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Islands of Books
1991 Dawson's Books oblong softcover w/ paper wrap, reprint. Lawrence N. Powell (The Accidental Improvising New Orleans). Reprint of the first edition. Fifteen short essays on books including two on D.H. Lawrence. Has a new four page introduction by Powell for this edition. - Amazon
145 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 31, 2025
"And there for me is the whole quest and end of literature: to find and to cherish those works whose vision merges with mine." Yes, this book is a book written by a rather pompous, even narcissistic, gentleman. There were plenty of moments when I wanted to put a pin in him and deflate his ego. But I just kept reading because, as you can see below, there were some real gems hidden in his opinionated drivel. I am not sorry I read this one but I would also not choose to recommend it either. Read the quotes below if you want to find the gems offered and call it good in my opinion. But then, I may well be as pompous and old windbag as he is!
“I have always been reconciled to the fact that I was born a bibliomaniac, never have I sought a cure, and my dearest friends have been drawn from those likewise suffering from book-madness.”
“The learned librarian, whose politeness was all the better for being completely devoid of affectation, told me that not only could I have whatever books I wished to see, but that I could take them to my lodging, not even excepting the manuscripts, which are the chief feature in that fine library. I spent a week in the library, only leaving it to take my meals and go to bed, and I count this week as one of the happiest I have ever spent, for then I forgot myself completely; and in the delight of study, the past, the present, and the future were entirely blotted out. Of some such sort, I think, must be the joys of the redeemed.” -Cassanova (I know, right?)
"Ten years ago, when we lived in the canyon, my study measured 9 by 12. It was almost completely lined with shelves which held my total private library of 1500 volumes. Now I own twice as many, in spite of constant discarding (to my college library), and the smaller room will hold only part of my books. This compels me to discipline my tastes and to choose for roommates only those volumes which I feel I must see every day. Note that I said 'see' every day, not necessarily read. For next best to reading books is to sit at slippered ease and look at their backs. Each speaks to me in a different voice, each is fastened to my imagination by an invisible cord, and a mere glance nourishes me with the juice they hold. Instantly I recall the entire history of my relationship with each volume - when and where I acquired it, my first reading and subsequent samplings, travels it has gone with me; and when a book no longer nourishes me without my even opening it, I want no more to keep it in my studay and it is either discarded or shelved elsewhere."
"Why should I waste the meager hours of my life staring at cinema or television, dealing in cards, fingering checkers or chessmen, when I can sit in the corner of my study and look with love at the backs of my books knowing that my wife and sons are with me under the same roof, that my work awaits me in the morning; and that when my eyes blur I can go out of doors to our terraced garden, kneel on the earth and pull weeds until my hands hurt."
"Llewelyn Powys was a yea-sayer, finding his own religion within him, like a good Quaker, opposed to dogma and idolatry."
"Literature has always been kept alive by a roomful of readers."
"She is la Reina de Los Angeles or plain Queen of the Cow Countries, depending on whether one is southside or northside of the Tehachapis; yet I, who have known her all the years of my life, must deny her rank with the world's great cities, for the reason that she lacks a body of water. Distant twenty miles the Pacific has never brought her more than money, and fog. By its influence water gives soul to a city. Whether it be river, lake, or ocean, water touching earth, where people swarm, works magic. London, Paris, Florence, Budapest, Istanbul, New York, New Orleans, San Fransisco, Seattle. Yes! Los Angeles? No! Filled and forgotten are the zanies. The city's river is bedded with concrete, on which no myths accrete. Plenty of water in the pipes, tasting of chlorine and hard as flint, or boilded and bottled. Take your choice. Rain water in the gutters, there today, gone tomorrow. A fountain or two. But no wind-dimpled body or tubulent flow. Absence of soul-bestowing water."
"The works of great writers have many uses. They educate the young, cement friendships, or lie placidly as reservoirs to which a man in need can return again and again at different stages in his life."
"Thus does experience document reading, and reading heighten experience. Ever again the old saying holds true, that next to mother's milk books are the best food."
"I was in correspondence with Hemingway that winter of 1936-37, when he was writing The Grapes of Wrath. He had made money, for the first time, from Of Mice and Men and had 'hutched up,' as he called it, in a house at Los Gatos; and there he worked himself sick writing his masterpiece. A series of postcards told of its progress and completion; and then he fell into a slump of success from which, in my opinion, he never emerged. Rockets never soar twice, though, without recharging. The tree withers when the taproot is cut."
"Shakespeare said, 'Man must endure his going hence, even as his coming hither. Ripeness is all."
"It was the honey-colored binding that took my eye. In spite of long academic discipline, my approach to literature is still unsystematic and casual, and it was mere optical delight that led to a decade of joyful reading."
"I found that Yeats wrote better poetry the older he grew. When he was young, he said, his Muse was old; now he was old but his Muse was young. He is one of the few poets in history (Shakespeare was another) whose last work is his best. The tautness of his phrases, the stark beauty, the sensual awareness, the simplicity he had never achieved in this florid youth, came to him in old age. 'The poems I can write now,' he said, 'will go into the general memory.' When he died at 73 it was not ridiculous for an obituary to say that 'he died like Shelley at the height of his life and with half his work unwritten.'"
"No land is truly civilized until literature has encrusted it with lore."
