It Speaks Volumes...

Do you know the scene in Gatsby--funny, he keeps coming up; I love the book--when Nick and Jordan, searching for their host at a wild party, wander into an ornate and imposing library? Therein, they find a drunken man, "Owl Eyes," who exclaims in amazement that the books are real. They have never been read, they are "uncut," but, "Absolutely real..astonishing!" It's a testament to the level of meticulous detail that Jay Gastby exerted in order to appear what he is not--an erudite, worldly fellow, swathed in tiger and dripping with rubies. It's a scene I linger over. I am a bit like the owl-eyed man. I snoop in peoples' bookshelves looking for who they are.


When we first met, Larry told me he was reading The Alchemist--and said, rather smugly, "It's about me." Paulo Cohelo's book is a classic hero's journey, which means, allegorically, that it's about everyone and our individual quest for happiness, enlightenment, fulfillment, etc. I was glad to hear that. It's a lovely book, and its reassuringly casual, face-down-to-hold-the-page posture didn't go unnoticed (like when you notice the toilet paper flowing the right way (waterfall), that someone recycles or makes the bed or is not feared by small children--check). When I first meet someone, anyone, and am invited home, I take a sideways meander down the bookshelf first thing. I'm absolutely not a literary snob, but will admit that in this moment, I am fully sizing you up. This may be where they get the phrase, "It speaks volumes," for right away, you can gauge a person's interests, neurosis, secret desires, who s/he is or at least might like to be. You can tell (often) a person's level of education, including college major, get a read on politics, sensitivity, sexual adventurousness, how seriously s/he takes astrology, experience with both therapy and spirituality, where s/he has traveled, or would like to, and if s/he's a patient, sensual person who can cook. If you are curious, go to the bookshelf. If you see a book that looks promising, open it and hope the spine is broken and no receipt falls to the floor. If it does, you could be Gatsbied. Dog-eared and annotated, wine or coffee stains? Check. No bookshelf? Run.


When we first started dating, with Christmas upon me, I thought it might be the ideal time to flesh out Larry's bookshelf a little more. My literary spelunking had revealed little. I found out what I already knew, which is that he is REALLY into auto-racing: coffee table books, The Concise Encyclopedia of Formula One, a biography of Aerton Senna (who?). This was all textbook: mostly gifts, now minimally revealing shelf decor. There was the requisite copy of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. While you might think this spells sensitivity, a trained bookshelf detective might tell you that what it may actually reveal is a past relationship with a woman who'd have liked it had he been more sensitive and thought the book might help. I am pretty confident that no man under forty acquired that book any other way, and I can see the moment when he thought about throwing it away or giving it to his mom and though, "Nah. It makes me look sensitive." See how much you can learn, even from books that haven't actually been read?

There were more. Several books about making as much money as possible in the least amount of time. I can get behind that--someone has to subsidize my expensive teaching habit! He had Stupid White Men, eliciting a sigh of relief; it's not a fine book, but at least he knows; but--oh, dear--Michael Moore is a Fat, Stupid White Man? Who resorts to calling people fat in book titles? This means he may have some redneck friends. Another sigh--dangerous, but in most cases outsmart-able, and besides, many rednecks have fun things like speedboats and are fun to argue and drink beer with. Tolerance goes both ways, last time I checked.

In any (book) case, over the years, I have come to associate certain books with certain people or types of people and experiences, and while this is of course totally subjective, here is a (by no means) complete run-down of the possibilities:

Zen and the art of Motorcycles Maintenance. He is spiritually curious, though probably more of a swinger than a devotee, and he can probably save you a trip to the mechanic for minor car problems. The Prophet: he had a girlfriend in high school, or someone who wanted to be, and it is probably inscribed with hopeful, cryptic generalities about hte future. If they went out a long time, he probably also has Ishmael, and this likely shares a shelf with The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. These are all great, but like friends, not all books are, and in both cases quality wins the argument.

