The Readers

Now seems as good enough time as any to address the issue of books.
On this point I agree with the Texas born, and Texas livin,’ author Larry McMurtry. One of the pleasures of having a library is that you can have these books around to look at in anticipation for the actual reading. The German philosopher Walter Benjamin called this “the aura of reading.”
In the same book of essays McMurtry calls Edmund Wilson (a giant of a lit critic whose personal library can now be seen at The University of Tulsa) an “accumulator” of literature not a “collector.”

I have been an accumulator of literature since I picked up a copy of Hunter S. Thompson’s “the Rum Diary” and was given a copy of “ A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man” by James Joyce that I had to give back after a class discussion (which somehow compelled one classmate to draw a parallel to the film Ghost Ship, a movie I’ll never see but perhaps should/ I did later call this kid a dick in front of a class and teacher but that‘s because he said my Pony Press editorial needed “an editor,” which it needed 5).

I remember disliking having to give back The Joyce. I have made up for it by collecting books I want to read in earnest and by going to Ireland to pay tribute to Mr. Joyce, unfortunately he had broken egg shells dripping rain water over his dandy bronzed shoes.

My hoarding is something of an extension of the enthusiasm I held for these two books the first time I read them, 12th grade. And still my accumulating leads me to similar joys. I haven’t felt so good in recent years as when I sat on my Target futon next to the cracked window of my living room in the early sunlight, finishing McMurtry’s “Terms of Endearment.” It told a good story. Who needs a job when you have books., and when you still don’t really know what a good story is!

Reading Thomas Wolffe’s Look Homeward Angel on the bench between Bizzell Library and Evans Hall felt particularly memorable. Borrowing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s This Side of Paradise from my friend James and connecting its narrative to my own college experience. Leave it to Kurtz to pick the best of the best writers to read for his book of the year. Getting AR points in middle school for John Grisham books. Tears for poor Holden Caulfield. Listening to professor Masopust read Homer and seeing how many sticky notes he fit in it. Reading The Adventures of Kavalier and Klay on the Crimson red wood planks of my old Emelyn front porch. Finally finding a Faulkner (As I Lay Dying) I could understand at Lake Thunderbird.

I like to go back to books as well, find things. My collecting, and I’ll steal a metaphor from McMurtry here, is the river my mind has traveled. In my life bodily obligations always interrupt things. I need to find a career, I need to work, I need to keep tending to my inherent social itch, a garden is on the way. But like McMurtry, I truly discovered that reading was a pleasure that would be central to my well-being, or personal sense of satisfaction, for the rest of my life. It probably also something to do with the fact that I get sick of people but I don’t get sick of them. Even when I’m alone, I want to meet some more people.

To play with the stereotype of the bookish worm that Jim James of My Morning Jacket excellently has fun with in the new song “Librarian:“ I don’t care what any one says, if you are good reader, you are a people person. You just might not be letting the 9-5 world know that you are.

I don’t fully make sense of all the things I read, I can’t finish a crossword puzzle, I’m given to pacing and taking walks. I like beer. I read 3 at a time sometimes. For instance I’m reading my friend James Nghiem’s novel, another friend’s screenplay, “Walter Benjamin and The Dairy Queen” by McMurtry, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserable…and I’m hearing Tom Yorke’s ominous generalizations on “In Rainbows” on a speaker somewhere off.

It’s really no wonder that I always drop shit and no one I can think of really depends on me to finish anything, ever.

But, going back to the library, all of these half read books bring me comfort. They are pleasures to be enjoyed at a later time. And I have met people with similar feelings about books. Some of these I have envied for their intellect and talent and discipline, some I have studied under. Most of them are my friends.

I find that when going back to a favorite book, or disc you are reminded of the people who have created these things. You realize that they were once young, and they once walked the earth and had the same suspicions about the outside world that you and your little case of phobias have right now. And you remember that they created. It probably hurt, it probably required sacrifice. But hey left their work for you. Writers are often perceived as egoists, but not to the point to reverse this fact: they have left something for you.

McMurtry talks about how literature classes mean nothing to him. He looks for the great readers. The mark of a great reader is someone who can give you something you never would’ve dreamed of, something that slips through the “market place” and the “academy.”
This is where my status as “a reader” falls by the wayside. I’m still very curious about getting caught up with the academy choices, and that has been the single biggest flaw in my reading. I hope this John Wesley Harding book will help get me out of it.

