BEHOLDER'S EYE

A FRIEND ASKED ME, "Do you think maybe you've already read your favorite book, heard the best song you'll ever hear, seen the best movie you'll ever see?"

At 70-something, I would say there's a good chance that I will never read a book better than those in my top 5 or so. I'm pretty sure the best music that can be written has been. Of course all of this is subjective and choice of best movie ever is even more a matter of taste and my tastes are apparently way outside the mainstream. For example, browsing through the list of the 100 Greatest Movies of All Time , you have to get all the way to number 43 to find one in my top 10. That one is "To Kill A Mockingbird". Then it's all the way down the list to number 83, "The Graduate", to find another of my all-time favorites, and those are the only picks of mine in that list of "greatest".

Music selections from Rolling Stones Top 500 confirm it: I'm out of touch, overly opinionated, and convinced that those under 20 have little idea of what really good music is, unless they are lucky enough to have a Pops that will play the greats for them, like Otis Redding's "Sittin On The Dock of the Bay"; The Beach Boys', "God Only Knows"; Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On"; The Beatles', "My Guitar Gently Weeps", Neal Young's, "Southern Man"; Crosby, Stills & Nash's, "Suite Judy Blue Eyes"; Bob Dylan's, "Like a Rolling Stone".

I'm not totally stuck in the 60s. For example, I'm pretty sure Diana Krall holds a place with the jazz greats of all time. Adele is magical. Brandi Carlile deserves a spot in the best of the best. Even two of my favorite Christmas songs are by young artists: "Snowman" by Sia and The Bahamas arrangement of "Christmas Must Be Tonight".

Can you believe that "White Christmas" didn't make the Rolling Stone magazine's list of 500 best songs ever? "I Can Only Imagine" by Mercy Me didn't either.

Will a song like "Silent Night" ever be written again? Could it? Several years ago I wrote a piece for an online magazine called "The Curator". It was about my favorite story--one I've heard all of my life, and about that song and it's power. You can click on this title: A Fear Not Story, if you would like to read it.

Just for fun, let's talk about one of the favorite childhood Christmastime books of Baby Boomers: "The Sears Christmas Wish Book". It was our Amazon. Between the time it would arrive in our mailbox until Christmas Eve I would rifle through that book trying to decide between an Erector Set, Lincoln Logs, a Chemistry set, or Johnny Unitas football helmet.

As I "shop" for our Grandkids, I wonder, is there any thing out there these days that would bring as much happiness and fun as a Mr. Potato Head, or a Slinky, or a plastic egg full of Silly Putty? Have the best toys already been made? If they reached into their stockings and found an assortment of nuts, an orange and a few pieces of hard candy, would they look at me like I was playing some kind of cruel joke. I already have a book for each of them. Maybe a book, a warm hug and a round or two of UNO and hot cocoa will be enough. It will have to be. Just as I'm out of touch with current movies and music, I'm clueless about the kids' taste in toys. Anyway, I'll be retired in a few days and My Amazing-Missus and I will be on a "fixed-income". I'm sure that answer will satisfy our little wide-eyed flock in their matching pajamas.

DOWN(SIZING) TO THE ESSENTIALS

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.”

— Oscar Wilde

My first thoughts: 1. Wow, that puts a lot of pressure on books. 2. Is Oscar saying we are what we read or at the very least we become what we read? 3. Do we really reach a place where we are what we are and we can’t help it?

Maybe I shouldn’t assume that he’s speaking only of books. He may be also referring to news sources, social media, electronic media, etc. I’m guessing his conclusion would stand.

We’ll be “down-sizing” soon, dispensing with a bunch of our worldly treasures. (I hope and pray that doesn’t mean a giant garage sale. I hate garage sales. So, if we have something you want let me know and I'll put your name on it and you can pick it up when we're ready.) We’ll keep a few things to set up a little household, but that’s for after living the silvery, nomadic dream: a year or two year's long cross-country adventure in our Airstream.

In preparation, I’ve been making a list of things I’ll want to keep. So far, other than the essentials for the journey, I want to keep my drum set. I would also like to keep my stereo and vinyl record collection—some new and some I’ve been hauling around since the 60s—but that may not be practical.

I will also keep some books. I’ve already given away a bunch and there will be more to give. I have a list I’ve been compiling of what is in the essential library. Here are a few (in no certain order) along with a quote from each:

“The people dreamed and fought and slept as much as ever. And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow.”

― Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“There are two occasions when the sacred beauty of Creation becomes dazzlingly apparent, and they occur together. One is when we feel our mortal insufficiency to the world, and the other is when we feel the world's mortal insufficiency to us.”

― Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

“The way things are does not determine the way they ought to be”

― Michael J. Sandel, Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

“I am not an angel,' I asserted; 'and I will not be one till I die: I will be myself. Mr. Rochester, you must neither expect nor exact anything celestial of me - for you will not get it, any more than I shall get it of you: which I do not at all anticipate.”

― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.”

