Book by Book (6 page)

If I glance at the wall to the right of my monitor, I can study a 1996 calendar from the Lorain Admiral King High School Marching Band, with a handsome picture
of the assembled musicians taken by Fazio's Starlight Studio. Nearby cluster the following: a photograph of Marilyn Monroe, seated on some playground equipment, reading James Joyce's
Ulysses;
portraits of several favorite writers, among them Vladimir Nabokov, M.F.K. Fisher, Jorge Luis Borges, Anton Chekhov, Stendhal; a caricature of Robertson Davies and a poster of William Joyce's
Dinosaur Bob.
This last abuts a reproduction of a Roy Lichtenstein painting, nothing but a pair of staring eyes and these words: “Why did you say that? What do you know about my image duplicator?” In the upper-right corner of an adjacent bulletin board looms a picture of the robot Gort clutching a red-gowned Patricia Neal: an advertisement for
The Day the Earth Stood Still
(“From out of space .. . A warning and an ultimatum!”). Close at hand are several other postcards: the Château d'lf near Marseille, where Edmond Dantès was imprisoned before he escaped to become the Count of Monte Cristo; the steel plant in which my father toiled for forty-odd years; Wilder Hall at Oberlin College.

Even the least observant visitor to this “office” could hardly miss the paperback cover that glorifies a stern Conan the Barbarian standing atop a mound of dead enemies while a voluptuous lovely caresses his mighty thigh (I call it “the book critic's dream”); or the button that says “I am a committed radical. I am against nearly everything”; or the color Xerox of the 1926 issue of
Amazing Stories
showing the Martian tripods of H. G. Wells's
War of the Worlds
, or the small poster of Douglas Fairbanks riding a winged horse in
The Thief of Baghdad
, or the photocopy of my late friend Susan Davis's drawing of an owl reading in a library. Also prominent are John Tenniel's illustration of Alice passing through the looking glass, the cover for Martin Rowson's comic-book version of
The Waste Land
, spotlighting a truly sinister T. S. Eliot holding out a handful of dust, and, not least, a bumper sticker that proclaims, “You can afford to be a connoisseur and a rebel” (long my secret wish). I am particularly fond of one other postcard, sent to me by the literary journalist Daphne Merkin, picturing the sorrowful donkey Eeyore bent over a piece of paper with a caption reading: “This writing business, pencils and what-not. Overrated if you ask me.”

On my desk itself are—in addition to a phone, Rolodex, and a caddy of pencils and pens—several coffee mugs, a half-dozen pads
of paper, no visible work surface whatsoever, and, at this point in time, nearly a dozen books:
The American Heritage Dictionary, The Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus
, a small King James Version of the Bible, a pocket Shakespeare, H.W. Fowler's
Modern English Usage
, the little
Annals of English Literature
(showing the dates of important literary publications from 1475 to 1950), a French dictionary, a German dictionary, an Italian dictionary, and my battered commonplace book into which I copy favorite passages culled from my reading. Pull open my desk drawers, and you will discover more books, as well as reams of correspondence (poorly filed, if at all) and, somewhere, one of those elaborate daily organizers. Periodically, of course, in a token effort toward greater efficiency, I shovel off a few strata of paper, but before long my in-basket again resembles an unemptied wastebasket. Even the cramped space at my feet is crammed with paperbacks, the odd poster, and several more boxes of my all-important papers.

Why, I am sometimes asked, do I burden myself with all this stuff? To visitors I explain, with a wan smile which fools no one, that my work space is a reflection of a singularly capacious and far-ranging intellect, one that observes no boundaries or limits, that boldly goes wherever knowledge is to be had. Pretty feeble.

Of course, I do find the quotes and pictures amusing or heartening; I even refer periodically to the reference books scattered about. But the truth is that my desk is a refuge, a nest, what Cyril Connolly famously called “a womb with a view.” Here I am in my element—among books and words and pencils and paper— and so feel secure. In this cozy, cluttered retreat the work will get done.

Say “leisure,” and many people will instantly think summer vacation—lying on a beach, snoozing in a hammock under the shade trees, visiting friends in Florida, renting a condo in Cancun. Of course the wise traveler takes his own favorite authors along on holiday, but what if that supply of Georgette Heyer and Dick Francis runs out? In a properly appointed world you would simply borrow from a well-stocked shelf of guest-room books.

Now the essential quality of a proper guest-room book is that it must avoid all the normal requirements of a “good read.” Nothing too demanding or white-knuckled suspenseful. Ideally, items should be familiar, cozy, browsable, above all soothing—like the following titles, conveniently arranged according to the major light-reading genres. Each category lists three possible choices. All guest rooms are presumed to start with the Bible, Shakespeare, and at least one novel by Jane Austen.

MYSTERY:
1. Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Complete Sherlock Holmes.
The fog rolls in, the fire burns low, and the game is always afoot. 2. G.K. Chesterton,
The Father Brown Omnibus.
Paradoxes resolved, from an “invisible” man to the hammer of God. 3. Dorothy L. Sayers's anthology,
The Omnibus of Crime.
Brilliant introductory essay on the history of the mystery and supernatural tale, followed by classic examples. (All-American alternative: Dashiell Hammett's
The Maltese Falcon
, Raymond Chandler's
Farewell, My Lovely
, or any Nero Wolfe omnibus by Rex Stout.)

HORROR AND FANTASY:
1. M.R. James,
Collected Ghost Stories.
Accursed manuscripts, haunted bedclothes, and cozy, antiquarian chills. 2. John Collier's
Fancies and Goodnights.
Witty Jazz Age tales of magic elixirs and deals with the devil. 3.
Gods, Men and Ghosts: The Best Supernatural Fiction of Lord Dunsany
(edited by E. F. Bleiler). Classic club stories, often told over a large whiskey, of strange sights, Munchausen-like exploits, and macabre encounters: “The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man.”

