Read This: How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself

David Mamet was born in 1947. He was eleven years old when Robert Paul Smith’s How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself was published in 1958. I’m not able to get in touch with Mamet to ask him if he read this book, but I am willing to bet folding money that he did, then or shortly after. Basically, this is a book that gives young boys ideas about how to entertain themselves when they don’t have anybody else to play with, starting out by making a spool tank and ending with a spring trap constructed from a wishbone, chewing gum, a burnt match, and a rubber band. Of the hundred or so pages in between, at least a dozen are dedicated to the rules of mumbly-peg; you can understand why this new commemorative edition features a huge legal disclaimer on the back cover flap.

Here’s an example of why I’m pretty sure David Mamet read this book growing up:

“One of the things that I found out when I was writing this book was that an artist can’t draw a picture of something without seeing it. I talked my wife into doing the drawings, and I’ve spent about a month now in making all the things in the book so she could draw them. Fortunately for me, I was doing this in the fall, and I could tell her that the reason I couldn’t make a willow whistle was because the only time to make willow whistles was in the spring. If you want the real truth, I never even knew a kid who could make a willow whistle. But there were books in the lbirary that told how to make a willow whistle, and I used to try. The only reason I’m even mentioning this is that people I’ve talked to claimed they knew a kid when they were kids who was able to make willow whistles. Maybe I’m just a dope about willow whistles and you’ll be very good at making them. But everything else in the book I’ve made. I made them when I was a kid, and I made them again as a grownup, and they work. This is a guarantee.”

Hell, after reading this book, I want to go out and get a penknife and start playing mumbly-peg. Which, oddly enough, I never did do when I was in the Cub Scouts and had a penknife. Boy, did I miss out. Also, I want an old shoelace and a horse chestnut so I can make a conker. And I wouldn’t be averse to making that spool tank. It’s a really wonderful book, and one of the great things about it is that Smith is constantly telling kids that “just plain going to the library and getting out a book is a swell thing to do,” and that they’ll learn a bunch more things than the things he teaches them, and they should look forward to that. Because the greatest skill How to Do Nothing with Nobody All Alone by Yourself teaches isn’t mastering the various levels of mumbly-peg, it’s about learning how to be content with yourself without anybody else around.

(Officially, from what I can tell, this book isn’t coming out until next March, which is funny because I’ve got a finished copy right here in my hands, but go figure. Just mark the date on your calendar already.)

7 December 2009 | read this |