Dashiell Hammett, Red Harvest (1929, Vintage Crime) and Ramona Emerson, Shutter (2022, Soho Crime)

I like crime fiction and noir. In this genre, I choose my books by publisher, and in this case from three publishing ventures: Vintage Crime, Soho Crime and Europa Noir. What they publish has similar characteristics. Vintage’s books I would best describe as raw, even when they are nearly a century old, you can still feel it. Both Soho and Europa have a quality of place to them, attention to culture and history. Europa’s are in translation, Soho’s written in English. When traveling to new places, or exploring new places via books, the authors have a quality of writing that brings the surroundings to a presence. I have a few inches of Europa’s set in Italy that I read when I was in the early stages of the Adelphi Project. It was fun to read something lighter in quality and style, but of the places I was engaged with.

In 1993 I lived a few blocks off Haight Ashbury, on the bottom floor of am old victorian, my room in the front, in the bowed window. I was young and too poor for too many books, but I borrowed what I could, had reader friends, and a used book shop around the corner that was very kind to me. Two odd gentlemen moved into the flat above me, and they lived noir. Their clothes, their accents, their language, their slang, their swagger. They wanted to be in a Hammett novel. They had a stash of the small paperbacks, pulp-style, and would bring them down to me so I could read them as well. I looked more manga than noir those days, but we seemed to get on just fine, and the book exchange flowed for the year I lived there.

Reading noir or pulp or mysteries came under serious consideration with this new plan of being attentive to what I read, particularly attentive, I mean. I was indecisively reading the shelves in a used bookstore, wanting something not so serious. School reading, work reading, essay writing reading, dense with ideas and in need of attention, they don’t spirit me away for a moment or thirteen. I am not much of a watcher of things, always a reader (no TV for much of my childhood, no right to watch when we had one). My eye was caught by Agatha Christie, then Jim Thompson. Thompson was published on Vintage Crime, and along with the Hammett, also read in the spring of 1993. I turned around to the Hammett, and picked up one or two, and decided, yes, this could be read, re-read. There seems to be something of the place, of the time, I am picking back up books I read in my early 20s, just as I was preparing to leave San Francisco, tired of the death and the disarray of that time. The books are rich with place, the writing so chewy and alert, and at the same time, I can taste the past on the tip of my tongue. I bought a Thompson as well, something I remember having an impact on me, but I cannot recall the impact. That one shall come later.

Emerson I had no knowledge of, but her being Dine’ and of course being published by Soho Crime, made this one compelling. And it was. The juxtaposition of being Navajo in the book, of the different cultural beliefs and understandings, of death and ghosts and ways of bridging worlds, is very well done. I would call it a crime novel, some listings want to call it a supernatural horror, which I think does disrespect to other belief systems. And belief systems isn’t the phrase either. It’s not a set of beliefs, it is the fundamental structure of the world as it is. I’ve been trying to catch myself on this lately. Too much anthropology and perhaps a distance of attempting to not offend those who don’t believe (there it is again) in spirits or ancestors. English lacks proper words for this, I often think. There is a world, and it is as it is, structured by natural law and relationships and ancestors and reality. Referring to reality as beliefs is a judgement, however subvert it may be. The reality of Emerson’s book includes ghosts. It is what it is. This is how the world works, accept without judgement. I’d read another of her books, if I find one in the used book store. She doesn’t have the bite of Hammett, so I would not suggest reading them back to back. But she has something strong of her own, and I look forward to what she does next.

The Hammett also made me want to re-read The Thin Man, not currently in my used bookstore, but I’ve got another 1996 books to go, so plenty of time to find a copy.

One of the things about my reading is that it tends to follow threads. It is a rare book that I find to read that is utterly random. Last June I went to Mongolia for the month, and in my travels there I spend some time with lamas, monks, and had an audience with the Rinpoche. I know far more about the history and philosophy of Vedism, Hinduism, Shaivism, tantra, and assorted other belief systems in that universe. Having come into a world where Buddhist philosophy is very present, I have been engaged in what I would call ‘Buddhist activities’ and have had a rather piecemeal engagement with philosophies, mostly vajrayana school from the Gelugpa traditions in Mongolia. Related to all this, I began studying traditional Tibetan medicine, which begins (and ends) with the four medical tantras of the Medicine Buddha, and requires an empowerment to read them. This is also entwined with Yuthok Nyingthig, and other practices that have become part of my life, as I study these topics.

