"Some dilate upon the number and kind of books suitable for a journey . . . "

{Photo by rocketlass.}

As travelling companions books have no corrival. If they lacked other purpose or defence, this alone would justify them before men. How many hours they have scattered pleasantly on lone and long journeys; what limitless tedium they have relieved or circumvented, how they have filled the waking hours, or composed the weary brain for sleep, every reader can support.

Those lines from Holbrook Jackson's seventeenth-century-style The Anatomy of Bibliomania (1948) seem right for this post, the last that I've lined up in advance to run while I'm off in Japan. For while the 600-plus posts on this blog surely put my love of books beyond question, I have to part with Jackson here: were the choice necessary, I would always select congenial living companions over books on a journey.

The following, too, seems worth quoting, if only to remind me that, however much my shoulders may ache from the weight of too many books at this point in my trip, my bibliomania could always be worse:

Some have gone so far as to construct travelling libraries for themselves, like Sir Julius Caesar, Master of the Rolls in the reign of King James I. His library went wherever he did. It was arranged in a box, shaped like a folio volume, covered with olive-green morocco, finely tooled in an elaborate pattern. On the inside lid was a catalogue of the forty-four books which comprised the library.

Which leads me to this closing line, the italicized part of which Jackson draws from Edmund Gosse's Library of Edmund Gosse:

I might here insert many more opinions, but they all tend to one conclusion: books are not entirely valued or intimately loved unless they are ranged about us as we sit at home.

And that is where, to sit quietly with my martinis and my cats, I am headed.

"So--when was it--I, drawn like blown cloud, couldn't stop dreaming of roaming . . . "

{Photo by rocketlass.}

The boy lost some of his shyness after that and began to point out landmarks on the road, a mountain where goblins lived, a shrine whose water healed the deepest wounds, a roadside spring that had never dried up in a thousand years.

That's from Brilliance of the Moon (2004), the third volume of Lian Hearn's Tales of the Otori, a fantasy series set in a magical version of feudal Japan, which rocketlass has been re-reading in anticipation of our upcoming holiday in Japan. While I don't expect we're likely to come across such marvels, I would certainly rather encounter them than some of the ghosts and demons with which I've become familiar through the work of Lian Hearn's namesake, Lafcadio Hearn. Like the flesh-eating jinkininki:

He saw that Shape lift the corpse, as with hands, and devour it, more quickly than a cat devours a rat,--beginning at the head and eating everything: the hair and bones and even the shroud. And the monstrous Thing, having thus consumed the body, turned to the offerings, and ate them also. Then it went away, as mysteriously as it had come.

Or the dread Mujina, whose regular appearances blighted the nights of a certain neighborhood in Tokyo:

Before the era of street-lamps and jinrikishas, this neighborhood was very lonesome after dark; and belated pedestrians would go miles out of their way rather than mount the Kii-no-kuni-zaka, alone, after sunset.

Hearn's account of that ghost is one of my very favorite scary stories, brief and effective. I won't tell you more for fear of ruining the surprise; the brave among you can find the whole story here, while the rest can simply read what they will into my fervent hope that rocketlass and I don't accidentally find ourselves alone on a dark stretch of the Akasaka road . . .

I expect, however, that the closest we'll come to wild spirits will be the snow monkeys we plan to visit in Jigokudani. So now to pack, in anticipation of which Bashō offers a reminder:

Thin shoulders feeling pack's drag. Body enough, but burdened with a set of kamiko (extra protection at night), yukata, raincoat, ink-stick, brushes, as well as unaviodable hanamuke, etc. somehow hard to let go of, part of the trouble in traveling inevitably.

The edition of Bashō's Back Roads to Far Towns from which I've taken that passage glosses kamiko as "strong paper clothing," yukata as "light summer clothing," and hanamuke as "farewell gifts." Note that Bashō didn't even touch on my biggest problem as a traveler: packing too many books.

On that front I am attempting to be more reasonable than usual, and having taken some good advice, I think I've settled on my library. Marie Mutsuki Mockett was kind enough to confirm me in my intention to bring The Tale of Genji; though I've read nearly 200 pages of it over the years, that still leaves more than enough to see me through. To accompany Genji, I've taken the advice of Maud Newton and have packed some Tanizaki (Seven Japanese Tales and Some Prefer Nettles), while Sam "Golden Rule" Jones led me to an unorthodox selection: Haruki Murakami's Underground, which he says is great for reading in Japan because of its portraits of ordinary Tokyo residents.

Now if someone can recommend a Japanese mystery novel, I think I'll be all set, ready to test my ability to apologize, in halting Japanese, for my halting Japanese--which would not, I am certain, find a place on any of Sei Shōnagon's lists of pleasing things.

Three dreams

1) I dreamed that one of the editors at my workplace had arranged for some prominent authors to give lectures on their craft to the entire office. First up were Ernest Hemingway and Joseph Conrad. They took turns speaking, and they actually had fairly interesting things to say about each other’s work. Hemingway was surprisingly self-effacing, and Conrad was exactly as I expected: formal, precise, and thoroughly serious.

