‘The Book of (More) Delights’ charms with quirky insights

In 2016, Ross Gay set out to write an essay every day about something that delighted him. He wrote quickly and by hand to capture a moment, chronicle an encounter, marvel about the natural world, or ruminate on the mysteries of human behavior. That collection of charming essayettes turned into the 2019 bestseller “The Book of Delights,” in which he reflects on kindness, dreams, racism, books, politics, pop music, his garden, and more.

Gay found that the discipline of daily writing engendered a kind of “delight radar” simply by compelling him to pay greater attention to what he loved. And in 2021, he decided to reinvigorate the yearlong practice into a lifelong project. With his latest compilation, “The Book of (More) Delights,” we are gifted with essays that are just as quirky, engaging, wryly humorous, and sometimes strikingly profound as the first set. These missives are not a cloying gratitude list, as the title might lead one to expect, and they offer a provocative, episodic read that makes a strong case for looking for joy in the everyday.

Every delight, he writes, “is a delight of record, even if you don’t record it with your pencil; it lodges in the body, particularly if you give it some lodging by noting it – is another little gnomic bit of truth, a mini haiku in all caps spray-painted on the rusty corrugated siding of a building that seems abandoned but who knows.”

This time around, Gay is a little older and perhaps just a wee bit more cynical. He is a tad darker at times, noting a book of delights exists amid ample instances of “undelights.” But he is still as unpredictable and eclectic, unfurling his prose in an unpretentious tone full of “dudes” and cheeky vernacular. Essays often read like a chat with your most entertainingly anecdotal pal. 

Gay, an award-winning poet who also has written the book “Inciting Joy” and four collections of poetry, is still living in Bloomington, Indiana, where he teaches at Indiana University. Much of the book is a chronicle of life in a college town – including the little wonders he notices wandering the sidewalks of his community, chance meetings with friends and strangers, and discoveries of nature’s treasures in his own backyard.

But many of the essays are memories, musings on dreams (in both senses of the word), and ponderings on everything from hickeys to hummingbirds. He writes about a perfect notebook, the power of scent, a walking-stick lending library (“Oh, this is a thing,” he marvels). One essay is a lovely elegy of his feisty Nana, another is a charming ode to dandelions, and yet another is almost a rant against Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Some are laugh-out-loud hilarious, while others can bring tears to your eyes with a surprising stab of recognition and poignance. I love his take on being open to wonder: “Wonder’s opposite emotion is know-it-all-ery. The know-it-all’s job is to put a stake in wonder’s fat and gooey heart.” 

Gay’s style in this new collection of “delights” has become even more meandering, sometimes frustratingly so. He is the king of digression, from parentheticals that run on so long you almost forget the subject, to full-on tangents that often stray wildly from the initial idea. But you have to hand it to him – when he veers off course, the man commits hard. He also gives in to his love for “full-bodied, full-throated footnotes,” some of which are nearly as long as the body of the essay. But always, always read these – most, like the plea to opt for human rather than digital interaction whenever possible, are so worth the detour.

At heart, “The Book of (More) Delights” is about the passage of time and what it means to be alive. It is a wise, insightful, thought-provoking, and appreciative reverie on the complexities of the human condition, fueled by what Gay calls his favorite curiosity – “why we are who we are.”