In September, 2020, the nice couple in my condominium suffered
a devastating stroke. I watched crestfallen as the ambulance that had turned
off its siren, parked outside our building’s entrance and a gurney carried my
neighbor into the back and drove away, siren on. The nonagenarians’ wife had
brain surgery, and the husband, George D. Chow, a failing heart broken by his
wife's demise. Two good daughters were helping the elderly couple cope with the
tragedy. The daughters, one returning from the US, sold the condo in our building
below market price to consolidate their losses and bring their parents to live
with them up north near Taipei.
George D. Chow is quite a scholarly
man; an English major in college in Taiwan, and an avid reader, a conservative
supporter of the KMT, mostly in traditional Chinese, of course, but also the
classics in English literature and some anti-communist propaganda. The
daughters started removing books from their sold condo and putting them in our
meeting room for anyone to take before they were carted away by a paper recycler.
I was there the first day to collect over two dozen books, mostly Taiwan issued
hard covers now illegal and out of print. I had to leave more than I could
handle; complete volumes on American and British literature, a complete
Shakespeare which, on second thought, I would grab the next day along with
others they would be bringing down. I lined them up atop the bookcase in my
study for there was no more space in the bookcases.
By the end of October, I had taken
around sixty books from the tables in the meeting room and was waiting for more
books to be brought downstairs. Books are my most reliable companions in Taiwan
next to my wife and the cats. I never read so much in the States as I do here
because I never had so much free time that wasn’t obscured by cannabis, my
family of four children, and the high school students I taught for twenty five
years. I drink weekend evenings here and that is all, cannabis being rare and
illegal. The rest of the time I’m sober and cognizant. I usually read about two
hours a day either by the riverside, up the Han, or occasionally on my patio,
enclosed or outside; but I rarely read at home for all the distractions, except
for when I am studying Mandarin in which case I welcome distractions.
As I skimmed through the books I
rescued from the meeting room, I had fun; a few pages of The Godfather here
David Frost's The American there, and The Rising Sun admitting
Japan did it to save Asia from white gringos. There was Ibsen 6 Plays and
another volume with 15 classics. Wow! There were so many books that I took
snapshots of them with my smartphone instead of trying to copy the names down
in my journal. They look great atop the bookcases and there they will stay,
with a common theme: The Rescued.
I was on the brink of reading James Joyce. I'm still
afraid but I got Ulysses and a Joyce collection from the meeting room now
on top of the bookcase in the study. I watched three YouTube videos about how
to approach the book and even considered one handbook one reviewer suggested
for pathways through Ulysses.
At Brian’s Delicatesses Desmarais
one evening, I sat at the bar having a beer and talked to Andrew and Walter;
Andrew about literature (he has published a novel, too) and Walter about his
job near Taichung Airport in the industry. Andrew, who teaches at the same
school as Brian, introduced a few books emblematic of the ‘50’s; Updike was too tame for him. I also asked for advice on
reading James Joyce whose Ulysses and The Essential collection I
rescued from the meeting room. ‘Read the Essential first,’ he advised, ‘then
listen to Ulysses on YouTube to get the inflection,’ he suggested
There was so much literature on the top of the bookcase from our
neighbor's clearing house. I was into David Frost's Americans and Mario
Puzo's Godfather but everything else was read a few minute only while seated
on the toilet. I am a slow reader and there are other books I bought recently,
like Deng Xiaoping that came first. With more books to come, and the
Eslite clearance starting the next Wednesday, it was a bit overwhelming,
The day the Eslite
book/CD/record clearance at Chung-Yo Dept. Store began, I went for first dibs.
I went realizing their English and CD selection have gotten smaller and
smaller over the years. Their records were new, not used, and not cheap at all.
Going is a social event as well as a shopping event; it is something else to
do. I don't need any more books, especially after the ones I got from our
meeting room. Furthermore, it was disheartening to see that for $1.99 I could
get 57 classic books on Amazon Kindle, but my cache from the meeting room was
free and old books smell, look, and feel better, anyway, plus they are easier
on the eyes.
I was monk-ish one
evening with no food or drink but water as I perused the books I bought at the
Eslite clearance the day before. This year, English books, CD's and LP's were only
50% off as opposed to 70% in past years but it didn't make me limit what I
wanted; books in Chinese were still six for 500 Taiwan dollars; about $17 U.S.