And all I’ve had is the market place. But I do consider many people who have peopled my life to be “readers” just the same. And they have given me books to put atop my tower of babel in my home that I wouldn’t give up for the world.

So I hope that you will know who “the readers” are and I hope you look for them. Because there are lot of things you don’t know about civilization, deserts, rivers, cooking, redemption, football, India and other things. Gotta find your readers.

(In the photo above) McMurtry says Susan Sontag, S.T. Coleridge are great readers, the former he has known, the later sets the precedent for every reader.

My friend Jimmy (in green) reads everything; his area of emphasis is in Southern matters. He has introduced me to more ideas of theosophy and philosophy than I thought I’d encounter at this point. He’s not ashamed of the popular fiction. When I gave him a Wilco album, he came back with his own Five Theses on the lyrics of Jeff Tweedy. Not so many music discussions that I have get penetrating so quickly.

The man doesn’t fuck around. He always has a book. He’s one friend I’ve continued to trust and consult on political matters as well, since the English class we took on Wordsworth and Coleridge. He’s also a Calvinist, and that takes a certain kind of discipline that you need to look for when finding the readers of the world.

I know that my friend Hunter S. was a reader. He pointed me toward all kinds of good stuff: Faulkner’s Barn Burning, Woody Guthrie, Norman Mailer, the old testament, Howl by Ginsberg. He made a point to put his reading life into his journalism, which has always made for good reading for this searcher. My friend Jimmy reads everything.

Chuck Klosterman does it. As Radiohead slivers out of my left ear I remember his words, more than any other I have read on the band: “Hanging out with Radiohead is a lot like smoking pot with librarians.” Do I remember these words better than Pitchfork’s because Chuck is a real reader and has read enough to see where people err and when they write a word that sticks? Maybe. When Chuck left Oxford, they sent him home with a book, and of course he referenced the book--passing his readerliness to other readers whether they liked it or not.

When I sit back and look at my library I like to think that I will read all of them. I know I won’t. But I’m still glad I have them. My friend Moneybags left my home with some Salinger and I’m sending Hesse to Big D Carter. Austin is reading Camus but not because of me. I’ll probably send some McMurtry to my Germans, whether they like it or not. These transactions are also a part of this river.

I would like to celebrate some of the “readers” I have met in my lifetime. I would turn to these people for a recommendation or I have noticed how they have carried books through their life in a way I perceived as meaningful to them. If you’re not on here, you probably should be, it is 1:42 a.m., as I post this late night reverie. I offer apologies now.

The Great Readers of my Young Life

The folks at blog.largeheartedboy.com. Their 52 books in 52 days series really helped me clue into the contemporary scene.

Jimmy Williamson- The man recently mourned my scuffed up John Coltrane CD. And he was right, this was a sad loss.

Terry Shiftsfleer- This man had read all kinds of hip American writers I hadn't touched yet like Jonathan Lethem! Tim doesn't go out a lot ("I have all these books!"). He's well versed in all the political philosophies. and like me he's not afriad to fumble his fries at McDonalds. Met him in Ireland, learned much about much especially life in Germany from him.

Meike Broscinski- She will teach literature in Germany. Her favorite author, or the one she talks about with me is Nick Hornby and Irvine Welsh. My time in Ireland was marked with books and talks about books with my new European friends. Meike was one of those who became distressed that she could not read everything and I can count on her for a list of “Book’s I’ve Read.”

Jasmin Ostermeyer- German. Bad horror movies and Bertolt Brecht. She was familiar with a world I never knew, but we still got on. She’s also working to be a lit teach in Germany. Like Meike, has written for the public.

Recommends things to me that I look at longingly. Someday.

Chris Steffen (staffer at Rolling Stone, former Daily colleague): Steffen would go out of his way to hassle real writers for Daily stories. Steve Almond he interviewed and published a story on the state of contemporary literature. I don’t know who read it, but Steffen enjoyed the interview. First person I met to trash Dave Eggers. He had Kerouac on his trip with a band on the road and his library is also a stack of books he will never get to. I can always count on him to talk about music biographies. Elvis, Sam cooke, Neil Young, etc.

