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Good Reads: John Toll, Mark Twain, and the booksellers of Baghdad |
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Written by Barbara Perlman-Whyman/Special to the World - View Profile
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Sunday, 05 August 2007 |
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“Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, Baghdad reads.”
— Arabic proverb known across the Arab world
Ranger John Percival Andrew Toll is a native northern Nevadan. The son of Nevada author David W. Toll of Gold Hill, and writer/producer Andria Daley of Incline Village, John was named for his great uncle, Senator John Pervical Jones, a Comstock Bonanza king, who brought in the Yellow Jacket and the Crown Point bonanzas, the tip of the mighty Comstock Lode. Jones was also Nevada’s longest standing U. S. Senator and a jolly fellow. A good friend for a time of Mark Twain’s, he became Twain’s bitter enemy when the Senator refused to invest any more money in Twain’s unsuccessful Linotype machines. But the link to Mark Twain emotionally has endured in the family, particularly to John.
“I think what I enjoyed most about raising John was how we shared a joy of reading,” claims his mother. “His first recited poetry was at 2.5 years, “Tiger, tiger burning bright.” I knew I had a willing candidate. We both still laugh out loud at Mark Twain. And, now, when he is so alone, with so much responsibility, it is a comfort to me that he can turn back to that joy he found in reading, that his appreciation of irony will help him endure, that he can find some level of comfort particularly in rereading Twain, who lived in equally tumultuous times. And that there will be a light at the end of the tunnel for my son.”
 An avid reader, who was tutored in Chautauqua, John studied “Mark Twain” with Incline’s McAvoy Lane. He has developed a long and enduring love of Twain. His favorite book, “Roughing It,” John finds somewhat poetic and carries it with him into the battle field. A graduate of Bishop Manogue Catholic High School in Reno and the University of Nevada-Reno in history, John is also a certified jump instructor, a graduate of many survival schools, having trained in addition to the Army Rangers, with the Israeli and British Special Forces, and is currently with 82nd Airborne Division in Baghdad.
He and his platoon were deployed to Iraq in January 2007 as part of “the surge.” The part of the city to which they were sent included the center of the book trade in Baghdad’s beaux arts district, al-Mutanabi Street, named for a 10th century poet and once the city’s commercial heart. Housed in the beautiful old building dating back to the Ottoman empire, the bookshops were small but opened all the time. On Friday there was a market when vendors laid out their books in Arabic and English on mats on the ground. At one time you could find any type of book there, and people came to discuss openly philosophy, poetry, history.
It was “ground zero for the intelligencia.” But toward the end of the 1990s there were sanctions imposed, and in 2003 the section began to be carefully monitored by a section of al-Amn al-Amm, the General Security Service who banned books on modern Iraq and works by Shiite and Sunni clerics. Even so, books were smuggled in through Jordan, Syria and Turkey.
 But then this year on March 6, only two months after John’s platoon arrived, the unimaginable happened. A powerful suicide car bomb hit the market, demolishing the center of capital’s intellectual sector, killing over 100 people according to National Public Radio, and wounding more than 100 others, all whom were either book sellers or Iraqi intellectuals who represented only themselves and their homeland. Those were the very booksellers and intellectuals who were the guardians of a literary tradition that has survived empire and colonialism, monarchy and dictatorship. With the bombing of Mutanabi Street, only time will tell whether the promise of freedom will survive.
Today, John knows many of the surviving booksellers and communicates with them in French, a language they both feel comfortable using. Although he does have two interpreters in his unit, it is French that they enjoy bantering about. As is evidenced by the photo of the once eloquent district, there is little left. The great collections of history, art and literature that once flourished in the Mesopotamian empire, between the Euphrates and Tigress rivers, about which we learned in school no longer exist. They have been obliterated.
These people, prisoners in a civil war, have little hope, but they do desire to keep the light of western civilization alive at least through reading, and that flame is fluttering. During the regime of Saddam Hussein, there was a ban on western literature and culture, but many of the Iraqi remained eager for books. And they still do, those very books which we in the United States take for granted: the classics, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Thomas Jefferson, Michel Montague, poetry, and history, the tenants of a governance, and the arts of a civilized society.
 Ironically John has been using his time in Baghdad, sandwiched between patrols in the 130 degree heat, to catch up on his reading, particularly the epic battle stories of the Greeks, Romans, Napoleon, and anything on World War II. His iPod is filled with Johnny Cash, Waylon and Willie, and Louie Armstrong, which he plays for his platoon when they return home from a difficult mission.
