A New Year's Reading Resolution

My good friend Cara once gave me the best reason ever for not eating fast food. "We eat a finite number of meals in our lifetimes," she said, "so why eat crappy food?" The same sentiment applies to reading, which I would argue is as essential an activity to my personal fitness as eating. With that said, let's do some math.

The average lifespan for an American woman is 79.1 years. We'll go ahead and round that down to 79 for simplicity's sake (although rounding that number down does make me a bit squeamish). Depending on the length and complexity of my current reading, I get through anywhere from 1 to 4 books a week. If last semester's coursework is a good benchmark, for at least the next 4.5 years, I'll be hitting closer to the 4 than the 1 on average.

So in my lifetime of 79 years, minus the 25 I've already lived (again rounding, since I'm really about 25.3 years old), I have 648 months of reading. Actually, the 52-weeks-in-a-year measure is probably a better way to calculate, since the whole 4-weeks-to-a-month thing is decidedly inaccurate. Thus, I can more accurately say that I have 2,808 weeks of reading left to me. That works out, using an estimate of 2.5 books per week (hereafter referred to as bks/wk), to 7,020 books.

I should point out that books hardly constitute the whole of my reading. As a graduate student, and future professor (cross your fingers, kiddies!), I'll be supplementing books with papers, articles, The Chronicle of Higher Education, department memos, colleagues' drafts, submissions to publications, online reading for fun, and the New York Times Magazine on Sundays. Let's stick with books for now, though, because doing these calculations with page counts sounds just a wee bit daunting.

So 7,020 books. A lot, yes? But not really, considering UNLV's Lied Library has a million-plus volume collection. I must be choosy, with this whole reading endeavor.

But I really like the way I've gone about reading until now. It's haphazard, true, and all over the map, granted, but it's led me to some really remote and interesting corners of the reading world. I just finished Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram (points earned for most first names in a name), on loan from a colleague/boss-lady at UNLV's Academic Success Center. I learned a number of things from that novel, including that Australia drafted soldiers to fight alongside Americans in Vietnam. What a strange tidbit to be elided from American history classes, but discovered in a book about India.

Before that, I read Roberto Belaño's 2666, hoping I would like it better than his Savage Detectives, which I read for a course last semester. I did like it better.

Next up, we've got Amartya Sen's Collective Choice and Social Welfare. I heard an interview with Sen on NPR's Planet Money podcast, and was intrigued by his thoughts on the centuries-long misunderstanding of Adam Smith's theories about the free market and the invisible hand. Sen has a book about these ideas coming out, but I want some background reading on his economics before I get into the new book. I'm trying not to take everything at face value these days, especially on the big questions like, "Why is there poverty and what can we do about it?"

Also on my reading list for the holiday vacation is assigned reading for next semester's courses. It runs the gamut from Aristotle and Plato to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. I'm comforted to know before even getting started that the spring reading will be as encompassing and eclectic as the fall's.

Each of those books, assigned or stumbled across, eats into my grand total of 7,020. I can try to read more, and certainly there will be times in my life when I do. Just as certainly, however, there will be times when I don't or can't. I need a different strategy to deal with my finite-lifetime-reading anxiety.

Here it is: Feel free to put something down. I'm guilty of trying, very hard and even desperately at times, to finish anything I start. If I don't, I feel as though I've given up too easily. If it was printed, it must be worthwhile, no? Well, no, actually. In a way, this train of thought wends its way back to my post on difficult reading. A worthwhile book for some is not necessarily a worthwhile book for me. And only I can make that call.

Thinking about my projected lifespan depresses me. Thinking about anyone's projected lifespan depresses me. It leads to one of those deep, dark pits that I deliberately avoid in my day-to-day thoughts. I suppose it's that kind of avoidance, driven by fear, that keeps me from writing fiction. That's a whole other topic, deserving of its own post, however. If I can force myself to climb down into the pit, that is.

But actively working towards making the most of my projected lifespan curtails the depression. It gives me hope. Hope that I am making the most, and hope that there is a most to be made. So for the first time in my adult life, I hereby make the following New Year's Resolution:

I will not finish a book just because. I will finish it because it's going somewhere, because it speaks to me, because it broadens my knowledge, because I can't wait to find out what happens next. I will read recommendations, required books, and random discoveries, as always. But I will not be afraid to put my reading down and say, "This isn't for me." In other words, I will never again read a book the way I read Snow Falling on Cedars.

