Last week I was invited to go through a deceased friend’s books. David lived in Coral Gables, a few blocks from the Biltmore, and had the largest personal library I had ever seen in South Florida – a library that, thanks to his cleaning woman, was now contained in dozens of large, sealed cardboard boxes. Toby, who let me into the house, lent me his Swiss army knife and told me to call him when I was done.
It was 10 o’clock in the morning. The lights in the living room, where most of the boxes sat, were not working, so I had to keep the front door open to give myself light. I cut the tape on the first box and dug inside. Paperbacks were mixed in with hardcovers, my main interest. While I knew I’d find many desirable titles, there was one in particular I was in search of: Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts. I have a copy – it is one of my favorite travel books – but David had once shown me his, which he had taken to an interview he had once conducted with the writer in London, who had not only signed it but adorned the inside with a whimsical illustration.
After 30 minutes I started to sweat. I took off my shirt and hung it on a wooden chair. Sounds of the street came in through the open door. My arms and hands were scratched and bruised from the jagged cardboard flaps. I tend to scoff at people who talk of departed loved ones looking down at them from heaven, but I did start to entertain a vision of David peering down at me as I rummaged madly through his collection. And I imagined him enjoying the sight of my frustrating hunt.
I pulled a number of volumes to take home with me – essay collections by V.S. Pritchett, Anthony Powell, Elizabeth Bishop; the poems of Robert Lowell, an 800-page biography of Lawrence Durrell; even some Leigh Fermor titles: Abducting a General, Words of Mercury, A Life in Letters – but not A Time of Gifts.
A little after 1 I gave up. I had gone through all the boxes in the living room, and a few in the dining room. I had a strong feeling that my luck wasn't going to change. Toby had said that the books will go to the library, which will put them on sale. I told him to keep me posted as to the date of the sale.
One of the nice things about being sick is that you get a lot of reading done. In the last ten days I finally finished Annie Ernaux’s The Years, which I found more impressive than enjoyable, her evocatively detailed recording of the past marred, for me, by her jaded, joyless voice. I read Richard Russo’s memoir Elsewhere (interesting but repetitive, more about his mother than it is about him) and Donald Hall’s Life Work, a memoirish meditation on work, which Hall enjoyed so much that, evenings watching Red Sox games, he couldn’t wait till morning found him back at his desk.
I started reading Penelope Lively’s memoir Dancing Fish and Ammonites (all these paperbacks, with the exception of Ernaux’s, picked up at Bookwise in Boca or Big Apple Books in Fort Lauderdale) and quit reading, after about a hundred pages, Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. The title had me dreading a grim, dystopian novel and instead I got a boring, contemporary novel, filled with unpleasant characters in the music industry. It was hailed, and richly awarded, for its structure – separate sections focusing on different characters and told from different points of view – but I found that initially confusing. Was it employed to distract from the less than scintillating writing? I can deal with unpleasant characters – be they John Updike’s or Nancy Lemann’s – as long as I can take pleasure in the sentences.
A recent starred review in Publishers’ Weekly of a work of fiction quoted two lines from the book: The first, a racist comment from a peripheral character and the second, another character’s statement about the prevalence of racial hatred. And I wondered: Do writers win points these days simply by citing the currently approved obsessions? Wouldn’t readers be more impressed by the sharing of some telling observation from the author, a brilliant apercu perhaps, or an unusual or interesting use of language?
Hoping for an all-South Florida NCAA final tonight, I now find myself thinking I may not even watch the game. Instead of two teams I have some connection to, there are two teams I care nothing about.
Had there been a University of Miami and Florida Atlantic University final, I probably would have favored the latter. I liked the UM team, and I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years at the university’s medical center. But I once audited a course at FAU.
It was 2003 and I was planning a summer trip to Greece for the Sun-Sentinel. I had never read the Iliad, and thought that doing so alone I would miss a lot. FAU offered a Greek Literature in Translation course at its Broward campus and I asked the professor if I could sit in.
It was time well-spent. The professor was in his 40s, short, quiet, rather nondescript, but he brought that ancient text to life. He not only explained but enthused, and transferred his passion onto the class. When the course was over, I read the Odyssey on my own and didn’t enjoy it nearly as much – and it’s a travel story!
I was at an event Sunday that featured authors sitting at tables filled with their books. One woman approached my table and said aloud "The joys of travel."
"Yes," I said hopefully. "There are seven."
"I'm sure there are," she said a bit dreamily, and then walked away.
I sat there thinking: Really? Why are you sure? Why couldn't there be 10, or 5?
Later, another woman approached, and opened the book.
"Oh," she said in a voice of profound disappointment,"I thought there'd be pictures."
I've been invited to speak at an event later this month, and the woman who extended the invitation asked if I would like a table set up where I could sell my books after my talk. I told Hania about this, and my concerns that it would look a little cheesy.
"In America," she said, "selling yourself never looks cheesy."