Reading

This is the first Christmas I can remember without any gift-wrapped books under the tree with little stickers on them proclaiming they were for me. Instead, I got a couple of gift cards I can use to buy books at the local B&N.

There’s a reason for that. I don’t read the way I used to and the people most likely to buy me books are aware that my reading habits have changed. I used to read nothing but history and biography. I loved books about Elizabethan England, the reign of Henry Tudor, the settlement of pre-colonial America, Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt, and old ships or famous mariners.

With that range of interests it was always pretty easy to find me a book or two or three.

I don’t read history any more. Or biographies. So buying me a book is a bit more difficult.

When I first stopped reading history, I turned my attention to memoirs. I read Pete Hamill’s A Drinker’s Life; and Tweak, written by Nic Sheff, a methamphetamine addict.

I devoured books by Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris and James Frey even though I was savvy enough not to believe Frey’s words because I’ve been where he claimed to be and I knew where he was talking about just ain’t the way he described it.

I read Smashed by Koren Zailckas and the beautifully-titled Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn.

These are tales written by the discarded, the addicted, the harmed, and those much less than perfect. Obviously, they each achieved some measure of stability, at least enough to put pen to paper. So each story is a success story in some way.

Each of these stories, and the others I’ve been reading, starts in pain and ends in hope. Each is the story of a mountain climbed or some difficult path walked to a better place. And that’s wonderful.

Lately, though, I’ve been reading Charles Bukowski’s books: Ham on Rye, and Women, and Hollywood, and Pulp, and others. Bukowski, for those who don’t know his work, is the writer whose story was told, at least in part, in the movie Barfly.

His books are different. They’re not about climbing some spiritual mountain or walking some difficult path to overcome an addiction or a dreadful childhood or bipolar illness or whatever. There’s no real salvation in Bukowski’s books. Instead, they tell how he embraced his need and his pain and his rage and somehow managed to co-exist with them and even to profit from the experience.

So why am I reading this stuff?

Thank God my experience has taught me the truth about myself. I know that if I tried to co-exist with my own long-acknowledged alcoholism the way Bukowski did, I’d be lost with the first drink. I’ve accepted that truth and don’t fight it any longer.

I envy Bukowski though, though he died a few years back, at the age of 74. I don’t envy his ability to drink and write and manage to eke out an existence but his ability to embrace his demons without flinching and turn that embrace into something positive.

Because not all demons can be overcome. Not all mountains can be climbed and not all difficult paths lead to happiness. In fact, many difficult paths lead only to more difficulties.

I’ve faced a truth other than the truth that I can’t drink in safety. I’ve faced the truth that I’m dying. What I want to do is embrace this damned cancer the way Bukowski embraced his drunkenness and then turn it into something positive.

At least that’s what I’m trying to do.