Some time ago, I bought a matching set of books that supposedly contained everything that Washington Irving ever wrote. “Some day, I’ll read them all.”, I thought while making the purchase. At the same time, I wanted to fill bookshelves with something that looked nice. Frankly, the promise to read the books was made to justify filling the space on the shelves.
After my recent detubification, I began reading the entire collection. I began with Irving’s “Life of Mahomet”, followed through with his accounts of the Moslem invasion of Spain, its reconquest by Christian forces, his “Life of Columbus” and his fascinating writing on the settlement of the Spanish new world.
During this, I’d also read about his visit to the western frontier, a hunting trip that lasted several months, his travels through England, and an occasional story like “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, familiar to many of us from books and movies.
As a result of having detubified myself, I have read what, if it were combined, would be a single book over two feet thick, nearly the entirety of Washington Irving’s literary output. I now have a feel for the first half of the 1800s that I never had, along with an understanding of American history, attitude, and thought that could be found in very few places.
Soon, I would like to find a similar set of Edgar Allen Poe’s writings, which were equally voluminous, though somewhat weirder.