“Louie helps to settle the soul when the daily slaughter that they experience is too horrific,” his mother Andria said.
His deployment has been extended twice, and he is hopeful of returning in March 2008 from the mission that was originally to last only until August 2007. He will be on leave in Incline Village and the surrounding area for the next two weeks. John said that he had promised to donate to the booksellers all his books, except for “Roughing It” as his copy has assumed a sentimental value with a nicely placed shrapnel hole, literature which may have saved him from a potentially serious or embarrassing wound as it laid snuggled in his back pocket. He is hopeful of returning to the United States next year and attending graduate school in history or applying to law school.
“I wish he would consider a career in politics as he would be a good, just and charismatic leader” she said. “He is my hero.”
When I suggested a Tahoe Basin book drive to assist them, Andria, John’s mother was very supportive.
“It would be very good if we could ship them used books. I sorted through my collection recently and found so many duplicates, four copies of Joyce’s ‘Dubliners,’ five ‘Hamlets,’ two with cliff notes, five language dictionaries, all things that would be wonderful to ship. I should think children’s books would be great to send to Iraq, and of course, lots of Mark Twain!”
“And, let us not forget the homeward boys: of the current 121,000 soldiers returning home from Iraq, as many as 27,000 have been injured and will endure long and lonesome recoveries,” she continued. “Books will help them too. On one of my frequent trips to Washington, I took an opportunity to visit Walter Reed just once, and what I witnessed was not good. I never saw a book anywhere, there were no libraries or nor were there quiet rooms. So, there is much that we can do.”
As a result of learning of the plight of the Booksellers of Baghdad as well as with our soldiers, Andria and I are in the process of launching a Tahoe Book Drive to collect books that could be sent to both our injured soldiers as well as the booksellers of Baghdad. If there are others who would care to join us (businesses, individuals, non-profit organizations, educators, book sellers, corporations, etc.) please contact me at
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As soon as the specific details of the collection, transport to Iraq and Walter Reed, and volunteer readers for soldiers are finalized, we will announce the details. Meanwhile “house clean” your bookshelves and box up all those priceless books that once gave to you and are now gathering dust. Give them to others. Particularly they will continue to mean so much to those who have no other way to procure them. We can show that Tahoe cares!
American Literary Sites Sights:
Journalist B.J. Welborn has written a fascinating travel book for readers, “Traveling Literary America: A Complete Guide to Literary Landscapes” in which she explores the history and literary legacy of the United States. I thought is might be useful for you to know about these places of interest so I will be highlighting one each week over the summer under “American Literary Sites Sights.” I encourage you to get to know these authors, read their works, and visit these places should you be traveling nearby.
Rowan Oak, Oxford, Mississippi
Yoknapatawpha County, home of Caddy Compson, Thomas Sutpen, and many more of William Faulkner’s memorable characters, is not as fictional as you may think. Faulkner scholars believe that the author based the hard to pronounce location on Oxford, Mississippi, where he grew up and where Rowan Oak stands. Faulkner moved to the home in 1930 and wrote “As I Lay Dying,” “Absalom, Absalom!” and “Light in August” under its roof. Appropriately, every year the city honors its native son by hosting the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, during which speakers and scholars delve into Faulkner’s literary legacy and the role Yoknapatawpha plays in his fiction. For more information, visit www.oxfordcvb.com.
Literary Birthdays This Week:
August 4 - Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792)
August 5 - Guy de Maupassant (1850)
August 6 - Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809)
August 7 - Garrison Keillor (1942)
Good Reads List:
Adults (fiction): “The World Without Us” by Alan Weisman
Young Adult (ages 13-17): “Portable Childhoods” by Ellen Klages
Juvenile (4th-6thgrade): “Grandpa’s War” by Elizabeth Derereaux
Children (2nd-3rd grade): “Stormy Weather” by Robert Coontz
Photos (top to bottom) courtesy of John Toll:
• John, after completing Army Ranger school, August 23, 2006, cheerful after having walked across a trip line, 80 feet in the air, to recite the Ranger Code, midway, then walking the remaining 40 feet under heavy, noisy fire, to safety.
• John standing outside the one elite booksellers district in Baghdad.
• John’s platoon, he is at the far left. They are a wonderful band of brothers, given a horrid task of seeking out the insurgents, and trying to repatriate Sunni, Shia and Kurd neighborhoods. He and his platoon were deployed to Iraq in January 2007 as part of “the surge,” his deployment has been extended twice, and he is hopeful of returning from the mission that was to last until August 2007 in March 2008.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 31 July 2007 )
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