3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
No Less Authentic In Paperback! :-), September 1, 2009
This review is from: The Thing Itself: On the Search for Authenticity (Paperback)
The prevailing style in the reviews of the hardcover edition of Todd's book was personal confession. So here's mine. Dick Todd is a friend of mine too. Not a good one, mind you. What is it Gore Vidal used to say when good fortune befell another writer? "Whenever a friend succeeds a little something in me dies." However, I was so excited to see Dick's book make it into print (finally) that I literally jumped up and down and gave the author a huge embrace. To say Dick is not a man prone to hugging other men is like saying the nation is experiencing a little bit of a credit situation. (I should add that in his self effacing manner Dick always finds a way to make clear that the awkwardness is all his.) Dick eschews such reckless acts of sentimentality. We would expect nothing less from the man who just wrote the book on authenticity. Nevertheless, ignoring Dick's obvious discomfort, that's exactly what I did. I hugged him. What's more, I didn't let go. "Okay, okay, that's nice. Thank you. Alright, I appreciate that. Truly," said Dick tapping me on the back and looking at his wife with a desperate expression on his face--the way you might look if a friend excited about showing you his pet Boa constrictor, suddenly turned and threw the reptile into your unsuspecting arms and said, "Here, you take a turn!" But what Dick didn't realize is that I wasn't so much hugging him as trying to hold onto him. Because when Dick Todd goes (and I hope that doesn't happen anytime soon), we will be losing one of the best American writers and thinkers in a generation.
I read THE THING ITSELF (for the first time) while on vacation with several other families. Eleven of us packed into these tiny decaying bungalows on a pond in the woods. Dick's book was passed around from reader to reader. The next person in line was giddy with delight when handed the treasured object. It was like a literary Woodstock. When one of the people who hadn't had his turn yet asked two of us who had which authors Dick's writing is most like, we looked at each other and simultaneously replied, "E.B. White and Wendell Berry."
When my ten year-old son finished the last installment of Harry Potter he broke down and sobbed and said he was never going to read another book so long as he lived. Well I'm not saying it was that hard a fall after I finished THE THING ITSELF, and, of course, my son lived to read another day. Still, I found myself feeling more than a little abandoned when I finished Todd's beautifully crafted masterpiece. Another 247 pages would have killed him?
THE THING ITSELF begins with an essay on the author's experience of purchasing an antique box, which he quickly discovers is not the real thing. It is a fake. The box becomes Todd's Rosetta stone which he uses to unpack his--and our--hunger for authenticity in objects and places, in politics and ideas and, most important, in ourselves. David Sedaris hasn't written anything funnier than Todd's chapter on his trip to Disney World in Orlando Florida, while Todd's lyrical prose on life in rural America is full of deeply human truths. The author knows full well that he is a member in good standing of the culture he criticizes. Todd looks with equal skepticism at his own follies and illusions as a citizen of the world, longing for the elusive prize of authenticity. On a more personal note, I couldn't help wondering if I was the only person (besides Todd's analyst--if he has one) to recognize what a sign of incredible progress it is that it only took the author 247 pages to write the following passage:
"Where do they come from these gifts? How resistant I am to the unseen! Others are on better terms with it; in the end we must all succumb to mystery: But I think within these sheltering walls I may sometimes understand another meaning of what it can be to 'live in the moment.' Not that striving, self forging, abyss-staring quest--not that at all, but instead something more like acceptance. It happens at a table at night with the closest people and you feel not unpleasantly that you are no more or less real than the candlelight. That they have your substance, your very self in their hands. That it is their gaze and their laughter, their unspoken and inexplicable affection that give you substance, that you are held there like a fallen leaf on an invisible updraft of air."
I am currently writing a proposal for a book on fatherhood. I hope I finish it soon. Needless to say, reading THE THING ITSELF isn't helping any. I'm sure I'm still capable of producing a sparkling, feelingful book but I find myself entertaining thoughts I imagine some of the New England Patriots must have had as they contemplated a season without their MVP Super Bowl winning quarterback Tom Brady--why bother? Whatever. Where I was going with this is that if I got another title out sooner than later I might find myself being asked by some radio host or news reporter "What is your favorite book?" I would answer, "Anything by Anne Lamott--but my favorite classic is Dick Todd's THE THING ITSELF, which just hit the shelves in August!"
Jonathan Diamond Ph.D.
Author of Fatherless Sons: Healing the Legacy of Loss
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