The Horrific Hazards Of Reading Multiple Books Concurrently

My general rule when it comes to reading more than one book at a time is that they have to be of different genres. More specifically, the basic thrills and joys that I get from them have to be somewhat different. Most of the books that I read involve excitement and action (because I am a simple, simple man) but what I get out of a Dumas or Sabatini is very different from what I take away from, say, Dashiell Hammett, or Robert E. Howard, or Alfred Bester.

The reason for this practice of mine, originally, was to (hopefully) keep me from being distracted by something new, and thereby deserting a book that I was only partway through. What I’ve realized more recently, however, is that it’s a good idea to vary one’s genres for another reason: things can blend together.

Perfect example, just recently I was reading The Women’s War by Alexandre Dumas, Blackmailer by George Axelrod, and Michael Chabon’s seminal The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (yes, finally… I know I was a bit late to that party) all at the same time. The Dumas work wasn’t a problem, but I also figured that a good ol’ pulp mystery and an iconoclastic look at the birth of comic books (the Chabon novel is a celebration of pulp art, granted, but still) would be different enough to stand as two entirely different sets of characters and events in my mind. Ah yes, silly me.

Both novels are set in the publishing world, and it just so happened that I got to each one’s big Manhattan cocktail party at about the same time. Granted, being a 1930’s bohemian get-together, Kavalier & Clay’s party is a much more eccentric affair, although Blackmailer’s 1950’s shindig–attended mostly by authors, publishers, editors and so on–isn’t without its own strangeness, in the form of a game whose rules seem to be “turn off all the lights and everyone runs around screaming giddily.” What’s more, both have their own quirky hosts, to wit:

It would be hard to tell you much about Walter Heinemann. The only thing I can tell you is that he gave parties. Big parties.
That was his profession. He was a professional host.
Blackmailer, p.44

There’s more about him, but some of it would be spoiler heavy. So, moving on to one of my favorite passages ever…

At a time when an honorable place in the taxonomy of male elegance was still reserved for the genus Fat Man, Harkoo was a classic instance of the Mystic Potentate species, managing to look at once commanding, stylish, and ultramundane in a vast purple-and-brown caftan, heavily embroidered, that hung down almost to the tops of his Mexican sandals.
Kavalier & Clay, p. 232

Somewhere in my mind, probably in part due to reading right before bed and having strange dreams, Heinemann and Harkoo began to intermesh a bit–despite each being odd in entirely different ways (and near physical opposites to boot). I began to wonder how awkwardly writer Sammy Clay would react to actress Janis Whitney, or what snarky comment Blackmailer narrator Dick Sherman would have to make about Salvador Dalí.

A frightening state of affairs indeed.