Reading for Survival

by John D. MacDonald

With an afterword by John Y. Cole and Jean Trebbi. vi , 26, 2 pages. stiff paper wrappers.. 8vo..

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Writing, Philosophy

26 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1987

About the author

John D. MacDonald was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and educated at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Syracuse and Harvard, where he took an MBA in 1939. During WW2, he rose to the rank of Colonel, and while serving in the Army and in the Far East, sent a short story to his wife for sale, successfully. He served in the Office of Strategic Services (O.S.S.) in the China-Burma-India Theater of Operations. After the war, he decided to try writing for a year, to see if he could make a living. Over 500 short stories and 70 novels resulted, including 21 Travis McGee novels.

Following complications of an earlier heart bypass operation, MacDonald slipped into a coma on December 10 and died at age 70, on December 28, 1986, in St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was survived by his wife Dorothy (1911-1989) and a son, Maynard.

In the years since his death MacDonald has been praised by authors as diverse as Stephen King, Spider Robinson, Jimmy Buffett, Kingsley Amis and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.. Thirty-three years after his passing the Travis McGee novels are still in print.

Reviews

[Cathy DuPont · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boston Marathon Bombers of April 15, 2013, Meet in 1985 Essay
While I have not read everything that John D. MacDonald has written, I have read the entire Travis McGee series twice and started the third time around earlier this year. Will pick up #3 in the series later this month. Also, I've read numerous other of JDM's standalones. Picked up Cape Fear a couple of times but it scares me so much, have to put it down.

I was unaware of this essay by JDM until I was conversing with D.R. Martin and others on his Travis McGee blog specifically JDM's Free Fall in Crimson review.

Written in 1987, the essay, which I downloaded, read like it was published a week ago especially in light of the Boston Marathon bombings and subsequent identification of the brothers suspected of the bombings. (This is Saturday morning, the surviving brother was caught bloody but alive last night.)

MacDonald writes in the voice of Meyer "Take a quick look at terrorism. In Ireland, in Africa, in the Middle East. Most active terrorists are between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. We keep making the automatic assumption that they know something of the world, of history, of politics, of geography. But that assumption is wrong. Totally wrong. They are manipulated by men who have the same thing in their heads that the kids have---nothing but hate, anger, machismo, a sense of fraternity, and access to explosives.

Take the title Reading For Survival literal.

Reading this essay encourages me to read more books on poetry (which I don't read much), political science, history and science. And I will take Meyers's advice and read Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror especially since so many Goodreads friends have had the good sense to have already read it.

Read broadly.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was turned on to this short essay by a friend. Her review is here:
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
She provides a link in the comments to a place it can be read for free.

Warning: When I attempted to download the file, I was told the link contained malware, so it was blocked by my security. I had no issue reading, although today 25Apr2013, someone else got some malware from the page, so I have removed the link from here.

************ Spoilers below, but it's a nonfiction piece in a fiction setting, so I don't think they really matter ***************

MacDonald died in 1986 & this was his last published piece, I think. That makes this almost 3 decades old. It's rather chilling how well it fits today. The essay is a conversation between Travis McGee & his friend Meyer, a very well read & thoughtful man.

Meyer contends that man evolved his memory & reason as a survival mechanism. This led into a society too complex for any man to remember everything, so we then evolved writing to augment it. While no man can read everything, the successful man will read enough of everything to be able to spot logical flaws in the situations he faces & thus will avoid common pitfalls & can make rational decisions by weighing evidence & doing further research.

...one out of every three adults... cannot read well enough to understand a help-wanted ad... They are disenfranchised, completely cut off from any knowledge of history, literature, an science. And because they can't read they become negative role models for their children, who, in their turn, become a new generation of of illiterates, of victims....

Meyer says he quotes from an editorial in "American Spectator" written by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. from the July 1986 issue.

And I [Meyer] quote: "Here in America, as elsewhere, there will always be tremulous little people of dim intellect and hyperactive imagination, burning for explanations to all life's vicissitueds.....

