Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles

[Note: Brief medical report; mostly good news. I just had to share with you guys that I've seen 4 in my long list of doctors (remember my post recently, "Any Paleontologists Out There?") the past few days and got great news from all of them, for a change. I see my cardiologist next week and hope that will go well, too. The only serious problem at the moment is the bleeding in my eyes from my retinas that has caused edema (swelling with blood) in both eyes and vision problems. Tom's got to take me tomorrow for laser surgery on my right eye and a follow up from the laser surgery on my left a few weeks ago. Please pray with me that it will go well.]

This post is in response to another kind of dreaded news on my part. I was “blog tagged.” I hate those with a passion and normally pass, but this one got me sucked in because (1) I was tagged by a blogging friend I really like, who shall remain nameless, but his initials are Bill Williams over at Spiritual Oasis, (2) everyone else has been responding and doing this one – and you know how it is wanting to “keep up with everyone else,” blogging world or otherwise, and (3) which is the main reason – I couldn’t stop thinking about what my responses would be and what books I would choose, even though I kept trying my best not to think about it! Ever have that happen?

It reminds me of Apostle Paul writing about doing what he would not do and not doing what he would, etc. You know how it goes both sin wise and blog wise.

Anyway – although my responses aren’t anywhere near as theological, spiritual and deeply intellectual in content (on the surface, anyway) as most of my good blogging buddies’ have been, I stand behind them 100% for a lot of good reasons I won’t go into here, but will be glad to sit and talk with you about any and all of them any day over coffee or even by email, if you’re so inclined.

Mainly I stand behind them 100% because they are me and who I am, or once was, maybe, along my way passing through this life to where I am now. So, see what you think and if you know anything about any of the books I’m going to talk about or have any questions you’d like to ask. The door is always open over here at Finding Direction, as you know.

By the way – most of the links I have here today are not directly to the books themselves, but to interesting links about them – how they came to be written, about the people who wrote them or lived in them. So check them out.

Here goes:

Name one book that you’ve read more than once. Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. I’ve always been a voracious reader and have read a lot of books more than once in my lifetime, especially as a girl. But I’ve probably read this book more than any other – at least 7 or 8 times beginning when I was a girl of 13, maybe. Seen the movie many times, too, and still think Clark Gable is the Rhett Butler, personified perfectly. Being a romantic to the core, I always thought Rhett Butler was the perfect man – rakish scoundrel, terribly sexy and smart, all wrapped around a hidden heart of pure gold. I’ll have to devote a whole post one day to this book and movie, to Clark Gable and romantic men. Remind me to do that.

Name one book you’d want on a desert island. I’ll have to say the biggest, fattest dictionary I can find. There is a ton of knowledge in a dictionary, have you ever thought about it? I mean a really good one. History, linguistics, roots of words, each and every meaning of a word. All of it’s different meanings, attributes, it’s anonyms, synonyms, use in sentences. Man – just thinking about it is stimulating. I mean, with a huge dictionary I could learn all kinds of things about life, see pictures of things, of people, find ideas for writing books of my own, essays, poetry.

Name one book that made you laugh. The New Journalism, Tom Wolfe and Edward Warren Johnson, editors. The book is both an excellent collection of articles and a “how-to” for budding writers on how to write in the style of the “new journalism.” Writers such as Hunter S. Thompson (“Hell’s Angels,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” – every book and “Rolling Stone” article I’ve ever read of his was hysterical), Tom Wolfe (of “The Right Stuff” – the hilarious book about the original 7 astronauts), Joan Didion, Gay Talese.

I first read it when I was in college at the University of Southern Mississippi in my 30′s (me and Brett Favre) hanging out in the Journalism department all the time. One of the journalism professors told me upon meeting me that he’d been dying to meet me because he’d been reading my weekly columns in the student newspaper and loved my writing, which he described as being in the “new journalism” style he liked so well. I’d been a newspaper Community Editor and Journalist for 3 years before that but had never heard the term.

Name one book that made you cry. Serpico, by Peter Maas. (Al Pacino starred in the movie.) This is the story of a straight cop. Frank Serpico was a young, undercover New York City cop who was shot in the face in a setup by a bunch of crooked cops and lived (still lives) to not only tell about it, but to testify about it in court to stop the corruption . I’m not sure why this is the book that popped into my head in thinking about a book that made me cry. I cry over a lot of books. And I read this book many years ago (it was written in 1973) right after it came out. But I still remember how strongly I felt and was moved by what happened to him, how alone he was and what a terrible price he paid for standing up for what was right in the face of corruption all around him.

Name one book that changed your life. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James Agee (who wrote it) and Walker Evans (whose 50 some black and white pictures begin the book and are an innate part of it). I read this one while at USM, too, and it had a profound impact on me in the way it captured – through both words and pictures, the lives recorded. The name comes from a quotation – “Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us“- in the Sirach — also known as Ecclesiasticus — one of the Apocrypha of the Old Testament. The irony of the words is obvious and biting, for Agee is describing, minutely, the least famous, the poorest of the poor, the men (and women, and children) who lived in and around central Alabama in the middle of the depression, in the summer of 1936.

