Seven books that changed my life: 7QT V, seriatim.

he French nov­el­ist Jean Malaquais once said, “The only time I know some­thing is true is the moment I dis­cov­er it in the act of writ­ing.” As it hap­pens, Malaquais was a Com­mu­nist; which makes me ques­tion the truth of the obser­va­tion. I don’t know whether the state­ment becomes any more or less accu­rate if I change it this way: “The only time I know some­thing is true is the moment I dis­cov­er it in the act of read­ing.” I like the thought, even if the truth may be less than pris­tine. I suspect—or at least I hope very earnestly—that there will be libraries in heav­en, where the truth will nev­er be in ques­tion. Until then, I often like to think of a dif­fer­ent, and still won­drous, cat­e­go­ry of books; and the only dif­fi­cul­ty, for the sake of this par­tic­u­lar post, was in nar­row­ing them to sev­en. So the list is undu­ly selec­tive.

FAITH TAKES PRACTICE:
A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY
BY JOHN IRVING

This nov­el has the best and most dar­ing first sen­tence that I have ever read: “I am doomed to remem­ber a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the small­est per­son I ever knew, or even because he was the instru­ment of my moth­er’s death, but because he is the rea­son I believe in God; I am a Chris­t­ian because of Owen Meany.”

For many years, this was my favorite book; and even though anoth­er has since dis­placed it, I have read it eleven times. A Prayer for Owen Meany los­es noth­ing through reread­ing. The end­ing is no longer a sur­prise, but even after eleven read­ings I mar­vel at how Irv­ing was able to pull it off. Every detail—and I mean every detail—and every plot ele­ment is a set up for the cli­max, so Irv­ing forces you to pay atten­tion to every­thing. I admire writ­ers who demand that I skip not a sin­gle sen­tence.

The plot begins when lit­tle Owen Meany, who nev­er grows taller than five feet and whose tra­chea is in the posi­tion of a “per­ma­nent scream,” hits a foul ball that kills his best friend’s moth­er. Lat­er, Owen claims to have seen his own name and his own date of death on a tomb­stone; lat­er still, he has a dream in which he sees the cir­cum­stances of his own death. Part of the plot also involves the nar­ra­tor’s search for his miss­ing father and his efforts to keep death from com­ing to his best friend. The end­ing, while inevitable, is whol­ly sur­pris­ing and whol­ly fit­ting. I have nev­er known a writer, oth­er than Dick­ens, who can walk the line so well between the far­ci­cal and the seri­ous while mov­ing toward an emo­tion­al­ly sat­is­fy­ing end­ing. At times, when Irv­ing is at his most far­ci­cal, he is also at his most dead­ly seri­ous. This is the fun­ni­est nov­el that I have ever read; it is also the most mov­ing.

Mr. Irv­ing has said that he began think­ing of writ­ing this nov­el when he asked him­self: “What would be the mag­ni­tude of the mir­a­cle that would con­vince me of reli­gious faith?” He decid­ed that such a mir­a­cle, while it might con­vince him, would also destroy him. John­ny Wheel­wright, the nar­ra­tor and Owen’s best friend, wres­tles with faith the same as Mr. Irv­ing has. He longs for faith more than he ever finds it. Yet it is pre­cise­ly because of his long­ing that we dis­cov­er just how impor­tant faith is to him. Faith is, as John­ny tells us, quot­ing Kierkegaard, “the great­est and most dif­fi­cult of all things.” Among the many strengths of the nov­el is that it is a book of deep faith that does not hide how hard faith is. Even Owen Meany, who has the great­est faith of any char­ac­ter in the book, tells us as much: “Faith takes prac­tice.”

I came to this book (how very fit­ting) the very year I decid­ed that I was an athe­ist. I read it most fre­quent­ly in that four-year time peri­od than I have since; which tells me, in hind­sight, that I was nev­er entire­ly com­fort­able being an athe­ist, and that I was look­ing for a reason—any reason—not to be. A Prayer for Owen Meany expressed, in ways I was not able to at the time, just how much faith meant to me.

INSTEAD OF DEATH THERE WAS LIGHT
THE DEATH OF IVAN ILYCH
BY LEO TOLSTOY

Imag­ine a book that can make death, for­give­ness, and let­ting go both extra­or­di­nar­i­ly painful and and extra­or­di­nar­i­ly joy­ful, and then read The Death of Ivan Ilych and dis­cov­er a book that exceeds the best that you have imag­ined. That is, in fact, the mark of a great writer: not that he has an extra­or­di­nary imag­i­na­tion, but that he exceeds the imag­i­na­tion. The Death of Ivan Ilych exceeds the imag­i­na­tion more than any­thing I have read.

John Irv­ing, whose favorite writer is Charles Dick­ens, has left one Dick­ens nov­el—Our Mutu­al Friend—unread. As a mea­sure of how much he admires Dick­ens, he’s sav­ing up one unread nov­el for the right moment. Mr. Irv­ing once said that he would like it if Our Mutu­al Friend was the last book he read before he dies, as though he has it in his pow­er to choose any such thing.

