My Pulitzer Prize Idea

A few months ago, I'd estimate around October or November, I started noticing that my personal library was taking on a new form -- it seems that, over time, I have veered away from simply purchasing books that I want to read, and instead started purchasing books that have some sort of intrinsic value. For instance, I owned The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden and Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, so I purchased the rest of his collection: his short stories, lesser-known works from the early 60's and any other writing of his I could get my hands on. I did the same for James Joyce and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

My collection no longer was based on the presupposition that there were books that I wanted to read or were very interested in, it became an obsession to simply collect books. Over the course of a couple years, my collection, which started off with 50 books, at the most, swelled to its current number, 542.

One of the themes that I noticed developing was a miniature collection of Pulitzer Prize-winning novels; in my endeavor to collect "classics," I had haphazardly developed a collection of these books. So, I decided, since I already had a jumpstart on this particular collection, why not attempt to complete the collection? And, if that weren't enough, I thought "I don't want to just collect these books, I want to actually read them all." And then I thought "If I read all these books, I want everybody to know I read all these books. So, maybe I'll collect them all, read them all in one year and then write a memoir about the experience!" because I really am that pretentious.

But then something else occurred to me.

This endeavor, which is a huge undertaking, might not actually be as self-involved as I originally thought. See, I knew that if I told people, "Yeah, I read every single Pulitzer Prize winning novel in one year," that people would either be impressed, conclude that I way too much time on my hands or be impressed at the massive amount of time on my hands. I also knew that nobody would ask me, "So what did you learn about yourself and the world around you through this experience?"

Maya Angelou once said, "When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young."

And it is with that in mind that I am going to embark on this journey. I'm not going to do this thing to impress anyone, to prove how much of a connoisseur of literature I am or even to simply say that I did it. I'm going to tap into the mind-expanding power of literature and let it consume me. Without any presuppositions of truth or love or beauty, without any definition and without any clarity, I am going to allow these authors, and their words, to change me.

When I told my friend Josh about this idea, he decided he was going to do it too and already has a pretty good start on it (check out his blog at http://inwaitingwerlost.blogspot.com). But I really didn't want to sit idly by and watch him do my idea better than me, so today I decided I'm going to follow through with it, keep pace with him by reading the same books at the same time, discuss the books when we finish, then co-write a memoir about the experience when we're finished.

This seems to be a more realistic goal anyway.

At any rate, this is the first of many, many posts to come, however you will not find any Pulitzer-related entries on this site. To follow me on my journey, click your way over to another website, The Pulitzer Blog.

- the drew

My Bookshelf

Okay, so I FINALLY finished my homemade bookshelf last night. I had a working version of it for a while, but it wasn't nearly big enough to house even half of my books. So I went to Menards yesterday and bought some really nice particle board shelving to make a more proper looking creation. I think it turned out pretty well...

My Weather Reading Dilemma

My favorite poem, The Charm of 5:30, by David Berman, opens with the line, "It is too nice a day to read a novel set in England." When I read that line a few years ago, I immediately understood where Berman was coming from and what he meant by it. While I was majoring in English at Northern Illinois University, I decided that I wanted my focus to be in British literature -- particularly from the Victorian era (a la Jane Austen, Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy). Sadly, this choice of focus turned me into a bit of a downer.

The grey skies, the rain, the love loss, the death, the class struggle, the factory chimneys, billowing the smoke of workers' dreams during the Industrial Revolution. Everything about this era of literature festers with heartache and dismay. And this is exactly the type of mood I hope to avoid when the sun in shining, the breeze is gentle and the kids are shouting happily in their front yards. No, this type of reading is usually reserved for days that are best for staying inside and wondering why everyone else isn't doing the same.

Of my top five favorite authors (1) James Joyce, 2) Ernest Hemingway, 3) John Steinbeck, 4) Charles Dickens and 5) (it alternates)), only Steinbeck is worth considering on bright, sunshiney days like today: Joyce is a complete downer who writes about rebellion and religious abuse. And even then, his writing is so experimental and difficult to get through that one hesitates to ever read him, regardless of weather; Hemingway is a beautiful writer and a master storyteller. Unfortunately, his books make one want to lay down on the floor, in the fetal position, and just scream; Dickens is a fantastic wordsmith, but a definite killjoy. He treats his characters like shit for half of the book, then drags them THROUGH shit for the second half. At the end of a Dickens novel, you sigh, exasperatedly, and think "Thank God I'm not THAT guy."

Poor Pip...

Steinbeck also has his share of flawed characters and despair, but the sun is always shining in his novels, so you never feel TOO bad for the characters. "Man, the Joads have a long road ahead, but at least the weather is great!" Joblessness and homelessness doesn't seem too bad when you're kicking around in the California sunshine.

Sadly, most of the books in my library I've either already read or are weather sensitive; and, since I most appreciate autumn weather, most of my unread books are complementary (Victorians and Moderns). I have discovered, though, that unless it's an Irish author like Frank McCourt or Pete McCarthy, memoirs are fantastic complements to great weather. For instance, today I began reading A Working Stiff's Manifesto, by Iain Levison -- a story of one frustrated English major's search for meaningful employment (which happens to be the situation I find myself in). It is one of the most bitter, but most hilarious books I've read in quite some time. Even in the coffee shop, I found myself laughing out loud at the many dead-end-job horror stories Levison chronicles. Not surprisingly, I was in a chipper mood for the rest of the day and the fabulous weather only accentuated my cheerfulness.

