Reading My Brother's Books

Toward the end of The End of the Affair by Graham Greene, the narrator, Maurice Bendrix, comes across a pile of old children's books that once belonged to Sarah, his dead lover. Maurice is now living in Sarah's old house with her husband Henry, the man Maurice and Sarah had been deceiving during their affair (it's a long story), which gives him time to rummage at leisure through her fairy books by Andrew Lang, "many Beatrix Potters," and several others. In one Beatrix Potter book Sarah had written her name in pencil. In another she had written "Sarah Bertram Her Book. Please ask permission to borrow. And if you steal it will be to your sorrow." These, reflects Maurice, "were the marks of every child who has ever lived: traces as anonymous as the claw marks of birds that one sees in winter. When I closed the book they were covered at once by the drift of time."

A few pages later Maurice encounters another of Sarah's old books. This one had been given to Parkis, a detective whom Maurice had employed to spy on Sarah and whose son had developed an attachment to the woman they were following (it's a long story). Parkis has returned the book, an Andrew Lang fairy book, because it was exciting his son. The son had taken ill with a mysterious fever and stomachache; when the ailment cleared up as mysteriously as it had arisen, the son said that it was the deceased Sarah who had come to take away the pain. He read in her book something Sarah had written as a girl - "When I was ill my mother gave me this book by Lang. / If any well person steals it he will get a great bang, / But if you are sick in bed / You can have it to read instead" - and believed that Sarah's ghost had written it just for him, to make him better. Maurice, a rationalist and atheist, dismisses the story as a mere "coincidence," but the coincidences have begun to pile up. An atheist friend of Sarah's has seen his facial deformity disappear. Sarah's mother has revealed that Sarah had been baptized a Catholic as a young girl, and a priest has insisted that the adult Sarah, ostensibly an atheist, was starting to become interested in Catholicism before she died. A true believer would see all these coincidences as little miracles, or at least as evidence that Sarah was still operating in the lives of those she'd left behind, but Maurice tries to resist the idea.

Nevertheless, by the end of the book he's begun to question his atheism. He's arguing with God like this:

You've taken her, but you haven't got me yet. I know Your cunning. It's You who take us up to a high place and offer us the whole universe. You're a devil, God, tempting us to leap. But I don't want Your peace and I don't want Your love. I wanted something very simple: I wanted Sarah for a lifetime and You took her away. With Your great schemes You ruin our happiness like a harvester ruins a mouse's nest. I hate You, God. I hate You as though You existed.

That last bit is quite brilliant, and it reminds me of the opening line of Julian Barnes's Nothing to be Frightened Of (about which which I've written previously): "I don't believe in God, but I miss Him." By the final paragraph Maurice hasn't abandoned his atheism exactly, but he can't shake the sense that Sarah's spirit is still alive in the world. The book ends with this prayer: "O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone forever." And when he says that, we know that he'll continue to be visited by Sarah, and perhaps by God, for the rest of his life.

I read all this in Joey's copy of The End of the Affair, which I fetched, along with several of his other books, from our mother's attic last year. Unlike Sarah's books it contains no inscription, but it is yellowed and creased like many books that had the misfortune to be used (I almost said abused) by my brother, who was famously careless with his possessions (as anyone familiar with the long, sad demise of his Honda Accord will tell you), so it's kind of like it's inscribed. How it got this way I will never know. Stuffed into a backpack and crumpled under larger, stronger books? Spilled from a suitcase or a duffel bag and then trampled as it lay under scattered clothes? Forgotten in a car seat and kicked by heedless passengers? His copy of Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which I "borrowed" from his shelves years ago, is in a similar state, as is his copy of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, which I also have. In the attic I also found a signed first edition of Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh with substantial water damage that almost certainly appeared after the book sold for $20, the price marked in pencil on the first page. In one of the other, as yet unplundered boxes in our mother's attic, I know there sits a ridiculously mangled copy of David Foster Wallace's gargantuan Infinite Jest, which I spotted on Joey's bedside table a long time ago. One day I'll get it out of the attic and stick it in our fiction section, where it will sit unread until some curious visitor grabs it, notes its well-used condition, and flatters us by assuming that either Kate or I must have read the thing (and then perhaps dragged it several miles down a dusty country road).

