Influential books

 Could you make a distinction between a good book — informative, entertaining, well made or widely revered — and a book, however flawed, that changes your life?

I read two or three “biographies” of Eric Hoffer when I was in college. They weren’t really biographies. They were retellings of Hoffer’s own stories about his life, which were marvelous in spirit though not true in fact. A biography that is not factually accurate fails at the foundations. I’d say it’s not really a biography.

But I came away with this idea: Hoffer earned a living, first as a migrant worker and then as a longshoreman, all the while devoting himself to studying questions that interested him. I was young then, but he seemed to be wealthy in a way I wanted to count wealth.

I was a student, and I knew some graduate assistants who were studying important questions, but they were questions that interested their professors, rather than questions that interested them. I also knew some professors who had interesting questions they wanted to study, but they were mainly grading papers and attending meetings. I didn’t know whether there were any people out there, other than Hoffer, who were studying the questions that interested them. 

I was perhaps easily influenced. But finding a way to study questions that interested me seemed like an important part of a good life.

• Source: I’m not sure this half-baked idea has a source. Many of the notes in this online collection are about influence, including people and books that have influenced me. But I recently picked up Will Schwalbe’s Books for Living; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017, which raises questions about how books influence us.

A poet speaks of being alone

 The poet Robert Francis liked being alone. In my mind he wrote the great poem about people who are like that. It begins: 

His willingness to be alone,

His happiness in being alone,

Was what they never could forgive.

 

Either he loved his loneliness

Too much or loved his friends too little.

And didn’t one imply the other?

 

Of course, the poet’s friends didn’t really want to know where he had been all week and what he had been doing. They did not really want to know what had been on his mind. They wanted him to want to know what was on theirs.

They wanted to know where he’d been all week and what he’d been doing — but not really.

 

As if they hoped and feared to find

That all his secret wealth was both

Within and far beyond their reach.

 

I love the poem because I am one of those people who cannot see how a person can be of any use to anyone else without spending some time alone.

• Source: Robert Francis, “His Wealth”; Poetry Magazine, August 1946, pp. 246-7. It’s here:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=68&issue=5&page=10

New Year's Day

 Charles Lamb said:

No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference. It is that from which all date their time, and count upon what is left. It is the nativity of our common Adam.

 

If you are looking about for a way to mark the day, Lamb offers an example. Many people look to the future. They make resolutions and plans. But Lamb said:

 

I am naturally, beforehand, shy of novelties; new books, new faces, new years, — from some mental twist which makes it difficult for me to face the prospective.

 

Lamb was saying goodbye to 1820 and hello to 1821. He was planning to spend New Year’s Day with his memories.

• Source: Charles Lamb, “New Year’s Eve,” in Essays of Elia; London: J.M. Dent & Sons, Ltd., pp. 31-7. The quotations are on p. 32.