When I moved to Los Angeles in the 60’s, I liked the sight of a red barn on La Cienega Boulevard. It was a bookstore. They sold used books and new, old ones, first editions, and rare copies. I went in once and felt overwhelmed. I felt that way when I was a boy and went to the Simmons Library in my hometown in Wisconsin. There were so many books to read that I was frozen. Why even begin when I couldn’t possibly read them all? Where do I start? I loved the idea of books. I read the jackets. I read the quotes on the paper covers.
Books seemed friendly. Books seemed serious, but entertaining. There was nothing frivolous about books. Nothing shallow. So many activities seemed useless. People read badly written dailies, weeklies, and rags. Some books were not good, sure, but BOOKS were nourishing, substantial, reassuring, lasting, warm, protective, and beautiful. They had a way of putting things. They put thoughts in order.
When a graceful paragraph conveys a clear pattern of thought, out of a troubled mind or a happy spirit; when a description of a place is so precise that you are in it; when an emotion comes floating off the page on words buoyant, lithe, and confident as a flying carpet on a certain mission; when a turn of a phrase splashes your face like a cool spray from a waterfall on a hot day; when a conversation is witty and penetrates as deep as a stiletto knife, barely tearing the psychic flesh and leaving an eerily pleasurable wound; when the suspense pulls you around the corner of the next page steadily as the irresistible pressure of a team of tug-of-warriors; when a place you’ve seen seems more vivid dressed in descriptive words; when the book leaves an impression that it was a complete world perfectly ordered and you know that you’ll want to visit again. When you experience all this, you know the thrill of books.
I know it. I read them now. The rhythms of life and eternal complaints satisfy me. Novels are about problems. The complaining complaints poetically put, points firmly made, identified precisely, and in a clear purifying light can brighten the gloom. Knowing someone understands so well that she can put it just right, makes you less lonely. Seeing an orderly account of chaos eases the stress. We are in this together, the writer and me. You and I.
We don’t communicate very well. So we are frightened. Fear makes us angry, and anger makes us do bad things. Books make my day. Books make my nights.
On location in Africa once, I read seven, well, six, and one on the plane and partially near Lake Naivasha. Under the low sky near wildebeest, antelope, hippos, giraffes, acacia trees and birds; books between scenes in front of the camera kept me fresh. I smelled the land; saw and heard everything. My senses were bees buzzing, bats swarming, breezes swirling. Books generated an intense light in my brain. The words felt as natural as the flora and each creature. Their worlds blended with everything on the plateau where we worked. Ants and beetles, pages and words, were equally alive.
Being alive makes my day, but only if I’m not afraid. Being alive means being awake and not dead to the world. In peace. Peace of mind I presume to say is everyone’s wish—well, except odd individuals who say they thrive on turmoil, tension, living on the edge. . . but then, those contradictory conditions may be peace itself to certain mysterious minds. People who write books are obsessed with order. . . and peace of mind.
Writers face problems and deal with them. They argue and manipulate. They set up and tear down. They judge and sometimes condemn. They tell the story out of an unknowable store of thoughts and feelings. This inner grain bin is a jumble. It’s an underground mountain that shifts, runs, spills, and emits from its substantial center puffs of dust. Like a silo full of wheat. You can’t pick out a particular nugget, but the writer doesn’t need to. The writer broadcasts handfuls of words that end in arranged fields. The problems proliferate. The field yields an orderly harvest.
And just as food is light—the sun itself—words illuminate. Books have always been illuminating manuscripts. The calligraphy isn’t nearly as bright as the words. Decorate early texts were embellished, perhaps, but their words bring the light. Books are as nourishing as the sun, but only in good portion; that is, good form, full bodied, richly constituted, the whole grain, not stripped. They nourish the inside, they warm it.
It’s a matter of staying alive inside as well as out. To some people, it’s just passing time. Some people escape into books. Not a bad place to go. Some say it relaxes them. It does that to me, as exercise does. Sometimes it puts me to sleep, but not really—only by way of satisfying a craving—which brings peace and rest. History books are fiction. I know that’s not the official party line. But they’re made up, aren’t they? Who can know what anyone said or really did or exactly how? Biographies are even more decidedly fictitious. I know that sounds wrong. Autobiographies just must be a little more accurate than accounts of hundred year old events by total strangers. Even biographies by a stranger, about someone the stranger knows or talks to, must be closer to the actual truth. The actual truth; there’s the rub.
Actuality is only that. It can’t be written. It can only be experienced. But that doesn’t mean that the person experiencing is capable of telling it accurately. Even if the person starts to tell it only weeks later—usually, it’s not for years that the writer takes it up again—things have changed. The filter has strained the event over and over again. It can’t be the same thing that happened. If you ask two people to write an account, well, the variations will be downright strange because of so many discrepancies. There’s no getting at the truth, if the truth be known. So it’s all fiction.
But fiction is reality. Its own. And not only its own. It is a careful rearrangement of details from the inner life of an observer. It is a serious attempt to explain formally what happens haphazardly. This can make the written account more than just the accidental truth. It can reveal more than the actual even could.