The Rest of The Story - Books Revisited

Everyone gets asked to name their favorite books.  It is often believed that the books a person likes is a window into his core.  Doubtful. For me, a book is a vessel - it is more like a cigar box that holds momentos of epiphanies, medals from challenges met and stubs of paper that marked moments of soaring high or when grief brought me low. Each book I've kept has characters who understand me or whose pain and joy I can feel. They hold stories that taught me the difference between truth and fact.  In the most fundamental sense, I'm indebted to every book that opened my eyes, lit my path or simply made me laugh, cry, cheer or rue. They truly comprise the signposts that mark the route that led me here. So...

Even though memory is rarely trustworthy, I believe it was during the time of convalescence after the final surgery on my leg that I began to read books, mostly novels. Not only did the stories transport me to times and places I couldn't go, reading drove away the pain of knitting bones where a surgeon's saw had severed them. Reading became as addictive as morphine. Being immersed in the lives of characters helped me understand and sort the deluge of thoughts and feelings that engulf every teenager. When I was deep in a story, I didn't hear any sounds, see any movement or feel any pain.  So it was and continues to be. The words become the sea that engulfs my mind.

Leon Uris wrote Exodus, Mila 18 & several other books about the birth of Israel. In that hospital room, reading his books transformed me into a worker for Ari Ben Canaan and to be a friend to Dov Landau. Together we gave birth to a new nation but I carried the cost to those displaced which lingered long after the exhilaration of the vote for partition. The earliest lesson showed me that labor I would give to important work would be far more rewarding than achieving the end result. It also made clear that every change leaves some people behind and often in a place worse than where they were before.

Having been born in Los Alamos at the time of the Manhattan Project, books about nuclear war vibrate some tuning fork deep inside me. I remember reading On The Beach where widespread fear characterized the nuclear dawn. Fallout shelters, duck and cover drills in school and predictions of nuclear winter took a more prominent seat in my mind. It was my first apocalyptic story. Fear was everywhere. The hubris of unbridled pursuit of power was going to kill my friends. Dwight Towers, Moira Davidson and I carried on a conversation, in my head, well beyond the last pages of their story. The talk flitted around what to do when the inevitable, lethal fallout from a nuclear explosion reached the beach where we were laying. I had to wrestle alone with what I might want to do with my last hours when death crept closer.

Lots of characters from hundreds of pages have shared their stories.  Pat Conroy wrote great characters but he wrote for the love of words. The only book I remember reading multiple times was Beach Music. Guys like Jack McCall, his brothers and Jordan were just like my brothers and my friends. Jordan did what I wished I had done during the Viet Nam War. But at that time my confidence and courage were only present intermittently and, then, in low doses. I continue to carry the guilt of having left the work of standing for what was right to someone else for far too long.

Of course, To Kill A Mockingbird deserves its status as a classic. The story would have been meaningless if it had been contrived. But Tom Robinson was as real as the humiliation and degradation that every black man knew first hand. Of course, Atticus Finch became the role model to be emulated and admired. He defended Tom Robinson without wholesale condemnation of every white person who clambered for his death. He was a man who humbly tried to do the right thing. But more important than Atticus' maturity and honor, was Scout who taught every would-be father what his daughters and sons had every right to expect.

Adam Dalgliesh and Arkady Renko are both detectives - and literate poets in two series of entertaining books. For them life is not a puzzle to be solved but revelations about the frailty of unexamined lives. Gabriel Allon traded duty to country by avenging a horrific wrong for a life of hiding from himself because of transgressions he couldn't reconcile. When reading about how he tries to restore his soul by restoring important works of art, I wonder how I will find solace and restoration when I see what I've done from another perspective.  Eddie Rake, from Bleachers, made me debate the cost of doing the right thing against the risk that I might be wrong about what the right thing is. Eddie helped me see the question more clearly.

There are scores more acquaintances who walked off of pages into my life. They are still there along with many more waiting for each new reader.  Every book is unique but books you love share two important traits. They never force you to read them. They never leave you after you have.

When I'm reading and sleep starts to overtake me, I fight to stay awake. But I close the cover. I trust that the door can be opened again. I cannot imagine a world without books. I sense the chaos that would rise if the wisdom of stories were not there to guide us. Or worse, if we repeat our failures and transgressions by relying on our own opinions rather than finding wisdom in history and stories.

Yes, when the words of a book run out, I feel the loss and want to grieve. Then I awaken to the final thing that every story, every book has taught me. If there is to be "the rest of the story", I will have to write it with the actions of my life.

-- td