Now, imagine if I had read Dickens...

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise, incapable of his own help and his own happiness, sensible of the blight on him, and resigning him-self to let it eat him away. - A Tale of Two Cities

Or Joyce...

He gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life's feast. - Dubliners

Or Hemingway...

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. - A Farewell to Arms

Okay, even Steinbeck has a way of making you squirm in your chair and pine away for a happier existence...

What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster. - East of Eden

Not on a day like today -- I wouldn't allow it. When the sun is shining and birds are singing, it is too great a day to allow yourself to be sucked into the neuroses, fears and pessimisms of my favorite authors, regardless of their ranking on my "favorite authors" chart.

My Homemade Bookshelf

For any of you who are following the bookshelf saga or even care (which I can't imagine is any of you), here's the design I'm going with...



Mine isn't anywhere near this level of completion yet, but it's getting there.

My 372 Books...

...won't fit on my two bookshelves. So, I have decided I am going to build my own bookshelf that will, hopefully, be light, compact and easy to move. The difficult thing, though, is that this mobile bookshelf will need to be able to contain 372 books, or at least a considerably sized portion of that.

Here are some designs I have been looking at and considering:

This design seems to be incredibly doable. All one needs is a sheet of plywood, seven long boards, a top, a support and enough wood for shelving. In fact, this design could also be sectioned into three units, making it easier to move. When set up again, the three units could then be pieced back together.

This may very well be the easiest design to build and most aesthetically pleasing. This sort of shelving can be made with, say, five 2x6 boards and fifteen shelving supports: drill the supports into your wall as five rows of three supports, space them maybe a foot apart vertically, three feet apart horizontally and simply lay the 2x6 board across the three supports. Simple.

One could also very easily make this sort of shelving illusory by making it appear books are "floating" on the wall. If one has a eggshell white wall, paint your shelves and supporting arms eggshell white; if one has a maroon wall, paint your shelves and supporting arms maroon. The arms and shelves will simply blend in with the wall, giving the illusion of books being suspended in mid-air, or glued to the wall.

This isn't quite what I'm looking for, but I definitely see the value in it. Maybe when I have a reading room/office, I'll build one of these and place it next to my reading chair... Ahhh, simpler times.

Again, a very simple design. The only tricky part would be deciding what sort of fabric design I should use to decorate the inside of it... Plus, this won't fit anywhere near the amount that I'd need it to fit.

If I ever bought a home, I would LOVE to have this in my closet...

Finally, this design is my absolute favorite. It's merely a fantasy of mine, I know... It's incredibly unrealistic, probably expensive and, obviously, immobile. But when I buy a house of my own and have my own library/office, you better believe this design is what's going to dominate one of its walls.

My New Old Books

Well. I have a problem.

A spending money on books problem.

Is that a problem?

It probably is.

At any rate, here are the books I bought today at Goodwill:

1) The Social Contract and Discourses - Jean Jacques Rousseau
2) Day By Day - Andrew Murray
3) Nine Stories - J.D. Salinger
4) Running with Scissors - Augusten Burroughs
5) Shopgirl - Steve Martin
6) Heavens to Betsy! & Other Curious Sayings - Charles Earle Funk
7) A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf
8) A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man / Dubliners - James Joyce
9) Candide - Voltaire
10) The Last Days of Socrates - Plato
11) Island of the Sequined Love Nun - Christopher Moore
12) Running In the Family - Michael Ondaatje
13) How to Enjoy Wine - Hugh Johnson
14) Holidays On Ice - David Sedaris
15) Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
16) Tartuffe and Other Plays - Moliere
17) Hard to Believe - John MacArthur
18) Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
19) The Man In the Mirror - Patrick Morley
20) A Pound of Paper - John Baxter
21) Here and Now - Henri Nouwen
22) Nine Classic French Plays - Seronde Peyre
23) A Gentle Thunder - Max Lucado
24) The Journals of John Cheever - John Cheever
25) Open House - Elizabeth Berg
26) Come Thirsty - Max Lucado

My Inability to Write

I wrote a prologue for the book I'm working on today.

As some of you may recall, I had a bit of a near-death experience about a month ago that involved being asphyxiated by natural gas leaking in my bedroom. While passed out, I had a series of visions, memories of specific moments in my life that spurred me to wake up and I was able to drag myself outside where I gasped for air for an hour or so and I realized that all of the moments make life worth living.

The next day, I decided that would be good fodder for a memoir.

So I've been organizing my thoughts, trying to decide a good direction to go in (especially regarding the visions sequence -- do I wrote personal essays from each memory or do I try to a Joycean, stream of consciousness style of writing of every memory randomly?) ever since. While writing the prologue tonight (which will actually just be an excerpt from the third part of the book (in which I wake up and drag myself to safety)), I realized that I'm entirely incapable of writing anything meaningful or with any substance simply because of the fact that it has been so long since I last did.

