Guest Blogger: "Stepping Back," by Craig Weiner

I don't read anymore.  Not like I used to, when I spent hours in used bookstores desperately seeking performance-enhancing supplements to my English major and two subsequent masters degrees.  Now, I'm lucky if I can get through a Sports Illustrated before the next one comes in the mail.  My wife will turn to me in bed and say, "You should read this book, but I know you won't."  I don't even give her an empty promise.  I just roll over and go to sleep to numb the shame. 

I've thought a lot about books since reading Kirby's inaugural Remainders post.  I have a lot of them.  Each time I've moved, I've faithfully packed them up in new cardboard boxes that I've had to purchase for the occasion because the last thing you want to do after you move is look at cardboard boxes, let alone keep them.  Five different apartments in six years in St. Louis, a year in Boston, to a storage unit while searching for myself abroad for a few months, a year in New York, two in Pittsburgh, and then seven more and counting back in New York.  I'm in my fourth apartment here.  The last three apartments have come with a wife and two of those have included a small child.  The last time I moved, I didn't even bother to organize the books on the shelves.  Ernest Hemingway rubbed shoulders with whoever wrote the "I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski" trivia book based on the Coen brothers film and no one cared.  When space got tight in our daughter's room, we moved the bookcases into a narrow hallway that has essentially served as stroller parking and storage.  Suddenly, it appeared that there were no books in our apartment, save for the hundred or so books for two year-olds, many of which extol the myriad virtues of not defecating in one's pants.

I know he claims that this is his daughter's, but don't let him fool you.  I've shared a hotel room with the man.  I know the truth.

It seemed strange to me that the bookcases were not the central feature of the living room, like trophies on a mantelpiece to show off how well-read I once was.  You ought to be able to tell a lot about a person by the books on their shelves.  What did it say about me that I had no books?  Or rather had hidden from them like a former best friend with whom you no longer had something in common, yet always rode the same busy subway train each morning, avoiding eye contact, perhaps moving to another car during a stop.  I was angry that the books had been relegated to obscurity, but of course I was only angry at myself for arriving at this point.  I had all the excuses, including the scarcity of space and the compromise that comes with not living alone anymore, but I was finally resolved to do something about it.  Our apartment was closing in on us.  Toys mounted.  I tried to counteract the expanding force by exercising in the hopes that a smaller ass might allow us to live here another year without moving to a three bedroom in Queens.  My last resort was to redesign the apartment.

"Redesign" is probably a generous description of what can be done on a $300 budget.  "Rearrange" is really the word.  Move a dresser here, throw out a dresser there, buy another dresser, throw out a broken bookcase, buy a smaller used dining room table, move a nursing chair from here to there, and now we have the makings of a roomier home.  In a stunning transformation, the bookcases have been moved to a more prominent part of the hallway, just off the living room, visible to anyone who wants to stand near our hallway.  Last night, I arranged the books.  One entire bookcase of plays, another one for literature, i.e. anything written before 1970, plus contemporary fiction on the lower shelves.  The remnants of my other major in History now sit neatly atop two dressers, as well as in a smaller bookcase, in the bedroom.  There is still a box of my wife's cookbooks in the hallway.  We need another bookcase, but I oughtn't push my luck.  To purchase a new hideously wood-colored Ikea bookcase to match the relics from graduate school that persist in our lives is a design folly my wife would not stand. 

What made this event momentous was not so much the return from banishment of the books, but the fact that I voluntarily removed nearly a dozen books from my collection, to be donated to Housing Works, where no one else will read them, either.  Big, thick books that I packed and unpacked, year after year, but certainly never re-opened.  Textbooks about Dramatic Theory & Criticism, Theater Production & Management, even an old French textbook from God knows when.  It was liberating in a way I hadn't imagined, not because I had freed up space, but because I had come to terms with my new life.  Not only do I no longer read, I no longer write.

Ask Craig about this one between innings of a Red Sox game sometime.  Just don't expect him to be conversant in English.

I used to be a playwright.  I haven't written a new full-length play since the day my fingers grasped the diploma that came with my MFA.  Yes, I've written some shorter pieces, even had some some minor productions of them.  I've tinkered with and retooled a play that I began in 2002, but haven't quite been able to adequately finish.  I attend meetings with a writer's group, but it is more an excuse to see my friends than it is to workshop any pages.  I used to consider myself a serious writer, always with some sort social or political theme in mind, whether it be race or war.  I used to write angry, which I felt spurred my productivity, but I don't get angry anymore.  Now, the news is just minor indigestion, and the moment passes.  I don't have the energy for anything more.  Maybe my priorities have changed.  Maybe I'm just getting old.  I'm more interested in dabbling in writing sitcom pilots that only tangentially deal with identity or injustice, and I'm lucky if I make time for that once every other week.

So, I don't need to hold onto obscure textbooks that I once thought I'd refer to when I joined the faculty of a college theater department.  That ship has sailed, so there's no longer any need to pack for the journey.  I am content to spend whatever free time I have with my daughter, tickling her and dusting off my reading skills to help put her sleep.  Or I'd rather go to a bar and watch football with my friends and have a pint or three.  Or just have a date night with my wife, which I will do tonight, instead of writing something not terribly important to me.  Maybe one day I will be fired up about something, or strike a brilliant idea for a play, but I'd list myself as "doubtful" on the injury report for that game.  I'm certainly a little remorseful that I am not living the life of a successful playwright, but it's not something that tears me up inside, and it seems like something that should.

Now, I take a step back from the hallway and into the living room and look at my books--arranged, but not yet alphabetized.  I am the curator of my own museum.  I am a little lost, but I know I am home.  I should look for something to read.

 

A still from the New York production of Craig's play, The Home for Lost Boys.