For your amusement. PD

Apparently musing85 thinks I’m worthy of gassing on about books, because he’s nominated me to keep a meme alive. I’ll try to answer the questions as best I’m able:

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

    musing says that in Bradbury’s novel, where all books are banned, people memorize a work of literature and “become” that book. Thanks for the reminder; I think the last time I read Fahrenheit 451 was in middle school, 25 years ago.

    I’m going to go with Tropic of Capricorn, or really any Henry Miller novel. I’ve got something of a potty mouth; might as well put it to good use.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

    Yeah…Nancy Drew…

    Sigh.

The last book you bought is?

    Damned if I can remember. Something about secular society. I buy ’em, and half the time, they pile up on a little desk in the blogcave. I’ll mention a few of the recent good buys, though: Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, which has to be one of America’s greatest overlooked masterpieces. Anything by Vonnegut is, really.

    The Complete Tintin Companion is a marvelous work that takes you through Herge’s comic book tours-de-force one by one, explaining their background and their revisions over the years. Fascinating stuff, and a must-have for any serious comic addict like myself.

    Claudius the God is the second half of Robert Graves’ I, Claudius. For some intangible reason, it falls flat, not quite reaching the peaks of the first part of the story. But I’ll dare anyone who read that first novel to hold back from wanting to know the rest of the story. Poor Claudius.

What are you currently reading?

    Again, it’s more like what are you not reading? So: I haven’t finished the Tintin Companion mentioned above. I’m also supposed to be reading a biography of Frances Freeborn Pauley, a pioneer of integration and other social justice causes in Atlanta.

    What I’m actually reading: Jughead Double Digest.

    Is there a problem?

Five books you would take to a deserted island?

  • I’ll go with Musing and take my breviary. Mine’s only two volumes to his four, so I’ll cheat a little and throw in a missal for good luck.
  • Krazy Kat: The Art of George Herriman. Because if you’re going to get stuck on a desert island, you might as well have the company of a saint and a genius, all rolled into one.
  • The Brothers Karamazov. Ditto.
  • Good and Evil by Martin Buber. It’s a short book, actually a collection of his essays, but I could read it again and again. It’d probably take me from here to eternity to feel like I had a handle on what Buber’s talking about, and from eternity on to exhaust all its possibilities.
  • More cheating: the collected works of Will Cuppy: How To Be A Hermit, How to Tell Your Friends From The Hairy Apes, How To Attract The Wombat, The Decline And Fall Of Practically Everybody, and others. You gotta have a larf on a desert island, and Cuppy’s a stone genius. Or did you feel like doing voluminous research for a short, humorous essay on bees?

    I didn’t think so.

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

    I don’t know. My friends are all hairy apes. I’ll get back to you on that one.