reading – Page 5 – The View From Sari's World

For a moment I was elated. I felt the rush of a mountain climber reaching the summit of Mount Everest. I sat back on my heels looking at my now empty bookshelf with a sense of accomplishment. After culling through my Intending to Read pile, I’d managed to restack both my fiction and nonfiction reads into one shelf! I had a whole shelf sitting empty! I sighed and leaned back, basking in the glow of self-satisfaction; a momentary triumph over my book hoarding. But seconds later it was gone. I’d hit something as I leaned away and turned to see what it was. Damn it! I had forgotten that I started piling the keepers up to my left. Somehow, as I moved about, the pile was to my back. Oh well, it was a nice feeling while it lasted.

Today I finished book sorting. I started with my text and reference books and ended with my personal Grendel, the foe I never thought I would defeat, the dreaded Intending to read shelves. Over the course of a few hours I learned a few things about myself and book collections.

Textbooks – One piece of paper will do

I know, I know, most normal people sell their used textbooks back to the university bookstore after each semester. I’ve kept all of mine. It became a habit. The year I decided to go back to school the university tried an experiment. Instead of buying expensive rarely opened tomes, the university decided that most text would be offered as downloads or as PDFs to be read on computer screens. This was supposed to save students money. Personally, I think the school was at war with the bookstore and we students were the collateral damage. Because of all the color pictures, charts and graphs found on almost every page, it ended up costing us almost as much in paper, ink and binders as it was to buy them! I actually burned out a small printer by the end of the spring semester.

At the end of each semester instead of tossing the multiple binders I amassed, I instead shelved them high in my office closet. So, after switching back to textbooks, it was a habit to keep my books. A few times I found myself pulling out an older text when doing research on a paper. Once my son was in high school, my old text came handy for his research. My habit of keeping texts was cemented by their usefulness.

This morning I pulled out every textbook I owned and scattered them on the floor in front of me. I thumbed through each with one question in mind, “am I really ever going to use this again? “Out went sociology, psychology, gender studies, math (for someone who hates math, I own a lot of math books) and an old history book that I’ve kept since 1983. I’m keeping my German language and literature books, philosophy, art, science, (well okay, I got rid of two. Who needs three natural science textbooks?), western literature and post-modern humanism. The one’s I’ve kept are ones that I have and still use as reference books. All the others sat as a testament to my academic endeavors. I found I no longer needed to remind myself that I finished college. Isn’t that what the piece of paper hanging on my wall is for?

Eastern Philosophy- the heavy boat

Culling through my textbooks was easier than I had imaged. Maybe because I went at it with a single minded approach or maybe because it was a chore to be done. Either way, the ease at which the task was accomplished gave me the courage to plop myself down in front of my Eastern Religion bookshelf. Coming face to face with these books I wondered if I could do it. Could I even pull one book from this sacred space?

As I sat staring at the books, an old Buddhist story came to mind. A student was eager to learn more and more about Buddhism. He wanted to be a great Buddhist master. His teacher told him that ,Buddhism was like a boat. The boat can only get you across a river. After that, you have a choice; you can either tie up the boat and continue on foot, or you can drag the boat with you everywhere you go. At some point your education must come to and end. At some point the Buddhist principles are a part of you. There is no more reason to try to grasp at Buddhism as you travel through life. The same holds true for the books I had in front of me. They served their purpose. Back when I was in California living a completely different life, these books helped me become a better person. They taught me compassion, patience, and self- acceptance. As a collection they’ve been an important part of my life. I took them with me on two big moves. But now, pulling them out and examining them, I realized it was time to moor the boat. It was time to pass them on to someone else who might need to cross the river.

Intending to Read- when is someday?

Feeling a little empty and a little relived, I moved on to the last set of shelves; the physical manifestation of my reading habit delusions. The dreaded, Intending to Read shelves!

I pulled them all off the shelves, then after dusting the whole bookshelf, I picked each one up and asked myself a question, “If I had time, would I sit down and read this right now?” If the answer was “no” (and in this I had to be brutally honest) the book went in one pile, all “yes” went into another. Here is the weird thing; it only took me about 10 minutes to go through these because of these two questions. I now have a nice small collection of books I’m looking forward to reading soon.

