Books: July

Books acquired:
The Shadow of Sirius by W.S. Merwin
Arguably by Christopher Hitchens
Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner

Books read:
None.

This month I read no books. I'm reminded of this poem by Raymond Carver:

It’s August and I have not
Read a book in six months
except something called The Retreat from Moscow
by Caulaincourt
Nevertheless, I am happy
Riding in a car with my brother
and drinking from a pint of Old Crow.
We do not have any place in mind to go,
we are just driving.
If I closed my eyes for a minute
I would be lost, yet
I could gladly lie down and sleep forever
beside this road
My brother nudges me.
Any minute now, something will happen.

Except without the Caulaincourt or the Old Crow. I did read a manuscript of Howl by Allen Ginsburg and a few of the Merwin poems.  Amid the meetings, the email, the rushed meals and late night train rides, these poems are probably enough.

Allen Ginsberg knew a generation of madman bums and angel beats in Time, unknown. They did drugs and made love and wrote books about experience at a furious pace.

Everything I know is known. I research. The writers I read are healthy and measured. The Times praises Eugenides for being thorough. If Kerouac wrote now, we'd call him dual-diagnosis. These are boring times for the mind.

My friend Jerry, who deals in used books, predicted 20 years ago that Dunkin Donuts would be all the rage. He knew this because our minds, like our bodies, crave excess. Right now we care about Tara Parker Pope but eventually we'll want another Paula Dean.

Craving disproportion, I associate my work with emotional rock songs. I listen to "You Know I'll Never Last" by Morrissey and compare my third year in law school to his late career economic success- the squalor of the mind.

An antidote to late-summer intellectual squalor? This song: