“The books in a person’s house reveal an enormous
amount of what’s going on in his head.”
(Paul Theroux, My Other Life)
Books on bookshelves
Before coming to Thailand I had lived my entire life in an apartment with walls covered in shelves full of books. In my early days, while I wasn’t able to read, I was attracted to the shape and appearance of books. I saw a thick book or a thin book. Some looked new while others looked old. Some had expensive leather covers, which felt smooth, but also hard, while others were of a yellowish, rusted color and felt quite rough and unpleasant. Pages were either white or dirty and colored with age. Some books were in good condition, and others were so difficult to read because the cover was detached from the rest of the book. Some of the books had been reconditioned and had cardboard added to the covers and the pages had been sown. Some pages were polluted with blue or black ink and had words written on the sides by someone with an old-style of handwriting. Some books had colored pictures while others looked very dull without any images at all. This variety encouraged me to dive deeper and deeper into the unexpected world of reading.
When I was a child, I remember being left alone in my parents’ or grandparents’ apartment with nothing to do, so I would continually browse through the shelves of books. They were all so different. My grandfather’s library mostly contained old books that excited me more than the new ones. I would just choose a book at random that had a peculiar color, shape or cover, and skim through the pages. If there were pictures, I would take the book and sit on the armrest of the big armchair my grandfather used while watching TV or reading his evening newspaper. Unfortunately, many of the pictures were not in color, but the curves, lines and shadows attracted me. I would study my favorite picture for hours while waiting for someone to come back home and be able to explain what it was about and what the words under the drawing meant.
Books that pleased my eyes
In primary and secondary school I was finally able to read the alphabet. I would start (but never really finish) reading some of the books that pleased my eyes. Since I spent most of my time with my grandparents while my parents were at work, my choice of books coincided with the ones I could find on my grandfather’s shelves. I still remember the books about airplanes and the colorful pictures that accompanied the texts. My grandfather would always sit down next to me and help me read because the texts were quite difficult for someone my age. He would read about the war he had fought in and the planes he had piloted. It was then that the little boy I had been started to become fascinated by a world full of mysteries. It was a world I would try to decode by looking at pictures and trying to find meanings in pages filled with long sentences.
My family moved when I was in the sixth grade and my parents decided that I had to spend more time in their apartment, so a new period of my reading life started. By then I was already indulged in reading books that were compulsory for school, but they were never as attractive as the titles recommended by the teacher for holidays or for when we had free time. The list was quite long and some of the books were not in my parents’ library so I decided to borrow books from a library at a different school. As soon as the holiday started my school bag was always full of interesting books. I never had enough patience to read a book from the beginning to the end. I would begin reading a new book but, after a couple of days, the new book would have lost its spark. I would start a different book when the title seemed more interesting than the previous one. By the end of the holiday, the corner of my desk was full of books that were waiting to be finished. I was left with no choice but to have to choose which books were more interesting. I usually left the ones with few pictures, or those with only black and white pictures on the bottom of the pile.
Entering Alice’s Wonderland
One of the first books that greatly influenced me as a child was Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. In a way I was like Alice, falling every day through the rabbit hole and taking part in strange happenings. I spent a lot of time home alone and wasn’t allowed to go out until my parents returned from work. My grandparents watched my older brother so I suffered from feelings of solitude and isolation. Lewis Carroll’s book showed me that there existed an opportunity to escape boredom and meet children my own age to play with. These friends were the characters Alice met through her journeys in the underground world of strange beings. When boredom would take control of me I would just hide under a pillow-made castle and imagine I was in the rabbit hole joining Alice in her wonderful adventures. I think I even regarded Alice as my first girlfriend.
It is fascinating how this book has followed me through my life and has given me the strength to plunge into a different hole at every important step of my life. The ‘rabbit holes’ were the subjects that interested me in high school and university, thus drawing me again and again to the bookshelf, the primary source of escape from my lonely existence as a teenager. There I found Alice. It became obvious that between the covers of other books I could also find answers to questions that were puzzling me.
Let the adventures begin!
I started the quest for adventure as soon as I entered my teens. The rabbit hole grew deeper and deeper. I was no longer reading abridged books because I made up some rules that I strictly followed. Every book had to be finished as soon as possible without any interruptions or long breaks, and I had to write a detailed summary of all the interesting books I read.
If Lewis Carroll’s adventures were part of my childhood dreams, then Jules Verne’s novels kept me dreaming as a young teenager. Verne’s novel Around the World in 80 Days had a great impact on my life. It was a new step in my psychic development because I switched my dreams from the underground world to the sky and Earth. My heroes became great explorers, men of arms, and scientists. Children my age were always included in his novels, so it was easy to escape from my daily routine into a world of adventures. At this time I became obsessed with the notion of flying. The images, ideas, and descriptions from Verne’s novels created fantasies in my mind. Thus, I started dreaming that I could fly, and it was such a realistic feeling!
