The Consolations of Reading

Recently someone wrote to the editors of The Paris Review for reading recommendations. The person in question was suffering from severe depression. As a result he had already lost his job and relationship. He wrote that  he was in therapy, but wondered if the editors could recommend books that would help him recover. Sadie Stein responded with a thoughtful and lengthy list of reading suggestions. She began with books by people who have suffered from depression, on the grounds that whatever you're grappling with, it's good to know you're not alone. She also suggested escapism in the form of rediscovering favorite childhood books and (since the writer admitted to trouble concentrating) collections of short works such as stories and essays. Stein also recommended "life-affirming reads," books that lift us up with "inspirational sentiments and sheer beauty of language:"  War and Peace, Huckleberry Finn, The Dead, Middlemarch, Disgrace, If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, A Sentimental Education, The Brothers Karamazov—all these are books that reaffirm, for me, something essentially optimistic. Others—Children of Gebelawi, In Search of Lost Time, One Hundred Years of Solitude, most any Faulkner, The Magic Mountain, Things Fall Apart, The Tale of Genji, Moby-Dick, The Orchard, Pedro Páramo—will simply awe you. If those all seem too daunting, what about poetry? One woman I know says Wordsworth is what got her through the toughest time of her life. The question of which books can cheer you up has been on my mind lately, as we approach the season of cold and rainy days when many of us don't want to do anything but stay in bed and read. I'm not familiar with many of Stein's recommendations, and thus can't comment on them. But I will say this: as a Faulkner reader since college days,* I cannot imagine recommending Faulkner, no matter how beautiful his language, to someone who is depressed. If I had to compose a similar list, I would start with books that just make me laugh. P.G. Wodehouse is (to me) possibly the funniest writer in English. I've recommended him on this blog before. His comic send-ups of upper-class English life in the last century will render almost anyone helpless with laughter. My favorites: Leave it to Psmith, The Code of the Woosters (which contains the classic Wodehouse line, “I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled”) and Joy in the Morning.   Other writers whose books I find hysterically funny: Carl Hiassen, Janet Evanovich (the Stephanie Plum series), James Thurber, Calvin Trillin, Matt Taibbi, and Roy Blount, Jr. For "inspirational sentiments" I suggest Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down, a novel about suicide that turns into a how-to-manual on getting on with your life. Many of my favorite authors write books infused with affection or compassion for their characters, no matter how flawed they may be. Specific titles:  A. S. Byatt's Possession, Anthony Trollope's The Last Chronicle of Barset, Amy Bloom's short story collection Come to Me, Stewart O'Nan's Last Night at the Lobster, and Penelope Fitzgerald's Offshore. Anyone who finds great consolation in beautiful language can't go wrong with Possession (again), any collection of W.H. Auden's poetry, the poetry of Rilke (Stephen Mitchell's translations), Shakespeare, the King James Bible,  The Great Gatsby, and T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. Anyone who likes nonfiction of a philosophical bent might consider trying Marcus Aurelius' Meditations or anything by the current Dalai Lama. Another possibility is Walden, a reflection on society and life that I love in part because Thoreau can be completely right and absolutely nuts at the same time. Furthermore Walden has one of the most optimistic final sentences in American literature: "The sun is a morning star." Like any book list, this one is incomplete. I'm sure many of you have other suggestions.  But for now, turn off the computer and start reading.   *I've been described by friends as a "Faulknerite," a "Faulkner nut" and (my favorite) an "American lit. pusher."