Of course, your “life” is a pretty broad category. But for me, the idea of a life without books is a tad depressing. It sounds smug to say this in a world where the majority does not read beyond what is required for their job. It sounds elitist, as if only those who read, count. Well, I grew up in a home of loving grandparents whose only reading was religious, and far from literary. I admire these grandparents and know that they expressed in their lives many fine qualities of character I will never own. Still, I know too that their lives would be further enriched by becoming friendly with the great minds and artists of the past.

 

My reading began after I moved to Nova Scotia at the age of ten. Television was still in its infancy, with one channel, and I looked first to Westerns, then to the Hardy Boys, then to sports stories to feed my imagination. School, of course, required us to read certain quality books, but not enough to create real enthusiasm. My lucky break came when my American aunt decided to send me books for birthday and Christmas presents. I started to read with a growing sense that I was entering a special world. At age 13, I was transported by Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island; at age 16 school took a back seat to the magic of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Frodo lived alright, in me. George Eliot’s Adam Bede came in the mail, and I found myself reading with effort, but willingly, to overcome the initial difficulties. I began to see that it was not just the writer’s job to interest me. To some extent, I had to remake myself to understand the writer. My cousin sent me copies of the weekly, The New Republic, and a life long interest in political and social analysis began. In school, there was one boy who could speak intelligently about Marxism, and, strange as he was, it was his knowledge that increasingly seemed more important than the sporting achievements I chased.

 

And so, gradually, the development of my life became tied to the books I was reading. In my twenties, amidst the Sixties’ afterglow, I read the books I thought offered the keys to the kingdom of the self. Herman Hesse’s novels, Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous, the philosophical books of Albert Camus, the teachings of Indian masters, the novels of Graham Greene, Dostoevsky’s masterpieces, Jung, Nietzsche, Maslow, Huxley, Kazantzakis, the Christian mystics. The Taoist I Ching was part of my daily regimen and even my diet was guided by the philosophical writings of George Oshawa. These were exciting days, when books brought me in touch with the innermost thoughts of people I could never meet and who, if I did meet them, could never tell me half as convincingly what was found in their books. Later, after the greedy chase for truth in my twenties, I discovered the abiding power and comfort of poetry. Today, I have been so rewarded by great writing that I have little time for books that offer less, however honoured they are. I want nothing less than that experience that enters my bones, that drugs me, that leaves me in a days-long daze, beyond pleasure and depression.

 

Ars longus, vita brevis: art is long, life is short. Get started. Education is that most generous of gifts that speaks to the deeper definition of your self, beyond your job description. The great books are those that speak to the pilgrim in you. In universities today it is fashionable to mock the idea of greatness. Truth is a fiction, beauty a trick, meaning political, they say. In this, they are much more wrong than right. The self that writes is not the same as our other self of daily details, says Marcel Proust. Books allow you to meet this self. The purpose of an education is to create a capacity for intellectual pleasure, says J. M. Coetzee.  Books are the way to this pleasure. Get movin’ pilgrim. There are thousands of books written each year but even the best readers will only count their lifetime reading in the hundreds. Carpe diem. Seize the day.  Hunt out the significant writers, the ones on whom your life depends, and read. We can help.   

 

-Mr. Bauld, ARHS