Weekend Guide: 10.23.2020
What do you read to reset? You know, after you’ve tackled something heavy like The Power Broker, War and Peace, or…Infinite Jest. My good friend, Bill, posed this question to me over text after I finished “The Deficit Myth”. The assumption being that after I dust a non-fiction i’ll jump head first into a Stephen King book. I usually do. King rocks. His books are always fun and super easy to read, and I never leave them feeling cheated. You know how people say feels like a warm hug? Every Stephen King book i’ve ever read feels like a warm hug - even though I don’t think this is Kings desired outcome.
While I wait for a hardcover copy of Insomnia to make it’s way to my house from Thriftbooks, i’ve started to revisit I Remember by Joe Brainard. I Remember is a short book of remembrances. Each sentence starts out with, you guessed it, “I remember” followed by a memory. It seems simple, maybe even juvenile, but I assure you it’s anything but.
These memories, while some of them are dated, seem evergreen. I would even venture to say that some are universal. Even though we grew up decades apart in diametrically opposed parts of the country, these memories feel like my own.
I remember the only time I ever saw my mother cry. I was eating apricot pie.
I remember when my father would say "Keep your hands out from under the covers" as he said goodnight. But he said it in a nice way.
I remember when I thought that if you did anything bad, policemen would put you in jail.
I remember not understanding why people on the other side of the world didn’t fall off.
I remember a girl in school one day who, just out of the blue, went into a long spiel all about how difficult it was to wash her brother’s pants because he didn’t wear underwear.
I remember after people are gone thinking of things I should have said but didn’t.
The idea for this book is one of those that’s so simple, you think that you could (and should) have come up with it. Like MMMbop, or Brain Stew it’s beauty lies in it’s seeming naivety.
Support the arts and pick it up. Put it on your coffee table and grab it from time to time. You can read it end to end in one sitting, or use it as a palette cleanser the next time you need to detour from some heavy non-fiction. Either way, this one will subtlety fuck you up in a good way.
What if our individual experiences aren’t all that unique? Maybe we are all more alike then we want to admit.
Since I write a lot about books I feel it is only right to source some choice selections from you, dear reader/friend. I have started a spreadsheet for book recommendations. Please tell me, and everyone else, what you are reading as I do not see us all being able to leave our cozy confines for quite some time.
Peace and love,
Dan