[The Bookshelf #73] Smuggling in the Time of Reaganomics
The title will make sense in a minute, maybe
Hey there, friend.
I know you have a lot going on, so thanks for making The Bookshelf an occasional part of your life. I enjoy writing these newsletters about books, and my joy is made complete when I find out you’re enjoying them too.
Recently, unprompted, I’ve had some dear folks opt in to the paid version of The Bookshelf, which is like the free version, only... they pay for it! I’m grateful for those votes of confidence. You know who you are. Thanks so much.
Money is great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s far from the only currency around here. So if you enjoy The Bookshelf, would you consider helping to spread the word? Books aren’t everyone’s thing, I know, but everyone has an odd reader or two in their life, God bless ‘em. Maybe it’s your friend Ed or your aunt Emily or your coworker Esteban who won’t shut up about the Norwegian crime novels they’re constantly reading. Or, you know, whatever their specific thing may be.
A person like Ed or Emily or Esteban might enjoy The Bookshelf if someone they know and respect—someone like you—forwarded it to them, right?
Anyway, your kind camaraderie is always appreciated. Truly. Gracias.
What I’ve Read Recently
In his 1987 novel Crossing to Safety (Modern Library), Wallace Stegner has given us a richly textured, deeply felt story of friendship and marriage. Specifically, it’s the semi-autobiographical story of two marriages and the friendships between them over the course of many long, winding years.
It’s a nuanced, layered story about wild-eyed hope, and naive commitments, and ambitious plans—and about what happens when life intervenes.
It’s a story about how friendships drift apart due to geography and vocation and temperament, as well as unforeseen cataclysms and untended wounds. It’s about the rifts that form because of what’s said and what’s left unsaid, what’s done and what’s left undone. And it’s about how none of that damage needs to be terminal, not necessarily.
It’s a book that sees longevity and faithfulness—especially with those few people who know us and love us and are given to our care—as maddeningly elusive and fraught, but absolutely worth the effort, so far as it depends on us.
“And so, by circuitous and unpredictable routes, we converge toward midcontinent and meet in Madison, and are at once drawn together, braided and plaited into a friendship. It is a relationship that has no formal shape, there are no rules or obligations or bonds as in marriage or the family, it is held together by neither law nor property nor blood, there is no glue in it but mutual liking. It is therefore rare. To Sally and me, focused on each other and on the problems of getting on in a rough world, it happened unexpectedly; and in all our lives it has happened so thoroughly only once.”
What I’m Reading Now
My friend David tells the story of a high-stakes international smuggling operation—occurring under the cover of darkness, no less—in which he was thrust, bewilderingly, into a starring role.
It was 1984, give or take, and David was in Paris, when he made a quick trip to visit a friend in Barcelona. As the weekend drew to a close, back at the Aeroport de Barcelona-El Prat ticket counter, he was approached by a strange woman.
“Are you American?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to Paris?”
“Yes.”
“On this next flight?”
“Yes.”
She asked if he knew the name of a certain Latin American novelist. He did not. “He’s very famous,” she said. “Regardless, I’m his agent and I have an urgent need to get this manuscript to an editor in Paris.”
She handed him the stack of typed papers. David tucked them into his carry-on. He boarded the plane just like every other passenger. This being the ‘80s, he may well have smoked a cigarette during the short flight while pondering the mysteries of the universe. Whatever the case, he insists he did not read the manuscript. But if he had, he would have read, in the original Spanish, these now-recognizable words: “It was inevitable: the scent of bitter almonds always reminded him of the fate of unrequited love.”
The manuscript, of course, was Gabriel García Márquez’s long-awaited work Love in the Time of Cholera. The novel may have reached the editor in Paris without incident 38 years ago, but it’s just now found its way into my hands—in the form of the beautiful recent illustrated edition from Vintage.
I know better than to expect it to be quite as good as One Hundred Years of Solitude, but I'm enjoying it. So much, in fact, that I attempted to tell David’s smuggling story just now in the style of Gabo himself, that imaginative lover of absurd but truthful detail.
What I Might Read Next
One of the benefits of being married to a seminarian is getting to read (some of) what Katie’s reading, and then talking about those books together. Christianity's Surprise: A Sure and Certain Hope (Abingdon) by C. Kevin Rowe is yet one more book that fits into that category. It’s next up for this Eastertide season.
As always, thanks for reading. I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of these reflections. And do let me know what you’re reading these days.
Tim
I need help to enjoy Gabriel García Márquez better. I see the gifted writing but struggle to truly enter the worlds he writes. Any suggestions?