Guernica

Pablo Picasso, 1937

Have you ever read a book that you really appreciate, but know that you’ll never really want to read again? You can see why people are heralding it and it scratches that mental itch, but if someone were to ask you if that were the one book you would want to take with you to a deserted island, you just might say, “Can I choose another, please?” or perhaps you may think to yourself, “Guess it’ll have some use in case all that coconut milk kicks in.”

In a sense, it’s sort of like art. Take Guernica (above), for example. No one can deny the mastery of the work and the significance that it has come to take on as the very embodiment of anti-war sentiments. Yet, it is something so fine and sometimes so emotionally and mentally perturbing that to hang it over your fireplace for daily viewing would do neither you nor the painting justice. An idyll or better yet, Malevich’s White on White, might better suit those purposes so that the viewing of Guernica can take place during select, special moments, such as a certain Colin Powell press conference at the U.N. (or not).

White on White

Kasimir Malevich, 1918

And so is the case with books. In reflecting on the few books that I have read over the past couple of weeks, I’ve realized that the books that have left me with that feeling of wanting to slowly turn the last page, hold my breath, and hug the book to my chest, hoping that some of the beauty of the book and of the author’s words will seep into my very being so that I can re-read the book over and over again in my mind (you know … that feeling …) have not been books on “The List” (the list being the list of 55 Pulitzer fictions I’m determined to read), but rather off “The List.” (gasp). That is right. I enjoy non-Pulitzer prize winners.

So in the next couple of days, I’ll share some thoughts with you on why those non-p’s are so amazing. Until then, I leave you with this gem. Guess where it is from!

“During the Age of Silence, people communicated more, not less. Basic survival demanded that the hands were almost never still, and so it was only during sleep (and sometimes not even then) that people were not saying something or other. No distinction was made between the gestures of language and the gestures of life. The labor of building a house, say, or preparing a meal was no less an expression than making the sign for ‘I love you’ or ‘I feel serious’. When a hand was used to shield one’s face when firghtened by a loud noise something was being said, and when fingers were used to pick up what someone else had dropped something was being said; and even when the hands were at rest, that, too, was saying something. Naturally, there were misunderstandings. There were times when a finger might have been lifted to scratch a nose, and if casual eye contact was made with one’s lover just then, the lover might accidentally take it to be the gesture, not at all dissimilar, for ‘Now I realize I was wrong to love you’. These mistakes were heartbreaking. And yet, because people knew how easily they could happen, because they didn’t go around with the illusion that they understood perfectly the things other people said, they were used to interrupting each other to ask if they’d understood correctly. Sometimes these misunderstandings were even desirable, since they gave people a reason to say, ‘Forgive me, I was only scratching my nose. Of course I know I’ve always been right to love you’. Because of the frequency of these mistakes, over time the gesture for asking for forgiveness evolved into the simplest form. Just to open your palm was to say: Forgive me.”