Insatiable
I want to read every great book that has ever been written. I get like this sometimes. My brain gets so stimulated. I want to experience everything in the world that is good, that has been created and has been judged to be exceptional. The tragedy is that there’s not enough time. There are terrific books I will never get a chance to read. Musical compositions I will never get to hear. Cities I will never get to see. There are tons of wonderful people I will never meet. It’s not my fault. It’s just the way things are. Life is filled with an infinite number of beautiful things. There’s only so much time.
Yesterday I went to the Strand, determined (after some Amazon.com research) to buy John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor. I was in the mood for something postmodern. The book was written in 1960 but Barth wrote it in the style of an eighteenth-century novel. I bought it. Then I left the Strand and went to Barnes & Noble in Chelsea, and I wound up buying yet another book — The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami. My friend Nick is reading it and he thought it would be cool if we both read it at the same time, because then we can discuss it afterward. It was sitting there, prominently displayed on a special shelf. It looked interesting. So I bought it.
And so instead of The Sot-Weed Factor, which is now sitting on my bookshelf horizontally (I’ve been told it’s unhealthy for a book to lie horizontally, although maybe that only applies to hardcovers), I’m reading The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. It’s terrific. It turns out it’s exactly the type of book I was looking to read.
I want to read everything. At the end of Rita Mae Brown’s book on writing, Starting From Scratch, she sets out a recommended reading list of literature — books that anyone who wants to be a serious writer should read. There must be at least 300 books on the list. How anyone is supposed to read everything on her recommended list is beyond me. I have this almost unquenchable desire to read everything on the list, even though I know that I’ll never be able to do it.
I want to learn Latin.
I want to read every great book because I think and hope it will make me a better-informed writer. It will clue me in to the use of language, to structure, to plot, to character development. I want to be an expert. There’s also an element of pleasure, yes — it feels great to read a great work — but there’s a Puritannical (or at least very American) self-improvement streak there, too. Great literature will make me a better person. In addition to a better writer.
Hmm… suppose I read a book a month. Over the next 50 years I can read 600 books. That’s a hell of a lot of books.
But there’s also people to meet. Sex to have. Really good movies to see. Places to visit. Cuisine to eat.
I’m envious of people who were English majors in college and read lots of the classics by the time they were 22. I’m 27 and I’m young. But in some ways, 27 isn’t so young. There are people five or six or seven years younger than me who have read way more great literature than I have, and so they are much better informed about these things than I am.
I want to find a good primer on Western philosophy. I want to work my way through the great philosophers. Find out why Plato’s so great. Saint Augustine. Figure out what Wittgenstein’s all about. I want to read everything. Now. Paradise Lost. Dante’s Inferno. Everything by Charles Dickens. Gravity’s Rainbow. Now. Because I don’t trust my attention span. If I don’t do it now, I will lose interest.
Well, it’s about time you updated! What have you been doing all weekend? Having great sex with alarming frequency? I certainly hope so. If you’re going to leave the rest of us with nothing better to do than–oh, read great literature–I say you’d better be having great sex!
Hey, that’s great, Tin Man! I went to go read the summary of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle on Amazon, and it sounds very intriguing. I think I’ll go pick it up if I have the time. (^o^)
If you don’t mind taking advice from someone much younger and less experienced than yourself, I would say not to worry too much about not having read a lot of good books earlier on. After all, the books will always be there for you to enjoy. (^-^) Just don’t forget to read them in the future!
Sometimes, I half wish that I chose some English or literature related major because literature is one of the things I really enjoy studying, but at the same time, studying literature isn’t my main goal in life…which is why I picked a BioEng major. (After all, I can enjoy literature on my own while doing BioE, but I don’t think I can really enjoy BioE on my own while studying lit!)
Eh, I’m getting really long-winded and I think I forgot my point already, but I guess what I really want to say is don’t forget you like to read even if your attention wanders (that happens to me all the time), and even if you don’t get to read all the things you want to, I think the things you do every day will already make you a better person and a better writer. (^-^)
Have fun reading!
Hey! I’ve never posted here before, but your comment about wanting a good primer on Western philosophy brough me out of the closet, so to speak. Take a look Richard Tarnas’ Passion of the Western Mind. It’s a very compelling, but very accessible book. I have a few issues with what Tarnas has to say in the final chapter, but I think it’s still the best overview of Western philosophy I’ve ever read.
Oh, to read just for the fun of it…
There are always too many great books to read out there. It’s funny how no one ever feels like s/he’s read enough. I just started graduate school in English last year and it seems that everyone in the whole world is still reading more than I am, even though I’m supposedly in this gig to read the stuff I want…
Hey I’ve been lurking here recently and really enjoy your writing. I share your passion for literature–I recommend my favorite book, “Memoirs of a Geisha” by Arthur Golden. I think Asian culture is fascinating, and this book you cannot put down!
When I was young I read about 5 books a week. Now I read about five books a year. I think I have read over two thousand books in my life and I’m thirty, so there’s hope :-).
Recommended:
(*) Yukio Mishima – ‘the temple of the golden pavilion’ (or ‘confessions of a mask’). He still deserves to get the Noble prize for literature.
(*) Oscar Wilde – ‘the portrait of Dorian Gray’, but I gather you have read it already
(*) Pat Barker – regeneration trilogy. Amazing.
(*) Alan Hollinghurst – ‘the folding star’. An amazing writer, his use of language is beautiful.
Thanks for inspiring me, I will reread Mishima’s ‘temple of the golden pavillion’ again.
As a former graduate student in classics (hey, I can teach you Latin! Repeat after me: da mihi caput! semper ubi sub ubi!), let me just say that *everyone* feels like they’ve read less than all those other young kids.
I learned that I needed to let go of the reading list mentality, and just look for the books that I want to read. For me recently, that’s meant some Shakespeare (read about half of Othello in airports on my last trip to New York) and some early Christian alterna-gospels (Q, Thomas). I’m still a sucker for academic analysis, so I pick editions with long scholarly introductions and lots and lots of appendices and footnotes. The Oxford Classics paperbacks and the new 3rd edition Arden Shakespeares are perfect for this.
But honestly, I can’t tell you how many “great books” I’ve attempted and just dropped because I was bored. If you’re not compelled to read it, then don’t force yourself to. Find something you love, and revel in it! For me, it was Greek and Roman myth, and then way-cool folklore (the only thing besides teaching that kept me sane in grad school, believe me).
Oh, Bill, you rascal. Teaching Tin Man to say bawdy things in Latin — tsk, tsk! Reminds me of the old days, when the Jesuits struggled to make Latin seem like fun to all us young New Wavers.
Hey there. I’ve stumbled on your page from a link at The Daily Dean, I believe.
You’re 28? Geeze, being 43, I have unread books on the shelf that are older than you! Hehe. But, I will agree with the suggestion that you simply read what pricks your interest. You may want to give some thought to the concept that perhaps it’s the serendipitous influences that we encounter that make us unique as people…and as writers. You now know the 300 titles on Rita Mae’s list (God bless her!)….what will be on yours?!
Cheers!
I hate to pass wind in this blogalicious Western classics luvfest, but it MUST be said: Rita Mae Brown (her choices of great books notwithstanding) is an idiot, and her books are garbage.
If the thought of reading 300 books intimidates a person, that person isn’t likely to be a good writer. Jeez, 300 seems like the bare minimum just to be intellectually alive, let alone think about becoming a writer …