Nonfiction not otherwise included in my book. Nonfiction writings by famous fiction writers. Some additional possible candidates as “Living books”

“Living books” was the title of a chapter in Henry Miller’s book The Books in my Life. I couldn’t find in that chapter a description of exactly what he meant. He might have meant people he knew who were well-read, or who were an endless source of information. However, in another chapter in the same book, he talks about a writer he knew whose life was as interesting to Henry Miller as that writer’s work. This reminds me of a comment about Ernest Hemingway in a book by Will Durant where he said that he thought Hemingway’s life was more interesting than his work. All those descriptions might fit this section of this website, as well as a place to add other books or other materials by or about writers that I mentioned previously in my book. I also want to include here documentaries about some writers whose books I have trouble reading. This section will be incomplete at this time because I have not yet read most of the books I want to add here.

Bibliography

It was through Norman Mailer that I first came to read Henry Miller, so I owe Norman Mailer a debt for that. I have about a dozen of his nonfiction books, but I have only read 1 or 2. I also have a couple books about him. As I read those books in the future, I will comment on them here.

Elie Wiesel presents a different situation. His name is probably familiar to most people, but in case it isn’t, he became a writer, civil rights activist, etc. as an adult, but at the age of 15, along with other members of his family, and residents where he lived in Romania, were deported to two successive concentration camps after a step by step process of control over a period of weeks by the military and administrative apparatus of invading Nazis in 1944. While his parents, one sister and other family members were killed there, he survived and over a period of decades wrote many books and lectured about his experiences. In the past, I only glanced at some of his books, not being sure whether I wanted to read them, but I recently read All Rivers Run to the Sea, the first volume of his memoir. Even before reading this book, I was more interested in the humanity of the man than the specific content of his writings. However, I had previously seen interviews of him that are unforgettable. One such interview is: Elie Wiesel, First Person Singular : Readings from the work of Elie Wiesel , a documentary about Elie Wiesel, alternating with excepts from several of his books read by actor William Hurt, all about memory. Surely he is a living book as Henry Miller’s meant.

There is another interview that I remember seeing on tv that I can’t locate, but the part that I wanted to talk about now is repeated in similar words in other places. The event he talks about concerns his thoughts when the Nazi soldiers came for the last time to complete the deportation to the concentration camps of residents from the village where his family lived in Romania. This is from the first volume of his memoir, All Rivers Run to the Sea (Schocken Books, 1996) :

“That night someone within me, my other self, told me it was impossible that these atrocities could be committed in the middle of the twentieth century while the world stayed silent. This was not the Middle Ages. My very last resistance broken, I let myself be pulled, pushed, and kicked, like a deaf and mute sleepwalker. I could see everything, grasp it and register it, but only later would I try to put in order all the sensations and all the memories. How stunned I was, for example, to discover another time outside time, a universe parallel to this one, a creation within Creation, with its own laws, customs, structures, and language. In this universe some men existed only to kill and others only to die. And the system functioned with exemplary efficiency: tormenters tormented and crushed their prey, torturers tortured human beings whom they met for the first time, slaughterers slaughtered their victims without so much as a glance, flames rose to heaven and nothing ever jammed the mechanism. It was as if it all unfolded according to a plan decreed from the beginning of time.” (p.78-9)

The idea of a parallel universe has appeared many times in science fiction stories, but I was struck by how appropriate it was when I first heard that phrase applied to reality. Not only does it apply to the particular events he is referring to, but to many other aspects of life as well. In order to fully appreciate what he meant by that phrase, it is also necessary to describe what universe he was referring to which was parallel to the nightmarish history which was unfolding in his description above. This is not specifically mentioned above (although it was in the documentary I can’t locate), but what he meant was the insular, religious, studious life of close knit families in the environment that he grew up in. Prior to the arrival of the Nazis, this was the only world he had known. He is trying to describe the shock of his whole world prior to that point disappearing in an instant and replaced by a new world with completely different rules.

Ever since I heard Elie Wiesel talk about parallel universes, the idea has never left my mind. It applies everywhere: people whose lives are so different from each other they can’t communicate, incompatible ways of seeing the world, the vast physical differences between people, religious differences, political differences, cultural differences, geographic differences (north and south), country vs. city, gender differences, economic differences (working class vs. professional), disability vs. non-disabled, the world of lawyers, the law and the courts, etc. I think this idea even applies to growing up, where the ideal world of the young gives way to the practical compromises of the adult world. The list is almost endless. I have not yet read any other books of Elie Wiesel’s besides the first volume of his memoir. So there is undoubtedly more that can be added to the above.

Another “living book”, one of whose books I discussed in Volume I of my book, is Studs Terkel. Here is Wikipedia’s description of his many careers: “ … American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1985 for The Good War and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.” Aside from the interview of him in the tv documentary series Television in America, there are several books written by him and at least one book about him which I have, but have not yet read. I hope to discuss those books here in the future after I read them. I also plan to discuss at least another half dozen writers here in the future as time permits.