Andalusia Farm, Milledgeville, Georgia, 2006 (Flannery O’Connor’s home).

Photograph by Susana Raab

Ayla and I went to hammer out some Christmas presents today. Off to the bookstore we went. Most of the time I struggle with mammoth proportions to not come home with a new book. I do normally lose this battle. My bookshelf gets happy, my wife gets mad. Today was no different more on that later. For some reason every time I’m at the bookstore I seek The Book Thief out. I pick it up, read the back and fan the pages. Sometimes I even walk around with this book under my arm looking around the store. Then a funny thing happens, I put it back. I did it again today. For some odd reason this book never makes it into my car for the trip back to my house. I can’t explain it. Has this ever happened to any of you with a certain book?

Portraiture of the Artists.

Shakespeare and Company, the legendary English-language bookstore on Paris’s Left Bank, recently got a facelift. Several faces, in fact. Fourteen illustrated portraits of the Lost and Beat Generation writers who once frequented the store—and its predecessor—now adorn the staircase wall leading up to the second floor library of the bookshop. On a recent visit there, I caught up with illustrator Joanna Walsh, who goes by the nom de plume “Badaude,” as she put the finishing touches on her mural, using only a pencil, Posca paint markers, and a touch of gilt for enhancements like picture frames, hanging wires, wall tacks, and an underlying wallpaper text design courtesy of James Joyce

Raymond Carver’s Life and Stories from here.

Sidenote: I’m reading Cathedral by Raymond Carver next. My brain has already decided this.