Literary Doorstops

Hefty volumes that pack a punch.

I’m a voracious reader - always have been. And, I’ve been attracted to massive books at times, including tomes by such prolific authors as: David McCullough; Doris Kearns Goodwin; and Stephen King. In fact, I just finished reading Ron Chernow’s, Alexander Hamilton biography, which checked in at (a densely-populated) 818 pages.

I very much enjoyed reading Chernow’s book. But, being the only person in North America who has not yet seen the musical, Hamilton, I believe that the reading experiences enjoyed by Lin-Manuel Miranda and me are very, very different. I didn’t hear a hip-hop musical soundtrack in the background, as I learned about one of our founding fathers. It makes me wonder what Lin-Manuel heard playing in his head, while reading, say, Steinbeck’s, The Grapes of Wrath. Perhaps the big Broadway hit of 2021 will be the ska-infused, Grapes (because, you know he’s gonna’ truncate the title in some way, and, Wrath is just too dark), which theater-goers might shy away from, thinking it’s some sort of Wine Country polemic.

I had the good fortune several years ago to hear Doris Kearns Goodwin speak at a dinner. I admire her writing, and she was quite an engaging speaker. She spoke for about forty-five minutes, and if I were transcribing her speech, I would not have needed to use a single punctuation mark; she spoke in one, very long sentence. And I scored two books that evening, each signed by the author, and totaling a combined 1,807 pages - I could have used a Hefty bag to ferry those “hefty” volumes home.

One of the books I carted away that evening was, A Team of Rivals, a book about Lincoln’s cabinet, which he assembled from a roster of his political rivals. I’m just beginning to read that book now. I’ve read several books about Lincoln in the past; perhaps I have a fondness for “Honest Abe",” being a native Illinoisan myself. Although Lincoln was actually born in Kentucky, his family migrated westward, and he became most associated with the state of Illinois. In fact, “Land of Lincoln” has appeared on Illinois automobile license plates since 1954. I tackled Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years some years ago. I wasn’t able to put my hands on that single volume, which contained both sets of “Years”, and am thus unable to document for you the total number of pages contained in the book (I know, it breaks my heart also), but, trust me when I tell you that it was indeed a formidable rival. In fact, I began reading it, and after setting it aside for many months, I had to begin reading it again to re-educate myself on the story, in order to make sense of it. I finally completed the book, and felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment, having invested a couple of years reading it. I’m contemplating writing my own “Years” compilation, which might be entitled, Southern: The Years Spent Reading Lincoln’s ‘The Prairie Years and The War Years’ - a guaranteed bestseller, I’m sure.

You might say that Sandburg’s Lincoln was my “white whale”, which might be familiar to those of you who read Melville’s, Moby Dick, in school. I can recall reading Moby Dick, and analyzing it to within an inch of its life in high school English class, endlessly discussing themes such as the white whale representing an existential challenge to one man; the dichotomy of good and evil co-existing in our world; the ability for man to persevere; and other such philosophical blather. I wonder if high school English teachers, such as the ones I had, who sported the quite-lyrical names, June Partridge, June Todd, Rose Moreau, and Norm Frey (insert sound of needle scratching a vinyl record here - you youngsters can Google that phrase later - I think you’ll find it’s quite an amusing turn of phrase, and quite appropriate here - wait, what? Norm Frey? If we were playing the song, “One of These Things (is Not Like the Other”) from Sesame Street, the level of difficulty assigned to the task of determining which of those four is not like the other would be very low), could have considered the possibility that Melville was simply writing an interesting story about a whale, because, maybe he liked whales.

I was never as proud of my daughter as I was when she, at about the age of ten or 11, noted the difficulty a teenage girl was having scooping ice cream from a very frozen bucket of mint chip ice cream at a Baskins-Robbins store, and remarked to me that, “Boy, that mint chip ice cream must be her “white whale”, huh?” She had never met the two Junes, Rose, or Norm, and here she was parroting the philosophical blather which I had learned from them some twenty-five years earlier.

I encountered one of the two Junes some years after graduating from high school, at a wedding, and reintroduced myself to her. I was pleased that she remembered me, and she said, “Oh yes, you wrote the research paper on Charlie Parker.” As part of a junior year research paper exercise, I did indeed write a paper on the life of Charlie Parker, a leading jazz musician who pioneered the bebop movement of the late 1930’s and 1940’s. It’s not seen much anymore, but graffiti years ago proclaimed, “Bird Lives!”, deploying his nickname, and suggesting the timeless nature of Charlie Parker’s contributions to jazz music. But, I digress - I’d be surprised if my Charlie Parker paper exceeded fifty pages, and it therefore has no place in this column - no heft.

Another book sitting on my shelf is, Stephen King’s, It, which includes 1,157 pages of unmitigated terror (I think - I haven’t tackled it yet). One of the book “blurbs” printed on the back of the book indicates that this book is, “The Moby-Dick of horror novels.” Most of King’s novels are set in Maine, and I don’t think there are many white whales in Maine (at least, on dry land), but I look forward to jumping into the fray soon.

I’ve also read some boring, unsatisfying books over the years. But, I’m no quitter; I stay with a book until the bitter end. . .usually. The one book I can recall setting aside was Robert Pirsig’s, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Perhaps I was too young to absorb the teachings of this bizarre book (I picked it up in my 20’s), but I think it more likely that it is simply an unreadable book; I attempted to read the Wikipedia notes about this book just now, and I didn’t even comprehend that information.

These books are the opposite of “beach books”, which have their place, specifically that they are more easily managed while reading, and that they rarely slip out of the reader’s hands, into the pool, and expand up to twice their normal size, and if they do, it doesn’t really matter, because they’re “beach books”, and who cares if they get wet, whereas the other, more-literary books which have become significantly water-logged after spending time at the bottom of the pool, will attract dirty looks from librarians, and a subsequent invoice from the library for the replacement cost of the soggy book, upon the reader’s attempt to return the book to the library.

Now, there’s a sentence of which Doris Kearns Goodwin would be proud!