Should Could Would Won’t
Hans Weyandt on Shouldnting Shoulds
To everyone who is new here: I trust Hans Weyandt more than anyone else when it comes to books and book recommending. Full stop. He will probably dispute this, but he is something of a legend in the Twin Cities literary community for his tireless contributions to bookselling, curating, and championing of under-sung gems and books that deserve more attention. A lot of us can pretend to engage and get by long enough in conversation, only to say, "Well, isn’t that interesting” before ducking out. Not Hans, one of the most curious people I know. And while most of us anxious readers and writers are sitting in cafés and wandering in bookstores and pulling our hair out about which book/which order, Hans has already done circles around us, pulled some long-lost or overlooked things off the shelf and has driven home to read half the stack. The other half? He’s not too worried about it. He’ll find the right homes for them. If you live in the Twin Cities, be on the lookout for his occasional pop-ups around town, Just Books. Without further ado, here’s Hans Weyandt.
-Josh
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Does an essay need a title? Does it need to be a thesis or pull quote? Does it need to be understood by the final line? Because this essay is titled Should Could Would Won’t. It’s too much, probably.
But my real question is: why do we read what we read? I think that about the guy on the train and the couple engrossed in the same novel on the plane—alternating chapters, maybe? I think that about book clubs, constantly. Why are so many smart people reading the same only okay books? I turn the question on myself. Is there ever a through line in what I pick up? My reading history is a jumbled mess — H to J to D to Q equals something. Hopscotch, really, which I kind of love. Sometimes themes or threads emerge. Sporadically, I’ll go on a spree on genre binge or devour everything from an author or focus on a locale or era, but mostly, my reading is pretty haphazard. This whole enterprise shouldn’t be overly structured, right?
But again: why this book and not that one? The sheer volume of what’s out there is mind boggling. What comes from Latin? What comes from Mayan? What comes from Cape Horn? What are absolute, must-read classics? Lucretius, maybe? Homer? George Eliot? Hell yes. Faulkner? Meh. Alice Munro? She was a lock, right? But that’s problematic now. How about cult hits? Geek Love is almost too obvious, but yeah. I’ll cop to A River Runs Through It. Guilty. David James Duncan or Roger Angell writing about baseball. E.B White and William Maxwell and Zora Neale Hurston and Eudora Welty — yes, please. The Russians? Mostly, yes. Master and the Margarita a book so profound that I do immediately like any person whose read it more than me. That’s probably nuts, but whatever.
But we get these wild ideas about reading. It’s all negative peer and self-pressure. Parents and teachers contribute heavily to this. I don’t mean my parents—they pretty much ignored the fact I wasn’t doing what I was ‘supposed’ to be doing. They didn’t should me much, in terms of books and reading. But, at large, we have sort of wrecked reading because it’s all considered with the wrong metrics. If you ask most parents what they are reading when they are expressing concern about their own children they start to sputter (because often they don’t read that much). There are bigger reasons for this I won’t get into here but it is wrongheaded and certainly does not ‘work.’ Like reading a certain number of books a year. A deeply foolish endeavor. No purpose at all. And I think most often counter productive. The shoulds. The shoulds are dangerous because they will swallow us whole. There are no shoulds in reading. It’s okay. Go read whatever the hell you want.
But then again, I have my white whale books I continue to kick down the road (a list too long to begin listing). I have my woulds and coulds and won’ts. I could read more magical realism. Or criticism. I won’t read T.C Boyle. He was a jerk. Twice. Colson Whitehead, on the other hand, won my support from the beginning. He was decent and kind. Normal. Ross Gay and David Sedaris and Jane Goodall and Wendell Berry and Li Young Lee and Marie Howe. All writers I liked even more after selling books at their events. Danez Smith and Hieu Minh Nguyen—genuinely, deeply funny and sincere in every way I’ve witnessed them read and write and teach. True talents who give back to many, many writers and people who enjoy their brilliance out loud.
