Fifty years ago this year, I dropped out of graduate school and my studies in medieval history, and set off in a different direction. I’ve never forgotten the thought that came rolling along right behind my escape from academia: “Now I can finally read whatever I want.” 

Nonprofit Pisgah Legal Services will welcome Imani Perry as its 14th Annual Justice Forum keynote speaker on Oct. 23 in Asheville with a free watch party happening simultaneously in Cullowhee.  

The event is free, but registration is required. This event is made possible by presenting sponsors Jacquelyn and Bruce Rogow and others generous members of our community. 

“In my younger and more vulnerable years” are the words with which narrator Nick Carraway kicks off “The Great Gatsby.” Those seven words entranced me when I first read “Gatsby,” living then in my own younger and vulnerable days as a 20-something whose heroes were writers, most of them American, most of them male. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Thomas Wolfe: that was my triumvirate, with dozens of other novelists and poets sitting just below the salt at the same table. 

It was nearing lunchtime. In the midst of putting out the newspaper last Tuesday, I was getting hungry when I realized it was almost noon. I hadn’t eaten breakfast and was still craving eggs, sausage, toast, hashbrowns (with onions) and strong coffee (at least two cups worth).  

Several years had passed since I’d last hunted with any enthusiasm. I’d go out into the field, find some game, and take home a few trophies, but the old thrill, that sense of anticipation and joy, had gone missing in action. I began to suspect my days of excitement and pleasure while on the hunt were at an end. 

Benjamin Merkle’s “The White Horse King: The Life of Alfred the Great” (Thomas Nelson, 2009, 272 pages) tells the story of the Wessex monarch who resisted the Vikings and after decades of fighting and prayer drove them out of his kingdom. He also began unifying Anglo-Saxon England into one realm, a merger only completed during the reign of Athelstan, Alfred’s grandson. 

Recently, I read an article about a Tolstoy short story. Curious if I had it, I pulled out Tolstoy’s, “Master and Man and Other Stories” (Penguin Classics, 2005, 293 pages) and found it. It was very short so I finished it in one sitting and moved on to the next story.

For all of you ’70s and ’80s hipsters, I’ve got one for you. In his new book, acclaimed author Paul Elie (“The Last Supper: Art, Faith, Sex and Controversy in the 1980s,” Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2025, 464 pages) takes a deep dive into the music and arts scene of the 1970s and 80s.

Reminiscent of “Starting From San Francisco,” one of the first books by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, San Francisco is also where Victor Depta spent some of his early years and where this 2024 reprint of his 1973 book “The Creek” (Ohio Univ. Press, 2024) begins — with references to Coit Tower, Nob Hill and the Fillmore District when he was there and reading Wordsworth, Whitman and Rimbaud.

Sometimes a book finds you when you need it and don’t even know you need it.

Over the last few years, I’ve read some of Andrew Klavan’s columns. He’s an excellent writer, the author of novels, film scripts and works of non-fiction.