When a scholar I know, of Hinduism and comparative religion decide to offer a course on the history of Buddhism the timeliness of it could not have been more perfect. I had been slowly reading as I attempted to wend my way through thousands of years of philosophy, schools and beliefs, but this was the opportunity to learn from one of the most erudite scholars I’ve experienced in my life, and be taught from a perspective that was easy for me to understand, that is Vedic to Hindu to Buddhist (with side travels to Jainism and Taoism, to name just two.)

Five or so years ago in the throes of The Adelphi Project (book 594), I had re-read Siddhartha for the first time since my twenties. It was beautiful as always, but a story without the wider context I was now attempting to slot ideas and events into, my bending of the moment towards seeing the world from a different perspective. The book had come up in my Buddhist History class, and I had pulled it off the shelf. I have an old hardcover copy, the feet on the cover reminiscent of the Bamiyan Buddhas, a reminder of impermanence, at the very least. (The edition I have of Siddhartha is a New Directions book, translated by Hilda Rosner.)

The middle way was more prominent to me with all the history swirling in my head, that neither asceticism or indulgence would serve. I can relate to this struggle. That he ends his life finding balance as a ferry pilot is also perhaps something that I should consider, given all the time I have spent on ferries.

One of the things that drew me to Roberto Calasso was his engagement with the Vedas and other early literature, his fascination with with the beliefs as well as the acts, the rituals, that which is left after the fire of sacrifice. It was not the reason I embarked on The Adelphi Project, but there was a resonance of connection in the fascination. In his office in Brera there were a set of shelves behind where a guest would sit, two shelves wide, all the books covered in paper so there was a similar look to the books, slightly variations of beige and a hint of green, the titles obscured. I asked about them once and he said they’d been Bobi’s books, the ‘perfect library’, all the books one needed to own for the rest of one’s life. I doubt he and Roberto had sat down to consider how many books they could read in the remainders of their lives, but the thread, it is there. Looking at my shelves and the books I have, thinking of the idea that I can only read so many more, I find I want to re-read far more than I would have thought, before such a consideration. And consideration is the word. I want to reconsider books I have previously known, those that had meaning or whose content I wish to taste again, at this phase in my life.

Roberto once told me that when they started Adelphi Edizioni they bought the remainders from a different house, I forget which or the context, though I likely wrote it in the notes I used to scribble after we met. The crux of it though was that one of the things they purchased was the rights to the Italian version of Siddhartha, which, he said, turned out to be the best selling book and fund quite a few of their future dreams.

Returning to Siddhartha, as I have returned to my serious, but non-Buddhist, meditation practices, as I consider what it is to be alive and what to read for my remaining years, seems of a piece in this moment. This, the memories of Roberto, the eightfold path, history, philosophy and the current state of the world are all held within me as considerations of how to live a life of integrity, one that, I hope, bends towards wisdom and compassion. One does not need to be Buddhist to follow these paths, or Hindu, or, in my belief, to hold any religion or belief system at all. I think one merely needs to want to be as present as possible, to live in the world, and to liberally apply care across all beings and all situations. And probably, as well, to let things go, to let them flow by and past. I do miss Roberto, of course, and can be bogged into despair when I look at the world, but finding a way to step outside of this has long been my mode of presence, and Siddhartha and the threads of memory that surface in the re-reading, and the exhilaration of scholarship and this precise moment in life can, and do, feel like just the right ‘enough’.

Wayne and I were having a conversation about the books in our house. There are around 7000 of them and we sat looking at the poetry shelves. He asked, “how long would it take me to read them all again?” And from there we meandered along the topic of, how many in the house would we re-read, of our own, or how many of the others do we wish to read, those as yet unread.

Wayne then calculated that if he currently is reading around 100 books a year, and perhaps has 30 years of reading left, that he has another 3000 books to read. So how, he asked, to ensure that those 3000 books are the best possible books he could read.

I sometimes read more books than 100 a year, (though not while doing my PhD, now I read parts of books), and I estimate 20 more years of life. So let’s say I have 2000 more books I can read in my lifetime. (Hopefully more, though.) Which books? There is something about this exercise that seems fun, though not a normal thought process for me. I rarely consider when I die, how far off it is, and what can be done between now and then.

We could choose the 100 books to read this year, which could result in tall stacks being created around the house, to be diminished over time. I am unlikely to be able to do this. I tend to flow too much by inspiration or topics that appear.

I tend to not write in public about the books I read, though for 35 years I have kept notebooks of every book I read. I haven’t been keeping track of anything for the past five years, nor have I been writing, but something about our conversation and this moment in time makes me wonder if I would start writing about each one.

Any one want to take a bet on how long it will take me to read 2000 books? Let’s not bet on how much longer I will live.