“Of course books tell about their readers.”
It was at an art show and the man making the statement was a successful interior designer. He went on to say he often bought classic books by subject for bookshelves in the homes he designed and furnished.
“My clients know that people judge other people by the books they read. They want to impress their visitors.”
He went on to describe people as being strongly influenced by characters, whether they are fictional or non fictional, in books or on the screen. Ex-President George W. Bush has a story that he loves. Both he and his wife have publicly acknowledged that the story he relishes and reads over and over again is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Accepting Patriot Act reading habit assumptions, the idea that a book gives insight into its reader, I purchased a copy to investigate.
This is the story:
One Sunday morning a caterpillar emerged from a very small egg. That little caterpillar was very, very hungry. The author gives a day-by-day account of what the caterpillar consumed during the following week. Day one the caterpillar ate through one apple; two pears on day two; day three, plums. The next day four strawberries. On the fifth day, Friday, he ate through five oranges. Saturday he hit the junk food trail and devoured a slice of chocolate cake, an ice cream cone, one pickle, a slice of Swiss cheese, a piece of salami, one lollipop, a slice of cherry pie, a sausage, one cupcake, and a slice of watermelon. Of course he didn’t get sick, but by Sunday he had slowed down considerably and could only down one green leaf. Later that day he spun a cocoon around himself and two weeks later the once avaricious unspectacular worm emerged a spectacularly beautiful butterfly.
But beautiful or not a butterfly’s existence depends on more than the dietary intake of its previous incarnation as a caterpillar. At the time I read of our ex-president’s literary taste, the Miami Blue butterfly once found throughout Florida had become the victim of pesticides and the uncontrolled development of our natural environment. This tiny blue butterfly was making its last stand in Bahia Honda State Park on the Florida Keys. In an ironic twist, this beautiful blue butterfly is presently holding onto its existence by nesting in Nicker Bean Plants that sprout near a neglected, rusting railroad trestle, a trestle built by Henry Flagler, the railroad magnate, who initially opened the Florida Keys to development when he established the first train service from the Keys to the mainland in 1912.
A butterfly needs flowers, plants and a pesticide-free environment to thrive. But as a friend pointed out to me that perhaps in the world we are creating, the caterpillar will remain a caterpillar—forced to eat his Saturday meal over and over.
My friend’s premise has yet to be proved. Until then will the butterfly and his biological predecessor the caterpillar still tenuously survive in an environment created by those claiming that industrial and automobile pollution do not harm the natural environment, and that global warming is caused by an overheating sun.
A butterfly may be nothing but a caterpillar showing off, but it does have to survive to show off.
Given his busy political schedule, while in office Bush may not have had time to read other books. But he might pay particular attention to the Miami Blue. In another ironic twist this beautiful butterfly is barely surviving in the very state that made him president.
Copyright 2009 Irving Rothstein
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