The Green Wave

There are times in my reading life when I crave challenge, risk, edginess, and the kind of confrontation that shakes up the status quo.

This is not one of them.

Lately, I turn to my books as to the faces of beloved friends. I open them up in hopes of finding not a tongue-lashing but a comforting chat with a trusted confidante. The tone I’m after is conversational, confiding, kind, and interested in the world. There is something leisurely and good-humored about their prose; yes, they see problems and questions, but rather than screech, they’d rather pour a second cup of tea and imagine their way to a better world. They know that there is as much meaning and interest in a shoe-lace as there is in a political summit. They are prepared to ruminate on the difference between daisies and lilies, but they’d be ready to listen if you put in a word for roses.

In short, I love their company. In time, they come to seem like friends to me.

Here is a partial list of friends:

• J.B. Priestley -  When I finished my first reading of Delight, Priestley’s collection of essays about dozens of pleasing things such as pine forests and reading detective fiction in bed, I wrote in my journal that I had met a new friend.  I never wanted to be out of his company nor lose his particular way of seeing the world.  Now the book – formerly a library copy – sits by my bed.

• Anne Fadiman – In At Large & At Small, Fadiman writes what she calls “familiar essays,” and by that she means both essays about familiar, ordinary things (coffee, ice cream, and mailboxes among other things) and also the sense of family and relationship.  Her curiosity knows no bounds.  In her company we travel from the world of insect-collecting to the world of Charles & Mary Lamb.  She wears her knowledge so lightly you scarcely realize how much you are learning -but learning you are, and not just facts, either:  a way of taking a deeper and livelier interest in the world.  She feels to me like a kindred spirit.

• Charles Dickens – I wrote about him in my last post, “Scrooge & Me,” and my experience of his writing is fairly limited to the “greatest hits” (Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol), but I will amend that gap now that his good humor and humanity have impressed themselves upon me.  He is that person at the party who seems at first quite ordinary and later is revealed as the most extraordinary person in the room.

• Robertson Davies – Pick up anything by this Canadian writer for broad-minded, intelligent company, but if you like essays, get Happy Alchemy, his book about music and the theatre, two of his life-long passions.  And for sheer delight, check out his book of academic ghost stories set at Massey College in Toronto, High Spirits.  Great laughs!

• M.F.K. Fisher – Fisher writes about food, but not just about food:  food as a metaphor for the way we take in life, how we digest experiences, how we dine on relationships or abstain all together.  Her essays tell us about the pleasures of eating alone (she seems to favor an omelet, a green salad, and a glass of wine – OR she’ll go for something messy and forbidden), about the feeling of extreme hunger in youth and how older people forget what it is to be ravenous (for life, of course!), and even about the various sinks and kitchens in flats she rented throughout Europe.  You can start anywhere with her, I think – her early books about cooking and eating (Serve it Forth or How To Cook a Wolf), or later books of essays like Sister Age, or dip into her journals and letters.  She’s honest, unflinching, friendly without being saccharine, and wise.  Another friend I’m glad to know.

This is just a tasting plate, and I’m sure you have your own list; if so, I’d love to meet your friends!  Happily, all it takes to access their company is to open their books.  So tonight I’m throwing a dinner party and inviting all of these and others (the poets and novelists who belong at the table, too).  I hope MFK won’t judge my cooking too harshly – but since we’re friends, I think she’ll be gentle with me.  And besides, we’ll be dining on words, words, words, with whimsy for dessert!