― J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” - Atticus Finch

― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

“That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don’t know nothing about it.”

― Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Vanity and pride are different things, though the words are often used synonymously. A person may be proud without being vain. Pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves, vanity to what we would have others think of us.”

― Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

“Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons.”

― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”

― G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.”

― Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

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So, that’s a sampling of what I’m keeping for my library. These make the cut because I’ve read all of them multiple times and I look forward to reading them again. They always seem to have something more to give.

Also, from Oscar Wilde:

“A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.”

— Oscar Wilde

I’m stretching Oscar’s definition to books, and these books provide great company within solitude. And, if these particular books help shape the person I will become when I can no longer help it; I’m okay with that.

What would you recommend adding to a library of essentials?

A Gift For Every Man

Still shopping? If that hard to shop for person on your list is a guy, a dad or granddad, maybe I can help. Please do not say at any point during the reading of this post, "but, he doesn't read; and there's no way he would write in a journal."

Buy him a good book and a journal. Because...

“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson

I firmly believe every man will read something, or at least look at the pictures. Here's one that will be a sure-fire winner. It's a wonderful story about a father, a son and a baseball bat. It's only 70 pages long. It's called "A Drive Into The Gap". Click here to check it out, watch a short video about the book and even order it.

While you're at the Fieldnotes site, peruse their selection of journals and order your guy a pack.

If your home library doesn't already have a copy of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill A Mockingbird, get them before they're banned in our new version of America. Don't worry that he might think these are books for kids. Because...

“No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally – and often far more – worth reading at the age of fifty and beyond.”   ― C.S. Lewis

Next, bundle up your gift of book and journal and put them under the tree. If when he opens his gift this Christmastime, he looks at it like he hasn't seen a book since seventh grade. Tell him that you read a blog where some wise-old man said that reading will enhance mental capacity, youthfulness, and virility.

“It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines
what you will be when you can’t help it.”   ― Oscar Wilde

If he needs some help with what to do with his new journal, send him to this post at The Art of Manliness. He won't be able to resist visiting a site called "the art of manliness".

THE END

Read It Again

I'VE TRIED BUT I JUST CAN'T DO IT; NOT YET ANYWAY. I have a friend who challenged me to choose six books. Here’s how the challenge went down: If you had to choose six books to be the only books you would have on your shelf to read from now on, what would they be?

“Comme l’on serait savant si l’on connaissait bien seulement cinq ou sìx livres.”

— Flaubert

Translated: “What a scholar one might be if one knew well only some half a dozen books.”

Obviously the Bible would be first. Not because I’m holy or anything, but because it has everything in one book: mystery, intrigue, poetry, philosophy, love story, history, science, etc.

“You can’t choose the Bible. In fact, let’s narrow it down to novels, literary fiction.”

Even as a kid I loved to read and be read to. When I think about this challenge of picking just six books, I think, “Why?” But kids prove that stories can be read again and again and again and again. In fact, I can hear my Grand-Girls now: “Read it again, Pops.” 

karlee and pops

Growing up, once I began reading beyond picture books, my list-of-six would have included: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Call of the Wild, Treasure Island and City High Five.

But then, the Call of the Cool came in early adolescence. And you couldn’t be caught reading or admitting you really liked reading. You would be pummelled with your copy of Red Badge Of Courage. And then there were those books that teachers insisted we read…

“Nothing ruins a book faster than a teacher who insists it is important.”

— Alex Miller Jr.

Some teachers I trusted. Some teachers would make you read a certain book (by assignment and threat). Some teachers would make you want to read a certain book (by there obvious love for the story).

Why is it important to have six books (or whatever number) that you could and will read again and again? Because one of the things that makes a great story a great story is that you can hear it over again, and it is fresh and compelling each time. And then there’s this, from The New York Review of Books:

The ideal here, it seems, is total knowledge of the book, total and simultaneous awareness of all its contents, total recall. Knowledge, wisdom even, lies in depth, not extension. The book, at once complex and endlessly available for revisits, allows the mind to achieve an act of prodigious control. Rather than submitting ourselves to a stream of information, in thrall to each precarious moment of a single reading, we can gradually come to possess, indeed to memorize, the work outside time.

As I said at the start, I can’t quite whittle the list to six; yet. But I do have it to eight. Oh, as you read my list, don’t judge me. I’m not in seventh grade anymore, your judgement doesn’t matter to me, but I would love to hear your opinions and your list. I’ve shared my emerging list with a few people. Some of have questioned whether some of these qualify as “classics”. That’s not one of the criteria. Remember, this is about books you could read again and again.

Specifically, I’ve been critized for having Catcher in the Rye on my list. It is, in fact, a book I read about once a year, and have for years. One said: “Jane Eyre! Isn’t that a chick book?” I hit him over the head with my copy. And if you’re familiar with Jane Eyre you know it (the book, not Jane herself) is large and packs a wallop.

So, [drum roll] here’s the list, not necessarily in any order:

• To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
• Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

What's on your list?