Bookworms are usually thought of as somewhat solitary, socially inept people. Websites such as BookCrossing like to portray books as a bridge between people, a means of connection for those with like minds, all over the world. Read a lot, they imply, and you will find literary company wherever you go. But, is it really true? Is a well-stocked bookshelf a way to win friends and influence people? Here are five interactions from the life of The Expositor. You be the judge:
1987: I was a messy kid. Rather than suggesting I brush my hair and make some friends, my father encouraged me to obtain a copy of a story about a magical woman named Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle who cured a girl of slobbery by planting radish seeds in the dirt in her ears. Unfortunately, the book was only available at the public library branch in Pawtucket, RI – maybe a twenty-minute drive from our home in Providence, but an Odyssey in the estimation of my Pennsylvania-bred father. Still, he loved his disheveled little bookworm, so he bundled me into his Volkswagen on a snowy winter evening and promptly got lost. A more reasonable person – such as my mother – would have consulted the map and/or asked for directions. My father dealt with the situation by chain-smoking and singing “lost in Pawtucket” to the tune of “Waltzing Matilda.” I made some friends after that, but still get lost easily.
1996: It was Kerouac’s birthday, and my friend Marina talked two of her male acquaintances into taking us on a road trip to Lowell, MA to visit his birthplace. At the time, I had never actually read anything by Kerouac, despite attending a high school where the staff of the school literary magazine demonstrated their cred by talking incessantly about the Beat Generation. However, I had a first edition paperback of The Dharma Bums, and read it out loud en route, to the annoyance of the driver and the complete indifference of a quiet dude named Ron. We never did find Kerouac’s home, and nearly got arrested trying to locate his grave after hours in the town cemetery. Eight years later, I finally finished The Dharma Bums, on a bumpy jeepney ride through the mountains of the Philippines. Fourteen years later, Ron and I moved to Seoul together.
1999: Despite the number of books I’d read, I was desperately far from being the most well read person on the University of Pennsylvania quiz bowl team. That title was typically awarded to my college sweetheart, a quirky genius with coke bottle glasses, Velcro sneakers, and a mania for weighty literature. In an effort to please my man, I usually read whatever classics he told me to read (and we are talking about someone, by the way, who once described Silas Marner as “light, fun reading”). Fortunately, he recommended The Magic Mountain, which had plenty of pomposity, liquor, tobacco, and getting lost.
2002: Rachel Simhon and I sat outside the Pension Natividad in Manila, talking books amid a rapidly growing pile of beer bottles and cigarette butts. Almost everyone in our Peace Corps group read a lot, but the two of us got vocal about it. As the evening progressed we veered away from stuff we liked – The Tin Drum, A Confederacy of Dunces – and onto the juicier topic of bashing Dave Eggers. “You can’t get people to take you seriously with a load of meta-postmodern whining about how you can’t get laid!” I drunkenly protested, and when no one took me seriously, staggered off to bed alone. Rachel, always the more proactive one, grew up and started a magazine.
2010: I now write a literature column read by, in Ron’s estimation, “upwards of twenty people.” Talk about a bridge to full social acceptance!
Photo credit: www.brooklyn.net
Dharma Bums is the only book by Kerouac that has stood the test of time for me and The Magic Mountain is a beast but is one of my favorite books.
I have never read anything by Kerouac. It makes me feel kind of bad, but only kind of.
Silas Marner is too a fun read! As for “light,” it weighs less any other novel by Eliot.
I read and memorized salient portions of Silas Marner for a high school English class, then repressed every word, as I did with everything read under duress. I didn’t win any friends or influence any people, but I did pass the test.
March 12! For some reason, I know Kerouac’s birthday offhand…I felt plugged in to On the Road because I had once waited in the rain for a bus at Bear Mountain, just like Sal Paradise (we took that bus to Manhattan, to watch Showgirls). I read the book entirely on the train, I found it boring when I was not in motion.
I just figured out you have a column. You now have 21 readers!
I haven’t read kerouac, either, which is a terrible thing to admit on the internet… in the company of smartass friends.
But your piece is lovely, and I like the constellation recollection.
I think I saw the Silas Marner episode of Wishbone once.