BY MICHAEL KEARNS

Mind Reading

“My body has certainly wandered a good deal,” Noel Coward said, “but I have an uneasy suspicion that my mind has not wandered enough.”

There are presently seven books—some carefully bookmarked, others haphazardly folded to the page I'm on—in a state of disarray next to my bed. (We won't list what used to be next to my bed in a state of disarray.) There's also a book that I'd previously read in galleys, written and autographed by a former porn god.

In her galvanizing acceptance speech for the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature, 88-year old Doris Lessing lamented the absence of reading in our culture: “We are in a fragmenting culture, where our certainties of even a few decades ago are questioned and where it is common for young men and women who have had years of education, to know nothing about the world, to have read nothing, knowing only some specialty or other, for instance, computers.”

The books I'm reading can be easily categorized into three genres: Politics, Spirituality, and (don't be too surprised here) Show Biz.

I find myself obsessed with politics. Adhering to the axiom that we need to know something about the past in order to examine the present and invest in the future, I am more than halfway through Doris Kearns Goodwin's stirring Team Of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln and constantly flipping through the pages of Eldridge Cleaver's Soul On Ice as if they are on fire.

Both books illuminate two of the hot button topics that dominate today's political terrain: the black man's animus in America and the acrimoniousness of factious behavior among politicos. The success of Lincoln's presidency was dependent upon the syncretic energies of his most vociferous political combatants, a lesson that should deter the schoolyard tactics of some of the current crop of potential presidential nominees. Nominated as the interracial Peace and Freedom Party's candidate for President in 1968, Cleaver's book-in spite of the horrific homophobia leveled at James Baldwin—is a testament to the radicalism of an intellectual undermined by society's dissension.

The Way of The Small, according to author Michael Gellert, is a book that “draws upon the age-old teaching that simplicity is the key to a good life.” I approach this material—the smallest of the books I'm reading (literally)—with cynicism, daring each page turned to prove its spiritual hypothesis. Amish Grace, How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy exemplifies the moral code that is described, somewhat laboredly, in Gellert's book. Perhaps the subdued journalistic tone of Amish Grace, detailing the events surrounding the lives of ten Amish schoolgirls who were shot, and the astounding response of their community, is appropriate. Forgiveness needn't be grandstanding; it can be small.

The three show biz books share many commonalities; two of them have Rock Hudson's name on their dust jackets. The third, by far the more discreet literary offering, does contain Mr. Hudson's name, demurely referenced in the Index.

Mark S. King's memoir, A Place Like This, breathlessly charts the author's recovery from a life of juicy debauchery that was punctuated by a dalliance with Rock (“The hurried drunken sex acts we had just performed seemed worlds away from Technicolor Doris Day comedies…”). Under The Rainbow implicitly poses the question: If birds fly over the rainbow, why couldn't John Carlyle? Edited by Chris Freeman, Carlyle's book presents the underbelly of Hollywood; the tale of a never-was survivor who mixed beauty, booze and Judy (as in Garland) with predictably mouth-watering results.

The piece de resistance in my current library is The Letters of Noel Coward, a too divine account of the prodigious artistic and literary outpourings of the twentieth century. Edited by Barry Day, there are hundreds of pages that contain Coward's letters as well as replies (in many instances), resulting in a virtual “Who's Who” of actors, producers, writers, designers, wits, and sophisticates who defined a generation.

Just like you can't judge a book by its cover, you can't judge a porn star by his past. Hunky Steve Pierce has chosen to set his gay male love story in a future that is perilously impacted by global warming. Pierce's novel, World Without Winter, has muscle.

"It is our stories," Lessing says, "that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed."

Let your mind wander.