Curtains for Hollywood, Pages for Me

Hollywood writers and actors are on strike, and I have a contingency plan a few inches above the family television. On a long shelf slightly higher than the console are two dozen classics I’ve never gotten around to reading. Without new TV shows and movies, I’ll have plenty of time to catch up.

The thought comes to mind as we enter the homestretch of summer, a season marked by long afternoons in swaying hammocks, with thick books anchoring us in place as we rock through gentle waves of prose. It’s a lovely ideal, though one I’ve often found elusive, as I’ve been reminded this month while toting around my vintage copy of Beryl Markham’s “West with the Night.” I bought a paperback of Markham’s celebrated 1942 memoir of her years as a pilot in Africa when a new edition debuted in 1983. Forty years later, I finally cracked the cover, tackling about a chapter per week. At this rate I squeeze in a page or two daily amid garden chores and summer house guests. I just might finish as autumn’s leaves begin to turn. Meanwhile, my reading backlog grows.

I never read in summer, or any other season, as much as I think I will. I suspect I’m not alone. Even during the Covid-19 lockdowns, which brought reports of isolated Americans eagerly burrowing through volumes of Proust and Tolstoy, I didn’t achieve the reading bonanza I had hoped for. I’d just started a new job, which took my mental energies elsewhere. My copy of “War and Peace” remains unblemished by wear.

Even so, a reader lives in hope. Maybe the lack of Hollywood fare will give me the nudge I need to cross “Scoop,” Evelyn Waugh’s 1938 comic novel, off my bucket list. With any luck, that hefty collection of William Maxwell’s short stories and Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” can migrate from my to-be-read shelf, too.

It could be, as a TV viewer, that I’m headed for a little strike of my own.

Mr. Heitman, a columnist for the Baton Rouge Advocate, is editor of Phi Kappa Phi’s Forum magazine.