I bought the books I could imagine myself reading sooner than later, and only
one book about China, The Battle For China's Past, about how the
Cultural Revolution and Mao remain influential for most Chinese. I passed over
a few other history books about Jiang Ching and the ''disruptive" Cultural
Revolution knowing they'd be negative assessments and not constructive,
besides, I was getting my history from Vogel's Deng Xiaoping book. I
also passed over a capitalist biography of Marx opting instead for How to
Change the World about Marx's increasing influence. The Inner Life of
Animals, The Upright Thinkers, and Climbing Mount Improbable are all
about nature and natural science by translated authors. Serendipities;
Language and Lunacy, by an Italian author, seems quirky in reviewing history
mistakes in literary works. In addition,
Two Russians, My Childhood by Gorky and Five Plays by Chekov in a
new translation will round out the 12 Plays, 6 Plays by Ibsen with a complete
Shakespeare, and numerous others in the books rescued from the meeting room;
Chekov appears in none of the anthologies! Memories of Mount Qilai, is
an autobiographical book from a Taiwanese poet I'd like to get to know. Grown-Up
Anger, connecting Woody Guthrie with 'Bob Dylan' (his name used mostly as a
come-on for readers that know no other topical folksinger) is a memoir from a
radicalized baby-boomer. Nickel and Dimed, a book I know intrinsically
but never read is finally on my shelf next to Fast Food Nation. The
New Yiddish Kitchen's recipes will soon be on my dinner table. I couldn't
pass up a condensed illustrated version of Moby Dick nor could I let The
Wizard of Oz, with its odd rubbery green cover, pass me by any more than The
Island of Doctor Moreau. Last but not least was a 5 CD abridged reading of Les
Miserables for 437-$14 and a deluxe 3-CD second album set of The Verve. The
total cost after discount was 6513, about $220 for 17 items. I would go back to
see if there was anything added worthwhile but I was in no hurry. The sale would
continue a few more weeks until the first week in December.
There have been a lot of voices in my head recently. It started
when I rescued the trove of literature from the meeting room. All the great
writers, mostly in first language English, have been beckoning me in my dreams to
read their works. The onrush of authors started before the books came into my
possession when I picked up a paperback copy of Edgar Allen Poems at Caves to
read “The Raven” for Halloween with private students. Who could have known that
a beautiful red hard-cover collection of Poe would be coming my way soon?
And Joyce, Hemingway, O'Hara, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Puzo, just to mention a few,
and anthologies that cover the depth and breadth of English language literature,
poetry, and drama. It was amazing! But of all the literature at my fingertips,
what had I chosen to read? The Wizard of Oz from the Eslite clearance
sale while continuing Deng Xiaoping by Vogel; Americans by David
Frost and The Godfather are the first two works from the trove I have
delved into.
The next week I took four more books from the meeting room; two
handbooks on birds of Taiwan, one of birds from Japan, and the last, Problems
in Prose, by Paul Haines; a handy hard cover textbook of short stories and
excerpts with questions to understand how they were written so a student could
write his own. It was published in 1962. Most of the authors are obscure and
haven't passed the test of time.
It turns out, Mr. George D. Chow,
the English major in college, left me an amazing collection. I hope he was
happy reading them while a student. It couldn’t have been easy as the
translations in the margins show. I wish he had written more clearly in
Chinese. At first glance, his shorthand makes it hard to make use of his notes for
me to study Mandarin.
Meanwhile, I had returned and gotten a few more books and LP's at
the Eslite sale and my wife got six books for 500. I didn’t plan on buying any
more. Some of my purchases were frivolous. The rock group Verve’s second CD set
and The Pencil Perfect, in particular. Others were highly selective and I
put two-thirds of the titles I accumulated back. Interestingly, I got another
book on Marxism and a third about how Marxism can go forward in China. I read
20 pages that evening of the newest acquisition, A World to Win by
Sven-Eric Liedman that, interestingly, disparaged another book on Marxism I had
in hand but chose not to buy (Karl Marx; Greatness and Illusion by
Gareth Stedman Jones) and another I bought last week (How to Change The
World; Tales of Marx and Marxism, by Erik Hobsbawm) that he recommended. I
didn't get any books on modern Chinese history, thought I looked for and didn't
find the Jiang Ching biography I thought I might pick up after all; someone
else had bought it. I got a book on European colonization of Africa, Empires
in the Sun; The Struggle for Mastery of Africa by Lawrence James; a
subject I have not read about in detail yet; Africa remains the
mysterious part of my education.
On another note (pun intended) The LP's I got were an unreleased
Tim Buckley (“Look at the Fool”) The Small Face collection, ”From the
Beginning” on Decca that, ironically, I had ordered a few before on eBay.
“Tumbleweed Connection” was an album I was thinking about earlier in the year when
I was on my Elton John kick, and the last Move album, “Message from the
Country”. Both Move and Small Faces have accompanying codes to download MP3
versions but I couldn't seem to figure out how to do it when I tried. The Move
download may have extra cuts including "Do Ya" so I'll try
again. I have a number of albums I wish I could upload into the PC and
download into the Walkman and the turntable system I bought a few years ago has
terrible sound.
While sitting on the toilet I read
about Chaucer during my morning dump, and the first verse of Canterbury
Tales. The day before I started reading The Battle for China’s Past,
its introduction and up to page six. In the morning in Tan-Zih Park, I read Smarter
than Man? up to page thirty. I read Richard Dawkins’ Climbing Mount Improbable
intro and up to page eight as I sat in the living room. The day before, I had read
Liedman’s A World to Win up to page twenty-one at the riverside. In
short, I’d been doing a lot of reading but doing no writing or revising of my
own works. All in its own good time.
December 3, 2020
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