“I have always been reconciled to the fact that I was born a bibliomaniac, never have I sought a cure, and my dearest friends have been drawn from those likewise suffering from book-madness.”
“The learned librarian, whose politeness was all the better for being completely devoid of affectation, told me that not only could I have whatever books I wished to see, but that I could take them to my lodging, not even excepting the manuscripts, which are the chief feature in that fine library. I spent a week in the library, only leaving it to take my meals and go to bed, and I count this week as one of the happiest I have ever spent, for then I forgot myself completely; and in the delight of study, the past, the present, and the future were entirely blotted out. Of some such sort, I think, must be the joys of the redeemed.” -Cassanova (I know, right?)
"Ten years ago, when we lived in the canyon, my study measured 9 by 12. It was almost completely lined with shelves which held my total private library of 1500 volumes. Now I own twice as many, in spite of constant discarding (to my college library), and the smaller room will hold only part of my books. This compels me to discipline my tastes and to choose for roommates only those volumes which I feel I must see every day. Note that I said 'see' every day, not necessarily read. For next best to reading books is to sit at slippered ease and look at their backs. Each speaks to me in a different voice, each is fastened to my imagination by an invisible cord, and a mere glance nourishes me with the juice they hold. Instantly I recall the entire history of my relationship with each volume - when and where I acquired it, my first reading and subsequent samplings, travels it has gone with me; and when a book no longer nourishes me without my even opening it, I want no more to keep it in my studay and it is either discarded or shelved elsewhere."
"Why should I waste the meager hours of my life staring at cinema or television, dealing in cards, fingering checkers or chessmen, when I can sit in the corner of my study and look with love at the backs of my books knowing that my wife and sons are with me under the same roof, that my work awaits me in the morning; and that when my eyes blur I can go out of doors to our terraced garden, kneel on the earth and pull weeds until my hands hurt."
"Llewelyn Powys was a yea-sayer, finding his own religion within him, like a good Quaker, opposed to dogma and idolatry."
"Literature has always been kept alive by a roomful of readers."
"She is la Reina de Los Angeles or plain Queen of the Cow Countries, depending on whether one is southside or northside of the Tehachapis; yet I, who have known her all the years of my life, must deny her rank with the world's great cities, for the reason that she lacks a body of water. Distant twenty miles the Pacific has never brought her more than money, and fog. By its influence water gives soul to a city. Whether it be river, lake, or ocean, water touching earth, where people swarm, works magic. London, Paris, Florence, Budapest, Istanbul, New York, New Orleans, San Fransisco, Seattle. Yes! Los Angeles? No! Filled and forgotten are the zanies. The city's river is bedded with concrete, on which no myths accrete. Plenty of water in the pipes, tasting of chlorine and hard as flint, or boilded and bottled. Take your choice. Rain water in the gutters, there today, gone tomorrow. A fountain or two. But no wind-dimpled body or tubulent flow. Absence of soul-bestowing water."
"The works of great writers have many uses. They educate the young, cement friendships, or lie placidly as reservoirs to which a man in need can return again and again at different stages in his life."
"Thus does experience document reading, and reading heighten experience. Ever again the old saying holds true, that next to mother's milk books are the best food."
"I was in correspondence with Hemingway that winter of 1936-37, when he was writing The Grapes of Wrath. He had made money, for the first time, from Of Mice and Men and had 'hutched up,' as he called it, in a house at Los Gatos; and there he worked himself sick writing his masterpiece. A series of postcards told of its progress and completion; and then he fell into a slump of success from which, in my opinion, he never emerged. Rockets never soar twice, though, without recharging. The tree withers when the taproot is cut."
"Shakespeare said, 'Man must endure his going hence, even as his coming hither. Ripeness is all."
"It was the honey-colored binding that took my eye. In spite of long academic discipline, my approach to literature is still unsystematic and casual, and it was mere optical delight that led to a decade of joyful reading."
"I found that Yeats wrote better poetry the older he grew. When he was young, he said, his Muse was old; now he was old but his Muse was young. He is one of the few poets in history (Shakespeare was another) whose last work is his best. The tautness of his phrases, the stark beauty, the sensual awareness, the simplicity he had never achieved in this florid youth, came to him in old age. 'The poems I can write now,' he said, 'will go into the general memory.' When he died at 73 it was not ridiculous for an obituary to say that 'he died like Shelley at the height of his life and with half his work unwritten.'"
"No land is truly civilized until literature has encrusted it with lore."
September 25, 2024
Took me over a year to read, others borrowed and finished my copy in this time.
Lawrence Clark Powell (I think was his name, I write this in the dark on my bed with the book on the shelf) writes in a way that calms me down. Somehow he was able to captivate me for many months with short essays about himself and his books and the landscapes he pictures in his head. I own all of Casanova’s memoirs because of his essay on them, and owe to this book a vivid aspiration of how my own voice might one day sound.
Lawrence Clark Powell (I think was his name, I write this in the dark on my bed with the book on the shelf) writes in a way that calms me down. Somehow he was able to captivate me for many months with short essays about himself and his books and the landscapes he pictures in his head. I own all of Casanova’s memoirs because of his essay on them, and owe to this book a vivid aspiration of how my own voice might one day sound.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews