Last year I brought 32 books to the beach, vital things like Pound's Cantos, my Greek New Testament, Finnegan's Wake, and Portnoy's Complaint. Jami took great delight in counting them and proclaiming to her friends in the beach house, "my fiance' has brought 32 books to the beach." And I can only wonder, what's wrong with the world where a simple man such as myself can't drag along 32 books to browse through during a seven day sojourn at the beach? This year I said things would be different: I would only bring five or so, less than ten, no more than 20, but not 32 books. Not that I'm ashamed of bringing such a number of books to the beach: books like David Markson's Reader's Block and This is not a Novel: books of a fine avant guard sensibility. Books are fuel for the intellectual furnace. A lot of steam power is needed at the beach because the furnace is forging ahead, full steam, against the ocean, the ocean as symbol of unconscious desire and archetypal burbling. That is: the ocean is not just a body of water influenced by tides and having variable salinity; the ocean is a repository of longing and weltschmerz and schadenfreude, and heroics and courage: the Aran Isles, men and the sea, Old Spice, Moby Dick and the devious cruising Rachel. I can't just face the ocean alone, flailing at its waves like Cuchulain: it's the siren's song (name that tune), terror incogneato, terra firma and terra recota (the cheese of a new world). 32 books may not be enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment