The Book of Delights
- Jan 20, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: Jun 15
★★★★★
There are, for the sake of argument, and because we’re talking about Ross Gay’s delightful (ahem) The Book of Delights, two kinds of people: those who are open to delight and those who are not. By “open” I don’t simply mean “receptive to,” though I do mean that, but rather “unguarded.” That is, I think there are those who live lives of embattlement, living as if they are beset (on all sides, to quote Jules Winnfield), and those who do not. That is, there are those for whom life is full of possibility, let’s call it abundance, and those for whom life is full of certainty, and let’s call that scarcity. That is, and I’m thinking of my mother here, (and I promise no more “that is’s”), some see life as trial and tribulation, struggle and grief, something to be borne until the glory of death and the promise of the sweet hereafter, and some see life as journey with, yes, of course, ups and downs, times good and bad, but as adventure, not something to be borne but something to be savored.
I wasn’t raised with an abundant mindset, as I suspect is true of most people. My father, who created something from nothing when he opened his own restaurant, might have bestowed such a philosophy, but everything he did, for me at least, was clouded by an air of selfishness, his generosity turned inward. My mother, already mentioned, possessed not even this modicum of bounty, at least as was ever known to me, however asterisked like my father’s. (A twice-baked memory: asking for, at Christmas, music cassettes or compact discs, depending on the decade, and receiving several as gifts, but rather than the titles I’d asked for instead received ones my mother liked.) The reasons are myriad and speculative: Catholicism, Midwestern values, teenage parents, divorce, middle-to-lower-middle-class socioeconomics—a non-exhaustive list in no particular order. Though I wouldn’t consider either of them hard, at least not in the traditional sense, I do think they softened with age, both perhaps as grandchildren entered their lives, and, as we were no longer close by then, if we were ever truly close other than by proximity or obligation (I lament my “child of divorce” ennui-bordering-on-bitterness), none of that softness, that openness, was ever felt by me. (After all these years, it’s hard to know who to blame, if blame should be laid at all, them or me—chicken or egg, one begat the other but was, in turn, begat again by the other.)
All of which sounds like a major drag, man, and perhaps a tad judgemental, though I neither mean to pull any of us down (my parents included, who I’m sure did the best they could with the cards they were dealt, even if they dealt much of their own hands, and even if I often question that forgiving assessment), or to judge (my parents or anyone else). I mean, actually, to illuminate, to shed light upon, to open (yes, that word again) a window and let in a little fresh air. A question, then: How did I come to seek out a book on delight—a book of delights—when I was, for all intents and purposes, raised in an environment unfavorable, perhaps even hostile, to its premise? By climbing out the window, literally and metaphorically, around the age of 16, and, mostly, never looking back.
I first heard of Ross Gay from the (also delightful) podcast, Poetry Unbound, which featured Gay's poem “Ode to Buttoning and Unbuttoning My Shirt” back in 2020. It is, as you might suspect from the title, a poem that savors in the joy, the delight, of a simple, and often simply mundane task. And that, finding delight where you do—things big and small, meaningful and meaningless, profound and trivial, public and private—isn’t just at the heart of The Book of Delights, it’s the point. The beauty of delight is that it’s unlimited, abundant—infinitely abundant—so there’s no need to hoard it, to squirrel it away. Finding it reveals more. Sharing multiplies it. Delight begets delight. Gay opens you up to his world of delight, in, frankly, the most delightful way, and, through it, you can see how to open up your own world to it, that anything can be worthy of delight if you’re attuned enough to find it. Go ahead, throw open the sash, take a deep breath, climb on out if you like, and take it all in. It just might change your life.
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