He Lost All His Books in the Fire

On 1/20/19, I wrote about going through the books in my home, and giving a few bags full of books to my local library for its Friends of the Library book sale/fundraiser. I was recently reminded that I was fortunate to be able to consider carefully which of my many books I would relinquish, and make my own decisions about when to do so. The journalist Jaime O’Neill was not so lucky. As he wrote in the 1/6/19 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle Datebook, his house in Butte County, California, was destroyed by the horrific wildfires of November 2018, and one of the losses he most mourns is the complete destruction of his personal library of about 2,000 volumes. (Interestingly, many of these books were bought at his local library’s book sales, institutions –- both local libraries and their book sales to raise money for the libraries -- of which I am a great fan.) He writes of books used for long-ago college classes, newly purchased books, books he was in the process of reading when the fire forced him and his wife to evacuate, books he and his wife had given each other, signed editions, books in their closet intended for Christmas gifts for their daughters. O’Neill acknowledges that the loss of his books is “a long way from the worst of losses” suffered during the fires. But for him, the loss is very painful. “Nearly every book title evoked a memory, either of reading or of acquisition. Some reminded me of things I know, and the source of a particular shard of knowledge. Some of them contained inscriptions from the people who had given them to me, and some of those people are now gone, too.” Anyone who loves books, and especially their own treasured volumes, cannot help but ache with sympathy for O’Neill’s loss of his precious books and all that they meant to him.

"A Life of My Own," by Claire Tomalin

Once in a long while, I love a book so much that I hesitate to write about it here, because I worry that I won’t do it justice. Claire Tomalin’s recent book, “A Life of My Own” (Penguin, 2017) is an example. Tomalin is a well-known English literary editor, critic, and esteemed biographer of great figures of British literature such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Samuel Pepys, Shelley, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and Katherine Mansfield. So you already have an inkling of why I am so drawn to this writer. But to be more explicit: she is English (as you may remember, I am a bit of an Anglophile); she is a woman; she has been involved in literary matters her whole life; she has terrific taste in writers (several of the subjects of her biographies are among my favorites – in particular Austen and Hardy); she has lived a long and full life outside of her literary work as well, with a complicated and fulfilling – if sometimes difficult -- family life, including two marriages and four children. After being a biographer of so many others, in this book, at the age of 80-plus, she writes about herself. One of her themes, about which she is clear but not didactic, is the question for all women who want to “balance” a life in literature and a full family life of just how to do that; she does not shy away from describing how hard that balancing act sometimes is, but she also does not dwell on it. She writes engagingly about her family, her childhood, her education, her romances, her marriages, her travels, her various literary jobs, her own writing, the other writers she has known personally, her children, and much more. But what I am afraid of not being able to convey is what a wonderful, wonderful writer she is. She also strikes me as a fascinating (although unpretentious and down-to-earth in some ways) person, and her autobiography makes me wish I knew her personally. I loved reading this book, and I highly recommend it to you; do please consider reading it.

RIP Mary Oliver

The poet Mary Oliver died a few days ago, on January 17, 2019, at the age of 83, of lymphoma. This is a great loss, and she is being deeply mourned by her many, many readers and admirers. Actually, “admirers” is not a strong enough word for those who love Oliver’s poetry, and whose lives have been directly influenced by her poems. Some years ago, when I didn’t know Oliver’s poetry particularly well, I went to hear her read here in San Francisco. The venue was full, mostly of women, and there was something in the air that immediately indicated that the audience was thrilled to be there, almost worshipful, and that they felt a deep personal connection to her and her work. At that time, Oliver already had some problems with mobility, and had to be helped to and from the podium. But her presence and voice were strong, and from the moment she started speaking and then reading, she had the audience rapt. After this experience, I sought out Oliver’s poetry and saw why it was so popular. She writes about things that matter to her readers: how to live, how to observe, how to relate to nature, how to know what is most important, how to appreciate life. Some critics have been suspicious of her popularity (being popular seems to be automatically regarded as a defect) and have called her poetry lightweight or simplistic. They are simply wrong. (I can’t help wondering if some of the condescension shown to her work is because she is a woman, and because so many of her readers are women….) Her most famous line, in her most famous poem, “The Summer Day,” is “Tell me, what is it you plan to do/with your one wild and precious life?” This line has resonated with huge numbers of readers, and with good reason. But there are so many more poems that are also wonderful, beautifully written, aesthetically pleasing, and meaningful, even healing, to her readers. The stature and value of Oliver’s work have also been validated by her Guggenheim, her Pulitzer, and her National Book Award, among other prizes and honors. Goodbye, Mary Oliver, and thank you for your quietly stunning poems, which I am sure will be read by many, many more people for many, many more years.

