APRIL 6, 2020 – (Cont.) The next day came. My sister Jenny called from New York to give us a full report on the view from her family’s apartment. In the sitting room adjoining my wife’s book office, I put Jenny on speaker and chatted away. The conversation drew my wife from her office (her online book biz has been as brisk as ever). Our talk continued for quite a while. As it did, I slipped away from it and into my wife’s office, where a set of floor-to-ceiling shelves house a collection of old books of classic literature—a place I hadn’t yet searched for Robinson Crusoe.
Would you believe, my eyes landed straight upon an old volume of the classic! Ecstatic over my good fortune, I drew the ancient book from its resting spot. Despite its age—it bore a printing date of 1930—it was a fine edition, well-bound, printed on sturdy paper, and contained eight beautiful, illustrated plates. I opened carefully the front cover. To my amazement, it bore my father’s youthful but beautifully executed inscription, Raymond Nilsson / Jan. 1, 1936. He was 13 at the time.
He died nearly a decade ago just shy of 88, and it took a full year to sort and sift, save and sell the contents of the family home. Of the thousands of books it contained, only a small handful were retained and parceled out among my sisters and me. I’d lost all memory as to how Dad’s copy of Robinson Crusoe had landed where it did, hardly marooned but surrounded by friends.
Later in the day, while soaking up vitamin D on our back patio, I penned a journal entry about Robinson Crusoe, much of it as recounted here. I also recorded how by email I’d recently asked my oldest literary brother-in-law (of the three literary Nilsson bros-in-law), “Have you read Robinson Crusoe? If so, how would you rate it?”
“I read it when I was 10,” he’d written right back. “I loved it.”
The phone rang at the very moment I closed the cover of my journal. It was my most-books-of-classic-literature-read brother-in-law Dean (see posts, The Dean of Readers – 9/16/19; Quarantine Coach – 3/18/20; Scam Likely – 3/24/20).
“Dean!” I answered. “Have you read Robinson Crusoe?”
Of course he had. And Daniel Defoe’s other classic, Moll Flanders, which Dean said he’d enjoyed just as much as Robinson Crusoe.
That night I followed the “enlightened” advice of Don Simón Rodriguez. I read from a book . . . the book that contains “everything I need to know”—especially in these times of isolation; the book about the man marooned, Robinson Crusoe.
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
