"Tyrannosaurs in F-14s!"

As part of packing up the Red House, I decided to fill one small box with the books and DVDs that I would want with me anywhere I lived. 1 ft. x 1 ft. x 1 ft.: The Essential Matt Wright Collection. In no particular order, and without proper italicization because I'm lazy, here it is:

— The Autobiography of Malcolm X

— The War Against Cliche by Martin Amis.

— Pnin by Vladimir Nabokov

— Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino

— The War Prayer by Mark Twain

— A Mencken Chrestomathy by HLM

— Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

— George Orwell's collected essays

— James Baldwin's collected essays

— The Essays of E. B. White

— One Man's Meat by E. B. White

— The collected fictions of Jorge Luis Borges

— Writing with Style by John Trimble

— The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White

— The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon

— The Oxford Book of Essays edited by John Gross

— Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

— Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

— Orlando by Virginia Woolf

— Notebook of a Return to the Native Land by Aime Cesaire

— The Swimming-Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst

— On Love by Alain de Boton

— The Big Lebowski

— Monty Python and... ...the Holy Grail, ...the Meaning of Life, ...Life of Brian

— Pulp Fiction

— 25th Hour

— Spaceballs

— Eight of Phaidon's -55- series of photographer profiles — notably W. Eugene Smith, Walker Evans, and Andre Kertesz

— The Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book by Bill Watterson

There is a little room left over in the box, and if I had my druthers, I'd fill it with my copy of The Master and Margarita, which I think died an untimely death while on loan, and a Cowboy Bebop DVD collection.

It's a pretty interesting little exercise — a mini-personality profile. One cubic foot puts a constraint on portability, which made my Phaidon books so viable.

But I probably would have had to chuck the whole size requirement had my Calvin and Hobbes book not been exactly one foot in length. I came across the 10th Anniversary Book yesterday and made the mistake of flipping through a few panels. One of the greatest luxuries of packing early is that it allows you to get lost in books you haven't picked up in a while, and I took full advantage, rereading the thing cover to cover all last evening.

The 10th anniversary book, which contains Watterson's commentary on the characters, the evolution of the strip, his feuds with his syndicate, and his thoughts on the artform of comic strips, remains one of the most entertaining and enlightening looks at an artist and his craft. Few other books so aptly demonstrate the tension between an artist and the constraints of making a living off his art. And it remains funny to the point of tears on even its third or fourth read.

So here's a question: Which Calvin and Hobbes character are you? I look and act too much like Calvin to make any other claim, but I think deep down I'd like to be Hobbes.

UPDATE: I accidentally left out Charlotte's Web by E. B. White and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. I have a soft spot for kid's books, probably because they deal so unashamedly in emotions. These books remind me: Emotions are simple; it's figuring out how they fit into our lives that is so complex.