I have a lot of excuses and none are particularly good. Have I read the Bible front to back? I mean, I think so but maybe not. Jane Eyre. I don’t like Kerouac. Or, I like Gary Snyder better. I have kind of read Ulysses. Ditto on the Norse myths. Proust. Henry James. O. Henry. Only recently did I learn something about Cleopatra—thanks to Stacy Schiff, who writes the kind of non fiction that is both fun and smooth and so damn educational. But I have massive gaps even in my “study” of American fiction, much less anyplace else on earth or elsewhere. Glaring omissions exist, to be sure.
Sometimes I get optimistic and I’ll tackle Japan or Morocco or Haiti. Arkansas. St. Paul history. Books on jaguars or tigers. I don’t know why. I guess, in truth, I like to think about how there are these animals out there that can kill almost anything. They are in charge if they choose to be. The science and magic of things that communicate differently than us. Trees, mushrooms, ferns, bees—all of that.
It’s not that I won’t, but also, I haven’t: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Infinite Jest, Ottessa Moshfegh, Game of Thrones. But I have read Glennon Doyle. I love Brené Brown. Sue me. I get called a book snob. Or I know some people think it. But I really try not to be. “Cool” isn’t any certain thing. Neither is “fun” or “interesting” or “joy” or “heartbreak” or “redemption.” Nothing good is only one way.
Like a lot of people, I stumble upon things accidentally— from strangers, the internet, magazines. Friends and random people I meet show me the way. My Canoeing With Booksellers group text, my book club, several teachers I’ve had who continue to advise me. And Uber drivers (in Los Angeles)! Thanks to Nee, who explained certain Ghanaian foods to me. And then said he might one day open a restaurant. Of course we talked books. He wanted to buy textbooks from me and my coworker Nicole. My barbers, yes, “normal guys” who are thoughtful and so great to talk with about anything but especially art and music and politics and our kids and books. My friend Walker, a wonderful cook who bought cookbooks from me. We’ve worked together and I’ve seen him make difficult things look simple in kitchens. His mother, Monica Edwards Larson of Sister Black Press, is an artist I really admire. Friends like Mel Spencer, Johanna Hynes, and Chris Hubbuch have always come through.
Guys from AA and NA. Never strictly books about addiction except for the astounding White Out by Michael Clune. That book changed how I see these people—my neighbors, former classmates, my friends who are fighting a serious battle. The horror of it. It changed how I think about love, how you have to both accept it and chase it. Because there are people out there, and I know I could be one of them, who can't have any of that. Heroin (and all the other hard drugs our country is losing a terrible, long, and growing war against) – it's a dire situation. So many can't stop. They can't get off that merry-go-round. I get it. That book did what truly great things do: it cracked me open and put me back together a little differently. I hope for some unconditional empathy. That seems fair.
That book rules.
Anyways, I could meander on forever. We should all maybe consider what we just read and will read next. How did it happen? Who made that choice? But books are freedom. That’s my bumper sticker or t shirt. It’s so true.
Addendum of people I’ve read and like and it doesn’t matter if you agree. You’ve got your own. This is just a mini one:
Louise Erdrich, Lawrence Weschler, Penelope Fitzgerald, Amy Hempel, Yusuf Komunyakaa, Rita Bullwinkle, Jenny Erpenbeck and Helen DeWitt (the New Directions duo who are both virtuoso writers). Jonathan Franzen writing any non-fiction not about climate (yawn. Or, the horror!!!). I know I’m supposed to hate him. Read him without prejudice and he nails it. Tayari Jones. Naghib Mahfouz. I am reading Pynchon for the first time in a long time(thank you, Aaron King). I'd read anything any of these folks wrote the moment it comes out. My goal has never been to impress anyone. It certainly shouldn't be now.
Hans Weyandt is a reader and still occasional bookseller from St. Paul, MN. He lives in Minneapolis.
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You can find Hans’s previous guest posts here and here. Please spread the love to your local libraries, independent booksellers if you can, or shop online at Bookshop. Thanks, as always, for reading.