BACK

There is my endless backlog of books to be read. It lies in the piles by the chair, on the desk, on the bedside table, in the back seat, on the "official" reading list, and on the "unofficial" reading list that exists in a scattering of scratched out notes to myself that seem to follow me about. It does make me anxious at times, but it also brings some measure of comfort, a guarantee of sorts. There is always another book to be read.

Then there are the surprises. The titles and authors I jot down and keep bypassing for whatever inane reason or other. Every now and then, I come across a book in the library or in a store and remember that it is one that I meant to read. Years ago. And it will turn out to be a book of such merit that I begin to find it auspicious that I saved it for later without ever meaning to. As if there are certain books that come and go and then find their way back to me.

So it was with Leif Enger's So Brave, Young, and Handsome. I read Enger's first and only other novel, Peace Like a River, when it was still new and enjoyed it enough to be eager to read So Brave when it published, though it ended up relegated to my own remainder pile. Enger is from Minnesota and he writes with that straightforward Midwestern sensibility and with a sparse richness that might be called elegant in its own way. It is the kind of working in words that I particularly favor.

This novel reads like a song. The best reference I can offer as example that you might recognize is that of Charles Portis with True Grit. You likely remember the movie recently remade and originally starring John Wayne, but you may not know that it first found life as a book, one that you should read, of course. If you have read the book or seen the movie -- in which, thankfully, the original lines of dialogue are salvaged nearly word-for-word -- then you know of the peculiar use of language that sets it apart and makes it so enjoyable. The characters speak in a way that is poetic and earthy, almost Shakespearean. And while you quickly take note of its high-mindedness, it does not seem at all out of the ordinary. You find yourself wondering why we do not all speak this way, because it sure makes for a far more interesting discourse. It also builds a narrative that is tough and sharp and literary and still altogether believable.

And, like True Grit, Enger's book is a bit of a cowboy tale. You know I like those. Though it involves few horses, there is much traveling and outlawing and campfires and a bit of Spanish spoken. But, do not let that steer you away from it if you are not as inclined as I toward such things. There is much to love here -- the plain and the scrubby country that shines in the background always and the characters who are crafted as solidly as woodwork and the dialogue that dances. It is also a melodious story of true friendship and of finding the things we did not know we sought. And it is about writers.

Though I did not mean to save it for later, I am glad that I did. It was worth the wait.

ENCOUNTERS

There is this with which I shall begin. From an interview with Jhumpa Lahiri in the regular feature of the New York Times Sunday Book Review called By the Book:

"From the beginnings of literature, poets and writers have based their narratives on crossing borders, on wandering, on exile, on encounters beyond the familiar."

Lahiri is a particular favorite of mine and I have been anticipating her forthcoming novel for most of this year. Put her novel The Namesake on your reading list now. I am grateful for her words in this interview about the "immigrant novel." Because, yes, are not they all immigrant novels in one way or another, as her quote above prompts us to consider? But, her own work as it explores the experience of immigrants to America from India is particularly poignant. She is able to capture as well as anyone else I have read the alienation, the loneliness of transience and, as it were, of being and becoming American -- the anxiety and disquiet of a life of fragile connections. There is also something about the way food figures into her writing, in especially The Namesake. We often ignore the importance of food to our identities and not just in a cultural way, though it is primary. I am thinking of how we may take our meals, gathered around a family table perhaps, and of the work of preparing it and of growing it and of what happens after the meal is done, what is said and what is not. Who does this or that chore. The sensory experience of it. The smells and tastes and sounds -- sizzling oil in a pan, the creak of an oven door, the clacking knock of the knife blade against the cutting board. These are the kinds of ordinary and small details that beat out the rhythms of our lives and give shape to our memory. And, they are the kinds of details that Lahiri shoves into the quiet spaces of her narrative so that it rings all the more true.

As much as I tend to revere authors and have also expressed my surprise here before about a similar answer to one of these interviews, I am taken by another quote from this piece. 

"The idea of meeting writers of the books I’ve read doesn’t interest me. That is to say, I wouldn’t go out of my way. If the book is alive to me, if the sentences speak to me, that’s enough. A reader’s relationship is with the book, with the words, not with the person who created it."

And, of course, we have also talked many times before about those encounters beyond the familiar -- what a way to put it, no? -- with which we are blessed when reading fiction. As my job plants me again behind the wheel of my car for long stretches of time, I am relishing the audio books once more. I never know what I am going to get with those things, so I walk out of the library with stacks of them, hoping for a treasure in the bunch. At least I generally know within a few minutes if I will be finishing one or not. The current offering is the memoir from Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World. Part of what makes Sotomayor's own story a compelling one is, of course, that classic American mythology of moving beyond the confines of race, class, and gender to reach a pinnacle of personal achievement; for her, of course, to be appointed to sit on the highest court in the land. What we might not think of most times is that the justices of our Supreme Court are first and foremost writers. Writing is what they spend the largest majority of their working life doing, after all. Nevertheless, I am surprised to find this one an audio book that has drawn me in. It is a story of growing up in America and it is a well-told one. What I have enjoyed most, though, is the thread that shows itself over and over, the vital importance of reading to her life. Though she does not ever say it directly, it is clear that those encounters beyond the familiar that she craved as a child and throughout the rest of her life had an immeasurable impact. It was through books that she first began to see what lay beyond her own known world. And, while it is difficult to say that if she had not been a reader she would not have attained such prominence and success, I think you and I both still know that a love of books can, without doubt, lend a certain boundless shape to a life and mind.