Reading updates

Books on my bedside table (which is actually Manong's--I was given permission to occupy his bedroom while he's away): Thomas Pynchon's V, Joan Acocella's The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays, Gregorio C. Brillantes's The Collected Stories, JRR Tolkien's Letters. My Kindles (I have the Paperwhite and Oasis, which are such deliciously wonderful reading devices!) are also near me: technically, they carry with them an entire library! 

 

As you know I read voraciously and widely, and with no clear pattern or organization, and unless I write about them I tend to forget their states of reading completion. But books, in this way, are lovely: they do not feel left behind or emotionally injured; they simply welcome you back when you return. 

 

Tolkien writes to Camilla Unwin, his publisher's daughter, who asked him, "What is the purpose of life?" as part of a school project (letter 310 in the book). 

 

If you do not believe in a personal God the question: 'What is the purpose of life?' is unaskable and unanswerable. To whom or what would you address the question?

 

He continues: 

 

So it may be said that the chief purpose of life, for any one of us, is to increase according to our capacity our knowledge of God by all the means we have, and to be moved by it to praise and thanks. 

 

I also like the letters to his sons, such as this tender letter to Michael (letter 38a), which starts with, "My beloved boy" and ends with "Your own dear Father."

 

You can repay me, as much as I could possibly ask, by adhering to your faith, and keeping yourself pure and sober, and giving me your confidence. Every good father deserves the fraternal friendship of his sons when they grow up.  

And his reminders and honesty to Christopher Tolkien (no. 54):

 

Pray on your feet, in cars, in blank moments of boredom. Not only petitionary prayer. But remember me: I have a good many difficulties to face. 

 

I like passages where he writes about CS Lewis, his dear friend, as you'll read in his letter to Christopher (no. 57): 

 

I saw the two Lewis bros. yesterday & lunched with C.S.L: quite an outing for me. The indefatigable man read me part of a new story! But he is putting the screw on me to finish mine. I needed some pressure, & shall probably respond; but the 'vac.' is already half over ...

I also like his brutal honesty about the endearing and frustrating irritations we have in our dearest of friends, as we read in his letter to Anne Barrett of Houghton Mifflin Co.: 

 

C.S.L. of course had some oddities and could sometimes be irritating.

 

And then there are passages where he writes more about his irritations: he hates being interviewed and photographed while at work, he disapproves of the the illustrations of his book (he calls himself a "pedant"), among other things. Consider his letter to Rayner Unwin (no. 277). The context of the letter was that in 1965, Ballantine Books produced a paperback version of The Hobbit in the US, without incorporating his revisions to the text, with a cover that he had disapproved of. The woman in the letter was a representative of the publishing house:

 

Why is such a woman let loose? I begin to feel that I am shut up in a madhouse. Perhaps with more experience you know of some way out of the lunatic labyrinth.