Books and You

Under the terrorizing news onslaught, the idea of happiness or joy has seemed unlikely. Today I looked around to see what I am keeping close. Beside me is a photograph of Grace Paley in Vermont, 1982. I am happy every time I look at her, hands on her hips, sun in her hair.

(Grace Paley, Vermont, 1982, photo credit: Sylvia Plachy)

I took a long walk on the beach today with a dear friend, talking about books.

(New Smyrna Beach, Florida, 2.2.25)

Also beside me is a stack of books from my town’s library sale. No one I know would say that I need more books. They are everywhere. But opening each newly found book at the library was thrilling. I gasped when I saw Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss. There is no bookstore in my small town in Florida. The closest is a Barnes & Noble in Daytona Beach.

W. Somerset Maugham published Books and You in 1940, on reading and writers and books. I first read it when I returned to Florida after leaving New York and a man I loved. On my return, I was unemployed and broke, but, in addition to my own library, I had thousands of books I’d acquired from a work acquaintance moving across the country. He’d limited himself to bringing 25 cartons of books to San Francisco and said the rest had to go. Someone had to take all of them or he would throw them away. I rented a U-Haul truck and wound it down the narrow twisting streets of Winter Park, to a house on the lake. Filled the truck with books. Filled my entire living room with books – teetering towers like an unstable city.

I gave stacks away to colleagues, neighbors, friends, but books still filled the room. When I moved to a pink apartment in downtown Orlando, my boyfriend asked a carpenter friend to build massive wall-sized bookshelves for me as a gift. I lived with all of those books for a couple of years.

Then, I started an online bookstore, Ivanhoe Books (for the lake I lived on). Disappointed to be back in Florida after leaving so triumphantly, happily, I’d told few people I was home. Isolating. A walk around Lake Ivanhoe every night. But once my online bookstore was open, I heard from people all over the world. Each wanted a book. I was going nowhere, but my books were traveling all over the U.S., the world.

The man I loved suggested that I keep a commonplace book of the titles I sold. I’d bought each of us a yellow-green linen notebook while in New York, and still had mine. I decided that after each book was sold, I would have three days to read it, before I mailed it to the new owner. The goal wasn’t to finish each book, but to read as much as I could. Then, to write a little something. Many were scholarly books on religion, spirituality, critical theory, social sciences, history, art. The deadline of three days reading time propelled me into the books, and then the books took me somewhere else.

Eventually I got a new job, and the bookselling fell away. Years later, I found the green notebook, and from it, wrote this poem:

BOOKS & YOU
Kelle Groom

He said I was 44 Anna Kareninas, but I still had to go back home, 
unemployed, broke, I began to sell books I’d saved from the dumpster—

Springtime of the Liturgy to Franklin, New York, then, Ideology: 
An Introduction to Columbus, a Reader’s Greek-English Lexicon 

to Waukesha, Wisconsin, another to Fort Lauderdale, The New 
Testament World to Richmond, Dangerous Liaisons to Rockaway, 

Deconstruction of the Visual Arts to Fairfax, Colonial Discourse 
to Nashville, a Concise Theological Dictionary to a man 

in Brecksville, Ohio who said he’d long been looking for this book. 
He said may God bless you, and I felt like he meant it. 

Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkheimer to Berkeley, 
Pioneer Life to Jacksonville: a little girl gets bit 

by a rattlesnake, and her brother (small) runs with her 
in his arms to a doctor far away who has one dose of snake 

venom (needs two for a child), and she dies. A Geneology 
of Pragmatism to Upland, California, Beguine Spirituality 

to Seguin, Texas (signed), Reading de Man Reading to Berlin, 
A Grammatical Analysis of the New Testament to another Upland 

in Indiana, Simians, Cyborgs, & Women to Reseda, a Theological 
Dictionary to King’s Park, The Spivak Reader to Upper Marlboro. 

The 19th book sold: Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said, 
to Middletown—“inability to conceive of any alternative—

made empire durable.” Rousseau painting on cover: 
“The Representatives of the Foreign Powers Coming to Hail 

the Republic as a Token of Peace,” 1907. I had never thought 
of Jane Austin as an imperialist before. 

