written on James Patterson flyleaves

[mrissa]

Last night we had dinner at Timprov's cousins' house, and somehow I came round in the conversation to the fact that I'm reading all of my grandfather's books. "Louis L'Amour, Robert Ludlum," I said, "I hope I like them, because I have a lot of them ahead of me." Timprov's cousin Tom blinked at me and said, "You seem obsessively principled."

I don't know. I don't know that it's obsessively principled, but I don't know that I want to argue with that, either. On their last trip up from Omaha, Mom and Dad brought four more boxes of Grandpa's books with them, and I'm cataloging those this evening. They got the James Patterson shelves. James Patterson has written a lot of books (for some values of "written": some of them have co-authors who may have done the lion's share of the work), and I now own most of them. And it is very important to me right now to go through and sort them properly, so that I know which ones are series books and which are stand-alones, so that I get the series books in the right order.

My grandpa's handwriting in The Thomas Berryman Number reports, "Christmas 1996. Deb, Dan, & Marissa." In The Midnight Club the front cover has a carefully taped-in Christmas tag, a gingerbread woman holding hands with a tomte, and it reads, "To Grandpa, From Marissa," and I am already making the printed a's like a typed a rather than a script a, but it is not "From Marissa and Mark," so it was sometime between 1993 and 1996. In 1st to Die, a note, "From Deb & Dan," and a mailing label that says, "SMSgt Richard W. Adams," and his first Omaha address. Further back was a different eagle-globe-and-anchor mailing label in one, a note "From David M." (my godfather) in another.

It is so important to me to get this right. It is not the crazy kind of important. I know that I will not, by reading his books in the proper order, get my grandpa back. I know that he wouldn't have been mad at me if I didn't want to read them at all. He wouldn't have minded a bit. I know all of that. It's not that it's important for some external reason. It's that it's intrinsically important to me right now. There are things you get right not because it gets you something else but because you do. You just do.

Comments

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Reading the books is a good memorial activity, if somewhat expensive in time and emotionally (but then any good memorial activity would be). It's a connection that very much makes sense for you (a book person, after all).

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Totally understand. My inheritance from my dad was a picture I had drawn for him that his wife didn't want, and his paperback damon runyan collection. Which I read.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I wonder if this is similar to my urge to buy gold metallic shoes to wear to my brother's wedding. I don't particularly *like* metallic shoes and never have, but my grandmother did and wore them a fair bit. I figure I'm chanelling her, for an event that would have been so important to her. (And for which she wouldn't have cared in the least whether my shoes were metallic, as long as they were reasonably nice.)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Memorials are for those of us who remain. Even the completely idiosyncratic informal ones. Possibly especially those.

[themagdalen.livejournal.com]

Yes, this.
And this one is lovely.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I can see how this could become a Project of Importance. It won't cure anything, but you may feel like there's a hole in your psyche that you can plug by doing this. I dunno. I think it sounds kind of neat. I could never do it for someone of my family, our tastes are too different in reading.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Grandpa and I had some pretty divergent tastes--I am currently contemplating the box of Louis L'Amour and whether I want to tackle it before bed or just go to sleep--but we had lots of points of commonality, too. I think it's the variety that makes this appealing. Grandpa was not a simple man. Some of his tastes in books were simple, just as some of mine are, but the whole was not at all simple. So if I read the ones I like and the ones I don't know about yet and the ones I'm pretty sure I won't much care for, it makes a whole thing that's interesting. The whole thing it makes is not my grandpa, but it's related to my grandpa.

Also, I have a relationship with my grandpa's books the way I would with no one else's. Once I was too big to have a crib/cot in my grands' bedroom, I slept in the room with Grandpa's books when I visited them. The box of Louis L'Amours I should probably leave until morning was always there, arrayed on the shelves in Grandpa's particular order. It is a piece of solidity in life for me. Being able to find out more about something that was always itself without detail is a great goodness.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Our culture doesn't provide us with good rituals for mourning, in my experience. This sounds like a lovely ritual journey, one with layers upon layers.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

That makes perfect sense to me as a manifestation of care: you are taking the time to pay attention to these books, to think about them and their contexts. It's the reading equivalent of a wine tasting, perhaps, noting all the corollary details that go along with the taste itself.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

What everyone else sensibly said.

But I really really hope my putative grandchildren don't feel the same way. Not only would it take them a long time, but you make me pre-emptively want to throw out my W.E.B. Griffin (sorry David!) and that old copy of Belle de Jour that was a present from someone when I was 17.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Why? I don't have any problem with having Grandpa's Griffin on the pile.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Because I have some books that I have enjoyed reading but which I think are trash, and the thought of my putative grandchildren reading them and valuing them as books I owned is embarrassing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Ah.

Grandpa knew some of his books were trash, too, but I see where you're going here.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Also, this will take me a long time--even longer because I am not stopping reading other things in the interim. But I think it taking a long time is an advantage for me, not a disadvantage. If it was, "I'll read all my Grandpa's books, and then I'll fold the laundry and peel the potatoes and finish Chapter 13," that would be upsetting.

On the other hand, I think you already have a great many more "fellow book people" in your life to whom your hypothetical survivors could sensibly give one or two of your books as memorials, whereas Mom and Dad are letting me have these knowing they can get at them whenever they want, and that's about it for people with whom Grandpa shared books much.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think it's lovely that you're doing it and nice that it's ongoing. I just... look, if and when I have grandchildren I may feel differently, and I'm sure your Grandpa would have. But I have a lot of books, and the thought of anyone reading their way through them because they're my books rather than because they thought they might like them is just weird.

[redbird]

It may be that you are obsessively principled, but that doesn't quite feel like the right term here. Not that it isn't a reasonable or useful thing to be doing, but "principled" to me suggests obligations to someone or something outside, or a belief that it would be ethically wrong not to do this. Nor do you sound obsessed, from what you say here: committed, perhaps, but not obsessed.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It seems many times in my life people have used other adjectives when a simple "stubborn" would do.

[brooksmoses]

The problem is, I think, that our culture erroneously fails to consider "stubborn" a virtue, and thus one is concerned as to whether it will be understood appropriately.