When you are lying sleepless in bed in the middle of the night, alone in a snoring house with your inadequacies and fears, you learn to appreciate your truest friends. I speak, of course, of books, wine, and chocolate.
I have a few “animate” friends, too – but I have learned over the years that waking them up with the panicky question, “Am I really likable?” is not the best way to keep their friendship.
So I’ve developed an appreciation for other midnight companions.
The first book I ever bought was “Verses From 1929 On,” a collection of poems by Ogden Nash. I was incredulous that such quirky modesty had found a publisher:
So That’s Who I Remind Me Of
“When I consider men of golden talents,
I’m delighted, in my introverted way,
To discover, as I’m drawing up the balance,
How much we have in common, I and they.…
“I’m afflicted with the vanity of Byron,
I’ve inherited the spitefulness of Pope;
Like Petrarch, I’m a sucker for a siren,
Like Milton, I’ve a tendency to mope.…
“In comparison with men of golden talents,
I am all a man of talent ought to be;
I resemble every genius in his vice, however henious –
Yet I only write like me.”
After Ogden Nash, on my midnight bookshelf, is The Benchley Roundup. This collection of Robert Benchley’s essays includes one about “The Real Public Enemies:”
“Of course, after years of antagonizing members of the inanimate underworld, you are going to get an active conspiracy against you, with physical violence on their part as its aim. … For example, I have a pair of military (hair)brushes which have definitely signed up to put me on the spot and will, I am afraid, ultimately kill me.”
A mainstay of midnight reading is, of course, the chocolate bar – I mean, the murder mystery. There is one catch: you must already have finished the book at least once, so that suspense won’t interfere when your eyelids eventually droop. Armed with a glass of domestic red, we may embark:
Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion has his adventures in England between the World Wars. It is a long-gone world of servants and estates which, perversely, makes for restful reading despite the spies, thieves, and murderers he outwits. I similarly enjoy Dorothy Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey, of the same period. It’s like time-traveling to spy on people I could never meet, with problems I will never have. And I like Agatha Christie’s stories, especially those with Miss Marple. This apparently ordinary, “fluffy” maiden aunt solves mysteries that baffle entire police departments.
When all else fails, I turn to The Incomplete Book of Failures, by Stephen Pile. I can’t decide which I like better, the incidents he collects, or the way he tells them.
“The Most Unsuccessful Prison Escape: After weeks of extremely careful planning, seventy-five convicts completely failed to escape from Saltillo Prison in Northern Mexico. … On 18 April 1976, guided by pure genius, their (secret) tunnel came up in the nearby courtroom in which many of them had been sentenced. The surprised judges returned all 75 to jail.”
“The Least Successful News Hound: V.S. Pritchett is a celebrated literary critic, but we can overlook this in view of his contribution to hard news reporting. In the 1920s he took a job as a reporter on the Christian Science Monitor. … He once missed the resignation of a cabinet minister because he ‘couldn’t see how it mattered.’”
“The Art of Being Wrong: ‘They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…’ The last words of General John Sedgwick spoken while looking over the parapet at enemy lines during the Battle of Spotsylvania in 1864.”
Just as I finished my list, my husband woke up and caught me with a chocolate bar I thought I’d have to myself.
“I think I see a pattern here,” he said. “You’re inspired by the misfits and losers who somehow muddle through.”
I distract him from the chocolate with a glass of wine. “Maybe it’s the so-called misfits and losers who are truly creative,” I answer. “Or maybe we’re all really misfits …and that’s okay, too.”
“I’ll drink to that,” he says.
For, as Stephen Pile writes, “Success is overrated. Everyone craves it despite daily proof that man’s real genius lies in quite the opposite direction. Incompetence is what we are good at: it is the quality that marks us off from animals and we should learn to revere it.”
Amen!