Self empowerment is wonderful and I look for reflective, evolving people in my life, so books like The Power of Now, which every man loves just like every man loves The Shawshank Redemption, are a positive sign. However, I become a little nervous if I see Tony Robbins, might leave at the sight of L. Ron Hubbard, and titles like How to Win Friends and Influence People make me want to take a shower. The Game, a mating manual for insecure misogynists (is there any other kind?), will have me faking immediate, contagious feminine problems. But here are some positives, lest we get too jaded lingering on this shelf: John Irving--great! It probably means he's already had therapy, in which case he's already gotten rid of most of the titles above. Literary heavyweights may suggest a non-lucrative college major (like mine, Liberal Studies), but this can't be taken for granted (or "for granite," as many of my students often write). I don't want to over-generalize, but I don't really believe anyone besides James Joyce has ever actually read Finnegan's Wake, and War and Peace may mean he has trouble sleeping; I used that book as a sedative for many years and only got up to chapter four or so. If he has any Virginia Woolf, I like to think he'd give you your space, hopefully with a door that locks and nice, big windows. I tend to associate magical realism with traveling (in fact there is a whole secret genre of books read by people who are traveling, available in any bookshop along the Kho-san road-- Shantaram, anyone?); so, if I see any Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Isabel Allende, I think I might be able to coax him out of the continental US--personally "traveler" falls right after "reader" on my "yes, please" list. Hemingway? You can hope he will tell it to you straight, though maybe too straight, as in six words or less. David Sedaris is good; he'll at least not be homophobic. And Kurt Vonnegut may suggest he isn't a creationist, so you can expect to have logical conversations. Jack Keruoac makes a great road trip companion, and if he has a dog-eared collection of Steinbeck, and you are me, you might as well take off your clothes. (Incidentally, I recently discovered a website entitled artofmanliness.com, and many of these titles/authors are on their list of most manly books. So, reading is a very manly thing to do. The internet says so, so it must be true.)

I will add here, in case I sound stuffy, that I am often wrong. But here is a sampling from two other owl-eyed friends:

Emily, a fellow English teacher (and funny, I had my thoughts about Palahniuk as well--way more suggestive of latent perversion than Lolita): "OK, so if you see Choke by his bedside table, best be sure to check out if he has any strange fetishes, or any colonial costumes? Or, if you've read Eat, Pray, Love, you're, well, pretty much any cool woman." (My addendum: if a man has read this book, it is highly probable that he will be able to tolerate how theatrical you can be and may come to love you eventually if, like me, you really want to spend a night eating pizza and drinking wine with Elizabeth Gilbert. Preferably in Italy.)

Cindy, now a mother of three who lived with our family years ago, once brought home a candle from the bar where she worked shaped like a blue unicorn humping an air plant, all glued to a log--so obviously one with impeccable judgment: "If he wants you to think he's romantic, Nicholas Sparks (of course you understand that he has no literary sense and probably listens to Top 40 music). If he wants you to think he will eventually become something important, despite the fact that he lives in his parents' basement, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People on his milk crate nightstand. If he goes any which way, doesn't prefer a certain "type," Margaret Atwood (so many genres!). If he's reading Barbara Kingsolver, hold onto him like the mechanical bull in The Bourbon Cowboy."

Alas. My Larry had none of these books, and thus, little could be read. My hope, of course, is that I might reverse the process; you know, give him books containing ideas I consider fundamental, and hope through exposure to these ideas that they might take root or at least lead to some juicy arguments. Meddlesome? Probably. But it's what I do for a living, and so it's quite difficult not to apply the same logic outside of the classroom. It's not about changing who someone is, for if you don't already love that person, what are you doing there to begin with? It's about viewing the world through the lens of someone else's experience for two or three hundred pages. If I didn't believe that was fundamental, I would have gotten a business degree, or something.

So what books did I buy him? I'm not sure if there is a limit to how long a single blog can be, but if there is, I have surely reached it. And yes, I do realize that so far, three blogs in, I haven't written one world about Larry actually picking up a book and reading a thing, so, as it happens, this has been much more about me writing (and meddling and snooping) than him reading. But we will get there. Apparently there is a whole heap of context I feel the need to address before we get to the part where he read me to sleep last night. For now, enjoy the subtle irony of this, enjoy the suspense--Oh! What will he read?!--delivered via blatant foreshadowing, and go crack the spine of a nice, fresh book.

(One more thing: he actually did buy Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. He just hasn't read it. Yet.)