A message from Alasdair Gray’s mural in the Hillhead Subway Station in Glasgow:
Do not let daily to-ing and fro-ing
to earn what we need to keep going
prevent what you once felt when wee,
hopeful and free.
(For those who don’t speak Scottish: “wee” means “little.”)
I’ve been thinking lately about how only sharing the books you’ve finished or the books you recommend is not the full picture of your reading life.
There’s the reading you actually get done, and then there’s the reading you want to do. The books you check out of the library. The books you buy that pile into stacks on your nightstand.
The books you threw across the room!
I always enjoyed how Nick Hornby listed BOOKS READ and BOOKS BOUGHT in his “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” column for The Believer.
(One thing I think Kate Bingaman-Burt’s Daily Drawings do so well is show how purchases can add up to a picture of a person.)
Because there are so many more books I want to point to other than the ones I myself have read, I’m thinking about whether I can steal this read/bought format for the newsletter…
One of my favorite things is flipping open my paper dictionary to a random page and seeing what turns up. (See: bibliomancy.)
After Edward Carey (author of Little) finished writing his first book in 1999, he wrote to his hero, Alasdair Gray. This was Gray’s response.
…please tell anyone you know in the writing game that I’m too selfish to be of use to anyone. If you photocopy this letter and pass it around I will think it a favor.
That handwriting! Exquisite. I want to copy every letter.
I’d never heard of Gray or his work until a few years ago, when Elizabeth McCracken (author of Bowlaway, and, not coincidentally, Edward’s wife) sent me this charming video of him talking about his writing and art:
“I couldn’t make a living by either of them,” he said, “so the writing helped the painting and the painting helped the writing.”
I particularly loved his response to the ever-worn-out question, “Can writing be taught?”
Of course! I couldn’t write before I was was taught! That’s why they give it to you in primary schools. Writing and speaking are things that have to be learned first. Some people at a certain stage think that they don’t have to learn any more. If you’re very interested in words then you try to keep on learning more. And the best way, of course, is by reading other writers. Good ones! Or even bad ones are better than none to begin with.
Delightful video. Do watch.
Related reading: Edward Carey at the APL
I was intrigued by Gretchen Rubin’s Met Museum Experiment, in which she plans to visit the Met every day of this year that she’s in NYC. (She lives within walking distance.)
Her experiment and her goals — to waken her senses, to learn about art, to explore the building space, to see more clearly, though she doesn’t feel she’s a visual person — got me thinking about how I like to visit museums.
Here are 3 things I do that make my museum experiences much richer:
1. Draw, draw, draw! When you try to draw something, even with just a rough sketch, you really have to look at it, and you notice all kinds of things you don’t by just standing around gawking at it. I always have a pocket notebook and a pencil or two with me. (Many museums don’t let you use pen or marker in the galleries.) I stand and copy the art I like, often just swiping a detail here and there from different pieces. (I write more about drawing and “slow looking” in chapter 5 of Keep Going.)
2. Enlist a small child to guide you through the museum. Kids are alive to the world in ways we aren’t as adults. They’re also lower to the ground, so their perspective is literally different. (More on this: “The 5-year-old docent” and “Borrow a kid.”)
3. Don’t read the label before you look at the art. Watch people the next time you’re in a museum gallery. They almost always look at the labels first! Don’t do this. Use your own eyes first. Let yourself be drawn towards what is genuinely interesting to you. Spend time looking at a piece without having someone else’s words messing with your looking. (More on this in Edward Tufte’s essay, “Seeing Around.”)
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