Later, I would go through one of Frank Lloyd Wright's prefab homes, one of a series of affordable designs he called American System-Built Homes. It was temporarily assembled in front of the Dallas Museum of Art. Walking into that tiny space was like walking into an old growth forest: sacred, quiet, shafts of light filtering down and illuminating hardwoods and stone. It was a spiritual experience, even in an exhibition setting, with me trailing in a line of people, inching forward as if waiting for a movie. Even in that unnatural setting, everyone was awed to low whispers. It was amazing to witness live the effect of good architecture on the soul. Environment is real. Light matters. We intrinsically connect with things that are well connected to earth. Art connects us to the fundamentals of life. It is not an excess of civilization, but rather a vital, spiritual reminder that we are connected to something greater than ourselves, either as individuals or as a society. What all artists essentially desire is a connection with the unseen fabric that holds life together. The artists who succeed are able to provide just a glimpse of that to the public.
That library in the suburbs opened the world of art to me. I grew up in a house without books. We had one bookshelf of church books, but it was in my parents' bedroom, out of sight, where the books wouldn't clutter up the public spaces. My dad read Newsweek, and a copy would be sitting on the couch or table now and then, but there were no books. That is a terrible thing to do to a child. Or so I think. Marci and I have made sure our home is filled with books. They're in every room, even the bathrooms, and our kids care less. No, that's not true. They do care. They are always telling us to get rid of our books. So maybe books do not fill a universal hole, but they are important to me. I don't read as much as a lot of people, but I want the right words to be found when I hunger for something said right. I want to be able to go to the shelf and pull out a book and say, "Ah, yes, that's how she put it. Amazing, simply amazing. I too enjoyed the small canyon more than the big one. And she said it perfectly."
Marci and I have spent twenty-one years enjoying books together. When we lived on the Navajo Nation for eight years, we had no TV, and I remember laying in bed, fall and spring evenings, the window open, together, each lost in our own world, reading. It was wonderful. We also loved to go to Flagstaff now and then for the weekend. Bookman's was a wonderfully large bookstore there. It's still there, but one year, the roof collapsed during a massive snow storm. And when they rebuilt it, it was never quite the same. Many of their books were lost, and they seemed to be targeting a more general audience. Less books, more multimedia. Less literature, history, religion, and more popular books. It became more like Barnes and Noble. What's worse, and I don't know what would account for this as they still sell primarily used books, but much of the old book smell was gone. Oh, I love that smell. Mixed with the smell of coffee, there is nothing in the world like it. It says, pull up a chair, open a book, you're home!
Recently, I decided to live seven weeks in the 1970's. I was sick of living in a divided country. I wanted to disconnect with current reality. Except for seven minutes on Saturday, I'd give up Facebook. I wouldn't listen to the news. I'd only watch TV shows from the 70's. I'd only listen to music from the 70's. I'd only read things in print in the 70's. I read Jonathan Livingston Seagull and wanted to love it because the movie had a big impact on me when I was seven or eight, and I loved the soundtrack by Neil Diamond, but it just didn't do much for me. Then, I picked up Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It's a sad thing to admit, being an English teacher for 19 years, but I had never read it.
The first sentence grabbed me. The first paragraph made it known that I'd stay:
It was a pleasure to burn.
It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With his helmet numbered 451 on his stolid head, and his eyes all orange flame with the thought of what came next, he flicked the igniter and the house jumped up in a gorging fire that burned the evening sky red and yellow and black. He strode in a swarm of fireflies. He wanted above all, like the old joke, to shove a marshmallow on a stick in the furnace, while the flapping pigeon-winged books died on the porch and lawn of the house. While the books went up in sparkling whirls and blew away on a wind turned dark with burning. (Bradbury)
Wow. That is style. That is intense. In an earlier post, I said, "If pushed, I'd probably have to say, I'm for style over substance". Bradbury is a perfect example of what I mean. That paragraph isn't powerful because of what it says. It is powerful because of how it says it. It's because of the images, the sounds, the pushed pacing and alliteration forcing the reader forward. Sight and sound is its substance. Jonathan Livingston Seagull has a lot of good things to say, and the story is wonderful, but the words, ironically, never take flight. Fahrenheit 451 blazes substance without even trying to; words burn a hole through the center of you whether you want them to or not.
Here's what I think is the difference. Richard Bach had a message to tell, and so he wrote a book to tell it. It was a message people wanted to hear, and so they bought it. Good. Nothing wrong with that. We need good messages told adequately. Bradbury just needed to write. He'd write anything, just to get words on the page. And he'd drive himself mad until he wrote something that stylistically mattered; he'd write until each paragraph glowed. Meaning, rather than being predetermined, was discovered in the process. Great books are not conceived. They are born. They are the products of the author making love to the uncertainty of the sentence before him, hoping, praying, yearning to get it right--to make that mystical connection with something more than I. It's the words that matter, not the message. The message grows out of a love of language, and because the author is not attached to the message, it grows wings, and takes flight, free to go and say and do as it pleases. The writer just follows along, filling in the landscape to the best of his ability as fast as he can. That is the birth of great books, not ideas.
Now, writing this, rain beats hard on the house. Thunder rumbles. The fields are soggy, deep with grass, and oh so green. I sit in a room alone and stare out at the darkening day sky. There is the sound of clothes in the dryer, tumbling. Marci is a presence in the other room, reading.
If the sky were to lower hard and heavy and squash us under a weight of water too burdensome to bear, I would still know that God lives, that my love for Marci is eternal, and that books matter. Not just because of what they say, but how they go about it.
References
Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451. 1951. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment