Absolute Gentleman

How does a person get reliable book suggestions? I spoke to a friend a couple of weeks ago and remembered that we talked about Norman Mailer over a beer about ten years ago. My best friend, Dave, and I sat adjacent to these two women and discussed Mailer. The only thing I knew about him then was that he wrote giant, unwieldy books, but that he was one to be read and studied. One of the girls, the one who has been “seeing” Dave since then, mentioned a book title, and I shrugged. How was I to know if she had read several of his books, truly, and was giving me good advice on a Mailer title? She was a bit too enthusiastic about the book, and yeah, it’s a tell if you’re too gushy about a book. She’s definitely the kind of person, despite the face that she’s seeing (I think, but who knows how things are going now. Dave doesn’t call me.) a man I love as deeply as a heterosexual male can love another man, who would throw titles around in an attempt to impress. I must have wanted the Mailer conversation to end there or else I would have gotten into it deeper with her. How many books had she read by Norman Mailer? What made one book better than another? But I was not interested in intellectualism back then. Probably because I could still throw a baseball 400 feet on the fly.

So in the conversation with the friend, who happened to be the other girl at the bar that night, I asked “What was the name of the book J- suggested that night?” She didn’t know, but was ready to offer one of her “favorites,” Tough Guys Don’t Dance. I forgot to ask you, though, S- if that was the only title you’ve read of his. I can’t trust you until I know.

I’m being stupid probably, and this is all saying more about me than anyone else, but it’s all because of guidance counselors — more specifically, one I worked with down in North Carolina when I was cutting my imagination as a thinker and teacher. I’ve never had much respect for guidance counselors ever since I saw one make a presentation, drop her papers, then bend to pick them up, her bright red thong calling to us, an audience of about 100, through her white skirt.

Anyway, this other guidance counselor, the guy who worked alongside the red thong girl, invited some of us younger teachers, the ones who were 23, 24 and made fun of the crusty veteran teachers all day long and got love letters from our students once a week, to his house for a few drinks and a few attempts at enlightening each other. This guy was married to a woman who was also a guidance counselor, though she was ruining young lives at another school. So there we were, and I only remember two things from that night because it was so long ago: the guidance counselor’s wife was crawling all over Dave (Yes, it always comes back to Dave, who teaches fifth grade special education back home on Long Island, and who should be a father by now because he’s the most incredible man I know and I named my second son after him and I miss him.) all night right in front of her husband and the husband expounding the virtues of The Pearl, by John Steinbeck.

Everyone has read The Pearl, of course everyone has read The Pearl. It’s like 90 pages long and easy to squeeze into a week’s lesson plan for teachers. We weren’t even talking about books, really, but about what we were teaching in our classes. The Pearl came up, and this guy, this swinging (apparently) guidance counselor goes into a drunken fit about how great The Pearl is. Immediately I was like: This is the only book this guy has ever read in the history of his oxygen intake…It was like someone hit this guy’s talk button by mentioning the one book he can discuss without making himself look stupid.

So how do I trust? Where do I look for answers? Do I just buy what Soft Skull publishes? Joe Meno books? Coffeehouse Press? Something written by an Asian (not Asian-American) author?