It was only after I’d returned to my office following the lecture that I remembered that both Hemingway and Conrad were long dead. “Of course!” I thought. “Those must have been professional impersonators!”

I ran for the front desk, hoping to catch them before they left. Conrad was gone by the time I got there, but Hemingway was just stepping into the elevator. “Wait!” I shouted. “Who do you do when you’re not doing Hemingway?”

Hemingway turned. Then, smiling, he ripped off his mask, held it aloft, and jauntily shouted, “Yourcenar!”

2) I dreamed that I was reading—and greatly enjoying—Anthony Powell’s biography of Robert Burton, author of The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621). It was only after I woke up that I remembered that Powell never wrote a biography of Burton; that was Nick Jenkins, the narrator of Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time, who serves as Powell’s stand-in.

Realizing that I would never get to read the book I’d been enjoying so much in my dream was substantially disappointing and not a good way to start the day.

3) This one is Stacey’s dream. Friday morning, before we left to visit my parents for the weekend, she told me, “Last night, I dreamed that you were bringing fifty books on this trip.”

From Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621)

Against fearful and troublesome dreams, nightmare and such inconveniences, wherewith melancholy men are molested, the best remedy is to eat a light supper, and of such meats as are easy of digestion; no Hare, Venison, Beef, &c. not to lie on his back, not to meditate or think in the day time of any terrible objects, or especially talk of them before he goes to bed. For, as he said in Lucian after such conference, I seem to dream of Hecate, I can think of nothing buy Hobgoblins; and, as Tully notes, for the most part our speeches in the day time cause our phantasy to work upon the like in our sleep, which Ennius writes of Homer: as a dog dreams of an hare, so do men dream on such subjects they thought on last.

Home is the blogger

One sure way to make your in-laws continue to think you’re a bit weird in your reading choices? Bring a 669-page novel about the civil war in Sudan when you go on vacation with them. Bringing two books on Spinoza helps, too, I suppose, even if you don’t get to them until the day you’re leaving.

This whole post is a bit belated, but feel like I owe you a book tally for the trip. We packed a very sensible eight books (six mine, two Stacey’s), plus half a dozen to give as belated (or early) birthday presents to family members. And we read eight books (four apiece) . . . but they weren’t the same eight we’d brought.

That sounds like a riddle, but it’s really just the inevitable result of a trip to Powell’s City of Books in Portland. On the bike ride back to our friends’ house, my shoulder bag groaned under the weight of thirteen new books (eight mine, five Stacey’s). Between the broad selection of cheap used books and the satisfying stock of out-of-print titles, it’s probably good that we live a couple thousand miles away.

It was a pleasant trip. We read in airports, on planes, while grilling, in the great house we rented in Sunriver, in Portland parks, and in our friends’ living room. Oh, and we did some other stuff, too, like canoe and ride horses and see old friends and spot a large Vietnamese pot-bellied pig grazing contentedly—and inexplicably—in a Portland park.

And I learned a lesson that will be of use in planning for future trips: when bringing running shoes on a trip, make sure to pack your most worn-out pair. That allows you to, without qualms, leave them behind . . . which makes space for approximately eight books. If I'd realized that while we were still at Powell's, we could have bought one more!

Travel books

When packing for a trip, before I’ve even started gathering clothing, I make a stack of books. Complex calculations follow. How many books am I likely to read in x days? By what factor does that number decrease for each niece or nephew on the trip? By how many books should I overestimate that number in case I rabidly dislike a book or two that I’ve brought? Is it worth bringing a recently purchased and much looked-forward-to hardcover despite it being significantly heavier and larger than paperback options?

The answer of course always turns out the same: too many. But I don’t mind. It’s better than the alternative, though my shoulders might disagree. Stacey laughs a little, I pack the books back home, and a few of them go on the stack for the next trip.

For the trip we just returned from, I carried nine books. And I read six, which doesn’t sound like a bad ratio to me—though one, John Grogan’s Marley and Me (2005), was brought (and pressed into my hands) by my mother, so I was really only five for nine. I spent much of the week reading Peter Guralnick’s recent biography of Sam Cooke, about which I hope to write a full post eventually.

But the other four? Hard Case Crime. Small, lightweight, and, now that I’ve ironed out the problems with my subscription, stacked six deep on my kitchen counter, they were the perfect traveling companions.

I started with Dominic Stansberry’s The Confession (2004), in which a forensic psychologist tells of a series of murders that may have been committed by a serial killer—and for which the psychologist himself is under increasing suspicion. Stansberry plays throughout with the reader’s trust in the narrator, even briefly reaching Ishiguro-level heights of uncertainty, in a scene where the psychologist breaks into the district attorney’s home in search of exculpatory evidence. Did the psychologist really find what he says he found? Did he even break in at all? At other points, Stansberry’s attempts to imprison the narrative so completely in the psyche of one character works less well, but he kept me off-balance and guessing most of the way, and the truly creepy end made the book well worth the read.

