I bought this book a while back for Señora after hearing the author 
interviewed on an NPR podcast. He sounded like an interesting fellow and the two readings that he did during the interview were (wait for it) delightful. With Señora’s health issues she occasionally struggles with her mood. This book struck me as a possibility to shine a little light into her days. She was grateful for the gift and placed it on the nightstand on her side of the bed.
I noticed after a while that she was not reading it much as the bookmark had hardly marched past the first few pages. In fact she had only read the first 11 essays. Since she was not reading it, I placed it in the downstairs baño and I read one or more essays each day during my “meditation” time.
The book is not what I would have expected after listening to the interview. In many ways I felt like the title was a case of false advertising. Perhaps Señora and I are not his target audience. Gay’s primary medium and what he is best known for is poetry. Certainly, many of these essays have a poetic sensibility, especially some of his run on sentences. These act like free form poems inserted into the text without the distinction as being set off as such.
He is also a professor at Indiana University. You learn from the essays that he is the child of a mixed marriage. I hate that term, but do not know what else to use. He identifies as black and grew up poor. I mention these facts as they play a part in many of his essays. Some of his essays dealt with, at least briefly, his sexuality and left me a little uncomfortable. He also tends to use some rough language from time to time. I’m not particularly prudish about this, but I tend to think of this type of language like salt. It is best used sparingly and is not good on all foods.
Some of the essays were truly uplifting and delightful. Flower in the Curb talks about just that, and he describes the flower so vividly that you can see it. In Hummingbird he intertwines one of my delights, hummingbirds, with a very human story of illness in a relationship. I found it more bittersweet than delightful. His Pawpaw Grove was my favorite. He is enamored with this fruit and these trees and it shows. Fireflies is a close second. I’m betting most of us have fond childhood memories of these insects. I also enjoyed Black Bumblebees as he described the appearances and habits of a species of bumblebees I did not know about.
One essay I found more than a little interesting, The Negreeting. My interest in this essay stems from having long term relationship with a few African-Americans. I observed, and just filed it away, that black folks almost always acknowledge each other in public places. In my mind it was just amped up Southern courtesy. To Gay it is more than that. He goes on a bit of a rant about a black man in red tennis shoes who failed to give him the negreeting!
I will say that many of his essays struck me as curmudgeonly rants, something that might fit on my blog, Curmudgeon-Alley. One such was Some Stupid Shit which for all practical purposes was a short essay trashing Thomas Jefferson. Yes, Jefferson was a complicated person and one of the biggest slave owners of colonial America. We seem to be busily revising and trashing so much of our history to fit the political correctness of this time. I just felt like he was piling on, but then I am not a big fan of much that passes for politically correct.
Perhaps the essay that bothered me most was An Abundance of Public Toilets. In it he essentially writes about being out, and not being able to find a public toilet quick enough. He ends up peeing in his car seat and that was the delight. That was essay 72 and I just about quit reading there. He goes on with this same theme in Get Thee to the Nutrient Cycle! In it he graphically describes collecting his urine as a nitrogen source for his garden. He is also much too real in recounting how a friend’s daughter almost drank from the Gatorade bottle he had used as a collection vessel. Not delightful.
I found the book a mixed bag. Some of the essays were truly uplifting, delightful and worth my time. More than a few had me wanting to toss the book in the pile to go to Half Priced Books.
The book can be found at Amazon: The Book of Delights: Essays
More information about the author can be found at his website: Ross Gay
Be well.