April 11, 1935 - THE BOOKWORM TURNS
They say that the most widely traveled people are those who just sit at home and read. But if you can see a place and read about it, too, isn't that better?
The Washington Daily News—Thursday—April 11—1935 Page 21
THE BOOKWORM TURNS BY ERNIE PYLE
(While Broun is on vacation)
That gifted young man who draws funny pictures on the opposite page from here (his name is Talbot or something like that) was telling me yesterday about a set of Con-red he was going to bid on at an auction.
So I mooted over that all afternoon, for I would have liked very much to have the set myself, and as one thing leads to another I mt to thinking about second-hand bookshops which I love to "browse tround in," in the booky people say, only I never say it, and from there I got to thinking about the books I had read in the last year or so, and how when you get start-ed'on a certain line of reading you just keep right on buying and reading until you hare practically mopped up that section of the world's literature and if this isn't one of the longest sentences even written I'll eat every word of it.
Anyway, Just for fun I counted up and found that I had read 47 books.in the last 15 months, which isn't any record, of course, but isn't so bad either for a fellow who has only been in this country 30 years and couldn't read a word of English until he was five.
But in looking back, the thing that pleased me most about this reading was not the quantity, but the diversity of the subjects. Those 47 books ran all the way from detective stories, right thru the Dialogs of Plato on up to a History of the New Deal, which I couldn't make head nor tail of.
● ● ●
My big splurge of the year was Galsworthy. Having already read the last two books he ever wrote, I sat down and dashed off seven more, “Maid In Waiting” and the two trilogies, “The Forsyte Saga” and “A Modern Comedy.” It makes no difference to me what people say about Galsworthy: anybody who can turn his typewriter into a camera and photograph people as humanly as Galsworthy did is good enough for me and I dare you to show me anything more beautiful than “The Indian Summer Of A Forsyte.
My next biggest wave of reading enthusiasm was on books about the Southwest, and I haven't even got a good start on these yet. This reading Included Harvey Ferguson's "Rio Grande," a new book called "Sky Determines," by a doctor of philosophy who lives in Silver City and peddles his books him-selt, Mary Austin's "Land of Little Rain," and a rip-roaring book about the shootin' days of Tombstone, Ariz. They say that the most widely traveled people are those who have just sat at home and read about places, but if you can see a place and read about it too, isn't that better? Right at the moment I'm a big Southwest man in literature, having just been down there, and when I walk into the local bookstores some of these days with my list of Southwestern books, they'll have to send out for extra clerks.
Two of Ring Lardner's books got a reading from me during the past year... "Roundup" and "What Of It?." and I intend to read at least two Lardner books every year of my life even If it means reading the same two over every 12 months for the next 50 years.
● ● ●
Hall and Nordhoff always got a big hand at our house, and I wound up their Bounty trilogy with “Man Against The Sea" and "Pitcairn's Island" and threw in Hall's "Story of a Shipwreck" besides. Incidentally while we're on the subject, these two wrote a book in about 1920 called "Pacry Lands of the South Seas" which nobody has ever read but me, and which is one of the loveliest things ever done in the English language.It makes O'Brien's "White Shadows..." read like a seed cat-alog.
I read two of Donn Byrne' books, "Destiny Bay" and "O'Mal-ley of Shanganagh," and intend to read many more. I read, of course, James Hilton's "Lost Horizon" and "Goodbye, Mr. Chipps." and liked them very much.
The hardest of all the books for me to get thru was Matthew Josephson's "Robber Barons," a thrilling subject but written in a style that would have an insomniac flat on his back in five minutes.
Max Miller's "Second House From the Corner" was duly recorded, but I doubt that I shall try many more of Mr. Miller's books, for it seems to me that he is trying to turn out a book every morning, and that is too often.
A volume of Balzac's short stories and de Maupassant's "Ball of Suet" kept me from dying last winter when I was sick. There will have to be more of these two boys in my literary life.
In the way of higher education and trying to make something out of myself, I took on Lindbergh's (Sr.) “Our Country at War," Craven's "Modern Art" (but even now all I can tell you about art is that Van Gogh was crazy), and a learned little book on the Japanese philosophy of conduct called "Bush-ido."
● ● ●
And that brings up the circumstances under which one reads books. I found this "Bushido" in a sailors' library on a freighter. The library consisted of one wooden box about two feet square lying on the floor in the deckhouse. The box was filled with donated books, and nobody had read any of them for months, because when I looked in they were still all wet from some past heavy sea. I dug out "Bushido," written in 1904, and discovered why the Japanese are always courteous, and how they learned dishonesty and dissembling from Amcri-can business men, and why and how they commit hara-kiri and what they think about their women. And I also saw in it, for the first time in my life, the name of Laicadio Hearn, whose books I shall most certainly find before the year is out.
Also from this sailor's library I dug out and read two detective stories, the Arst I had read in years. And all that need be said about these is that I sat up ull 3 in the morning to finish one of them, and I had never read a book thru in one night before in my life. The book was "The House of the Opal," by Jackson Gregory.
The books of the year which zipped along as tho you were skating on them, and made grand swift reading, were "Light-ship," "City Editor," "Brazilian Adventure," "Cingalose Prince," and the "Tin Box Parade," written by that brilliant alumnus of The Datly News who is shooting for the stars, Milton MacKaye.
There was also some Kipling, some Mark Twain, some Damon Runyon, some W. H. Hudson, and finally a book on astronomy by Simon Newcomb, which I read each night in the vicinity of Panama, reading a few paragraphs in my stateroom, then dashing out on deck and trying to see in the vast southern skies the things I had just read about. And, wonder of wonders, I did see them. But I didn't understand them.
---
💛 **Enjoyed this post?** Your support helps us continue to transcribe and promote Ernie’s work. Please click the link below to donate.