I’m not sure how I feel about these boxes of books I now have in my office. I wish I could tell you I feel a huge burden has been taken off my shoulders, or a sense of relief, knowing I was able to let go. But I can’t. I feel a little numb. I don’t know if I feel as if I’ve lost a limb and am in shock or if I’ve had a tumor removed and the anesthesia hasn’t yet worn off. Only time will tell.

Next chore up- one hell of a garage sale!

Have you ever found yourself disagreeing with a fictitious character’s actions based on your experiences and or culture? Or judging their decisions because it is something you would never do?

While I shouldn’t say this is wrong for the everyday reader (but I think it is) I will say it is wrong for those of us who have chosen the path of higher education, at least as it pertains to the humanities. We humanities majors have committed ourselves to studying more about the world so that we may learn among other things, empathy and understanding. We have committed ourselves to not just learn about people and events, both past and present, but from other people as well. We are not to sit in our ivory towers tossing our chamber pots over the heads of anyone passing that we find culturally unappealing or acting in ways that do not fit our understanding of the rules of social engagement.

Sadly, not everyone who decides to earn a humanities degree understands this. Yet this lack of understanding keeps them from the beauty and heartbreak of those different from themselves.

I am currently taking a class titled “Non-western lit”. The name says it all. We are reading a novel a week (which is why my blogs have been few and far between) from authors outside of our western culture and cannon, with the understanding that we are to read from their point of view. In other words, we are to drop our Orientalist and post-colonial views, and see the world through the eyes of the characters presented to us.

There is a woman in my class who, despite being a self professed world traveler, refuses to see the non-western world as it is but instead comments on behavior that disgusts her. She sits in judgment as if all people walk the same path and have the same life experiences as her.

Take for instance, Jhumpa Lahiri’s Pulitzer Prize wining, interpreter of maladies. In this beautifully written but heart wrenching collection of short stories there are people who make decisions or do things that may not make sense if we look at them from the western perspective. Some of the stories contain characters that we can identify with even if we do not agree with their behavior. But just because we do not agree with them does not mean we in a position to judge them. Yet, at every turn this woman will blurt out, “My husband would never do that”, or, “my husband would never act that way”.

The story When Mr. Pirzada comes to dine”, is a perfect example of what this woman is missing as she sits in judgment. Mr. Pirzada (a professor we assume) comes to America to study botany on a government scholarship. While he is in America an Indian couple and their daughter befriend him. While he is in America the Pakistani army invades Mr. Pirzada’s home country of Dacca. The couple and Mr. Pirzada sit night after night watching the news for any signs of hope as they watch teachers being dragged out of their homes and shot in the streets. Mr. Pirzada clearly cannot safely return home to his wife and six children.

The theme of this story is family. The ones we have and the ones we make. This unnamed Hindu couple takes in Mr. Pirzada, a Muslim, in because they share a cultural heritage. And, even though Hindus and Muslims have been at each other’s throats for hundreds of years, the couple become his surrogate family in a time when he needs family the most. This is what we were supposed to get from the story.

What did my aforementioned classmate complain about? That Mr. Pirzada did not return home to his real family! She asserted, “Her husband would never do that!” When I asked if her she and her husband had ever lived a country that was ravaged by war, she admitted they had not but held firm in her conviction that her husband would return to her if he found himself in this situation. When our professor asked her how Mr. Pirzada was supposed to fly home during an invasion, she became silent but unconvinced that Mr. Pirzada did the right thing by staying in America until it was safe to return. My classmate was focused on the theme of family responsibility, but her absolute stance on what her husband would do, blinded her to beauty of the story.

A part of me understands why my classmate talks about her husband so often. He passed on two years ago, and clearly there is a hole she needs to fill. By remembering him as the perfect husband, she can cling to her past, as the present may be too painful for her. I don’t know. I feel for her, yet there are days I want to shake her and remind her of our commitment to grow, not from the experiences we have had, but from the ones we haven’t. What stops me is my willingness to step back and try not to judge her too harshly. As bad as I feel bad for her loss, I feel equally as bad for what she is continually loosing; a chance to grow as a person.

The next time you find yourself at odds with a character’s behavior, remember the author is not asking you to sit in judgment, rather you are being asked to understand based on the information you are being given. Allow you to learn and grow. After all, isn’t this why we read?

Tag: reading

Saying goodbye to books

Why we read, part 2

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