The last time I wrote a personal essay was last summer, when I was considering applying for Roosevelt University's MFA In Nonfiction program. It was called "Brown and Gold Shag Carpet" and it can actually be found on this blog if you scroll back far enough. It was a tremendous essay and, thus far, I've considered it my grand opus. And, like the terrible writer I am, I didn't put my Golden Rule of Writing into practice ("Write everyday regardless of content, style or worth!") and now I am scraping off the layers of dust and rust from my pens and struggling to come up with anything remotely worth reading.

It's a shame how my greatest passion in life has become such a frustrating chore.

At any rate, here's what I have so far:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I shot up, out from under the covers, and took a deep breath, frantically scanning the room for my escape. I lost myself in the darkness and wondered whether I had opened my eyes at all--if I was even awake or still dreaming. My body tingled, too numb to help me tell the difference. The whirring of the fan in the corner and the warmth of my blankets were the only indicators of my location.

I must be awake.

I forced my right leg out of the bed and felt the fibers of the Berber carpet scratching the bottom of my foot. After planting it there firmly, I swung the rest of my body in that direction, planted my left foot next to its counterpart and straightened my back. Under any other circumstance, getting out of bed is never this much of an ordeal; but, in my condition, fighting dizziness and the loss of feeling in all of my extremities, I needed to be absolutely sure of my every move.

I slid myself off the bed slowly, easing all of my weight onto my sea legs, stood up, tall and erect, shuffled my right forward, my left, my right. After a few of these baby steps, I was overcome yet again by a fit of dizziness and collapsed, in a heap, to the floor. I lay there, lifeless, gazing listlessly into the blackness and tried to breathe.

I must be dying. I don't want to die. I don't want to die.

I lay there for a few minutes, a few years, in the fetal position, fighting the urge to fall asleep, fighting the blackness of the basement from enveloping me and swallowing me whole. I rolled over onto my belly and, with every last bitter ounce of energy in me, dragged myself across the floor, with my forearms, to the stairs that led to my redemption. Very slowly, I dragged my lifeless body up the stairs, step by step, never pausing to catch my breath. The fear coursing through my veins, consuming my entire being, produced just enough adrenaline to give me the strength necessary to pull my weight up each stair. The small sliver of light shining through the crack under the door was my goal.

I must go toward the light.

At the top of the stairs, I reached up, fumbled in the dark for the doorknob and, upon finding it, gave it a weak turn and pushed the door open with my forehead, collapsing again onto the hardwood floor in the hallway. Again, I laid still for a few moments and collected my thoughts. To my left I could see the door to the backyard. My blood boiled in my veins and caused me to sweat profusely. I pushed myself up to all fours and crawled like a dog through the kitchen to the back door, pushed it open and was met by a cool breeze that felt even cooler on my hot, wet skin. A few dozen more feet to go and I'd be safe.

I crawled across the deck, past the grill and the patio table and collapsed into the grass; every blade tickled my back as feelings started to reappear and I laid there, lifeless and alone, gasping for air, savoring every molecule inflating my lungs. The breeze blew the clouds in my mind away and I gazed intently into the night sky. The stars were so clear, and so bright.

I must be alive.

Pleased with My Purchase

There are those that laugh at me when I tell them of my love for the Goodwill Store. They chuckle and retort, "What in the world could you possibly find at the Goodwill? Why would you WANT anything from the Goodwill??"

I tell them of fantastic deals, absolute steals and meals on wheels (I really wanted to keep with that "-eal" motif I had going).

They don't believe me when I tell them of the treasures I find, stacked upon their shelves -- particularly in the book department. In the past month, I have bought at least 20 books from Goodwill, and I reckon I've spent somewheres around $20 for those books. And these aren't stupid, cheap books either -- this is actually quality literature!

Why, just last month I found a first edition copy of Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain! Sure, they wanted $30 for it, and, yes, that is pretty expensive for a thrift store, but that seemed to be a reasonable price considering it's worth around $600.

I made six more purchases today...

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
---> I've read this book a million times, but never got around to buying it. Now I have a copy.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
---> I also found McCarthy's The Road at Goodwill. I've heard nothing but good about him, so I figured I'd get this one too.

House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
---> Three words: "Oprah's Book Club."

Waiting for God by Simone Weil
---> I really don't know what this book is about, but I figured a book by a 20th century French theologian can't be all bad.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham
---> Whenever I see a book that's won the Pulitzer Prize, I have a tendency to pick it up and thumb through it. When I see a book that's won the Pulitzer Prize at the Goodwill, I buy it, no questions asked.

A Monk Swimming by Malachy McCourt
---> This is a memoir by the brother of one of my favorite writers, Frank McCourt. I was very surprised when I opened to the title page and found the author's signature too, albeit addressed to "Jennifer." No bother -- I just need to come up with a story to explain this Jennifer person... Furthermore, my Irish nationalism bubbles over when I see an Irish writer and I have a high propensity to buy books by Irish writers simply for the sake of our being Irish together.