Book Recommendation: Reading New York by John Tytell

"Books are like canned goods stored for the winter. 

We reach for them when an emotional or 

intellectual part of us needs to be fed." 

Often, I receive email from soldiers or family members who want to write a book. They want to know how to get published. But that's not a question I or anyone else can answer without first nudging them onto the path of reading.

As I've written in the past on my other (now inactive) literary blogs, one learns to write well by reading. I'm not going to go into whether or not you should read the classics, or the merits about reading one genre over the other. The truth is, we gravitate to different things, and most of you are not students, but back from war and you want to get your story out. However, remember that we are influenced not only by what we have experienced (and war is at the top of the list of BIG), but also by what we read. So here's my advice: read a lot. Read inside and outside of your preferred genre. Read about things you know nothing about, or read books your friends would never believe you are reading. Why? Well, if you've been through a war, you shouldn't give a damn what anyone thinks if you're reading Alan Ginsberg's "Howl," poetry by Emily Dickinson, along with Lee Child's latest Jack Reacher story.  After all, I only read poetry, Lee Child, and Jane Austen when my husband goes off to war. For this, I offer no explanation.

But by going outside of your preferred genre, you will learn a lot, and stretch yourself as both reader and writer. Since growth is a desired outcome on a writer's path, exploring your own boundaries can be a desirable pursuit.

Well, I guess I could have taken the price tag off.

Right now, I'm thoroughly engrossed in John Tytell's Reading New York. I found this a few years ago, and like so many other books --let it languish in a pile. I tell you this because it happens to everyone, and there's nothing wrong with it. But books are things we collect, anticipating that one day we'll need them.  Books are like canned goods stored up for the winter. We reach for them when an emotional or intellectual part of us needs to be fed. Hence, Reading New York is the transition for me back to the writing I love, the type of writing that I have been absent from since War strutted onto my sofa and took up a permanent space.

John Tytell presents us with an opportunity to remember. Where were you when you read a particular book? What were you experiencing, and what revelations occurred to you when reading it, and how did they influence the path you're on?

Tytell, an English professor at Queens College, and an author of many books,  gives the reader a wonderful literary map of his own life, shows us what he was doing and experiencing while he was discovering Whitman, Poe, Henry James, Henry Miller, Kerouac and many others. He gives us insight into their lives, making them human by showing us parts of their lives that formed how they thought,  taking away the barriers that sometimes form as the result of being rushed through their works in a high school or college course. There's no test at the end of this book, so reading it is pure pleasure.

New York City is the backdrop for the writers, and Tytell himself.  The city is a lifelike presence, changing over the centuries, alternately the bane and savior for many a writer. We see Tytell's understanding of the city changing as he goes from Poe to Kerouac, ultimately finding the space he desires (at least on the weekends and the summer) in a cottage in Vermont. There's much to be admired about this book --the fine writing, the making of such icons of literature into beings we can relate to. At the end, I wanted to read more but life goes on beyond the end of a book.

For those of us who suffer under the cacophony of social networking, tire of the bluster of blogs, are wary of the seduction of a Facebook "Like," Reading New York takes us to the fertile ground of reading and writing. This is the stuff that fuels our imagination, softens the world, and reveals a perspective to help us catch our breath and continue forward.