Mrs. June Page- The teacher who let me borrow Portrait of the artist and gave me a few good marks and some bad ones. She has read everything. Her lecture on melancholy is memorable. Studied at Oxford recently after becoming a nationally certified teacher. Can find 4 copies of the same book and she told me never to read Faulkner, sentences that last a page, she laughed, knowing she loved that shit herself. A good teacher. Raised some good, inquisitive kids.

Allison Meier- Her tastes have influenced me big time lately. In Hugo, her favorite, I see why we have it wrong when we scoff at epics. The European writers created little universes of their novels. She wants to write for the rest of her life. And she has the same holistic ideas of the personal library I have. I now carry in my possession three of her books, and she doesn’t nag me about giving them back, which she should.

Tyler Moneybags Weinrich- He is the target audience for a writer. He can’t read all the time, but when he can he does so he wants a good story. He’s good to have drinks with as well. Knows a good thing when he sees it, I guess.

Stephanie Singer and Shandhini Raidoo- These two roommates talked like characters in some literature that has fallen out of fashion on the American scene. And that’s a good thing. I wouldn’t know Julia Child if it wasn’t for Stephanie and I don’t think of Marquez without thinking of Shan welcoming her summer with “One Hundred Years of Solitude.” And of course Steph was in love with “Love in a Time of Cholera.” Conan Doyle, Alan Dershowitz the lawyer and a book about a farm came from this place. Their curiosities seem bottomless.

Cati Harris- Girl carries a book with her everywhere. Worked at WLT. Knows a shit ton about Russian writers, speaks it too. She is well versed in the oral tradition as well. She’s kind of a traveler, wanderer and is able to articulate her misadventures very well.

Damon Akins- Always carried a book, shunned Newspapers. Lived in the land of the Frontier, Frederick Jackson Turner style. I’ve never seen such dense essay test questions. Could only be from a bookish American Frontier Professor. Also an indie rock pedant who teaches his kid Deerhoof songs.

Gene Perry- Wrote a sci fi novel when he was 12, or tried too. Like to talk about strange literary facts at parties, like how no one could make sense of the manuscript that Ralph Ellison left behind.

Nate Weygant- Because he truly wants to know how Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon would’ve turned out. Claims to shun fiction.

Rita Kerezstesi- My favorite person from the literature department at OU. Seems to have read everything. Loved her thoughts on black literature, her angles seemed fresh (Booker T Washington as a trickster figure? Never thought of that). Had a sense of humor about the real “important” writers like Eliot. Very concerned with Faulkner. Talked about geography a lot, different places she’d been. Why communist architecture sucks, why graffiti in Brazil is interesting. That was good.

Honorable Mentions:

Jess Brown- Parties too much. But loves to find new books and encourage poetry talks among other Norman kids. Gave me The People, Yes! And some regional stuff. Loves the road.

Connoly and Connoly's Used Book Sellers (Cork, Ireland).

Man was an Orwell junkie. We went through passages of Why I Write together while he smoked his pipe under an awning in the rain. It was again confirmed that my study abroad experience was complete. He preferred Wolffe and HST, probably because the proper thing. Good set up, disorganized.

Wilder- Wilder knows Latin, or will.

Darren Carter- Just beginning to wade in the waters.





Lindsey Brend- I feel this one does most of her reading on the internet. But you can always find something interesting to read at her place.



Josh Stoops- A college career and a dose of Kerouac has turned Stoops into a promising explorer.

Baxter Holmes- A sports writers encyclopedia. Studies the cigar chompin' old timers and the David Halberstam stuff. Keeps a book in each room his house, like stations. book on the toilet. Book in the parlor room next to the big exercise ball, three books by the bed. And a book for the TV room.



Mr. Burns- It has been 20 years since Burns was an avid reader. He did a lot of Ayn Rand and all American history. Wars. He’s a Korean War veteran himself with a biting wit who loves kids though he won’t admit it. I never have seen a person handle wild kids so gracefully. He’s got panache. Bought him some Hemingway because Bogey played in the movie. And he looks to kick start his reading again after he retires in 15 days.



Chris Dearner- The man is books. Versed in computer language and Steve Earle on the side.