On sitting around and reading a novel

For nothing but the pleasure of it

Posters for National Library Week 1960-1961 (via @carlemuseum)

Hey y’all,

Before I get going today, I’ve love it if you’d pop into the comments and tell us: What’s the last great novel you read?

A few months ago my dad told me he was in the middle of reading a novel.

This was a surprise to both of us. I’d never seen my dad read a novel before and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d read one. He figured it’d been at least 50 years. Maybe more. Until now, a decade or so into his retirement, he’d never given himself the time to sit down and read a novel for pleasure. There were always a hundred things to do around his little ranch, and even if he’d given himself the leisure time, I’m not sure he could’ve sat still long enough to get through a novel.

But age will change you. Now, here he was… reading novels! Novels were a novelty to him. A new and unusual experience. And the way he described reading a novel was one of the purest and most innocent things I’ve ever heard him say. “It’s like, you read the words… and you get to make your own movie in your head!”

We were both delighted by this development.

“When something that is not your thing blows you away, that's one of the best things that can happen,” wrote Dave Hickey in The Perfect Wave. “It means you are something other than you thought you were."

(Last I heard, Dad has read three novels. He’s hooked!)

McMurtry’s Last Picture Show trilogy is also a journey through several eras of book design

I myself spent a good deal of the past weekend lying around reading a novel.

As I mentioned on Friday, I started reading Larry McMurtry’s The Last Picture Show after finally watching Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 film adaptation. The minute I finished that novel, I started reading the sequel, Texasville, which might not be as deep or as good, but it’s funnier and more freewheeling. (Once I’m done, I’ll probably read the third in the trilogy, Duane’s Depressed.)

There was a moment on Sunday when I thought, Am I really going to just sit here and read this novel? I mean, for years I’ve joked that one of the biggest reasons I became a professional writer was so I could become a professional reader, and yet, I find myself, over and over again, feeling worthless for simply doing my job.