Attempts to communicate with the Universe. Lettres à l’Univers et autres destinataires.

I know, I wrote you not long ago, but I have something to say.

It occurred to me this morning as I woke up and finished the last two pages of a book by Aimee Bender, which was nice but did not rock my boat, that I should send you some sort of acknowledgment note. A public thank you, if you will. I often tell my friends how lucky I feel to just, somehow, attract great books in my life. Books, truth be told, I don’t know how I would’ve made it without them. They have such a superpower, and they’re the easiest and toughest thing to share.

Books have, in all fairness, saved me many times from many desperate situations. There was a time, as a child, when they were the only friends I trusted, more important than class, homework, and always far more interesting and kind than people, who betrayed and snapped in and out of feelings and moods. I remember hours spent in bathtubs experimenting ways to read without getting pages wet; a particularly long lunch break spent sitting on pipes at the bottom of a hole in the street I’d fallen in because I was reading while walking; many nights spent hiding under the sheets with a flashlight, unable to resist the urge of just another page, just another chapter. I remember feeling and living so much of what I read that it made the real world and its crazy unfair grown-ups bearable. Stories allow children to accept the idea that some people are mean, ugly, irrational, unfair. Without these stories in which young children learned to progress and deal with the evil world and be better persons, I think I simply would have closed down.

They have probably been the most influencing factor in my life. As a child, they showed me a world with hope and happy endings and other children facing ordeals and rising to transcend themselves, and the obstacles, and life’s injustices. I remember disappearing completely from reality as I read Frances Hogdson Burnett’s Little Lord Fauntleroy, The Little Princess and The Secret Garden. I became a rabid fan of the Comtesse de Ségur’s works, which introduced me for the first time to the joys brought by a beautiful edition, with exquisite lettering and illustrated pages and engraved leather. All the fairy tales from all countries sent my mind flying through roofs. I still read these stories regularly, and the pleasure remains.

Growing up and becoming one insane and tortured teenager, one book or author would refer me to another. My life is punctuated by different cycles of readings and extreme feelings of joy and passion for specific encounters. I tend to exhaust an author or a genre. My teenage angst was dramatically nourished by the 19th century. Balzac and Zola and Flaubert and Stendhal. I theorized on my concept of “love as fiction” early on. Witnessing on a daily basis the limitations of love, its lies and mediocrity, its non-existence, I felt strengthened by all I read. Love was but a fleeting weakness, a fictitious delusion. An invention to give humans something to hang on to. Dostoievski was a shock. So I read the Russians. Tourgueniev, Gogol, Tolstoi showed me how deep the soul can go, and how some great minds could think and experience life (love) differently, drive themselves to extremities. Tourgueniev’s First Love was one of my first loves. Gogol somehow led me to Kafka. Baudelaire became a semi-god amongst my personal pantheon. I look back at the books I love and wish I still could discover some of them, because some books are just such an intense experience when you meet them for the first time, I just can’t believe it’s over.

There were so many books in my life, books that deeply affected me, the way I see the world, myself, Life. I’ll have to make a list of them somedays. I’ve often wished I had the discipline to write about the books I read, to keep a log, but, argh, I keep forgetting. I’ll try again, now with the blog and all.

And well, to make my point, Braunwen, because I could go on forever, you recommended a book, when you were visiting, do you remember? You said that I should read the Time Traveller’s Wife. That it was really good. Well, jeeeeeeeeeez, lady, you don’t screw around with recommendations, do you? What a great insane amazing story… By page 10 I was flying through the roof. And to be perfectly honest, one of the feelings great books arouse in me, is envy. I know, eeeek, it’s a horrible feeling. But oh my oh my, how I do envy Audrey Niffenegger, the author, for producing from her brilliant mind such a brilliant first book. I love stories. I love how the brain can imagine and put together incredible beautiful perfect stories.

And to make another point, if you wanted me as a guest-speaker, I could come and share some music and history with your students in April, when I’m in NYC. I need to think about what and how, but I’ve got ideas for you, inspired by jazzchool, that very cool and progressist program I put together at the Knit, back in those days, tee hee hee… Because books are like music, they bring so much happiness and violent emotions and new thoughts in your life, you just want to share that with people, in the hope that one person, at least, will be as enthralled as you are.

So Braunwen, thank you for recommending that book. And now, tell me, my friend… how do I solve the fact that perfectly nice respectable books have felt, since the Time Traveller’s Wife, bland and well, short of the many qualities I demand from a book? Huh? Tell me, Braunwen.

Mad love,
M-N

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 10th, 2005 at 1:55 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.