On the bookshelf
What comes to mind when someone asks you to name your favoritebook? Ask the people around you to give you their top five booksand you will get as many different answers as people you ask.
That is the question that we are putting to the faculty, staffand students of SMU: what are the books that shaped yourworldview?
I hope that as you read about the books others love, you mightfind something that will pique your interest, keep you company andmake you think about something you’ve never thought aboutbefore.
With this in mind, I’ll start of this column with my owntop five books.
Dillard, Annie. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. 304 pp.
I first read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a collection ofDillard’s essays, the summer after my freshman year atcollege and have returned to it many times since. It has been themost influential book in my life, both in shaping my tastes inliterature and the way I view the world.
With an eye for beauty and brilliant insight, Dillard carefullycrafts this masterpiece. The sheer power she uses to convey herinsights into the beauty, horror and wonder of the natural world isas amazing as what she is actually writing about. Ranging from thenomadic Eskimos of the artic and those recently granted sight bycataract surgery after being blinded from birth to the lifecycle ofthe horsehair worm, this book cannot be matched in breadth.
“I don’t know what it is about fecundity that soappalls. I suppose it is the teeming evidence that birth andgrowth, which we value, are ubiquitous and blind, that life itselfis so astonishingly cheap, that nature is as careless as it isbountiful, and that with extravagance goes a crushing waste thatwill one day include our own cheap lives.”
— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Franzen, Jonathan. How to be Alone. 288 pp.
In our popularity-oriented, herd-minded society, the title aloneshould raise a few eyebrows..But this book goes far beyond itstitle; comprising an incredibly engaging set of essays touching onmany different aspects of self, especially in relation to our evermore complex and noisy society, as well as delving into the stateof literature today.
Often gilded with melancholy, Franzen’s heartfelt seekingof truth resonates with those who read it. Aloneness has a stigmain our society as something to be feared and avoided. While thisbook does not seek to celebrate isolationism, it does show it assomething not to be feared.
Reading is the very act of indulgent solitariness, and Franzenexposes its beauty, as well as our own desire for the individualitythat comes with aloneness.
“Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache:the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe;of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfyingthem.”
— Jonathan Franzen, “Why Bother?” from How toBe Alone
Winner, Lauren F. Girl Meets God. 303 pp.
Not your average book from the religion section. In this sexyand smooth book, Winner tells her unique coming of age story in astyle all her own. Raised by a lapsed Baptist mother and secularJewish father, Winner feels a drive toward the divine (firstJudaism then Christianity) as powerful as her drives toward booksand boys. While Winner, only in her 20s, is too young to be writingher memoirs, this tale of faiths lost and found takes the readeralong for the spiritual journey as well. Often funny and always onthe mark, this is a compelling debut by a writer worthwatching.
“These weddings are fine when you are dating someone,someone you think you might marry, because you daydream the wholetime about your own wedding with him, you feel soft and hopeful andexcited. When, however, the last man to kiss you was your dad, thenthe weddings get to be rather a drag. You try to be happy for yourfriends. You fail.”
-Lauren F. Winner, Girl Meets God
Dillard, Annie. Holy the Firm. 80 pp.
This incredible work’s mere 80 pages are overflowing withbeauty and power. Dillard here has the boldness to ask thequestions of God that most of us have mouthed ourselves at one timeor another.
Written on an island in Puget Sound in a wooded room furnishedwith “one enormous window, one cat, one spider and oneperson” she reflects about time, reality, sacrifice death andthe will of God.
This is no idle twirling of daises but a full out expedition tothe divine, and Dillard pulls no punches.
“Who are we to demand explanations of God? (And whatmonsters of perfection should we be if we did not?)”
-Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm
Sedaris, David. Naked. 224 pp.
This is confessional writing at its best. Sedaris has led arich, comical and, by all accounts, disturbingly odd life, much ofwhich constitutes the material for this collection of essays.Surely all of us can relate to the time our sister brought aprostitute home for the holidays as Sedaris tells in “Dinah,the Christmas Whore.” Or we can all laugh at our ownexperiences at a low-budget nudist colony, which constitutes thetitle essay. Digging deep into its subjects Naked posseses athoughtful core while remaining consistently entertaining.