Next up was Day Keene’s Home Is the Sailor (1952), a very quick read and an excellent example of the average-Joe-in-over-his-head genre. A sailor who has forsworn the sea goes on a multi-day drunk, marries a beautiful, wealthy woman, and, to no reader’s surprise, finds himself involved in a murder. Keene writes sharply and efficiently, and he succeeds in one of the areas I view as essential to good crime writing: giving a good sense of the setting, which in this case is the San Diego area. In addition, he presents a scene in which a woman explains how her gender (with the help of bad luck) has more or less entrapped her in an unsatisfying marriage, locale, and life. Without overplaying the moment, Keene thus takes at least a small step towards balancing the gender scales in what is often tagged a misogynistic genre.

Misanthropy, rather than misogyny, animates Ken Bruen and Jason Starr’s spectacularly fun Bust (2006), which opens with a New York businessman hiring a hit man to knock off his wife. But the hit man isn’t really a hit man, and he’s dating the businessman’s mistress, so as you can imagine, things rapidly deteriorate. Soon, half a dozen or so people are involved in the murder plot and/or cover-up, all looking out exclusively for their own interests, but all more or less incompetent. Not a single person involved is sharp enough to think more than about a move and a half in advance—which Bruen and Starr use to great advantage, plotting tightly but maintaining the impression that the book really is being driven by the poor decision-making of the dopes involved. It’s quite an achievement. Meanwhile, their misanthropy is leavened by what seems to me to be a genuine affection for their characters, grotesque and despicable as they are. How could an author not enjoy the company of a character who freaks out far more about herpes than about being executed for murder? Bust is great (and horrible) fun. I wish I had it here to quote from, but I lent it to my dad, who reads far more mysteries than me, and who, by lending me Stephen King’s The Dakota Kid (2005), introduced me to this series.

The last crime novel I read on the trip, Madison Smartt Bell’s Straight Cut (1986), is a New York novel, too, set in the run-down early 80s city. The narrator, a film editor with a somewhat shady past, also travels to Rome, London, and Brussels, and each city is distinct and memorable, not just exotic window dressing. Bell writes excellent prose, striking a balance between noir spareness and world-weary reflection, and while the central relationship—a vexed male-male friendship—doesn’t come to life as completely as it should, the narrator himself is strong enough to carry the book. He knows his friend is entangling him in something dangerous, but he’s ambivalent about his life anyway (reading Kierkegaard will do that to you) and just curious enough to let himself get sucked in. Straight Cut is the best novel I’ve read in the series so far, atmospheric, and compelling. Bell is someone I had never read, despite the tremendous praise his books generate; liking Straight Cut may lead to me tackling his Haiti trilogy.

But now it’s time to pack books for another trip, this time to Portland. I’m taking two books on Spinoza, Tom Reiss’s The Orientalist, Phillip Caputo’s Acts of Faith . . . and two more Hard Case Crime novels, Allan Guthrie’s Kiss Her Goodbye and Richard Stark’s Lemons Never Lie. Surely that'll be sufficient. And if I should I run out, well, what better re-supply depot could I ask for than Powell's City of Books?

Between travel, work, and the holiday, I probably won’t post until after the 4th of July holiday. Don't set too many things on fire.

Elementary

From Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Boscombe Valley Mystery" (1891), collected in The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

"And the murderer?"

"Is a tall man, left-handed, limps with the right leg, wears thick-soled shooting boots and a grey cloak, smokes Indian cigars, uses a cigar-holder, and carries a blunt penknife in his pocket. There are several other indications, but these may be enough to aid us in our search."

If you've ever read any Holmes stories, you didn't even need me to identify the quotation. No other fictional creation could be so rapid, certain, and detailed, while at the same time suggesting that what he's revealed is only the tip of the iceberg.

"We have got to the deductions and the inferences," said Lestrade, winking at me. "I find it hard enough to tackle facts, Holmes, without flying away after theories and fancies."

"You are right," said Holmes demurely; "you do find it hard to tackle the facts."

Stacey and I have been reading Holmes stories aloud to each other on car trips for seven or eight years now. We don't read one on every trip—too often on winter trips we're leaving work right before sundown—but we've gotten through a fair number. We were reading from three or four Oxford World's Classics editions, but on the publication a year or so ago of The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes, we decided to start over at the beginning. We've therefore still got a lot of unread stories ahead of us.

Holmes stories are just about perfect for reading aloud in the car. (My coworker Carrie said she had recently suggested to her husband that they read aloud from Macbeth, but that's of necessity a two-person, home-based activity—too many parts to keep track of with a lone voice. And too much blood for a rental car.) The plots clip along, the dialogue is just stilted enough that one person can read each character's dialogue with reasonable conviction, and Holmes's arrogance rears its charming head often enough that the reading doesn't get monotonous, broken as it is by astonished laughter from reader and listener.

And there seem to be just enough stories, too. Just enough stories that, in fifty, sixty, seventy years of marriage, we could run through them again and again—but not so often that they get repetitive. The plots will become more familiar, but we're really reading for Holmes and Watson, and they, like a good marriage itself, should only become more comfortable—and comforting—with repetition. Watson's wife could be speaking to us all when she argues, in response to his worries that he might be too busy to travel on a case with Holmes:

"You have been looking a little pale lately. I think the change would do you good, and you are always so interested in Mr. Sherlock Holmes's cases."