And for good measure, I'll go ahead and put that resolution into effect starting............NOW.

The Crafty Christmas Corner

This holiday season has turned out to be a very crafty one, full of knitting, crocheting, felting, cookie-baking (See cookie buckets in photo!), and other assorted Martha-Stewart-style activities. Partially, perennial brokeness has habituated me to hand-made rather than store-bought presents. It's a habit I'm not planning on breaking though, because there's something beautiful about hand-made items.

My mother and sister have always been fabulous gift-givers. They find the most amazing, artistic, and apt gifts at bazaars, local stores, and farmer's markets. My inhibitions about spending money have prevented me from jumping on that bandwagon. But by making gifts myself, I hope to give some of that same warm-cozy to their recipients that I feel when I receive a gift from the aforementioned fabulous mother and sister.

Something else happens with a hand-made gift, somthing that makes hand-made gifts an appropriate topic for a blog about texts. They say something. They speak to the character and tastes of the giver as well as the receiver, and what they say about each person traverses, back and forth, the bonds that tie the two together. In a way, what these gifts say changes those bonds, strengthens them, weaves the past to the present and opens new avenues to the future. The weaving/growing/bond metaphor springs easily to my mind, since so many of the gifts I've been making are knitted or crocheted. They may take hours upon hours to complete, and I may be reading or watching TV or listening to This American Life while I work, but a good portion of the time I spend on each gift is spent thinking about the person it's for.

I think about the colors and patterns I've chosen for this person, hoping or knowing that they'll love them. This is the past. The experiences I've shared with him or her informs every choice I make.

When I painstakingly unravel and correct mistakes, I think about the moment this person opens their gift, and how I want that moment to be perfect and free of mistakes. I want to create a beautiful tiny space in their life that in some way reflects the space they occupy in my mind, a space I can go to to appreciate how wonderful my friends and family are. This is the present.

And when I've gotten into the swing of things, I let my mind wander and imagine the fun--and sorrows--I have yet to experience with this person, this wonderful friend, confidante, supporter, sounding board, inspiration. This is the future.

All these daydreams can't be drawn from a shawl or wall-hanger or pillow, no matter how loudly I think while I'm making those gifts. What can be drawn from the gifts is the care I put into making them, the concern I have for their recipient's tastes, and the time I have and will invest into my relationships.

I'm not big on receiving gifts myself. I enjoy knowing that people care, but I'm perfectly content with a hug and conversation on the phone or over a cup of coffee. But if I get one Christmas wish, it's that the gifts I give speak as loudly to their recipients as they have to me while I've been making them.

Writers vs. Readers: The Ultimate Smackdown

I've been thinking lately about difficult writing. That's perhaps a misnomer, actually, because I've really been thinking about difficult reading. Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake, the subject of my last post, got this ball of burdensomeness rolling when it came up for discussion in a class of fellow graduate students. There's one key difference between myself and these particular fellow students, though, that I think informs the contentiousness of what is really a pretty vanilla book. They're all writers, in the making-things-up, publishing-for-the-market-that-isn't-interested-in-Frenchmen-redefining-words-all-the-time, has-Random-House-called-yet kind of way. I am not that kind of writer.

This reaction of mine is not meant as an insult. I do not define myself negatively because I find that idea of the writer to be negative. I define myself that way because I do have a degree in writing and don't want to engender any confusion on that front. I define in a reactive way because I haven't yet figured out the positive definition of what and who I am. Frankly, I'm ok with that. It goes along with my distaste for setting goals, but I'll save that discussion for after I read Barbara Ehrenreich on positivism.

Lahiri is ridiculously successful. The Namesake won the Pulitzer, for goodness' sake. But it's not a very complicated book. I enjoyed reading it, but it was breezy and light and didn't evoke strong emotions, particularly not for the characters' sakes. From my last post, it's clear the book did create memorable connections to my own experience. But that's not the same as a book forging whole new paths in my brain. I felt rather that this book merely led me more slowly along paths I've trodden before. My classmates didn't seem to get even that much from it. In the words of one woman, who always offers well-reasoned and insightful comments, "I actively disliked it."