At any rate, I bring this up because I also have a nov­el that I have been sav­ing: Dos­to­evsky’s The Broth­ers Kara­ma­zov. Many friends have told me it is the one unread book I most need to read, which is why I have been sav­ing it. But I also imag­ine, and eas­i­ly, that I would want The Death of Ivan Ilych to be my last.

The sub­ject of this short nov­el is how to die. Which makes it nec­es­sary to read while we are young and have life and health, but also nec­es­sary to return to as we march on toward the inevitable day. Teach me to live, that I may dread / The grave as lit­tle as my bed / Teach me to die …

THE TWIN SILVER TRUMPETS OF PRAISE
PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK
BY ANNIE DILLARD

It is impos­si­ble for me to read Annie Dil­lard with­out com­ing away con­vinced that the Eng­lish lan­guage was made so that she would write it.

I remem­ber a con­ver­sa­tion with a friend in grad­u­ate school, where­in we were striv­ing to find the best way to con­trast Annie Dil­lard and Joan Did­ion. I don’t remem­ber why we con­ceived of such an odd duo of writ­ers. Per­haps it’s just because we were in grad­u­ate school at the time, and that’s the kind of thing that comes up in cof­fee shops and bars in a uni­ver­si­ty town.

At any rate, the com­par­i­son I made between the two was that Ms. Did­ion clos­es her arms and hides her face from the world in hor­ror and dis­may, where­as Ms. Dil­lard opens her arms and exults: “What joy!” That is why Pil­grim at Tin­ker Creek is one of those spe­cial and remark­able books that changed my life, and why I reread Annie Dil­lard to this day, and why I can­not bear to even look at the cov­er of a book by Joan Did­ion.

Pil­grim at Tin­ker Creek is Annie Dil­lard’s book of Psalms, writ­ten in prose, and with the sen­si­bil­i­ty of a nat­u­ral­ist wan­der­ing around all day observ­ing the cre­ation. It taught me the only prop­er atti­tude toward every­thing that God cre­at­ed: won­der and joy and awe. It is a book that shows us how to see the world, even down to its tini­est atom, and not miss it. It is a book that teach­es us to look at the sim­plest of cre­at­ed things, from cracks in moun­tains to pray­ing man­tis­es, as though we were chil­dren again see­ing them for the first time. If you miss out on this book, your life will be less.

MY HEART SINGS ANEW THE GOODNESS OF THE LORD
ROME SWEET HOME
BY SCOTT & KIMBERLY HAHN

I know: Rome Sweet Home is oblig­a­tory and cliche for Catholic blog­gers. But hav­ing con­sid­ered the mul­ti­plic­i­ty of books I read dur­ing my conversion—and I read some great ones—I can not think of a bet­ter. There is, after all, a rea­son why Rome Sweet Home is cit­ed by all of us con­verts.

But I will be hon­est: I resist­ed read­ing this book for a long time. Very ear­ly in my con­ver­sion, I lis­tened to audio of Scott Hahn, and I could not for the life of me fig­ure out why Catholics were so in awe of him. In my intel­lec­tu­al pride, I found his argu­ments easy and trite. “C’mon, Dr. Hahn, you don’t expect me to buy that, do you? Who do you take me for?” That was the kind of thing I would yell at the MP3 play­er.

But when I final­ly came around and gave Rome Sweet Home a chance, here is what I learned: I learned that a gen­uine intel­lec­tu­al con­ver­sion to the Catholic Church was pos­si­ble; in oth­er words, that con­verts weren’t just caught up in emo­tion, and that gen­uine argu­ments for Catholi­cism could be made. And I learned—which was a won­drous discovery—that giv­ing up every­thing that you once believed and thought was true could, in fact, be an expe­ri­ence of joy.

JARGON, WORMWOOD, NOT ARGUMENT, IS YOUR BEST ALLY
THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS
BY C.S. LEWIS

I know that it is coun­ter­in­tu­itive for a for­mer athe­ist not to choose Mere Chris­tian­i­ty. But here is the rea­son why this series of fic­tion­al let­ters between a demon­ic tempter and his hap­less appren­tice is the only choice for me: Every sin­gle one of the snares that Screw­tape sug­gests to Wormwood—every method the dev­il uses to con­fuse us—has trapped and con­fused me, at one time or anoth­er. Espe­cial­ly the ones hav­ing to do with intel­lec­tu­al pride. And I con­tin­ue to fall vic­tim, which is why I con­tin­ue to reread the book: It keeps me aware.

C.S. Lewis said that this was the book that he enjoyed writ­ing the least, because it made him feel dirty to try to get into the head of a dev­il. I sup­pose that would be true. And yet the book is a mas­ter­piece of lit­er­ary irony. It is a mas­ter­piece of inform­ing Chris­tians how they are tempt­ed, and thus how they may avoid temp­ta­tion. And, in the end, it is a won­der­ful sto­ry of sal­va­tion.