HUMOR:
1. British version:
The Weekend Wodehouse.
Silliness in the world of spats, aunts, and beautifully crafted sentences. American version: James Thurber,
The Thurber Carnival.
Includes such classics as “The Night the Bed Fell,” “The Macbeth Murder Mystery,” and “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” 2. Flann O'Brien,
The Best of Myles.
The funniest man in Ireland, always dreaming up “services” such as ventriloquist-escorts who carry on both sides of a sparkling conversation, thus making their companions look attractive and witty. American alternative:
The Most of S. J. Ferelman.
“Diana turned on the radio. With a savage snarl the radio turned on her ...” 3. Any of
The New Yorker's
cartoon books. Or any album of drawings by Charles Addams, George Price, Peter Arno, George Booth, Gary Larson, or G. B. Trudeau.

BIOGRAPHY:
1.
The Conversations of Dr. Johnson
(edited by Raymond Postgate). For many, Boswell's
Life of Johnson
is the most diverting book in the world; this abridgment highlights the gruff doctor's grouchy, aphoristic talk. 2. John Aubrey's
Brief Lives.
Sexual scandals among English worthies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including Sir Walter Raleigh, who, when he wasn't placing his cloak before the queen, had more than an eye for her maids-in-waiting. 3. Any good collection of letters, such as those of Flannery O'Connor, Gustave Flaubert, or Oliver Wendell Holmes. My own favorite is
The Lyttelton/Hart Davis Letters
, the very literary and gossippy exchanges between a London publisher, Rupert Hart-Davis, and his old Eton teacher, George Lyttelton.

POETRY:
1. W.H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson's five-volume
Poets of the English Language.
Dazzling introductions by Auden; a survey of English and American poetry that manages to be both catholic and idiosyncratic. 2. Any of the Oxford books of sixteenth-, seventeenth-, eighteenth-, nineteenth-, or twentieth-century poetry. Some of these, like Philip Larkin's on twentieth-century verse, are surprisingly eccentric and consequently treasure troves of the fine and unfamiliar. 3. The complete works of a favorite poet, such as T. S. Eliot, Alexander Pope, Langston Hughes, Elizabeth Bishop. Sometimes you want to immerse yourself in a single writer's sensibility. However, guest-rooms libraries should probably forgo the later work of Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and John Berryman.

CHILDREN'S CLASSICS:
1. Any good collection of classic fairy tales. Andrew Lang's
Blue Fairy Book
and its successors are semi-standard; these are some of the first, and best, stories we ever hear in our lives. The shortest, most wistful of all? “Once upon a
time . . . they lived happily ever after.” 2. Lewis Carroll,
Alice in Wonderland
and
Through the Looking-Glass.
“Curiouser and curiouser.” More memorable lines per square inch than any other book in English, excepting only Shakespeare's collected plays and the Bible. 3. E. Nesbit,
Five Children and It
, or any of her other classic fantasies for young people. Into the ordinary lives of schoolchildren irrupt adventures and creatures worthy of
The Arabian Nights.

DEEP—BUT NOT TOO DEEP—THOUGHTS:
1. La Rochefoucauld's
Maxims.
One- or two-sentence observations that you can think about for a moment or for half your life: “The surest way to be outwitted is to suppose yourself sharper than others.” “In their first passions women are in love with their lover; in all the rest, with love.” 2. Montaigne's
Essays.
In these pages we find a self-portrait of one of the most admirable human beings, and finest writers, of all time. 3.
Seven Greeks
, translated by Guy Davenport. Archilochos, Sappho, Alkman, Anacreon, Heracleitus, Diogenes, Herondas . . . From these founders of Western culture all that tends to remain are tantalizing fragments, and they are just right for late-night meditations. “A bow is alive only when it kills” is one example, by Heracleitus.

REFERENCE:
1. Any of the
Oxford Companion
volumes—to English, French, or classical literature; any of the Oxford books of political anecdotes, marriage, death, or dreams; Brewer's
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable;
any odd volumes of the
Dictionary of National Biography.
All of these are standbys of bedside browsing.
2.
H.W. Fowler's
Modern English Usage.
Not only a guide to grammar, Fowler offers quirky, addictive mini-essays on every aspect of language. 3.
The New Columbia Encyclopedia.
One volume containing nearly all knowledge. Ideal for serendipitous reading or finding out the difference between a quark and a quasar.

JOURNALS AND DIARIES.
1.
The Diary of Virginia Woolf
five volumes. Gossip becomes literature. 2.
Pages from the Goncourt Journal
(chosen and translated by Robert Baldick). Gossip about women, art, society, and illness, starring Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola, Guy de Maupassant, and other high-living French authors. 3.
The Diary of Samuel Pepys.
Observant, funny, and touching. “And so to bed.”

ODDS AND ENDS:
Any guest room should always include some personal favorites, though it is prudent to provide only “borrow-able” copies. Edward Gorey's little albums of the macabre. E. V. Lucas and George Aiorrow's
What a Life!
—that improbable Edwardian-Surrealist classic. Martin Gardner's various collections of mathematical games and speculations. Cyril Connolly's moody, aphoristic “word cycle,”
The Unquiet Grave.
Robert Phelps and Peter Deane's scrapbook-almanac,
The Literary Life.
E. F. Bleiler's definitive
Guide to Supernatural Fiction
, which summarizes the plots of some strange, strange tales. The endlessly browsable
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
and
Encyclopedia of Fantasy
, by John Clute and John Grant and others.

And, oh yes, one last item: the latest edition of Leonard Maltin's annual guide to movies—just in case.

Love is holy because it is like grace—the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.    
— MARILYNNE ROBINSON