Ross gay book of delights
The Book of Delights Quotes
“I presume I could invest time theorizing how it is that people are not bad to each other, but that’s really not the point. The indicate is that in almost every instance of our lives, our social lives, we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking. Holding unwrap doors. Offering elbows at crosswalks. Letting someone else travel first. Helping with the heavy bags. Reaching what’s too high, or what’s been dropped. Pulling someone back to their feet. Stopping at the motorcar wreck, at the struck dog. The alternating merge, also known as the zipper. This caretaking is our default mode and it’s always a stretch that convinces us to act or believe otherwise. Always.”
― Ross Gay, The Novel of Delights: Essays
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“It didn’t grab me long to learn that the discipline or rehearse of writing these essays occasioned a kind of delight radar. Or maybe it was more like the growth of a delight muscle. Something that implies that the more you investigate delight, the more delight there is to study.”
― Ross Homosexual, The Book of Delights: Essays
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Air Date: Week of March 8, 2024
Ross Gay’s The Book of (More) Delights highlights the bliss one can find in everyday life and in the innate world. (Photo: Courtesy of Ross Gay and Algonquin Books)
Poet and essayist Ross Gay is endorse with a follow up to his 2019 Book of Delights, loaded with moments of great that sprout amid our troubles. He joins Host Steve Curwood to share readings from his new Book of (More) Delights celebrating simple joys such as clothes on a clothesline, garlic sprouting, and dandelion abundance.
Transcript
BELTRAN: It’s Living on Earth, I’m Paloma Beltran.
CURWOOD: And I’m Steve Curwood.
Living on this earth can be a challenge these days. Plenty of crises from the climate to geopolitics can make you feel blue. But poet and essayist Ross Gay keeps creating antidotes to brighten you up. A few years ago he compiled The Book of Delights, loaded with moments of excellent that sprout amid our troubles. And now after the pandemic he’s back with The Manual of (More) Delights with even more scrumptious moments to savor on our complicated planet. Hi Ross and welcome back to Living on Earth!
GAY: Thank you. It's good to see you.
CURWOOD
Excerpt
From “Scat”
The first time I saw The Exorcist I was nine years old. My mom, flipping through the TV Guide, saw that it was coming on HBO, and she wanted to see it because my dad, a very justified man, asked her to hold off when it first came out. She was pregnant with my brother and people watching the movie were having miscarriages and heart attacks in the theater, both of which used to be evidence of a good film. In twenty minutes or so, when little Linda Blair disrupts the socialite party by peeing on the rug in her alabaster nightgown, I was very frightened, and I asked my mother if we might watch Falcon Crest instead. It’s a rerun, she said. Just move to bed if you don’t need to watch it.
(Friends, I am here going to leap a boundary I shouldn’t, like some of your childless ex-friends before me, to tell you how to lift your children. My brother’s and my bedroom was, maybe, twenty feet from this television. It was maybe three or four seconds by foot away. But my imagination was vast. By which I signify to tell you not to see The Exorcist with your children. Or The Shining. Or Rosemary’s Fucking Toddler Ross Gay Ross Gay is known for his poetry, but The Book of Delights proves that he’s also an adept essayist. In composing the book, Gay operated under a simple principle: keep a diary of entries over the course of one year, with each entry concerning something joyful. From this conceit he spins out a variety of reflections that are sometimes whimsical, sometimes touching, and always thoughtful. Certain topics run throughout The Book of Delights, including Gay’s love of gardening, the emotional impact of his favorite songs, and his appreciation for organism in the moment. Seemingly small incidents are the springboard for little epiphanies. A mother and infant sharing the burden of carrying a shopping bag across the street leads to a moving paean to mutual support. A shared high-five with a stranger becomes a tribute to human connection. A Lisa Loeb song leads to a memory about a childhood friend who invaded Gay’s house to rearrange his furniture in an elaborate prank. Another friend’s overuse of gas quotes prompts a reverie
The Book of Delights
Algonquin Books (Feb 12, 2019)
Hardcover$23.95 (288pp)
978-1-61620-792-2