The Pleasure of Random Reading

I’ve written about it before, a year ago more or less, but it is no less true now than then, that one of the most pleasurable aspects of a week spent in Aquiares is reading at random.

It would not be an overstatement to say that reading is an enormous, and an enormously important, part of my life.

Much of my reading is project oriented. For instance, I have lately been reading Hungarian novels because I have created a character in my novel who is Hungarian. I have never been to Hungary, not do I know much about Hungary (current politics are rather unfortunate, so I read), but I believe that through novels I will gain an understanding of what it is to be Hungarian. Hence: Szabo, Esterhazy, Banffy and several whose names I cannot spell.

Likewise, with a reading group led by the remarkable and remarkably Proustian Anka Muhlstein, I am making my way through Proust’s In Search of Lost Time (about 60 pages to go), which led me to Chateaubriand, my latest crush. Also to Proust and the Squid, which isn’t really about Proust but about reading itself.

I particularly like guide books and reference books. Anything about reptiles and snakes in Costa Rica is appreciated.

The existence of this blog notwithstanding, I rarely read on a screen, especially small screens. I always have a small paperback in my handbag, because you never know when you will be stuck in a traffic jam or an airport or the checkout line at Costco. (Unlike Foodtown, where the magazine stand allows me to catch up on the peccadillos of celebrities I have never heard of.)

I feel about reading books the way others might feel about running, or eating chocolate: a non-reading life is not worth living.

So when I arrive at Aquiares, after making sure the volcano is still smoking, the first place I go is the bookshelf. Volcan Turrialba, seen from the Esperanza patio, and closer up, from the road to Irazu.
This past visit I discovered a novel by the poet James Schuyler, Alfred and Guinevere, about siblings who spend the summer with their grandmother and Uncle Saul, and are largely left to their own devices. It is simply brilliant. Then I picked up John Buchan’s Greenmantle and got about 50 pages into it before I realized it wasn’t necessary to continue; a little stiff-upper-lip, self-congratulatory, Brittania-rules-the-waves, can go a very long way. It felt perfectly acceptable to abandon Richard Hannay to his heroism, and turn to Barbara Pym’s Quartet in Autumn. This story of four single people, two men and two woman, who work together in an office that will soon become redundant, and their circumscribed lives, is rendered with exquisite and often painful tenderness and exactitude. My reading was enhanced by the pithy and witty marginalia of another sister-in-law, Fritz. After that I thought I would give mysteries a try, and there was Sue Grafton’s G is for Gullible. No, I just checked on-line, it is G is for Gumshoe. Either way, I couldn’t finish it. Her detective’s earnest heartiness became a little cloying, so I guiltlessly abandoned her and discovered Dawn Powell’s memoir, My Home is Far Away. This was not for the faint of heart. Anyone embarking on step-motherhood could find in those pages the absolute worst you could be. Lastly, I plucked Nabokov’s Transparent Things, which I had most likely read decades ago during my Nabokov-obsessive period, but even so, just in the first 10 pages I had to consult the dictionary four times and was rendered befuddled (I still am) by “unintentional pun” on page 14.* What could be better?

I wasn’t the only one reading at random. My sister-in-law, Sandra, was seen quietly laughing over Alfred and Guinevere, and then devoured several Barbara Pym’s. Even CSB, having dutifully read our book club selection, found some Faulkner that beckoned him. Only my brother Carl resisted the temptations of the bookshelf, and kept plugging along at Hawking’s Brief History of Time. I encouraged this, because I hoped to have him explain it to me. It is not exactly brief. Carl highly recommends the illustrated version.

We left Aquiares sadly, but one consolation was realizing that there remain several books, unchosen by me, that look intriguing. Until next year.


*3 Photos
Oses

It is a truth universally acknowledged that I need a solid eight hours of sleep, and if it is not universally acknowledged, it should be. Were it not for that universally acknowledged fact, nothing would please me more than to be awoken at 1 AM, as we were 2 nights ago, by flashing lights and voices in the driveway and the dogs barking at the excitement. You may well ask, What crisis prompted this intrusion upon our slumber? What imminent tornado, or census emergency, or political scandal, or fallen tree, or terrorist threat?
It seems someone across the street called the police to complain of the noise of barking dogs and alleged our dogs were the guilty ones.
But no, our dogs were fast asleep under our bed, inside our house. It was only when the police arrived, all a-clamor, that Daisy and Bruno set about barking. The local constabulary apologized but declined to tell us who it was that so glibly and wrongly accused our dogs of disturbance, and succeeded in disturbing us.
Then I couldn’t go back to sleep, because I was feeling persecuted. What so-called neighbor was falsely accusing us of harboring annoying canines? Had I done something to offend whoever it was? There are several other dogs around here, any of which could have been barking – though I had heard none. What made our accusers place the blame on floppy & benign D & B? And then, because it is a truth universally acknowledged that in the middle of the night small problems can inflate like a soufflé and multiply like fruit flies, I worried whether people who cause us to be awoken by the law in the middle of the night are the sort of people who find poultry objectionable. In the middle of the night, this does not seem so much a question as an implacable fact, and sleep was further postponed as I bemoaned the fate of poor Alonso the rooster. Currently, Alonso’s crowing is a mellow alto and allows me to fantasize that we live on Old MacDonald’s Farm. But soon it will grow into its full heavy-metal baritone, and I imagine that the neighbors will call out the National Guard.
Once I had imagined all the terrible things that could happen to the chickens, I started considering the problem of poison ivy. Then I began to itch, and of course the worse thing to do when your poison ivy itches is to scratch it, so I scratched it, because it was the middle of the night and I desperately wanted to fall back asleep. The scratching did not help. I have a pharmacopeia of putative remedies for poison ivy, including, but not limited to, Calamine lotion, Caladryl lotion, tincture of jewelweed, Zanfel, Technu, oatmeal baths, fermented llama urine, and Prednisone. And I considered them all as I lay awake. But the truth is that nothing works completely except almost boiling water. In fact, it is almost worth getting poison ivy to stand under a very hot shower and arrange for the water to hit the body parts afflicted with poison ivy. I am not sure how it works, but this not only relieves the itching but the hot water sets off a feeling of total pleasure, euphoria really.
It’s the sort of thing that makes me understand what it must be like to shoot heroine. Or makes me think I understand what it’s like. Or makes me imagine I understand, though it is unlikely I do.
After euphoria in the hot shower I returned to bed and read Barbara Pym.