ONE FOR THE BOOK
Paying tribute to great reads that bring solace, guidance and a different way of thinking
Another book has found itself back at the library, largely unread. This time it's Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath, by Heather Clark.
“How could a book about a short life be so long?” I pout to myself while sliding the tome — 1,118 pages, 3.6 pounds (2 kg) — through the return slot.
Though the opening chapters of the book were intriguing, it literally hurt my wrists to hold it. Within 20 minutes, my fingers were numb. Eventually, I gave up.
But it wasn't just the heft of the book that led to defeat. It was the fact that Red Comet was one more book that seemed poised to change my life with a new and dazzling perspective but didn't.
Perhaps it's not the fault of the books; a similar expectation accompanies each and every visit to the hairdresser, and that never works out, either. Regardless, more often than not, the books I have tackled since retiring one year ago have left me with a hunger for something else.
Book-loving friends cluck in sympathy, blaming COVID -19 for a shrinking attention span, or the marketplace for catering to those with a taste for bloodthirsty nannies.
Both of those things are true. But it's more than that.
When contemplating retirement over the past few years, one of the things I looked forward to most was a return to deep reading. As a child, I was a passionate reader, frequently penalized in elementary school for poring over a book secreted in the maw of my desk. As a teenager, I read for a long time at night before sleep, splaying the book on its face beside the bed before turning out the light. On a weekend morning, I opened my eyes, reached down beside the bed, and picked up the book again before I had so much as visited the bathroom. I lost myself in books, one after another, with no desire to find my way back.
At university, however, there was so much reading for study that the time for fictional escape disappeared, and with it, the pleasure of sinking into a world free of expectations for performance.
Then came a period that flew by like a movie on fast-forward. It was called child rearing.
Books were stacked hopefully on the bedside table (I recall Marni Jackson's compelling
The Mother Zone and Margaret Atwood's terrifying Cat's Eye). But I only read for a few minutes at night before exhaustion pulled my eyelids shut, and it seemed a shame to waste such fine books on a weary brain.
Murder mysteries filled a need; if I had forgotten most of the book because I was actually asleep while reading, all would be revealed at the end anyway.
After the children moved away from home, there was more time for reading, and every so often, a book spoke to me. Once, in my 50s, foot surgery confined me to the living room couch for the better part of a week with Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch. I lived alone at the time, two divorces behind me. Something about that surgery, and the solitary time on the couch as the snowy world outside drifted by the condominium window, made me grateful.
Like Red Comet, the novel was big and heavy. But in the end, The Goldfinch revealed that past mistakes and missteps were just about being human and everything would be all right.
In that book was a scrap of something from those early reading years, in that faraway and delicious refuge where characters from Nancy Drew to Jane Eyre provided not only an escape, but also a road map.
Books are a valuable source of entertainment and diversion (thank you David Sedaris and Lisa Jewell). But the best ones offer so much more.
Like a nourishing friend who says just the right thing over coffee, books can plant a thoughtful perspective in the brain that remains for days, weeks, or a lifetime. A truly great book may even point to a different way of being.
In my 60s, I look to books for guidance. There are fears of an uncertain future to be soothed, new situations to be negotiated, old wounds still in need of healing. Forgiveness feels increasingly important.
So the search continues for the perfect book, one that has earned its place on the floor beside my bed. Gathering the blankets around us for warmth and comfort, we two can settle in for a good think and, together, figure out what it all means.