Just a few minutes ago, I finished my 12th and final book in my 12 books in 12 months resolution/goal that I had set for myself last New Years Eve. Its been quite a reading whirlwind, reading four books over the past four weeks in order to reach the magic number 12. Here are mini-capsules for Nos. 9-12, plus a few final thoughts about this process. No. 9: Let Me Be Frank With You by Richard Ford. I hadnt thought about Frank Bascombe, the protagonist Fords excellent The Sportswriter and Independence Day for years. I did all I could to embrace Frank, though, reading this book Bascombe-style (it seems like this man exists primarily in a world punctuated by holidays) during the long Thanksgiving Weekend. Of the four stories about Frank, now 68 and retired and living in a time not far removed from the physical and emotional wreckage of Hurricane Sandy on the Jersey Shore, the one that resonated most with me was Everything Could Be Worse. In it, Frank learns of a terrible tragedy that occurred years before in his home. Its a surprisingly dark story, featuring a long-ago death and a dignified older visitor, Charlotte Pines, who brings out the best in Franks always observational, always somewhat wryly detached, worldview. No. 10: Ghosts of Manila by Mark Kram. What a book! I loved this book, which deftly and with an artists eye chronicled the three-fight rivalry between boxers Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier during the 1970s. Kram, who wrote for Sports Illustrated in the 1960s and the 1970s, is generally considered the finest writer in SIs history -- better than Dan Jenkins, better than Frank Deford, better than Gary Smith. Ghosts of Manila shows why. Kram brings both men to light in such an unsparing, evocative manner -- Ali is more than the mouth that roared and Frazier is more than a quiet craftsman. There are too many great moments to recount here, but heres just one snippet of Krams remarkable writing, where Kram and Ali meet years later: Only his face remained as I remembered it. Eight years had elapsed since I had seen him spiral through the final, perilous years of his career, and even at age 42 it still held at bay any admission of destruction. ... Always the centerpiece of vanity -- this face, so instantly transportable into world consciousness -- it was betrayed only by his eyes, his words. Where once his eyes publicly spilled with tumbling clowns, they were now a dance hall at daybreak. No. 11: The Last Magic Summer: A Season With My Son by Peter Gent. I came to love this book slowly, as it started out rather clumsy and unsure of itself. Gent, author of the seminal sports novel, North Dallas Forty, was broke and broken in the early 1990s following a lot of fast lane living, a brutal divorce and child-custody wrangling over his precocious son, Carter. Together, he and Carter move from the hardened dog-eat-dog world of Texas, where Gent found professional fame and personal ruin, to Gents quiet little hometown of Bangor, Mich. The book takes a while to get going, and meanders a bit as Gent gives play-by-play of Carters Connie Mack league games. But about halfway through, the book begins to hum with true sentiment. There are moments between the pony-tailed, chain-smoking father and his soon-to-graduate-from-high-school son that are simply lovely and ring with a kind of warm, unhurried, emotional tenor. Gent, his body so battered from five years with the Dallas Cowboys he has to sit in a lawn chair while he manages Carters team, finds true love as he watches his boy excel in an arena that Gent has great ambivalence -- sports. Thanks to Carter, Gent finds purpose again in his own life: Living over a half century, setting goals, and working hard to accomplish them -- from Bangor High School to Michigan State to the Dallas Cowboys -- I had achieved nearly everything I had set out to do and nothing had worked out as I expected. ... I had learned control was a delusion. If you were gonna wreck, you were gonna wreck. All you could do was what you could do. No. 12: Running & Being: The Total Experience by Dr. George Sheehan. Every now and again I reach out to this book for its commonsense, its reliance on philosophers and philosophy, its runner as hero message to reinforce the principles that I hold dear. The last couple of days as Ive read this book have been no exception. Dr. Sheehan has been been gone for two decades now, but his words are as timely, as poignant, and as important now as they were back in 1978 when this book first appeared: And that perhaps is the essence of the running experience for me, and any number of different experiences for other people, Dr. Sheehan writes near the end of Running & Being. The lack of anxiety, the complete acceptance, the letting go and the faith that all will be well. In running, I feel free. ... There can be no consequences to make me worry or doubt. I am secure whatever happens. And in that security I reach a wholeness that I find nowhere else. What have I learned from this year-long exercise? Two things: 1) Its probably best to not read more than 1,000 pages over the space of about 30 days; I tried to savor, but there was also my innermost engine telling me that I needed to keep turning the page(s) if I was ever going to achieve my goal. 2) I certainly do love reading. These 12 books, from the somewhat disappointing Blue Nights by Joan Didion to the artistry of Mark Kram to the times I had to pull out a Kleenex as Peter Gent described his special relationship with his wonderful young son, all reinforced in me the power that good writing can have. The past year and these 12 books have definitely been worth it. Theyve helped me, to borrow from dearly departed Doc Sheehan, reach a wholeness that I find nowhere else.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 04:51:20 +0000
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