Pyrrha

 In his collection of philosophical parables and riddles, each centering on a hypothetical imagined city, Italo Calvino describes one metropolis that his narrator—Marco Polo; who is and is not the historical thirteenth-century Venetian merchant and traveler—visits after hearing of it only by name, Pyrrha. The city, the narrator reflects, is one he long pondered in thought before ever glimpsing it in fact. Having thought of it for so long, he conjured a version of it in his mind that came to have its own reality, and which he knew as the only Pyrrha. 

When the day arrived that he finally visited this Pyrrha and saw it with his own eyes, the invisible version of it that had existed in his mind was forced to cede the name. The imagined city could not be Pyrrha, since the real one was in front of him, and was plainly quite different; and it had already taken that name. Yet, the narrator cannot quite rid himself of the ghost of the imagined city. It still seems to have its own existence. Yet, if the real Pyrrha is before him, then what is the imagined city of his mind? The other city still exists, he declares, "but I could no longer call it by a name[.]" (Weaver trans.)

Something very like this happens with me and books. Now, I have had a life project of reading all the books ever written—a mission not unlike the quasi-historical Polo's desire to visit all the cities. And since such a thing is manifestly impossible, I have had to set certain limits to my goal: by "all the books," I really mean all the good books—the canon, however defined; the indisputable classics—and by "ever written," I mean, let's say, the ones written prior to the year I began this project, which was sometime around 2004. (I have to freeze time in this way, otherwise the pace of new literary production threatens to swamp all my efforts). 

And in order to have any hope of completing such a project before death, one of course first needs to get a handle on the size of the undertaking. Thus, at some point in high school, I began maintaining a single Microsoft Word doc compiling the ultimate list of books judged worthy enough and early enough in composition to merit a place in my life's plan. Naturally, the list grew much faster than my ability to read the books that were added to it. So it quickly became populated by volumes I knew only by title and author—and maybe dust jacket blurb or Wikipedia entry; scarcely ever, that is to say, by content between the covers. 

As a result, I often formed vivid conceptions of books, based solely on the visual data available from the cover, font, author, description, prior to actually reading them. And when I finally do get around to them, those earlier impressions have corresponded in greater or lesser degree to the actual content within. Italo Calvino's book, for one, has long been a denizen on the list; but its content turned out to comport fairly well with what I imagined it would be. A counter-example would be, say, Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang. 

Now, here was a book I knew chiefly from seeing the Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition that would have been most readily available to a teenager mining the shelves of his local Barnes and Noble circa 2004 or 2005, when The List first started to be compiled. Its cover features a red desert landscape, without human visage or life form. Wikipedia describes the book as the story of a group of eco-terrorists who conspire to blow up various mining projects, dams, and other monuments to human ingenuity and/or scars upon the once-pristine face of Mother Nature, depending on your view of the matter. 

I knew that I would eventually have to read this book, of course. According to the rules of The List, it was a shoo-in. Abbey's novel had been published long before 2004, and it possessed indisputably canonical status. Did not Harper Collins themselves declare it to be a "modern classic," worthy of reprinting in an exclusive paperback edition? So, clearly, I had no choice in the matter. Some day, if my goal were ever to be completed, I would have to read The Monkey Wrench Gang. 

Yet... the thought of actually doing so depressed me. Who wanted to read about a bunch of self-righteous, presumably white and relatively privileged eco warriors from the unselfconscious 1970s? I knew I would vaguely detest the main characters and their earnest desire to save the Earth from the ravages of human development. I knew I would disapprove of their methods, but—more than this—that they or the author would sense that such doubts had their origin in a deeper heresy still: a questioning even of their ultimate ends. Do the rights of the landscape really supersede those of humans looking for housing, lumber, or minerals? 

I didn't know, and I was annoyed with the book for trying to get me to take sides before I was ready to commit. And maybe it is wrong to even think of it this way—to frame the rights of human beings and nature as different from or in conflict with one another—but we are talking about a novel from the 1970s, well before the mainstream environmental movement had developed that kind of analysis or started to care about things like human rights and racial justice. I didn't care to spend my few precious reading hours in their company. 

Then, nearly two decades later, I happened to be in a used book store in Salt Lake City. Near the register, when I thought I had already made my final selections for the day, I spotted a rarer and older edition of Abbey's novel in cellophane wrap. This was hardbound, and featured a cover illustration in the bright colors and design style of underground cartoonist R. Crumb. It showed a group of vividly-illustrated comic book–style characters apparently planning to dynamite a train. I picked it up and added it to the check-out pile, deciding that this was exactly the sort of book one ought to purchase and read while one happened to be out West. 

Why did I feel so differently about the book this time around? The answer is clear. The R. Crumb illustrations managed to convey something to my awareness that the Harper Perennial edition never had: namely, that this book was funny. Not only that, it was a rollicking adventure! As such, the eco-terrorism, and whatever ideology might inspire it, or the questions it posed, did not need to be taken 100% literally. 

This is what I concluded from the novel, at any rate, after reading it over the coming days. Yes, it was about a group of white 1970s eco-terrorists whose behavior and statements don't always hold up to contemporary political scrutiny, especially not by the standards of a modern-day environmental movement that has matured a lot since that era and now tries to incorporate themes of social justice and human rights in its analysis—seeing these as part of, rather than at odds with, its quest to conserve natural resources. Yes, the book takes seriously their cause. But it is also shot through with saving laughter. 

I am willing to believe that this book exists. It must, since I have read it. I am even willing to believe that it was written by a person named Edward Abbey and that it is called The Monkey Wrench Gang. But still to this day, I cannot quite bring myself to believe that the other book I imagined—the serious, unsmiling one —does not also exist somewhere, and that I would not find it still there if I were ever to open the covers of the Harper Perennial edition that I saw in the Barnes and Noble, and that created such a different impression on me: just as Polo is willing to grant the name of Pyrrha to the real-life city he finds, yet cannot quite cease to believe in the now-unnamed other city of his mind. 

So strongly did I feel this way, that after I had put aside Abbey's novel I even turned back to the Wikipedia entry that had misled me all those years ago. I searched for hints that could unravel the mystery. Maybe I had somehow—in that used book store in Utah—accidentally picked up something other than the original text—some unofficial "comic" version of the novel that was at odds with the author's original intent. 

But no. What I had read was in fact the only Monkey Wrench Gang in existence. So where are you, other book of my imagination, if not within those pages? Where are you, Pyrrha of my imaginings?