This is how organized my reading habit is. First I decided to restart my Russian project (to read the major Russian novels), which was interrupted last year when my hardcover The Brothers Karamazov would not fit in the seat pocket of the plane to New Zealand. It had to be stashed in the overhead bin where I could not open it during the 10-hour flight. These are the details that break your resolve.
But then I made the mistake of opening the most recent Martin Amis novel, The Pregnant Widow. I thought, Easy, I could alternate the Russians with contemporary authors. Besides, I acquired a taste for Amis only recently. In the past it was an obligation (“You have to read Martin Amis!”) but after a trip to London I picked up The Rachel Papers and became a fan. So my reading calendar for 2011 would begin with The Pregnant Widow.
And then I saw a trailer for the upcoming HBO series A Game of Thrones, based on the fantasy novels by George R.R. Martin. Which I haven’t read. Which tempted me by not being available in the three bookstores where I asked for them. Which appeared in front of me the next time I looked. It’s a sign, I always say. Of what, I have no idea.
So I bought all the books, a famine mindset (“If I don’t buy them now I’ll never see them again”) that comes from having been a child in the pre-free trade martial law era. The brick-sized paperback was sitting on top of my bag last Monday when I walked into Powerbooks for no reason, just taking a stroll.
That’s when my eye fell on Quiet Days in Clichy by Henry Miller. I had just heard a harrowing tale in which a friend described himself as “broke, Henry Miller broke,” plus it’s the book Jesse Eisenberg’s character was reading in Adventureland, which I loved. Don’t do it, Jessica, don’t start reading... No!
So Quiet Days in Clichy is the first book I read this year, not counting my bedside table book Rugby for Dummies, which knocks me unconscious after a few pages. Quiet Days… has the advantage of containing lots of graphic sex scenes, starting on page 18. Miller mentions that he had just written Black Spring, which reminds me that I have a copy of Black Spring somewhere...
I have a lot of books. No furniture what’s the point, my cats will sharpen their claws on them anyway but 1,200 books or so in several shelves and a big air-tight plastic box. Periodically I cull volumes and give them away, which gives me an excuse to acquire twice as many books, so there is no end to this. When I got back from Borneo someone carried my suitcase up to my apartment, and while he refrained from mentioning the chaos my three cats had wrought in my absence he had to say, “You have a lot of books.”
I thought, “Please don’t say ‘Have you read all these books?’ because then I’d have to kill you, and I don’t have any acid with which to dissolve the corpse in the bathtub. Or a bathtub.” It occurs to me as I search for my copy of Black Spring that had the question been asked, the honest answer would be “No.” Although the question would still be stupid because it implies that the books are part of the interior design. Of which my house has none.
I don’t know what system you have for shelving your books, but I use the time-tested “I know where it is” method. In my mental map of my bookshelves Black Spring was in the first shelf from the door, near the complete Monty Python scripts and For Keeps by Pauline Kael. But when I scrutinized the shelf it was not there. It was past noon, I was hungry and on my way to lunch, but I could not leave without finding the book. I would have no peace until it was in my hand.
For the next hour I searched my shelves, a process which required removing the first layer of books so I could read the spines of the layers behind them. Nada. Had I lent it out? No, I’d remember. I remember why I bought it: because Henry Rollins had mentioned it somewhere. I remembered where I bought it: at an English bookstore in Paris, which is the only place to buy a book by a young writer describing his days of poverty and hunger in Paris. (But not Shakespeare & Co, which is so dirty it makes me itch. I read about it so I don’t have to experience it personally.)
“Did you lend it out?” I asked my cats, who stared at their demented human and resumed grooming themselves. In the course of my search I found an early Martin Amis, London Fields I’d forgotten I own a copy! And I turned up all these books I had intended to read early Jonathan Lethem, Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, and Conrad’s Nostromo, which I’ve never read beyond page three because the title is the name of the spaceship in Alien and I end up watching the DVD again.
I was sure Black Spring was in the first shelf so I kept going back there to reread the spines. In case the gremlins had grown tired of driving me nuts and restored the book to its proper place. Finally, when reason and hunger conspired to put a halt to the search, I bent down to put on my shoes and there it was in front of my nose, Black Spring by Henry Miller.
So now I am reading London Fields.
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Jessica writes about books and other things at www.JessicaRulestheUniverse.com.