Books That Saved My Life

By Catherine Lacey

“Catherine Lacey, You need to fucking read this book, I tell you. Now, I know I just met you and all, but, man oh man, you should go to your local library and get this book and read it as soon as possible, ok? I mean, it’s only going to change you life completely. You’ll recognize every fucking person in there.”

Though I just met Robert on the wooden back porch of a diner in Tennessee, and though he was high on stolen amphetamines, I fell in love with him instantly. This was complicated by another boy at our crowded table, a slouchy-shouldered blonde named Sam, who had been my boyfriend for almost two years. But no matter, I fell in love with that over-zealous dark-eyed boy in the way that only sensitive, irrational 18-year-old girls can fall in love. It doesn’t matter if he’s speaking in a shout, barely knows you, or is sweating conspicuously through his threadbare T-shirt. Sam glanced suspiciously at Robert and I as we talked with stunning intensity about writing and books; he was on his fifth draft of a bad novel and I wrote stacks of bad poetry and bad fiction. After I revealed that I had recently been forced to participate in an old-south coming of age ball, Robert demanded that I read This Side Of Paradise.

“I mean, do you have a library card? Do you visit your local library on a regular basis? Of course you do, Catherine Lacey. That’s the fucking kind of people we are! Jesus!

Robert was slapping the table and rocking back and forth in his chair, his dark hair flinging around wildly; he was nothing like southern boys, who usually kept their cards close to their chests and spoke in lone syllables. Diner patrons peered over their shoulders at Robert while he ranted about Armory Blaine and heartbreak and how I had to read it, but no one stared as hard as I did. Never before had I taken a book suggestion so seriously. I told him that I would read it and then we could talk about it; in truth, I would have done anything to have stayed in that diner the rest of the day talking to him about anything, but soon Sam was tugging at my hand—time to go.

Long before I met Robert, I loved to read—I loved the solitary, intellectual act of it— but I did not love books. Most of the books I chose to read were entertaining but unchallenging, and the ones I had been assigned in High School had bored me to exhaustion. (The main exceptions were the Brave New World, which I would not admit to liking because everyone else in my class thought it was disgusting, and The Awakening, which I would not admit to liking because everyone in my class thought it was depressing.)

I checked out This Side Of Paradise that evening and read it until two the next morning, relieved that I loved it as much as Robert thought that I would, but more relieved that a book so true even existed. Each character crackled with satire and familiarity. I could both detest and root for Armory Blaine, whose self-centeredness reminded me of so many of students at my boarding school, but who also satirized the flippancy that comes naturally to teenagers.

The play titled The Debutante in the middle of the book was what had spurred Robert’s recommendation initially, and I could see why. Armory and Rosalind are both invested in the societal formalities happening around them, but also bored by them. They long to do something differently— to rail against convention.

I was enamored with Armory’s dark intelligence and identified with his contempt for country life. “He used to go for far walks by himself and wander along reciting “Ulalume” to the corn-fields, and congratulating Poe for drinking himself to death in that atmosphere of smiling complacency.” I felt that I could relate since the “atmosphere of smiling complacency,” in my hometown had recently forced me to don a ball gown, high heels and face-full of what I thought of as clown-whore makeup. Now that I had crossed that rite of passage, been deemed “of age,” and was safely back in my converse sneakers, I was overwhelmed with the plethora of options I suddenly felt that I had. What did I want to do with my life? This was yet another reason that This Side of Paradise and Robert were so well-timed in their entrance into my life. They made me realize that writing and books energized me in a way that few other things could.

After Armory had struggled through one heartbreak and to another, the book ends with a dramatic proclamation that I found somehow comforting. “He stretched out his arms to the crystalline, radiant sky. ‘I know myself,’ he cried, ‘but that is all.’” I had only just started to know myself, but that little knowledge was good enough.

My relationship with Robert, a bond that revolved almost entirely around writing and reading evolved and devolved over the years. For weeks that summer we squatted in a foreclosed, crumbling mansion, writing, editing each others’ work and pretending to be Fitzgerald and Zelda as we hosted friends for all-night parties. We ended up going our separate ways, he to rehab and I to New Orleans, but our friendship endured in letters, a more natural way for us to communicate since our initial bond existed in print.

Catherine Lacey lives in Brooklyn and is writing her first book. She blogs at catherinelacey.com.