Books That Saved My Life

Stranger Things Have Happened

Cover art from Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar

On October 30, 2008 I sat down with author Anthony Swofford (Jarhead, Exit A) to talk about the books that have been influential to him as a writer and some that could even be life saving.  Art Bar, where the following interview took place, was festooned that day with orange lights, pumpkin-shaped garlands  and other Halloween decorations.  At the bar, the waitress offered us happy hour drinks and Tootsie Rolls.  We sat in an empty back room where the bespoke art glowed under red light and The Doors played on the stereo.  Every time I looked up another group of people–some in masks or full costumes–seemed to have materialized in the gloom.  By the time we finished up the Doors album had run its course and the room was full.

Montana Wojczuk:  So the first time I heard you read- it was in Portland, OR and Jarhead had just come out-I remember you saying that when you were in the Marines you carried Shakespeare in your pack, is that right?

Anthony Swofford:  When I went to the Gulf I asked my mom to send me Shakespeare and The Stranger by Camus.  The Shakespeare plays she chose, I’m not sure why, were Othello and the Merchant of Venice.

MW:  No comedies?

AS:  No comedies, though I should have had some.  The Stranger was the book that I read and re-read the most in high-school because it’s so sexy and dark, and any 16-year-old likes a book that’s sexy and dark.  I often think about the scene when they’re bathing and she’s kind of floating in his arms…

MW: I’ve never read it, I should.

AS:  You should read it if just for that scene.  There’s that great William Gass quote: “Sex is the first reason we read and the only reason we write.”   Though maybe that’s a little hyperbolic. (more…)

The Temptation of St. Anthony -Salvador Dali

This month at BTSML we’re excited to feature an interview with author Anthony Swofford (Jarhead, Exit A).  (I am trying to stop using the royal “we” but I just can’t help myself.) I’ve been a fan of Swofford’s since the first reading I went to of Jarhead, his  memoir of being a Marine in the first Gulf War.  I showed up late, at the cozy Hawthorne branch of  Powells Books in  Portland, OR.  Stuck in the back peering between people’s heads, I couldn’t help but notice the crowd–Portland hipsters with their glasses and doc martins cheek by jowl with young grunts with buzzcuts and excellent posture, Reed professors and armchair historians.  During the reading, the room got hotter and hotter, until at one particularly dramatic part of the book a cry went up from the audience.  A man had fainted.  An ambulance came and carried the man out on a stretcher, although by now he’d come to and was protesting being treated like an invalid.  Anyway, the reading went on and afterward a bunch of people gathered to get books signed.  The woman ahead of me hadn’t read the book yet, and had struck up a conversation with two young military guys about whether or not the book would be too incendiary for her book club.  She bought several copies so I assume the verdict was no, or else she decided incendiary was just the stuff.

The thing I remember most, though, was Swofford talking about the books he brought with him to the Gulf.  He said he always had a copy of Shakespeare stuck somewhere in his pack and would find time to read it in the strangest places. As a fellow Shakespeare junkie, the Bard would be my first desert island book,  or something I’d give to anyone going away for a long time.  I’ve wanted to ask Swofford about his favorite books, or I should say most influential books (one of my favorite authors is Christopher Pike, but I wouldn’t say he’s been very influential), ever since.

During our conversation I was struck by the idea that we tend to gift most those books that have most changed our lives.  In the spirit of the holidays I’d like to venture that we give books not just as something to weigh friends down on their next move, but to give them an experience–books we hope will come to their aid if they end up in the desert.

Sexy covers, Strangers and holding the blues at bay: an interview with Anthony Swofford

*Painting above: Room by the Sea by Edward Hopper

This week’s recommendations come from Javiera Benavente at Food For Thought Books, a not-for-profit workers’ collective located in Amherst, MA since 1976.  The bookstore “specializes in author readings, community events, hand-picked books and all manner of nourishment for the heart and mind.”

Photo courtesey of Food For Thought Books

Little, Big

John Crowley’s masterful “Little, Big” is the epic story of Smoky Barnable, an anonymous young man who travels by foot from the City to a place called Edgewood–not found on any map–to marry Daily Alice Drinkawater, as was prophesied. It is the story of four generations of a singular family, living in a house that is many houses on the magical border of an otherworld. It is a story of fantastic love and heartrending loss; of impossible things and unshakable destinies; and of the great Tale that envelops us all. It is a wonder.

Authobiography of Red

Anne Carson offers us Geryon, a red winged monster of mythological proportions that is at once quintessentially human. Delicious and provocative, this novel written in verse will move you to tears and inspire you to fly.

The Arrival

Stunning, powerful, gripping, moving– this allegory of the immigrant experience is meticulously thought out and perfectly wrought. The story alternately displays Shaun Tan’s heartfelt understanding of the dislocated existence of immigrants and his robustly imagined fantasy setting. It is a story of determination, of survival in hopeless times, of unexpected kindnesses, and always, always of love. An poignant & magical work of art.

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For

From the author of Fun Home — the lives, loves, and politics of cult fav characters Mo, Lois, Sydney, Sparrow, Ginger, Stuart, Clarice, and others. For twenty-five years Bechdel’s path-breaking Dykes to Watch Out For strip has been collected in award-winning volumes (with a quarter of a million copies in print), syndicated in fifty alternative newspapers, and translated into many languages. Now, at last, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For gathers a “rich, funny, deep and impossible to put down” (Publishers Weekly) selection from all eleven Dykes volumes. Here too are sixty of the newest strips, never before published in book form. Settle in to this wittily illustrated soap opera (Bechdel calls it “half op-ed column and half endless serialized Victorian novel”) of the lives, loves, and politics of a cast of characters, most of them lesbian, living in a midsize American city that may or may not be Minneapolis. Her brilliantly imagined countercultural band of friends — academics, social workers, bookstore clerks — fall in and out of love, negotiate friendships, raise children, switch careers, and cope with aging parents. Bechdel fuses high and low culture — from foreign policy to domestic routine, hot sex to postmodern theory — in a serial graphic narrative “suitable for humanists of all persuasions.”  *Also check out samples of Bechdel’s work at the NYT online.  Everybody loves free samples.

This December I wanted to post some recommendations from indie booksellers for their favorite books to give as presents. (I wanted to do this every week but the time caught up with me.) With the publishing industry suffering crazy cutbacks and book sales in a slump let’s put our few spare dollars to good use and all give books for the holidays (as a friend put it “we need a bailout for the book industry”).  Get a little book to squeeze into a sibling’s stocking, a graphic novel travelogue to make broke friends feel like they’re on vacation, or give your favorite Jewish cook a gelt trip.  As the writers here can attest, a book is more than a way to impart information, a book is a way to tell someone how you’re feeling in someone else’s words. A book is a mix tape.

As I once heard Russel Banks declare at a reading in Portland, OR, stories in books (as opposed, say, to film) speak directly to the reader, making them a uniquely intimate medium.  Through books, Banks said, authors get inside your most private thoughts. Not literally of course, though I bet there’s a great Scifi story there… Also, unless you’re watching a Branagh film, reading a book is the only time you’ll spend 10 hours inside a story.  If for no other reason, give a book to monopolize your friends’ time.

Insider Trading: Booksellers Recommend

Coming this month!

Interview with Anthony Swofford on  three books that are never far from his side

Pics and stories from our Great Book Swap

Our Joy issue (featuring the Joy of Cooking and the Joy of Sex)…there will be no joy in Whoville, but many biblophiles’ stories to come.