The Bookshelves Project

Two Quick Weeds

I was able to quickly weed two books from the shelves the other day. I bought William Gass' On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry in Montpelier, Vermont, in 1992, according to my note inside the front cover. I was in Vermont working on a Master of Fine Arts degree, and I suppose someone in the program recommended it to me. I found the book impenetrable back then; it has remained impenetrable every time I've picked it up since. During the last book-weeding, just before we moved, I remember deciding to keep it on the shelf because I might read it someday. If I haven't made it more than half a dozen pages into a book during several tries over 11 years, I'm thinking it's not going to happen in this lifetime. Goodbye, Gass.

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell was, I see, purchased during that same trip to Montpelier in September of 1992. I vaguely remember going to Montpelier on a sunny day during what locals told us was the most spectacular fall in decades, driving in from Plainfield with friends from school, none of whom I keep in touch with and most of whose names I have forgotten, though thinking of the trip to Montpelier calls up some faces, some fragments of the poetry and fiction we read to each other in the evenings, the smell of Goddard College, mustily housed in old farm buildings.

I suppose someone recommended So Long, See You Tomorrow to me, some faculty member I had a crush on or was courting for their connections to editors at various minor publishing houses. I read it back then, and thought it was good, though trying to get into it again the other night, I found it too abstract. It's the kind of novel where most characters don't have names, but are just "my sister," "my father," "my older brother." And it never slows down enough to show us a specific interaction in detail; each section tends to summarize a period of months or years. I expect the writer wanted to create an effect of distance, of foggy memory, of emotional detachment, and most likely the novel succeeds at being what its author wanted it to be. I just happen to prefer novels, if I am going to read novels at all, whose characters I can know and care about. Call me shallow.

I have another novel by Maxwell on my shelf. I have no memories of it at all, and am not sure whether I should try reading it or should just weed it by association.