Dr. Freud’s teachings
By my mid-adolescence I stopped dreaming that I could fly, but somewhere deep in my imagination I retained a secret desire to travel and discover new worlds and civilizations. But then, I was more aware of the world that surrounded me and became more analytical when I saw how deep the rabbit hole had become. During my free time I helped my father re-shelve the books from our library (as now it was mine, too!) I came across a series of books dealing with philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalysis. I became fascinated in the way our mind and soul works. Although I found the philosophy and psychology books quite difficult to understand, I became more and more familiar with the field of psychoanalysis.
Sigmund Freud provided a shocking but rewarding explanation to what happens to an adolescent who’s ready to start a real life. Psychoanalysis became the topic of interest once I realized I wasn’t yet ready to dive into more abstract ones, like philosophy and psychology. Also at this time I had great friends with whom I had a chance to share my thoughts, my doubts, and my beliefs. Through my close friends I began evolving into a person ready to challenge the world. The radical teachings of Freud, which might well have been outdated, made me rebellious and quite aggressive, ready to fight with words and fists for my beliefs.
The way of the samurai
Another important factor that influenced my reading life was the fact that I started practicing aikido, a Japanese martial art that teaches the way of harmony. Together with my friends, all of whom practiced a kind of Asian martial art, I tried to get a better grip on what Asia was all about. So, we started reading extensively about Asian culture, especially the Japanese one. Any topic related to Japan became of great importance. I began to come across Japanese writers who, through their own imagination, influenced my adolescent life.
When I look back I realize that some of these new readings had a productive effect on me, while others were quite devastating. But, as we cannot learn only through experience, nothing was in vain. From that point on, two Japanese authors have positively shaped my life. The first one was Akutagawa Ryunosuke, who taught me that life is full of mysteries, a ‘grove’ where anything is possible. His famous collection of short stories, entitled Rashomon, made my friends and I wonder at the genius of a writer who portrayed life as a strange place where nothing was what it seemed. The second writer was Yukio Mishima, a writer who taught me to fight for my beliefs, no matter what the consequences were. His suicide by seppuku, the last act of such in the modern world, made me understand what the concept of honor really meant.
The negative side of my choice of readings on the Japanese culture and civilization lay in the fact that it made me unhappy in my love life. As I had willingly let myself be greatly influenced by what I was reading I adopted a poor attitude towards the opposite gender. Thus, the melancholy and sad endings of Yasunari Kawabata’s novels started to shape my own relationships with the girls I used to love.
The chapter regarding Japan hasn’t been closed, and probably will never be. It will always remain in my mind and soul like a first love. A love that left scars deep down in my being. I usually never make the same mistakes twice, but I was and I am so often influenced too much by dreams that come from the pages of the many different books that I had read. The period of my life when I concentrated on Japanese literature was by far the most fruitful, rewarding, shocking, and painful one. I still read Japanese authors and I always recall good and bad memories. I always miss friends far away from me, and I always see myself as the person I shouldn’t be. It’s a drug that gives me pleasure, but at the same time opens wounds that should be left alone to heal completely.
On Gatsby’s footsteps
I became aware of part of all these good and bad points of being an avid reader while I was in the middle of my university studies. It was again a step forward. Sometimes we have to let go. So I turned my focus from Japanese literature to British and American writing. The reason was that my major was English Language and Literature. By ridding myself of one obsession I embarked on another. However, credit must be given to a few great personalities that shaped the course of my next couple of years.
Once, somebody asked me to describe what the best thing about my native Romania was. I answered without hesitation: the chance to have been guided by professors of invaluable character. They were the ones who really introduced me to the secrets of English language and literature. Until that point most of my readings were books translated into my mother tongue but, under the influence of my teachers, I started reading books in English. It was difficult at the start, but my efforts were more than rewarded by even my wildest expectations.
The first unabridged book that I read entirely in English was The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. It was the book that made me continue reading American authors and discover a new symbolic rabbit hole to spend my time in. It was also the great personality of a character called Gatsby that made me the man that I am today. Maybe it was destiny, maybe it was just life.
When I graduated from university I was a young man ready to face the difficulties of life simply because the main traits and the basic tools that every human mind needs, had already started to grow their roots that would help me survive such a crazy world. It was all done through the different books that I had read until that point in my life.
Books and literature prepared me for what I am now aiming to do at this next stage of my life. I believe that I will succeed in all that I try to do because once there was a little boy who liked to find meanings to pictures, and there was an old man who was patient; there was a father with a great passion; there was a little girl who fell through a rabbit hole; there were a couple of best friends, and there were teachers both dedicated and committed.
A shorter version of this essay was also published
in “The Nation – SmartLife” (November 21, 2005)
