My Weekend Read: Of Camelot & Historians
“The longer you look back, the farther you can look forward.” - Winston Churchill
True for a nation, even truer for an individual.
Reading is that elixir which gives us insight & vision into the darkest recesses of our daily life, giving us eyes that others have seen with; feet that have walked the same land; minds that have pondered the same pitfalls I stumble upon now.
History might be a bad tune that often rhymes, but we don't have to sing it.
I'm picking up where I left off yesterday -- Lewis Lapham's editorial insights to better editorialize our life's reading. Why reading matters, how that benefits our writing, and how one chooses the books to read, might be the summary of this piece. Plus, I leave you each Friday, with the books I am looking forward to that weekend.
"Someone said: 'The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.' Precisely, and they are that which we know." - T. S. Eliot
History is our antidote to folly, as is reading. For in every book is the history of the person writing it, made manifest before one's own eyes, one's own life. And the deeper it delves, the more it means to the reader. The greater a writer's intuition towards her own endless highs and lows, the more she connects with a reader.
"As persons deprived of memory become disoriented and lost, not knowing where they have been and where they are going, so a nation denied a conception of the past will be disabled in dealing with its present and its future." -- Arthur Schlesinger Jr., 'Folly's Antidote,' New York Times
Finding those writers who speak to you, is the key to any reading practice.
1. Not all reading is created equal
Learning how one reads matters as much as the reading itself. And, one gets the most mileage when exploring writers' works voraciously, and through their works finding favorites, and not letting other opinions influence one's judgment.
"Yet for all John Kennedy's good looks and telegenic charm, at his core he was a reader and a writer. Indeed, he was among the best-read and most articulate presidents the United States has ever had. Kennedy could read more than twelve hundred words a minute. Before he had entered the Navy, he had begun carrying a loose-leaf notebook with him in which he wrote sentences he felt were important to remember." -- The Letters of John F. Kennedy
Also, the more conflicted the character; whether Homer's Odysseus, or Logevall's Kennedy, or Kirsch's King David; they are all conflicted (like all of us); and good writers get that. None of these portrayals are idealistic, rather a messy, truthful one. There are no clean victories in life and books that show us that, makes for better reading, and better living.
"When I get to the office, mostly I'm reading for the quarterly, in which case I'm pursuing an idea -- whether it's War, Money, Education or the City -- whatever the forthcoming issue will address. So I'll be reading Thucydides, Gibbon, Voltaire, Dorothy Parker, Herman Melville. It's a very broad canvas." - Lewis Lapham
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2. Not all joys are created equal
Reading has been my personal antidote to folly, as weapons of mass distraction hover just a click away. Books are a great way to zig to a slower pace when the mind zags frenetic, like a pin-ball machine.
“Life is never easy. There's work to be done and obligations to be met-obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty." - John F. Kennedy
Granted, I lived my childhood school years (every single day on some weeks after my school day was done) at the library. But, after seamlessly picking up a lot of distractions & habits along the way, the reading ground to a halt.
In just over the past decade, I woke up and went to bed skimming Twitter or Instagram or the next click bait, spending hours on some weekends responding to irate strangers, like it's my business. I've eliminated all social media slowly, but very carefully; it was neither trivial, nor easy to pull off.
"He read in the strangest way . . . He'd read walking, he'd read at the table, at meals, he'd read after dinner, he'd read in the bathtub . . . He really read all the times you don't think you have time to read. . . He was always reading — practically while driving a car." - Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy
I still get sucked into reading The Athletic, during the NBA Finals, or political mayhem right around now, and find my brain melting. Developing a reading habit that is there for me at every given opportunity during the day or evening (a book wherever I look: car, office, night stand, coffee table, couch...) is slowly opening my mind to the joys of a good home-cooked meal vs. the quick dopamine hit of an In N' Out tweet.
Reading slows down my frantic mind, once eager to respond to every other tweet for over a decade and in the process burnt to a crisp and unable to see. But, staying away from these distractions takes time. And, that stolen time is now spared, and put to better use reading, just like I did as a kid.
3. All weekends with books, though, are created equal...
A local library is the gift that keeps on giving. Under budding redwood groves, a book in one hand, a hike checked-off, a Sunday beckons in ways that very few pleasures do...
"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of a library." - Borges
Another day I'll write about the gift of libraries and the role they play in our communities.
But, to wrap this post up at a decent hour, so I can get to tomorrow with enough sleep under my belt, here's the few books I've gathered over the last three weekends. This weekend's reading is in the picture above:
Other books I've picked up (the local library allows me to keep extending books every couple of weeks, indefinitely) and it is a joy! So, while there, I picked up the ocean of highlights from Kennedy's life, especially the highs. I guess this is a month's reading, maybe next Friday will see an update on how these books turned out.