Books

I suppose the above is OK, a computer rendered book. I suppose clipping it scott free off of a file sharing website is OK too. I should shut up but nothing beats paperbacks. I can't lug this flat screen around the house or in the backyard. Though the newer Kindle would allow me that. Though I'd still gripe. Kindles don't have that fresh book smell or that ancient, slightly mildewy smell of older books. Kindles out of the box smell like Polyvinylchloride. You know what “new” means to kids today? It means they can smell the out-gassing of the plastic of new, fresh electronics. Ah, pay no mind, this is just more grousing about the digital era from a fairly soon to be Old Guy.

For those of who know, reading is pretty much a calmative.  If you looked at me, while I was lost in a book, you'd see someone at peace, breathing slowly and can't notice the neighbor's kids screaming at one another in their pool across the way. The only noise you'd hear is the occasional paper rustling sound as I turn the page. Or, more so today, the right click sound of a mouse to advance a page, couple that with a CPU fan humming away.

I read in spurts. I can sit down for an hour or two, depending on my mood. I have a tendency to read faster as parts in the book interest me more so than others. But taken as a whole, I “eat” enough of it till I've had my fill and put it down till I am hungry for it again. I can rip through a book in one day or pace it a month; again depending on how interested I am.

There are hundreds of books out there I haven't read but wanted to. I was either too lazy to get them or more probably, too cheap to pay the $ the now defunct Borders Books was charging. More than a few several years ago, my brother had brought home a copy of Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I've had heard that title and the book itself being bandied about. The title of the book sounded alluring. What the hell was this all about? My curiosity was up.

The jist of the book is about a Dad and son taking a motorcycle tour of the US after the author's commitment to a psychiatric hospital for schizophrenia. In the book, he tells of his tenure as a philosophy professor at some Western college and the value of “values,” which drove him batshit crazy (along with some genetic predisposition, I'm sure).

I shot through the book in about 10 hours.

There were many parts in it when Pirsig impaled me discussing dialectics, Socrates and all those other toga wearing brainiacs from ancient Greece. But, even with that, his retelling of his life and his ride across the US with his son was very well written and captivating. Captivating. That's why I couldn't put the book down. Pirsig held nothing back about his life or his son's, he spilled it all. I suppose that was another reason why I was drawn in, he wrote so well about he and his son, you knew them intimately...or I felt I did.

The postscript to the book, added years later, jolted me somewhat. He spoke of how his son was gutted like a deer by a mugger in San Francisco at the age of twenty-two and was left on the sidewalk to die. “Jesus Christ” I thought to myself. “That kid had a topsy turvy childhood and this is how life finally treats him.” Like I said earlier, the book was so well written you felt bad for Chris and learning about his stupid-luck fate.

Most Americans don't read, from what I hear. It's a shame. I have nothing against most tv or movies (yeah I do, most of them suck and always have. Be honest!) but books are still great.



Robert Pirsig and Chris, during happier times.