Not all of Joey's books are in serious-to-critical condition, of course. I retrieved several pristine first editions of books by people like Steinbeck and Hemingway from the attic, books that must have been gifts (probably from our father) and that Joey almost certainly hadn't yet read. I retrieved a good academic edition of Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier (which I know Joey read and loved), a nice 1940s hardcover of Ulysses, an only slightly tattered The Moviegoer, a couple of decent Waughs, and a nice, big edition of a William Faulkner biography with a bookmark halfway through and a packet of photographs stuck under the back cover (showing, I gather, scenes from a trip my father made to visit him at the University of Virginia). There is also, speaking of UVA, an unread copy of Poker Wisdom of a Champion by Doyle Brunson, a gift Joey received probably because of the author's name, not because he had any special interest in poker. Inside is a card dated April 23, 2004. It says: "Dear Joe, This past semester I knew I could always count on you - no matter if you were busy or had a class, and for that I am very grateful. Thank you for always helping me when I needed you. Sincerely, Peter." (I don't know who Peter is - maybe one of you UVA folks knows?) There is also a book by Martin Hauan, in a plastic cover, called He Buys Organs for Churches, Pianos for Bawdy Houses. Inside is an inscription from Martin Hauan himself, which reads, "From one student of Oklahoma's politics to another. Best to you always." I doubt this inscription was for Joey - the internet tells me Hauan died in 2001, and Joey did not really become involved in Oklahoma politics until 2004 (when he worked on the campaign of a Democrat running for US Senate) - but I'm sure there's a story behind this book, which has a bookmark from the Full Circle Bookstore at the end of the first chapter, showing that Joey at least made an attempt to read it.

In every book I have that belonged to Joey I have installed either a bookplate that says "From the Library of Joseph P. Doyle" (Tina gave these to him; he never decided which books he wanted to put them in) or a Snoopy sticker (which Tina has also put into the books of his that she has). These books sit on our shelves, snuggled up with our own books like good friends. I like the idea that as our children grow and begin exploring our collection (we will require all of our children, however many there will be, to be avid readers), they will be able to know at a glance which books belonged to their Uncle Joey. They, like we, won't really know which ones he read and what he thought of them if he did, but I will be able to assure them that the bruised and battered ones, the End of the Affairs and the Infinite Jests, were indeed well-used.

As for the The End of the Affair itself, I know that Joey really liked it. He mentioned it to me more than once when Graham Greene came up in our conversations (which he did more than you might expect), but what exactly he liked about it - whether he enjoyed its subtle affirmation of Catholicism (if, indeed, Joey was a true-believing Catholic), its evocation of London during the Blitz, the caustic narrator, the comic private eye, or the way it dissects the intertwining nature of love and hate - either he didn't say or I have forgotten. I do know roughly when and where he bought it: the Borders on Northwest Expressway, in Oklahoma City, within roughly a year of May 7, 1999 (as a former Borders employee, I have the power of deciphering the stickers they put on the back of their books). That means he probably read it at the age of eighteen or nineteen, most likely during a summer at home, either before or after his first year of college. A book like that, with its weighty themes and big, unanswered questions, can mean a lot to a kid that age.

Everything that I've just said adds up to the strongest possible argument against e-readers that I can imagine. Everything that I've just said would be impossible to say or to know if my brother had done most of his reading on a digital device where words have no more permanence than they do in an email inbox or a facebook feed. And yes, I recognize the irony of my saying this in a blog, and no, it doesn't bother me one bit. By all means, folks, use your Nindles and Kooks or whatever as much as you want, but for the sake of those who come after you - indeed, for the sake of those who come alongside you - buy and read lots of real books, too. Bend them, crease them, circle passages you love, put stickers in them, forget them in the back of your car, drop them in dirty puddles, abuse them ruthlessly - even the ones you love - especially the ones you love - and then put them somewhere they can be found by someone who might care that you once held them in your hands, who might treasure even the stains from your greasy fingers, and who will wonder what you made of the words inside.

My brother's books are among the most direct links I have to the life he lived and the thoughts he thought. I could have read The End of the Affair on my phone, I suppose, but then I wouldn't have gotten the chill that I got when I read the part about Sarah's old books and the way she seemed to be still alive in them. I've often written here about the coincidences - or, if you prefer, the small miracles - that have happened from time to time since Joey's death. This was a big one, and, like the others, it made me feel a little less lonely and a little more open to the possibility that we don't really disappear when we die.