(Think of seeing a movie without him—sharp sadness & pull 
& love for his tender seeing of movies, everything—

what is that pull? as if my spirit-self makes a run for him 
but finds itself caught inside my body.)  The Black Atlantic 

to Sandwich, The Psychic Life of Power to Culver City. I dreamed 
a photograph of the author last night in an Anne Sexton style, 

Imaginary Bodies to London with a beautiful blue painting, 
like clothing for a soul, produced at the Offenes Kulturhaus 

in Linz, The Heart Of the Matter to Rockaway. The cloak of Elijah
is in the Book of Kings, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote 

his cloak essay in Jersey, in 1919, just after the war (the cup 
appears to be closing over), Critique & Power to South San 

Francisco, On Narrative to the Berkeley School of Law, 
Little Havana Blues to Monument. I can’t remember where I sent 

Extreme-Occident, (a little gauze coat with stars on it floating 
on a map of water), or A Religious History of the American People 

(over 300 people burned by Queen Mary, see the Book of Martyrs, 
“made their sad way out to face the fires of Smithfield.” Pilgrim’s

 Progress written by Bunyan in jail. & the hymns of Issa Watts),
 or Marxisim & the Philosophy of Language, “What are the procedures 

for uncovering, for seizing hold, so to speak, of inner speech?” 
Book #31: In Spite of Plato to the University of Verona, 

(she weaves her bridal all day, unweaving at night, until he comes 
home, reminding me of the Beguine women, “a feminine space 

where women belong to themselves,” also of the Reformation, 
the Puritans believing a spiritual life is lived in the world, 

not in retreat from it. I thought for a while that Penelope was real, 
a real Queen, “maternity itself can be a space”), Looking Awry 

to Lexington (Department of Geography), Abjection, Melancholia, 
& Love to Baltimore, Selected Subaltern Studies to Somerville, 

An Introductory Guide to Post Structuralism to Petaluma, 
Alternative to Speech to Brooklyn, Just As I Am, by Robert Williams, 

the gay priest whose books are among these, whose photo fell 
out of one, who died, to Maidenhead, Berkshire, United Kingdom,

 In Theory to Berkeley, More than Cool Reason to West Lafayette. 
(I am a little lonely for the Waffle House at 3 a.m.), An Anthology 

Of Essays from Dryden to Derrida went I know not where, Opening 
the Heart of Compassion to Australia, Jean de Florette and Manon

of the Spring to Madison, movies I saw at the Enzian with Frank, 
at least in the time of Frank, Book #34: Spiritual Exercises 

of St. Ignatius—all I can see is the pyramid, a triangle 
of protection for Jesus and Mary and Joseph, until the death 

of Herod, Heidegger: A Critical Reader to Irvine, the Conquest 
of Happiness to Harrisonburg (I send him little hints from 

this book, hoping), a first edition of Books & You—
mentions Johnson’s Lives of the Poets (who was killed in the bar? 

All the endless photocopying I did of that book in the library. 
Savage I think. I smelled the muck in front of Tangerine Avenue, 

where they dug for the new development, mountains of sinkhole 
muck that we stepped in, carefully, knowing it was quicksand. 

Madame Bovary taught me not to die for money, how I’d thought
I’d live for education, then die in darkest thinking or go to Europe. 

But seeing Emma, I saw myself buying an armload of clothes, a red 
wool dress and coat. Whitman on this—the animals have no mania 

for owning things.) When I had to get a temp job, it became harder 
to keep track of the books—Perma Red went, “Her grandmother 

had told her there were places along the river where water waited 
to be heard,” Women in the Acts of the Apostles and Holy Listening, 

“Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. See 
I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands” Isaiah 49:15-16. 

I remember when my parents said the way I drew the number 2 
was beautiful. This was when I was still young enough to get 

a grade for handwriting in school, Poetic Closure, The Secret 
Gospel, Clement of Alexandria, Medicine as Ministry—the myth 

of Tithonus, handsome and loved by the goddess of the dawn 
who forgot to ask Zeus to give him eternal youth along 

with immortality, and T became so old he folded up like a cricket 
in a basket; in pity, she turned him into one, a comforting noise 

in the summer night, “the suffering person to whom I minister 
is the one sent to minister to me.” What did I forget to ask for? 

The healing pool at Bethesda, Jung, Synchronicity, & Human 
Destiny, my brother called, said “You go rock this world.” He said, 

“I loved you all these years, I didn’t know how to talk to you,” 
Zen Macrobiotics (take a small spoonful of gomasio to neutralize 

your blood, stop eating honey, chocolate for a while), Practicing 
Macrobiotics, Operating Instructions, Window of Vulnerability, 

when the names of the martyrs are remembered in church, they say, 
“Presente.” He asked me to look for poetry/songs translated by Mark 

Strand (“Souvenir of the Ancient World”), I sold Of Being 
Numerous, Out of Silence, he draws a bookstore for me on the edge 

of the sea, boats in the distance, I am so happy to have a place 
to live under the blue sky. After that I only sold what I could not say.

(from Five Kingdoms, Anhinga Press)

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I’m thinking for 2025, I would like to begin a new commonplace book of my reading, and write a little on each book. Maybe you too?

With care in the days ahead,

Kelle