"Baked Ham and Cold Beer"

Charles Simic – whose translation of Milan Djordjevic’s Oranges and Snow has been sitting patiently on my desk for weeks – has captured the self-image of many American poets (and, I’d guess, writers in general) in a blog post for The New York Review of Books. He not only illustrates the desk-to-fridge lifestyle, but defends it. “Here in the United States, we speak with reverence of authentic experience,” Simic writes, taking a playful jab at the bedrock of American individualism. He continues:

“We write poems about our daddies taking us fishing and breaking our hearts by making us throw the little fish back into the river. We even tell the reader the kind of car we were driving, the year and the model, to give the impression that it’s all true. It’s because we think of ourselves as journalists of a kind. Like them, we’ll go anywhere for a story. Don’t believe a word of it.” (Where is Poetry Going? by Charles Simic, NYRBlog)

Sadly, I think the same thing can be said of most journalists.

A bit of background

Years ago I sold a couple of college textbooks. It was the end of the semester and the university bookstore fliers had colorfully advertised quick cash. I can’t remember what I did with the money (probably bought a round of shots and a tank of gas), but I carry the guilt of the sale to this day. The act of selling books, even heavy, poorly written Microeconomics and Astronomy textbooks, was a kind of betrayal. I had sold two objects but also two relationships (in this case, two bad ones) and it felt wrong.

This somewhat unhealthy but happy attachment to books no doubt dates back to my childhood, to two artistic parents and a house anchored by bookshelves, but we’ll leave that for a different time. This blog is not about me; it’s about my books. And I have quite a few. Many of them have traveled with me across countries and oceans, on planes and trains, in duffels and side bags and coat pockets. We’ve lived together in hotels, hostels, and apartments, in the Middle East, the mid-Atlantic, and places in between. Some (The Anatomy of Melancholy and 2666, to name a couple of heavy ones) I’ve carried thousands of miles and never read.

By necessity my books are itinerants, my great fear is that one-day they will be homeless. By writing about them here, I hope to give them a virtual shelter – a home away from whatever the future might bring. But that’s just the beginning. I also hope to shed a little light on the companionship they’ve provided and the ways they can illuminate different corners of the world.