Hurley House Fine Books

A Brief Note on Reading, Writing, and the Life of Adventure

One good thing to come out of teaching an online class this term is reading Tobias Wolff for the first time. “Bullet in the Brain” is such a good story, I wanted to read something else by him. His memoir of his tour of duty in Vietnam called out to me, so I picked up a copy of In Pharoah’s Army and am reading it now. It’s good. I am finishing the section on his Airborne training. He limns this portrait beautifully and it’s governed in part by his sense that this kind of adventure, and military service, and even war experience, is critical to the formation of a writer. He cites precedents, not the least of whom is Ernest Hemingway. Most of all this just makes me think of how little I agree with this in my case.

I will happily read about adventure, provided I am in a well-insulated house with efficient climate control systems and a very well-stocked liquor cabinet. I have no desire to jump out of airplanes or fight in a war. I just want to read books. But on balance, what I’ve mostly read about is non-adventure, you know, Beckett, Kafka, Proust.

I do like to travel (and have been reading some travel classics like Blue Highways, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, and Great Plains). I do not camp, though, and “roughing it” includes spending any amount of time without access to bars and room service and Wifi. I am a traveler who demands powerful, hygienic toilets and snow-white, king-size beds. I need blackout curtains and Bloody Marys. And a good book. Even one about someone headed off to the grim pleasures of Special Forces training. I’ll just enjoy that vicariously, Mr. Wolff, with a cocktail in hand and no one barking orders halitosistically into my soft, inexperienced face.