Pandemic Reading: A Letter to My Daughter

Dear Elizabeth:

You know how much I love to read, and you know how many books I read, and you are at times exasperated by how much I talk about the books that I read. Of course, with the pandemic in place, I’ve had more time to spend with these books and more time to tell you about them.

This has not always been to your liking.

You are, after all, 11 years old, and have other things on your mind. As you should. Still, I persist with my books, and your tolerance grows. What more could a father want? A tolerant daughter who accommodates her father’s dependence on his books, on what other people have written about the challenges we’re facing, and how books may or may not help us through them . . . your tolerance, that’s a great gift you’ve given me, and I accept it with gratitude.

I have listed here a few insights that have arisen from my pandemic reading. My hope is that, in several years, you’ll read these, and they’ll make sense to you. And that you’ll see how books work on a daily basis, and how much I loved you on a daily basis as well.

Remember, though, that books are funny things—if you read the same book several times, each time for a different reason, you get a different book. The pandemic has supplied most readers with a distinctive lens through which their books appear in distinctive guises. I’m no different. I’ve gone to my books over the past 18 months with my own personal, sometimes unrealistic expectations—Prince Hamlet! Reason me through this virus to a place of comfort!—and I have experienced equal bouts of uplift and deflation. But I have learned a few things from my pandemic reading, and I want to share them with you. I think five will do. For now, at least.

1. It is better to talk to the person working in the field than it is to study the economic system that landed him there. I most recently learned this from an essay by D.H. Lawrence entitled “Insouciance.” In that essay, he discovers that he would rather watch two men mowing hay with their scythes, and perhaps talk to them face to face about their distinctive swinging motions than he would discuss Italian fascism and Mussolini. The one establishes a community through conversation, the other dissects it through analysis. There is a time for either activity, of course, but talking to one another when the going is hard will never waste your time. Particularly, if it’s pandemic-time.
2. People burn a lot of energy in trying to avoid clear thought, so much so, in fact, that when the truth arrives they have no energy left to recognize it. I learned this from watching cable news, but everything Socrates said bears witness to this observation. Clear thought, based on reasonable authorities and sources, is worth the effort. Don’t take shortcuts, even when you’re tired and afraid. The crisis you’re facing will only worsen. The bad guys know this, and they will exhaust you with their constant stream of lies and misinformation. Take a nap, and return to the credible authorities in the field.
3. Love, if it is to flourish, requires constant practice and exercise, and a lapse in nourishing it will quickly render it almost invisible; hatred, on the other hand, seems always fit and ready to get in the game. I learned this from Katherine Anne Porter’s essay, “The Necessary Enemy.” Porter’s take on this is more complicated than I have indicated, but complexity of thought requires energy, and as I indicated in (2), I’m trying to conserve my energy so that I can use it to train the love that I carry within me to show itself on a more regular basis. Like cultivating clear thought, nourishing love is always worth the effort.
4. Wherever you are, whatever you see, notice how utterly strange it is, and remember that in its strangeness lies its magnificence. Joan Didion had a similar insight when she visited the Hoover Dam, and then noticed afterwards that images from her visit would pop up randomly and at the oddest times in her life. Her essay is titled “At the Dam,” and it ends on an ominous note, but not before it reboots our way of looking at the world so as to see its strange beauty. Don’t take beauty for granted. It’s an old fashioned notion, but beauty—and you get to define beauty which is the coolest thing—restores us, replenishes us, and outfits us to carry on the uglier struggles that confront us.
5. Caring for the daily things of your life with a simple heart and a loving mind is enough. Anyone who makes you feel otherwise can safely be ignored. The American poet, Howard Nemerov, wrote a poem titled “Vermeer,” and I think of it often when I feel that I haven’t done enough to solve the problems of the world. The first stanza goes like this: “Taking what is, and seeing it as it is, / Pretending to no heroic stances or gestures, / Keeping it simple; being in love with light / And the marvelous things that light is able to do, / How beautiful! A modesty which is / Seductive extremely, the care for daily things.” If you care properly for the daily things of your life, the world will take care of itself because the world is a collection of daily things, and how you care for those daily things is ultimately how you care for the world.

I wish you great good fortune, Elizabeth, as you navigate the world that lies before you. Take care, and take a few books with you too.

I love you.