Books

As I try to confront the many remnants of life that I seem to have accumulated....I turn to my bookshelf. I have more books than I have anything else in my life and these will be the hardest to parse through and to part with.

As I am staring at my bookshelf, I catch a glimpse of my favorite book and the one that changed my life in such a quiet way that I even forget it now: "Angle of Repose."

How the humility of the most humble can change your entire existence.

Temple University, circa 1995.

Just had become a History major after determining my math skills sucked and I would never be a veterinarian as I had hoped. Always had straight A's in History and that department had been courting me since my arrival a year prior.

Fell in love with Professor Allen Davis during an AP History elective when he handed out the book, "Angle of Repose," by Wallace Stegner to the class of "elites" that Temple allowed to make it that far...there were six of us.

I read the first two chapters on the subway home and then cast the book aside. I was bored by the narrative of the writer and his tone...so slow, so Midwest, so...unfamiliar. I forced myself through another chapter the following morning and then the world went still.

What Stegner had to say by page 120, Chapter 4, made my brain freeze, unfreeze, do an odd little dance, and then wake up. I wrote an analysis of his book later that night, after I had read all 300 pages, and that sealed my fate at Temple.

Professor Davis: "You were the only one who truly understood this book. You understood the message."

I remember being both proud and embarrassed, not used to taking compliments easily at the time (not now either, so much). I also, somewhere, knew why I had understood the message.

Stegner, who died in a freak car accident two years before I read his first book, writes about love and life in the simplest but most complex of ways. You carry forward with the narrative, wonder when he is going to reach his point, get through all that slow, meandering description of life that seems to characterize how Midwesterners speak and write...and then, BAM. Two lines, a handful of words, and you are on your knees not believing that someone could write this way.

I "got" his message because, at the time, I was trying to stay afloat in many of the same conditions as his characters in Angle of Repose. Granted, he was writing about the Midwest during the Depression and how people managed to survive and keep their souls intact on breadcrumbs...and I was living in a Philadelphia suburb in the 1990s and trying to work 40 hour weeks while going to school full-time. But, Professor Davis was right....I somehow got it.

Fast forward three years and I am laying in bed in Hungary with a case of pneumonia that I am sure is going to kill me. Drugged up beyond belief and delirious, hating life to its core.

Then, a package arrives. It is all books. My mother sent it to me. Despite being feverish and shaky, I jump out of bed and rip open the box. On the top of the pile, "Crossing to Safety," by Wallace Stegner.

And a note from my mother:

"I know you tried to convince me to read 'Angle of Repose' so many times in the past and I just couldn't get through it. But I finally did and I understand why that book changed your life. Now, read this one, because it has changed mine."

Another piece of beauty in the written form. It delivered me from pneumonia that week and saved my soul. Reminded me of what incredible depth and beauty humans are capable of. Reminded me of how important the search for Love is...and, when found, how important it is to nurture that garden with care.

"Crossing to Safety" is gone. Given to a friend somewhere along the line. Don't know if it helped or hurt or whether its current owner even knows what a gift lay in his/her hands.

But "Angle of Repose?" I still have my original copy. Pages swollen as though it was submerged in water. And it was.

My tears from 1995.