The Farm Report

(From Bill McKeen’s Book Blog in Tampa’s Creative Loafing.)

LEARNING TO FLY: Maybe it doesn’t happen for everyone. But for those who love books, it’s not hard to remember that moment when they fell in love with reading.

Maybe it happened early on, with Dr. Seuss. Maybe it came later, during the early pangs of adolescence, with Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

For me, it happened when I first laid hands upon The Wind in the Willows. What a strange and wonderful world Kenneth Grahame described in his 1908 novel for children. This tale of a mole, a river rat, a badger and the officious Mr. Toad was the first major step in my lifelong reading habit. Not sure where that first copy came from: It was the 50th anniversary Scribners edition, illustrated by Ernest H. Shepard, and it came out when I was three. It was probably my older brother’s copy.

At school, I plunged into reading – Robb White’s The Lion’s Paw , a whole series of biographical books aimed at the elementary school set – but Wind in the Willows was sort of a secret. None of my other friends had read it. Maybe, I figured, it was an English thing. I’d spent my first few Wonder Years in England. Later, when I read that the book was one of John Lennon’s childhood inspirations, I felt some kind of vindication.

None of my friends here in the States had read Wind in the Willows, though they were conversant in Poohspeak. A.A. Milne’s Winnie-The-Pooh came two decades after Grahame’s book, but both books were illustrated by the same artist, Shepard, who did the Wind in the Willows I knew best.

Now, just after its 100th anniversary, Wind in the Willows is back, in the deluxe treatment. That classic Scribners editionI grew up with is still available (from Atheneum Books), butW.W. Norton, the publisher that produces the “Annotated” series of books, has turned its reverent and superb attention to this classic of children’s literaure. (Norton has produced several books in the “annotated” series. Click here for more.)

The Annotated Wind in the Willows (W.W. Norton, $39.95) fascinates and entertains on so many levels.

First of all, there’s the great story of the adventures of Mole and Rat and how they band together with Badger to assist Mr. Toad in his battle against evil. There’s also a moment of revelation about the mystic powers of language. The chapter titled “Pipers at the Gates of Dawn” struck me in ways I didn’t begin to understand as a child. Yet it took me to another level and I realized language could guide you into a dream state. (It also might have inspired my first hallucinations, but that’s another story.)
For someone who grew up with this book, it’s the “annotated” stuff that gives this beautiful volume its added value. The Shepard illustrations are here, but so are pictures from earlier editions. The notes on the creation of the book – the “Dear Mouse” letters that Grahame wrote as prelude – are fascinating. All my life, Kenneth Grahame was simply the name of the man who wrote a wonderful book. The Annotated Wind in the Willows not only gives us the book, but the story of the creator and his life and struggles.

A beautiful book. It’s a crime if you don’t read this aloud to a child in your life. Think of the door you’ll be opening.

NOT FOR THE KIDS: OK, on the opposite end of the spectrum. Don’t read this next book to kids. But it’s a lot of fun and you’ll probably feel like a big, goofy kid if you follow the writer’s instructions.

Absinthe and Flamethrowers (Chicago Review Press, $16.95) by William Gurstelle is a mash-up ofMr. Wizard and Hunter S. Thompson. Gurstelle is an engineer who has now written two books (the first was Backyard Ballistics) about controlled mayhem.

In short, he tells us how to have all kinds of dangerous fun and the science and ballistics behind this delinquency. Absinthe and Flamethrowers is a guidebook to all sorts of mischievous projects you can do yourself.

Mr. Wizard – Don Herbert, host of the old smart-kids TV show – used to show how to do things on his weekly program. “First, get a used toilet-paper roll, then …” You do need a few props here and there, but Gurstelle’s primary interest is urging his readers to take risks. To that end, he offers us tips on the best places in the country to drive fast. For those of us who’ve had 50 years of Indianapolis 500 fantasies, this may be the closest we’ll ever come.

The comparison to Mr. Wizard is apt. Gurstelle de-mystfies science and engineering and makes it fun for all. The comparison to  Thompson is also on the money. Gurstelle, like the late doctor, loves to blow up shit.

LEONARD, WE HARDLY KNEW YE: Leonard Michaels crossed my mind the other day. I was reading a particularly insightful interview he’d done with the great American novelist, Thomas McGuane. And I thought: Damn, I haven’t read anything by Leonard Michaels in a long time.

   

 

With good reason. He died in 2003. Obviously, I should have renewed my New Yorker subscription when it expired in 1982. I’m so out of it with regard to belles-lettres.

I do remember admiring Michaels’ short stories when I was a young swain, reading damn near anything I could get my hands on, trying to learn how to make money out of pecking a keyboard.

Though it’s been years since I read anything by Michaels, the memory of his work always lingered, and so I immediately glommed onto The Essays of Leonard Michaels (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26).

It makes me recall how I felt about John Updike and Philip Roth. Their fiction didn’t always hit me. Much as I loved Updike’s Couples and his Rabbit books, some of his novels fell flat, in my opinion. But man, did I love his essays. Same thing with Philip Roth – when he is good, he is very very good and when he is bad … well, he’s still better than most of humanity. But one of the most enjoyable reading experiences of my life was diving into Roth’s Reading Myself and Others.

So Michaels – whose fiction often moved me but was just as often too delicate for me – turns out to be that special novelist who is also a brilliant essayist.

Michaels’ book of essays is not a doorstop and you get the sense that the editor truly culled the greatest hits from the late writer’s archive. The first half – the critical essays, the writing about others – shows him to be as astute an observer of the literary scene as Updike, Roth, Norman Mailer or other heavyweights who also wrote reviews.

But it’s the second part, the autobiographical essays, that gives the book its tremendous heart. These stories shed the artifice of fiction and Michaels just tells us the story of his life. His greatest stories were his own. These are brilliant pieces of writing and it makes me realize how much I miss his work in my life. This book is at once thrilling and immensely sad. If you haven’t read Leonard Michaels before, you should.