I was also fas­ci­nat­ed to dis­cov­er, through this book, that the dev­il is an intel­lec­tu­al. That strikes me as exact­ly right.

THE MOST PRECIOUS THING IN THIS WORLD IS A MAN’S LIFE AND HIS FREEDOM
BABI YAR
BY ANATOLY KUZNETSOV

I first read this book when I was eigh­teen. I am sur­prised I man­aged to get through all of it at that age; and I was not able to bring myself to read it again until I was more than forty. (I’m 44 now, since I’m giv­ing these things away.) There is no more direct, or stark, or uncom­pro­mis­ing a por­trait of human evil than in this book. Schindler’s List does not match it; Cor­mac McCarthy’s Blood Merid­i­an does not match it; King Lear does not match it. Cer­tain scenes in this book are not to be read unless you have an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly strong stom­ach; they involve the mas­sacre of Sovi­et Jews dur­ing World War II, and they are graph­ic in detail beyond any­thing to be found any­where else.

And yet it remains an incred­i­bly time­ly and impor­tant book to read, because the capac­i­ty human beings have for evil has not dimin­ished, and because ulti­mate­ly the real point of the book is in one of its last sen­tences: “The most pre­cious thing in this world is a man’s life and his free­dom.” At a very ear­ly age, this book impressed upon me the impor­tance of truth, the impor­tance of not los­ing one’s his­to­ry, and the sacred val­ue of all life.

BAPTIZED BY FIRE INTO THE BLADELIKE ARMS OF GOD
HOLY THE FIRM
BY ANNIE DILLARD

I have saved my favorite, and the great­est of all, for last.

If Pil­grim at Tin­ker Creek is Annie Dil­lard’s Book of Psalms, Holy the Firm is her Book of Job. It is incred­i­bly short—just 60 pages that took Annie Dil­lard four­teen months to write, work­ing full time. But in spite of its short­ness, it is an incred­i­bly rich and com­plex med­i­ta­tion on the suf­fer­ing of the inno­cent and the fierce­ness of God, at the cen­ter of which stand two events: a moth that Dil­lard watched burn to to death in a can­dle wick, and a six-year-old girl whose face was burned off in an air­plane acci­dent. (In the book, Dil­lard changes the girl’s real name to “Julie Nor­wich,” after the Catholic mys­tic.)

When the can­dle is burn­ing, who looks at the wick? When the can­dle is out, who needs it? But the world with­out light is waste­land and chaos, and a life with­out sac­ri­fice is abom­i­na­tion.

When I first read this won­der­ful and incred­i­bly com­plex book (Dil­lard has said there are parts of it she does­n’t ful­ly under­stand her­self), I was not Catholic, and I was not aware that Dil­lard is a Catholic con­vert. Hav­ing become Catholic, I now real­ize how ful­ly Catholic Dil­lard’s sen­si­bil­i­ty is, and I real­ize that the Carmelite spir­i­tu­al­i­ty of the book—the sense of a life of deep prayer lived whol­ly on fire for God—was prepar­ing my heart and my mind to final­ly embrace the Catholic Church.

I could read this book a thou­sand times and nev­er reach the bot­tom of it. I think I could read ten thou­sand more books before I die and nev­er encounter prose poet­ry that is as good, or shot through with depth, as in this book. I do not think it is pos­si­ble to write the Eng­lish lan­guage bet­ter than Annie Dil­lard does here. I read her sen­tences and mar­vel. I can do no bet­ter to illus­trate how good the writ­ing in this book is than to quote the first para­graph:

Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holi­ness holds forth in time. I wor­ship each god, I praise each day splin­tered down, splin­tered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many col­ors spread­ing, at dawn fast over the moun­tains split.

The great­est com­pli­ment I can give to any writer is to say, “I wish I could write like that,” and to know I nev­er will.

 

You can nev­er sum­ma­rize a great book. Flan­nery O’Con­nor told us so much in Mys­tery and Man­ners, when she said that a great book “resists para­phrase.”

Thus I despair of the para­phras­es that I have giv­en above.  The only way to real­ly describe any of the books above is to read the whole thing. And that can’t be done in a blog post. But I hope that what I have writ­ten is enough to inspire you to choose some of these won­der­ful books and read them; or, if you have read them, to return to them.

Because anoth­er mark of a great book is not just that it invites reread­ing but that it demands it.

Good writ­ing is slow, and care­ful.  Good read­ing is also slow, and care­ful, and the obses­sion many have with “speed read­ing” is a psy­cho­log­i­cal ill­ness.  Woody Allen has the best descrip­tion of the effects of speed read­ing: “I took a speed read­ing course where you run your fin­ger down the mid­dle of the page. I read War and Peace in 20 min­utes.  It’s about Rus­sia.”

Imag­ine say­ing, “I just don’t have the time.” What pover­ty. Books hath the pow­er to change your life. Take the time for them, and take your time with them.

 

Read more of this week’s quick takes at Con­ver­sion Diary.