They are defeated by histories that illuminate the past. No species of scholarship or analysis could ever satisfy them; for they need that Wondrous Explanation that will quiet all their fears, thrill them with villains to revile, and never tax their feeble powers of intellection."

"...He is beyond reason, beyond argumentation. He is right and everyone who does not believe exactly the same as he is wrong."

Wow! How many of this sort do I encounter on a daily basis? Obviously the news items about terrorists, but also the local preacher & a neighbor who tried to convince me that the world was only 5,000 years old. (Meyer mentions this, too. Scary.) Not everyone is that bad, but many seem to believe everything demagogues & political commentators tell them. It leads to the polarized arguments over guns, abortion, & homosexuality. Complex topics yet people fall into 'right or wrong' arguments. Ridiculous, yet that's another part of our evolution showing.

Anyway, this is well worth reading. It's short, only takes a few minutes.

[Book2Dragon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't say I did not like the book. It is supposedly intellectual views of the world in 1986, as told by a conversation between MacDonald and his chief character Travis McGee. Travis goes on & on about the state of the world and how reading will save it. There are a few excellent quotes.
I suppose because MacDonald was an atheist that some of the book turned me off. Also, it read as kind of preachy. (irony there?) It is interesting, however, that this was written in 1986 (published by the Florida Center for the Book in 1987, post-humously); before computers and eBooks.
It is a tiny booklet (my edition was 47 pages), and might be worth a read. (Library of Congress, center for the book).

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is why I read. And this is why I do not read enough.

In this essay, comprised of a running conversation between detective fiction's greatest protagonist, Travis McGee, and his erudite friend, Meyer, John D. MacDonald succinctly and convincingly links our survival as a species to us being widely read as individuals.

It is impossible to read this and not be taken with how MacDonald, over a quarter of a century ago, lays terrorism, religious intolerance, and climate change denial at the feet of an inadequately read populace.

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

John D. MacDonald believed that books can save the world. And so, in 1985, the Library of Congress asked him to share his thoughts on the matter for posterity. He used that chance, and a plot device of his two most beloved characters Travis McGee and Meyer having a conversation, to explain why he thought that reading was the cure for belief in Creationism (or the belief that it should be taught in school) and the undertakings of Terrorism, for example. It could save the best parts of Environmentalism and protect us from scams. He spoke about how reading gives the reader a kind of bulletproof vest suitable against charlatans and connivers of all manner. L. Ron Hubbard spread by book and could be, MacDonald reasoned, made harmless by book as well.

The intent wasn't to prevent the publication of books or ideas he didn't agree with. That would defeat the whole point. His contention was that one who reads regularly and from a wide variety of sources (fiction, history, poetry, etc), that one could be essentially inoculated against much of the silliness in modern society without having to surrender anything worth saving. He believed that reading broadened the mind and gave it space to roam free so that a person could be or give whatever it is they have to be or give before their short time runs up.

He was right, of course. John D. usually was.

[Sheri Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading for Survival is a brilliant essay written by John D. MacDonald in 1986 as a Center for the Book project. There is so much genius packed into 30 short pages, but, for me, the most memorable lines are:
"My point is that the man who reads is using the fabulous memory storage and relationship analysis of the brain his ancestors developed aeons ago. He is facilitating his survival in the contemporary world. He will recognize the pockets of fanaticism around him and know what is causing these universal foci of dementia. Of course, he will be called an egghead or a bleeding heart or a secular humanist, but he can lean back and, in a certain way, enjoy the marvelously crackpot rantings of a Jesse Helms, a Botha, a Meese, a Kohmeni, a Falwell, a Qaddafi, a Gorbachev, an Ortega, a Noriega--people from both ends of every spectrum, whooping and leaping and frothing, absolutely livid at the idea their particular warped vision of reality is not shared by everyone. Their basic lack of education, of reading, of being able to comprehend the great truths of reality has left empty places in their heads, into which great mischief has crept."

Highly recommend to anyone who suspects how critically dangerous illiteracy is. Thanks to my friend, Gavin Bledsoe, for letting me borrow it.

[Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Lost Travis McGee

"Reading for Survival" is a literacy and reading promotion short story / novella written by John D. MacDonald who is best known as the author of the Travis McGee series. Stepping outside of the standard mystery detective or investigator model, McGee is instead a "salvage consultant" who aids clients in the recovery of stolen items.

In the short story, McGee listens patiently while his boating-bum buddy Meyer pontificates on the evolution of the human species and the preservation of human knowledge in written form.

Copies of the original 1987 booklet/pamphlet seem to go for rather alarming sums of $40 to $100 dollars at the usual rare book store websites as no recent reprints are available. I found mine in a bootleg edition that was freely posted on the web (but is no longer available). It wasn't an actual facsimile but rather the result of someone simply retyping the entire document, adding a dozen or so typos to the mix (which I assume were not in the original).

[JC Olsthoorn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love John D's Travis McGee series. It kept me interested in reading, and now I reread those well worn books. So it was a real gem to read this book because of how he uses the conversation between Travis and Meyer to shed light on a topic relevant now as it was in the mid-eighties, and something that John D touched on in many different ways throughout his McGee series.

[Jennah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should read this every decade and it should be taught in schools. At least college.

[адэм · Rating 4 out of 5]

An essay dialectic between one caveman-obsessed schizoreader and his curious friend. Surprisingly enjoyable, below I've listed some of my favorite quotes:

"His ideas are compilations of the thought and wisdom he has accumulated up until now."

"Your turn, my friend. I've shown you the rock. Now you have to tip it over and look for the bugs."

"There's a clue for you in something Mark Twain said. 'The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.'"

"The man of a million years ago used exposure, experience, and all his senses to acquire, in memory, a useful picture of reality. His world was small in scope, limited to what he could see, hear, taste, eat, kill, carry, and use. The world today, to the man walking in a wilderness, is still the same size. But to the man who can read and also remember, it is huge and it is monstrously complicated. The man who can read and remember and ponder the big realities is a man keyed to survival of the species. These big realities are the history of nations, cultures, religions, politics, and the total history of man—from biology to technology. He does not have to read everything. That's an asinine concept. He should have access to everything, but have enough education to differentiate between slanted tracts and balanced studies, between hysterical preachings and carefully researched data."

"To be aware of the world you live in you must be aware of the constant change wrought by science, and the price we pay for every advance."

"l would not demand that a man read ponderous tomes, or try to read everything—any more than I would expect our ancestor to examine every single leaf on a plant he remembers as being poisonous. I would expect that in his reading—which should be wide ranging, fiction, history, poetry, political science—he would acquire the equivalent of a liberal arts education and acquire also what I think of as the educated climate of mind, a climate characterized by skepticism, irony, doubt, hope, and a passion to learn more and remember more."

"The life unexamined is the life unlived. Can one examine his own life without reference to the realities in which he lives? The political, geographical, historical, philosophical, scientific, religious realities? He does not have to know all aspects with some kind of deadly precision. He has to know the truth of them, the shape and the size, their place in relation to each other."

"Common sense is uncommon, dear boy. and in more cases than you could imagine, it comes from reading widely, and from remembering."

"The same idea was said in a different way by Eric Hoffer, the old dock-walloper, in his book years ago titled The True Believer. Hoffer's theory was that the best fanatics are people who have nothing in their heads but wind, smoke, and emptiness. Then if any idea manages to slip in there, it does not matter how insipid or grotesque that idea might be, it will expand to fill all the available emptiness, and it takes over the individual and all his actions. He cannot hear any voice but his own. He is beyond reason, beyond argumentation. He is right and everyone who does not believe exactly the same as he is wrong."

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

A conversation between Meyer and McGee, sometime during the time period of the last few books.

As usual with my reviews, please first read the publisher’s blurb/summary of the book. Thank you.

Meyer expounds a thesis about how external memory (mostly books in those days) has left a huge gap in man's actual memories. This leads to all sorts of bad results.

Mostly it's pretty dry stuff, and a bit dated as well.

[Gavin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 1986 conversation between Travis McGee and Meyer that John D. MacDonald utilized in order to stress the importance of reading for The Library of Congress.