It should be in everyone’s library to read at least once all the way through, although it’s not easy reading, and then picked up from time to time to soak up the meaning behind each and every photo taken by young Walker Evans. He and Agee were in their mid-20s when they lived with these sharecropper families and it is remarkable work in every way. If you don’t look at any other links here today, go to the ones in this section and come away changed.

I have to add that reading The New Journalism, (also called “creative non-fiction”) mentioned above, changed my life in a number of ways too because it gave me confidence in my voice in much of my writing. I saw that there was a great company of writers out there who were very good at their craft. And very funny. Satirical; hilarious; bit, or a lot, cynical. For me to emulate. (That’s a sample of new journalism style, by the way.) I’ve never been able to get into fiction writing, myself. Real people and events have much better stories to be told and are much funnier, I think.

I appreciate good fiction, though, have read tons of it over the years and still read it from time to time. Although I continually harass Tom about spending hours reading “trashy ol’ novels,” poor guy. But, have you ever read the classic hysterically funny “A Confederacy of Dunces,” by John Kennedy O’Toole, the young New Orleans writer who committed suicide before his mother ever found his work? It should be a must on everyone’s (every southerner, anyway) list of books to read.

Name one book you wish had been written. The greatest American novel ever, From Dust, To Dust, that has been in my head since I was 21 years old. I’ve got it basically set up in my mind, still, and know how I want it. It’s going to be in Two Parts, with each part beginning with a Biblical quotation. The first part – the “From Dust” part will begin with someone (okay – a girl . . . okay, me) – lying with their (her) face literally in the dirt and will go from there, a bit backward, but mostly forward. Part two – “To Dust” – will begin with that person’s death and its spiritual aspects and then look back through their (her) life to where the first part ended. The book will encompass all the best of American literature, I’m telling you. (Me who just said above I am not drawn to writing fiction, which could be why the book has not yet been written, for all the great stories I have for it.)

I’ve tried to start it several times, but could never get past the autobiographical portions, which is most likely where the rub is. If truth be told about my life (and very few people know the whole story – very few – as in, maybe one or two – other than God, of course), no one would ever in a million years believe that it was about me (which may mean that I could tell it, since no one would believe it was real). If you only knew . . .. But I certainly can’t tell anyone else, I don’t think, at this point. Plus there are all the innocent (and guilty, including me) parties to protect.

Then there are the at least two non-fiction books I started and actually did a lot of work on. One is Tiger, the Movie Star Cat & Other Varieties of Cat Tales about the kids and their cats when they were growing up. Especially about Mark and his cats, including Tiger (the movie star cat, of course) and his little black kitten buddy, Nerman (remember Garfield’s young kitten friend, Nerman, anyone?). The other book was (is?) going to be a book of essays and articles – Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles. Both of those were going well until I started blogging. Any suggestions, y’all?

Name one book you wish had never been written. The Qur’an.

Name one book you are currently reading. The Octopus and the Orangutan: More True Tales of Animal Intrigue, Intelligence, and Ingenuity, by Eugene Linden. It’s the hilarious sequel to Linden’s first book, The Parrot’s Lament, that I just re-read (and sent a copy to Patrick Mead, since he nurses sick parrots back to health and has some of his own as pets). If you love animals at all and have ever wondered about some of the more remarkable things your own pets have done, you’ll love these books about zoo animals, animals in research studies and animals in the wild as told by their keepers and trainers and those who know them best.

For instance – lab workers came in to their aquatic lab full of tanks of salt water full of octopus, lobsters, fish, etc. one morning and all of the tanks were empty, save one. The one with the octopus in it. They were terribly distressed and puzzled thinking someone had broken into the lab over night and stolen all of their specimens. They later found out through surreptious surveillence that the octopus climbed the side of his tank, climbed down the other side, across the floor and into all of the other tanks eating his fill of gourmet delacacies and then crawled back across the floor, back up the side of his tank and back down into the water.

That’s only the beginning. You ought to read about the notoriously expert picklock orangutans who can break out of any enclosure in the world and then sit outside to watch the commotion when their keepers find them missing. Then there are the elephants who figured out a way to help each other out (by trusting each other, no less) so that they could take turns and both eat dinner while managing to stay outside later in the evening in the zoo instead of having to go in to be locked in for the night.

Oh, and the funniest story of all of them Linden tells about these penguins at the South Pole who . . .. Nah – you’ve got to read the book.

Name one book you’ve been meaning to read. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers From Prison. I had this book for many years and consider to be Bonhoeffer’s most profound work that ranks up there with the best C. S. Lewis has ever written. It should be a must read for every Christian and spiritual seeker and in every theologian’s (those who read “God’s Word”) library. Mine fell apart and I had to discard it. Then a few months ago while I was confined, a friend of ours gave Tom a big stack of Bonhoeffer books to bring home to me to read and I was thrilled, because I’d long been meaning to read the book again.

I started reading it again, actually, and had it laying on our end table. But then we moved and someone else packed it into a box before I could retrieve it, so now it is near by but boxed up for months more to come. I’ve been terribly disapppointed that I’ve not had it out here to re-read, but I will just as soon as I can find it again.

In the meantime, I’m supposed to be tagging 5 more people, but won’t. If any of you would like to recommend a good book, or books, or comment on mine, leave a coment, please, and/or email me.

Cheers and Blessings to you from here, finally, late this cool, rainy summer afternoon in south Mississippi.