"We are never very far from those we hate. For this very reason, we shall never be truly close to those we love. An appalling fact, I knew it well enough when I embarked. But some truths deserve our attention; others are best left alone."
So begins my new novel, Cold Skin by Albert Sanchez Pinol, and I am immediately drawn in. It is a dangerous thing, this novel which is also beautifully written. I had picked it up for bicycle reading. Beautiful language is not usually what I seek out in a bicycle book. Not that I object, but beautiful prose can be a deterrent to exercise. Beautiful prose makes me want to stop pedalling, to curl up in a comfy chair with a cup of coffee and savor the language. Bicycle books are meant to keep the blood flowing and the legs pedalling with a gripping story. I may find them formulaic, with imperfect characterizations and even heavy prose, but all is forgivable as long as I keep to the stated goal: more miles pedaled.
That does not mean I don’t enjoy good fiction when I can find something that I can actually savor while I ride. This book promises both, a good ride and a good read.
It seems that my reading has been either missing entirely, or of one extreme or the other of late. Until a week ago the last book I read was Floor Sample with which I was very enchanted in the beginning. In the end that is what I look for in a book, something that enchants, something that forms a connection, almost like making a close friend. Few books live up to that potential of course, and of the ones we read, some are just passing acquaintances and others become friends to some extent or another, but few become lifelong companions. Those books we love deeply are few. But even knowing this I am eager to start each new book, and disappointed when it does not fulfill that promise.
Julia Cameron’s book was like that. It seemed full of promise at the beginning and I eagerly looked forward to each meeting. And truthfully I was drawn in to the story through a good portion of the book. But then it faded, slipping into what seemed to me just another accounting of the passing of life. Although that is not exactly true. The book has a rather open ended conclusion, but then life, while being lived, is also open ended. I suspect too that my own frustrations with this peripatetic lifestyle shadowed some of my perceptions of the book. "Settle down" I wanted to scream. This moving back and forth really gets you nowhere, you keep repeating the same scenarios. But that is not true. That is how I see it as I am much more of a person rooted to a place. But the personality and the art are always linked, and I admire Ms. Cameron for continuing to allow her art to thrive. At times the spark seemed to have gone missing in the book, but that may be that it is just all the more difficult to write about one’s own more recent past than it is to view that which is more distant. Not that I should complain. We all start out with great promise, but so often then are worn down by the repetitiveness of life and the need to get things done and account for our accomplishments. That the writing fades should not surprise me. Who am I to judge? I too subject the world to a meaningless drivel of boring words and accountings of the mundane passings of life. Of course I am not selling my words in a book, but still they are being flung out there, ever ready to blanket the world in boredom.
After that I did not read. There seemed little time to slip away into that magical kingdom ruled by words and imagination. Even bicycle books were ignored as I gravitated to the treadmill and running to a driving beat. But my brain longed to escape, and my knees longed for relief brought by that circular motion.
Last week I read Louse Erdrich’s The Master Butcher’s Singing Club and thoroughly devoured in a few short hours. Then I began bicycling again, and finding myself at the gym without a book, picked up Mary Higgins Clark’s ‘ll be Seeing You which was not such a treat, but did its job as exercise distraction, although just barely. Admittedly I can read some pretty bad things on the bike, but I have trouble getting through Mary Higgins Clark every time. Even on the bike the temptation to skim and skip ahead was almost overwhelming. Luckily it is a short book and fast read. Two sessions was about all I could take.
But now I have something better, but it too is short, and unlike Clark, this one encourages me to stay on the bike longer, travel further and read more. It will be finished before the week is out, even if I resist the urge to take it to my favorite reading chair and shut out the world for a while.