One quote by Meyer:

"Creationism? Garden of Eden? The world is six thousand years old? Every word in the Bible is true? Everybody has a right to his or her belief, Travis. But no one has the right to impose it by statute and ordinance on anyone else against his or her will. These days the Shiites are trying to impose on the Sunnis their particular version of the Koran. A very warlike version. Forcible imposition doesn't work."

Meyer further goes on recalling that man at one time had to learn and memorize everything. He knew plants, animals, and ways to survive. He better or he would die. With writing and especially printing that changed as man could neglect memory and refresh it with a book. Yet somehow after a great explosion of knowledge we are slipping back. Meyer calls it the Len Bias syndrome. A famous collegiate athlete who could not 'write a third grade theme, a simple three- or four- sentence description of a bunny rabbit. A fabulous athlete with a skull full of wet noodles.'

The life unexamined is the life unlived. So read books that don't meet your manias. Expand your world.

This book is only 47 pages including afterword. Lots of takeaways here.

[Randy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This little known essay was one of the final things that John D. wrote. It is a moment of true pleasure, a chance to spend a moment or two more with McGee and Meyer, and to revel in the role of the reader.

I obtained my copy, an actual printed book copy, from the Book of The Month Club many years ago. If you poke around a bit online I'm sure you can find a copy to read.

Because reading does make the world look different. Those of us who read are better equipped to see the world as it really is, not just how we might wish it would be.

As an added treat, MacDonald uses this essay to recommend other of my favorite writers: Barbara Tuchman.

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

A short book written at the request of the Library of Congress to discuss the need for people to read.

[Peter Sidell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think of John D MacDonald s one of the literary greats of the 20th century, I base my opinion on how much I enjoyed his books - both the Travis McGee series and the rest. I tried to read everything he wrote. Unfortunately some of it is hard to get.
He has found a clever way to preach his message - the importance of reading in human society and its survival and progress. Too bad he may be mainly preaching to the choir.
It is brief - prehps describable as a pamphlet as mauch as a book. It is also one of the last things he wrote.
If you can find a copy it is well worth the time it takes to read.

[Ginny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been on my shelf for years; I can't even remember where it came from. 😃 So glad I finally picked it up!
I haven't read anything before from this author but I certainly will now. A wonderful thought-provoking essay. I run a high school library and see first hand the fading intellect of our society. "I don't ever have to plan ahead or remember anything! I have a phone!" Not usually spoken, but that's the thought process.

[Vincent Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

One might read this short text and not agree with everything the character of Meyer puts forth. However, it seems that might be part of MacDonalds point. Many of its hard truths seemingly ring harder today than they might have in 1986. This short essay does a great job of outlining the necessity of reading for the future of man.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little (46 pages) essay on the value of reading and the danger of NOT, written by the prolific writer of Travis McGee novels. A Book of the Month Club freebie, as I recall.

Really only read this one time, no matter what GOODREADS thinks.

[Fred · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's worth reading and well written like you would expect.

[Carol Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read! Thought-provoking. Fascinatingly current, despite being written in 1986. Could have been written last week.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Makes one think, and definitely forgives those of us who are book addicts!!

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone should take an hour or so and read this pamphlet. MacDonald wrote it in 1985, shortly before he died. He was sadly prescient in describing what happens to a society that does not read. It produces people who are “...whooping and leaping and frothing, absolutely livid at the idea their particular warped vision of reality is not shared by everyone.” Where might it end? In “Mutually Assured Destruction”.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Actually a short essay MacDonald wrote in 1985 for the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, this is a dialog between MacDonald's great characters McGee and Meyer on the importance of reading. It was fun to read McGee and Meyer almost 30 years after their last outing and 27 years after MacDonald died.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure this goes with nonfiction. It's an essay by John D. MacDonald about reading, but it involves his two fictional characters Travis McGee and Meyer in a dialogue. A fun work, quite short, and definitely for completists. I enjoyed it.

[F.C. Etier · Rating 5 out of 5]

We must read in order to survive!

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing here I didn't know or think already, but elegant as all get-out.

[Diane Large · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is why I read. MacDonald wrote this in 1987 and touches on terrorism and religion as if it were today. Amazing!