READING AS A CHARITABLE ACTIVITY
I have friends who are involved in all kinds of noble activities, from helping the homeless to saving the environment. Through the years they have invited me to various marches, meetings and mass assemblies but mostly I have declined. When people ask me what I’m doing to make the world a better place, I generally avoid committing to an answer, pretending I don’t want to toot my own horn. In truth, the charitable activity I devote the most time to is one that most people probably don’t consider a charitable activity at all: reading books.
Reading is viewed as many things in our society – a means of self-improvement, entertainment, even a social activity for those who are members of book clubs – but I believe that, under the right circumstances, simply sitting in a chair and reading can also be an act of charity. Some people might concede that the reading of certain books – The Bible, The U.S. Constitution, The Republic of Plato – is a public good and therefore an act of charity. America would no-doubt be a better place if every citizen regularly read the Constitution. And, by making oneself better acquainted with the foundational documents of Western Civilization, a reader might make herself a better citizen of the world, thus rendering her reading a charitable act. But, for the most part, that’s not the kind of reading I do. I read a lot of forgotten bestsellers of yesteryear, as well as books that were never popular enough when they were in print to qualify as forgotten now.
My friend Don Napoli reads primarily California fiction published between 1890 and 1960. He has uncovered countless forgotten novels and written about them with sympathy and intelligence for his blog Reading California Fiction. Don can’t write off as charitable donations the thousands of dollars he has spent tracking down these books. Society doesn’t tend to look as warmly upon the time Don has devoted to his blog as it does to the hours of time some others might have devoted to caring for the sick or feeding the hungry. But, to me, Don’s project is a public service, and the time and money he has invested in it are the best kind of charitable donations – the kind you can’t write off on your taxes, the kind no organization is likely to give you a Citizen of the Year Award for, the kind done purely out of a passion for making the world a better place. Don makes the world better by reading the lost and forgotten efforts of bygone California writers and bringing them to the attention of a new generation of readers.
I’m not quite as charitable – nor as computer literate – as Don, so I can’t claim to be doing as much for forgotten literature as he is. But in my own, much smaller, way I spend a lot of time promoting books and authors that I feel have been unjustly neglected. The purpose of this Substack, for instance, is mostly to promote under-appreciated books and writers. Not only am I not paid for this work, I spend quite a bit of money on it, most of it on used book purchases. To my friends and acquaintances I send out an annual newsletter at Christmastime that contains detailed descriptions of the best books I have read over the previous twelve months, a list which is often dominated by relatively obscure titles such as Peggy Simson Curry’s So Far From Spring or Richard McGill’s Omamori. I have worked in bookstores for much of my life, and I have used that bully pulpit to recommend all kinds of forgotten gems of the literary past to potential readers. I am a member of several informal groups of friends who gather weekly for various purposes, and I am well-known (nay, notorious) within these groups as an advocate for lost, forgotten, neglected, or simply under-appreciated books. I long ago grew bored of listening to literate people go on and on about the same small handful of books – The Great Gatsby, The Catcher In The Rye, Catch-22 – as if those are the only books a well-read American needs to know anything about. It thrills me when I can turn one of these readers on to Nancy Hale’s The Prodigal Daughters, or Rose MacAulay’s And No Man’s Wit, or Mildred Walker’s The Brewer’s Heavy Horses, or Jessamyn West’s The Life I Really Lived.
If you believe that writing good books is an act that is beneficial to society, then you can’t deny that reading them is also good for society. Writing and publishing a good book is likely to earn you a few bucks. Buying and reading a good book will usually diminish your bank account. Thus, it seems to me that, as noble as it is to write good books, reading good books is even nobler, because it is done without any contemplation of financial reward.
In a recent interview with Tyler Cowan, author and New York Times columnist David Brooks urged the members of his audience to devote themselves to charitable causes that are dear to their hearts. He quoted (criminally under-appreciated) novelist Frederick Buechner’s advice to those seeking a charitable activity to pursue: “Find the spot where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.” Reading is my deep gladness, and I try to pursue it in a way that also meets the world’s deep need.
So if you’re wondering why I’m not out in the streets protesting injustice, the answer just might be that I am reclining in my easy chair and reading Henry Dumas’ Goodbye, Sweetwater, a great collection of short stories that has been allowed to fall out of print, which is its own kind of injustice, one that I’m hoping to do something about.
It’s true that my efforts at elevating their status have thus far failed to create a huge upsurge of new interest in The Prodigal Daughters or And No Man’s Wit or any of the other neglected books that I’ve been championing for years. But it’s also true that, despite the best efforts of my many charitable friends, hunger and homelessness are still far too commonplace in America. The fact that one’s charitable efforts have failed to solve the problem they seek to mitigate does not make those efforts futile. In fact, it generally just proves how necessary those efforts are.