Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays,
quotes, words, magazines, and books on tape.
I am thinking about friends, tonight. Yes, I am thinking about you, the people who come here and visit about books. We live in many states and countries, yet we can gather here in this safe room and perch on the virtual window sill or throw a large cushion on the floor and listen and share the stories we are reading, now, or have read and loved.
Quite a while back, Pastor Dan mentioned Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon by Spider Robinson and I wrote the title down. Then plf mentioned something about Spider Robinson and I got busy and ordered the book. Written in the late 70’s, it is still timely. The Time-Traveler story is worth the price of the paperback alone. But, it is the setting that I want to talk about as well as other settings in stories where the main characters are friends.
In Callahan’s, the regulars share the fun of Monday night music sing-alongs. Tuesday is Punday and Wednesdays are for tall tales. There is Doc, Jake the narrator, fast Eddie, Callahan the owner, Long Drink, Slippery Joe, Noah and then the others who stagger through the door to tell their stories and get help. It is no wonder some man said he had gone searching for months all over Long Island looking for the place.
One of the reasons that I like the Harry Potter series is because Harry has a loyal bunch of friends with Hogwarts as the background along with the village where treats abound. I find myself wishing to be there and to belong to the Gryffindors.
When I was a child, I loved Robin Hood, not just for the adventures, but for the group of friends who lived in the Greenwood...Little John, Friar Tuck, Maid Marion, Will Scarlet and all the band of Merry Men.
Then there is The Little World of Don Camillo where Don Camillo is an unusually strong Italian priest who thwarts the Communist Mayor of the town over and over...and talks to Christ in his church.
In the title of Tolkien’s Fellowship of the Ring, I find the charm of the book which is that the companions go through peril together. Eternal enemies, the elves’ and dwarves’ representatives become friends. The four hobbits are separated, but two by two, they still give each other comfort.
Sam sticks to Frodo with determined love though they travel through hellish country to their probable doom.
In college so many years ago, I came close to having the same experience of fellowship in the small college coffee shop. When I was a junior, the school had only 600 students. Eventually, nearly all of them appeared in the coffee shop. A couple of us would come from class and sit down with a cup of fresh brew and others would come by who knew one of the persons sitting next to you and join the table. There was a small lounge off the coffee shop that had a piano and sometimes a student would be there playing. Once, a talented pianist played the whole Warsaw Concerto from memory and I was able to slip in the door and listen. What riches of the spirit!
Quotes from The New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women...Rosalie Maggio
Friendship is the bread of the heart...Mary Russell Mitford
My friends are my estate.
I felt it shelter to speak to you.
Emily Dickinson
There are people whom one loves immediately and forever. Even to know they are alive in the world with one is quite enough...Nancy Spain
She is a friend of mine. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order...Toni Morrison
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born...Anais Nin
Friends are the family we choose for ourselves...Edna Buchanan
and from Bartlett’s
Friendship is a sheltering tree...Coleridge
Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning started as friends and the rest is history. His steady love and admiration cured her and she escaped the chains of being bed ridden for a life in Italy with him.
In the Sonnets from the Portuguese XXVII
...I am safe and strong, and glad.
As one who stands in dewless asphodel
Looks backward on the tedious time he had
In the upper life,-so I, with bosom-swell,
Make witness, here, between the good and bad,
That Love, as strong as Death, retrieves as well.
and XXXXIX
Because thou hast the power and own’st the grace
To look through and behind this mask of me
(Against which years have beat thus blenchingly
with their rains), and behold my true face...
and XLI
I thank all who have loved me in their hearts,
With thanks and love from mine. Deep thanks to all
Who paused a little near the prison-wall
To hear my music in its louder parts
Ere they went onward...
So what books do you love because of the friendship that is displayed in them?
plf515 has a wonderful book diary early on Fridays and all day.
I do check this diary for comments a couple of days afterwards, too.