"Nothing is More Human than a Book"

October 29, 5:27 PMLiterary ExaminerJohn T. Battaglia

Are you literary-minded?  Do you enjoy a good book every now and then?  Well, I do.  I like the look and feel of a book.  Sounds a bit old-fashioned, I know, but I consider “look and feel” a part of the reading process.  I have yet to touch a Kindle.  Supposedly that’s the latest technological rage these days.  That and Twitter.  But I’m afraid that a Kindle just might short-circuit and blow up in my hands if I were to touch one, and as for Twitter, I don’t believe that human beings should tweet, at least not publicly.  Naturally, I’m a fan of Tweety Bird and all, especially when I worked as a gangster-in-the-park character for the whole of a month at Six Flags Magic Mountain in shiny, happy Southern Cal.  Yep, I hung out with Tweety and Yosemite and Porky and Petunia and the rest of the big-headed bunch.  Bugs, too, of course.  But we never Kindled.  Never tweeted, either.  Suffice to say that neither of these technologies existed in the year 2006, at least not to my knowledge.  And I don’t think Facebook was much of a household name then, either.  My, how things change.  

I’m not into Facebook and the so-called social networking sites.  My idea of socialization, strangely enough, is picking up a book.  Here’s a favorite quote of mine, from Housekeeping and Gilead (Pulitzer Prize) author Marilynne Robinson (The Paris Review, Fall issue 2008): “I’m kind of a solitary.  This would not satisfy everyone’s hopes, but for me it’s a lovely thing.  I recognize the satisfactions of a more socially enmeshed existence than I cultivate, but I go days without hearing another human voice and never notice it.  I never fear it.  The only thing I fear is the intensity of my attachment to it . . .  I grew up with the confidence that the greatest privilege was to be alone and have all the time you wanted.  That was the cream of existence.  I owe everything that I have done to the fact that I am very much at ease at being alone.  It’s a good predisposition in a writer.  And books are good company.  Nothing is more human than a book.”  Now, I enjoyed the movie “The Graduate” (who didn’t?).  And I really enjoyed the way Anne Bancroft showed off those lithe, yummy calves of hers as the Mrs. Robinson character.  Yep, she was one sexy married lady.  But, to me, there’s something especially hot about Marilynne Robinson – the author.  I love how her mind operates.    

“Nothing is more human than a book.”  That’s a forceful statement.  You might ask, Well, how can a book be human if it merely consists of words on paper?  A book is human because, in the words of another renowned author, John Gardner, in his The Art of Fiction: “[W]hatever the genre may be, fiction does its work by creating a dream in the reader’s mind.”  Fiction, pardon the cliché, is an escape.  Reading a book is like going to the movies, only the projector pushes its light directly through what is known as the mind’s eye.  The author writes down the words, supplies the characters and situations, and maps out the story.  All the reader has to do is turn the pages and allow the author’s images – his imagination – to, um . . . kindle (sorry, couldn’t resist!).  My favorite book is Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.  It’s my favorite book because the characters are so alive and seem so real, almost as if they can walk out of the book and into my life.  I’ve read a couple of books in the past year that have generated something of a similar feeling: Willy Vlautin’s Northline and Katie Crouch’s collection of shorts, Girls in Trucks.  There’s nothing better than picking up a book and having it literally blow you off your twin bed (mine is without legs on the floor – not even a box-spring to it – so the fall is never far or injurious).  It’s rare when a book is so utterly right, so nearly perfect, but when it happens, there’s no forgetting it.  And there’s no forgetting the author, either, the wordsmith and idea-manufacturer whose inner-artist awakens readers to much more than just “a book.”  No, the successful author gives the literary-minded something else, indeed – an entire world.    

There isn’t much else to say, really.  I more or less allow the books I read to speak for themselves within my reviews.  And the way I review is simple: If I enjoy a book, I let it be known.  And if I don’t, the same.  Of course I want to like every book I read.  That’s why I read them in the first place.  But it’s impossible (and downright lazy and preciously “nice”) to have to like them all.

Please feel free to subscribe to the Literary Examiner (formerly a Philadelphia Literary Examiner, but recently added as a national contributor) by clicking the button at the top of this page and entering your e-mail address, that way you can receive any new posts when they first appear on-line.  I look forward to your readership and welcome any comments you may have.  It is my bookish responsibility to introduce you to a wide selection of titles and talent, both popular and obscure, ranging from contemporary and classic fiction to memoir, and all hopefully worthy of your attention.  Occasionally, as with this introductory note, I’ll write about something other than a review of the latest best-seller et cetera.  But the topic will always be about books – in some capacity.

Because I share in the idea that “[B]ooks are good company.  Nothing is more human than a book.”