4. The Books I Carry

THERE'S THAT RIDDLE about the One Book You'd Take With You On A Desert Island that I always answer with the infinitely snarky: The Comprehensive Guide to Surviving and Escaping a Desert Island (If You Really, Really Had To): A Memoir.

This is my answer despite the fact that this book does not exist (and if it did, would probably not be a memoir), and not knowing whether this book would do me any good (especially if it were a memoir). 

It'd be nice to have an Ikea-esque schematic of an escape raft--where you follow the pictures without words and make sure not to destroy the packaging--but I doubt, if pressed into service, that I'd be able to build said raft. 

And if I built said raft, that I'd tow into the surf with a bushel of coconuts, my pet volleyball and pray for the best.

No, I believe if you left me on a desert island, I'd probably spend more time climbing to the hierarchy of that island, than launching a dangerous attempt to leave it. 

I would be perfectly happy as King of the Finches. Lord of the Turtles. President of the Palm Trees.

Or something to that effect.

BUT I'M NOT GOING to a desert island. Where I'm going, I can take as many books as I'd like to carry. And so, I've listed here my top choices. The must haves. They sit in the front, even get shoved into the glove compartment, while the stragglers have to hide in the trunk.

Then We Came To The End

Joshua Ferris employs the 1st-person plural perspective (Then we came to the end), to capture the group-think, gossipy world of corporate America. 

Considering this is a book about a series of layoffs at an advertising agency, and I just left my job at an advertising agency after a series of layoffs, it's more a choice of looking back than forward. 

My favorite line (so far): a young copywriter calls his farmer uncle for insight on a pro bono cancer ad. After the young copywriter proves what kind of soulless, dimwit he really is, his uncle is forced to ask: "You folks over there...you say you call yourselves creative...and the work you do, you call that the creative...and I bet you think of yourselves as pretty creative over there, I bet." 

The young copywriter confirmed his uncle's assumptions.

So the old man said, wouldn't that make you "creative creatives creating creative creative."

What was the young copywriter to do but nod yes?

"And right there," concluded the uncle, is a "use of the English language just too absurd to even contemplate."

Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

There's this great passage in Pirsig's philosophical novel where his young son, trained by the boy scout culture, falls behind their hike up a Midwest mountain, and frustrated, sits down to pout. 

Pirsig gets angry at his son, or rather, the culture that teaches him that the hike is only worth it if you can climb the mountain. That the journey has no intrinsic value without a destination. 

It is unclear whether a road trip I have now coined as "from here to Alaska" is immune to said phenomenon. I hope it is, but I have a history of kidding myself. 

Into the Wild

Yeah, I know. Don't eat the berries! In this case, ignorance is my friend. I know enough about wild plants to know that I know nothing about wild plants, and anything I eat in the wild should be accompanied with a 7-11 receipt. 

The Great Gatsby

As an urbanite making his way out to the midwest, I'm taking the opposite route of Fitzgerald, who left the "wide lawns and friendly trees" of Minnesota, to muck himself in the world of New York finance and glitzy summer houses.

There's this great part in Gatsby, where on a lazy summer afternoon, the gang takes a leisurely ride down to Astoria and get excited about driving over the Queensboro Bridge--on purpose! I guess those really were the days. 

Lincoln at Gettysburg

Garry Wills won the Pulitzer Prize for his essay on how Lincoln's most famous speech was modeled after Pericles' funeral orations. I have read this book, a minimum, of four times, but considering that I plan to spend three days in Lincoln's presidential library, like a monk bowing at the seven buddhas, it's prudent to read again.

Between this book, expositing Lincoln's words, and The Complete Speeches of Abraham Lincoln, capturing them all, this canon is my version of the Holy Bible. This should not be considered in any way weird or creepy. 

THERE ARE MORE, like Valencia by Michelle Tea (mmm...lesbian memoir), The Physics of Superheroes by James Kakalios (when is Electro, Magneto? And when is Magneto, Electro?), and Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl (hey, college memoir weaving in the different ideas learned in college classes was my idea!). 

Really, I could go on forever, from Martin Amis to Emile Zola, but I actually have some driving to do.