I think buying a book because you feel like it has something to say to you is a good reason to buy a book. That’s why I bought this one – Penelope Niven’s biography of Carl Sandburg. Used ($8.50). I think it has something to say to me from reading a bit in it and from visiting Carl Sandburg’s home in Flat Rock last June.
All we knew then was he was a famous American who wrote that big Lincoln series a long time ago and won Pulitzer Prizes in poetry and history. Sounded like an interesting fellow, and it’s only a few hours drive. At the entrance to the long hike up to the house there’s a restroom building. On the walls outside are photos and stories and quotes of Sandburg. I saw these words and was hooked -- I even had to go back to the car to get my notebook to write it down:
There is a place for me somewhere, where I can write and speak as much as I can think, and make it pay for my living and some besides. Just where this place is I have a small idea now, but I am going to find it.
Then this:
It is necessary now and then for a man to go away by himself and experience loneliness; to sit on a rock in a forest and ask of himself, ‘Who am I, and where have I been and where am I going?’
Well, hello. Maybe that doesn’t say ‘pssst’ to you, but it does me. What kind of life did those words come from and lead to? Getting to the house, we began to find out. Self taught. Eighth grade drop-out. Owned 17,000 books. Rejected by academic critics. Most of the things I like reading are spiritual or leadership biography or business -- this guy was none of that. It was the start of a growing little curiosity.
You may not know what a book (or a life story, or a sunrise, or a piece of music) has to say to you, but you know what it feels like when you’re asked to listen. It taps you on the shoulder and you tilt your head and give it a second. If after a few taps you’re still listening, there may be something there for you.
Thank you, I needed to remember this!
Posted by: Becca Baez | Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 02:17 PM