I've been trying ever since that class to make sense of the almost uniform dislike expressed by this group of writers. During the conversation, I defended the book, as did one other student. He and I have similarly comfortable sort-of foreign, sort-of not backgrounds that might account for our attachment to a book about immigrants that focuses on feelings and assumes a stable economic and political situtation. But the more I think about The Namesake, the more I realize that it doesn't really focus on feelings. The text never lets you in, never invites you to share a titillating bit of info or the excitement of a sexual escapade. All that gets glossed over. In reading, I must have inserted all the good stuff from my own experience, and let it mix with the words and actions and characters actually on the page.

The further I get from the experience of reading, the more disenchanted I become with the book. That's usually how I judge: about three weeks later. Because those books that I truly love are the ones whose endings I can't quite remember, but I do remember one character or description or awkward moment or turn of phrase that I have incorporated into my character and ways of speaking and attitudes towards others. With Lahiri, there is nothing to incorporate. Instead, I incorporated myself into the book, and mistook that self for something deeper within the text itself.

Even in acknowledging all this though--that I don't like it as much as I thought and it certainly shouldn't have won the Pulitzer--I feel compelled to defend the book against the primary complaint I heard from my fellow students. It's too accessible. Really? As writers, considering the market, weighing what you want to write against what people want to read, searching for a publisher and devoted followers, how is accessibility necessarily a bad thing? That complaint would have surprised me far less coming from literature students, who slog through difficult writing as a matter of course. (For an example, see Michael McKeon on anything. Anything at all. Just read a paragraph. You'll get the idea.)

Full disclosure: Samuel R. Delany, the sci-fi guy, also makes the following argument, which I was excited to see someone else espouse when I read him.

Difficult writing has its place. Some ideas are intrinsically difficult, and require some verbal jumping-through-hoops and big words to express well enough and clearly enough that they can be understood correctly. Currently, I'm reading Foucault's History of Sexuality, and it's not the most transparent thing. Concomitantly, it's not the most opaque. Rather, Foucault seems to have hit on just the level of difficulty needed to convey his often non-instinctive ideas. If it was too easy, it wouldn't have the same level of insight and nuance. So difficult writing has its place.

But Lahiri isn't trying to take apart the dominate discourse. She's just trying to show us an immigrant family and some of their (admittedly minor) struggles. And if doing so in an accessible fashion gets her books just flying off the shelves of Borders and Whole Foods, then good on 'er. I'm inclined to think that people reading, no matter what, is a good thing. People reading about other cultures than their own, even if the treatment of that culture stays surface-bound, is definitely a good thing. Lahiri hasn't contributed anything to the literary conversation about the immigrant experience and what it means to write as a minority American. She has, however, contributed to the general public's conversation about what it means to be an average American. The Bengali characters Lahiri shows in Boston and New York, celebrating Christmas, dating white people, are now entrenched in her readers' minds. These readers may never have met an Indian-American in real life, but by getting to know Gogol and his family, the Indian-American experience no longer seems so foreign. Lahiri has taken the Other and through her easy and engaging writing style, made it seem not so Other at all.

That's where accessible writing has its place. Not everyone reads at the same level, and that's all fine and well. Maybe I'm in this particular camp on the subject because Mr. P, with whom I share everything else, couldn't give two red hoots for reading. I know that doesn't make him less intelligent or knowledgeable; in fact quite the opposite is true. He knows chemistry and I know criticism. Which one of us uses our brain more deeply and thoroughly and usefully? Impossible to say, but I do know the fact that I read and he doesn't means squat in answering that question.

For Lahiri's readers, then, perhaps reading isn't an intellectual activity. But it can still be an activity that acquaints them with lives they've never seen before. Those lives aren't fully explored in The Namesake, and we're always at a distance from the characters' interiorities, but we have to start somewhere, right? New things are scary, and Lahiri knows just how far she can push the new before it gets too scary.

The writers reading her book know too much. They know how to parse difficult reading, and they are offended by accessible writing that sells. It's an insult to them, who spend their time perfecting their own literary craft. To them I say, remember. Remember that not everyone is like you. Remember that reading is a skill which you have fought for and struggled with and honed into a sharp-edged tool. But you too had to start somewhere. And for millions of readers who bought Lahiri's book, maybe it will be the start of their own struggles. Even if they don't struggle on the same scope as you, their struggles can still be worth having.