On Thinning My Bookshelves (Again!)

Recently I have, as I do every few months or so, been going through the “stuff” in our house, trying to get rid of things, especially in my overcrowded “study” (aka put-everything-you-don’t-know-where-else-to-put room). Although, as I have written here in the past, most of the books I read are either from libraries, or passed on to others when I finish with them, I do keep the books that are special to me for some reason (e.g., they were my parents’, or were given to me by other important people in my life, or are reference books, or were written by my very favorite writers, or I think I “might need” them someday, or…you get the idea. This results in several very full bookshelves. For the past few “cullings,” I have considered giving away my small collection (perhaps three dozen volumes) of books about women’s literature: anthologies, encyclopedias, etc. I love literature by and about women, I used to teach women’s literature, and I always think these will be handy references for various purposes, including this blog. I also have an emotional attachment to the topic. But this time I realized that realistically, I almost never consult these books any more. And if I need information, or copies of the stories and poems contained in the anthologies, there are my university and local libraries, and there is the Internet. (I also don’t have room on the shelves in my university office, themselves overcrowded.) So I put these books (all but a very select few) in sturdy canvas bags and hauled them to my beautiful local library to donate to its Friends of the Library organization, which has magnificent monthly sales to raise money for the library. And, somewhat surprisingly, I didn’t feel one iota of regret. In fact I felt “lighter.” These were good and faithful companions, but I didn’t need them any more. And I now had two long empty shelves available. One of these shelves has already, since the “purge,” been repurposed for books for my one-year-old grandson (who, very fortunately for us, lives nearby with his parents) when he comes to visit. A worthy replacement, and a reminder that there are phases in everyone’s life.

"The Library Book," by Susan Orlean

As readers of this blog know or could guess, I love libraries, I go to libraries often, I borrow many books from libraries, and I support my local “Friends of the Library” organization. But did I want to read a nonfiction book about the catastrophic fire of 1986 that nearly destroyed the Los Angeles Public Library? I would have read an article in, say, The Atlantic about this fire, and would be somewhat intrigued by the mystery aspect of whether it was arson and if so who was responsible for it. But a whole book? The answer, it turns out, was emphatically YES! There is a reason that the respected New Yorker writer Susan Orlean’s “The Library Book” (Simon and Schuster, 2018) has been getting so much positive critical attention as well as much popular attention (being on bestseller lists, etc.). It is simply fascinating. Orlean spent several years researching the book, and much time interviewing various people at or related to the library (now rebuilt), including former and current librarians, and often just “hanging out” there, walking through the various sections, observing the librarians and the patrons, listening to the sounds of the library, smelling its scents, and in general immersing herself in the library and its history. Readers will also feel immersed in the library, this one specifically but also “the library” in its larger sense as well: the library as an institution, and all the libraries we each have visited. Orlean is excellent at conveying the atmosphere, the feeling of libraries, and people’s (including her own) visceral connection to libraries. She is particularly interested in public libraries, which have their own joys and issues that are somewhat distinct from, for example, university or school libraries; she doesn’t shy away from challenges that libraries and librarians face. The characters (librarians, patrons, investigators, architects, and more) whom she describes come alive. There is one main character: the main suspect in the fire, a young, somewhat lost would-be actor named Harry Peak. I won’t say any more about what Orlean (or the investigators) find out. And finally, the question of whether the fire was arson is an interesting one, but the joys of the book are much larger than the mystery/detective aspect of the story, just as this book is about, at the same time, one specific library but also all libraries. I very highly recommend this book to anyone who loves libraries.

"Ultraviolet," by Suzanne Matson

It is perhaps not too much of a surprise that so soon after posting (on 12/21/18) about the novel “A Cloud in the Shape of a Girl,” which I noted was a type of novel I usually enjoy very much – the story of several generations of women and families – I found and read another such novel: “Ultraviolet” (Catapult, 2018), by Suzanne Matson. I don’t mean I consciously looked for such a book, but such novels often call out to me. In both books, there are three generations of women, and the women of each generation are different in their circumstances, ambitions, and constraints. They all deal with wondering about family and children and whether and how to balance them with work and creativity. One thing that drew me to “Ultraviolet” was that the first (oldest) of the three women, Elsie, along with her husband, was a missionary in India in the 1930s. Her daughter Kathryn grew up there, and when she returned to the U.S., felt somewhat unsettled. As I have mentioned before, I too grew up in India as the daughter of missionaries, although some time later than Kathryn did, and when I came back to the U.S., I also experienced some mixed feelings. Kathryn moves around, has some adventures and love affairs, and ends up marrying an older man. Overall, her life does not make her happy. Her daughter Samantha wants a better life, one in which she controls her own circumstances much more, and despite some unhappiness of her own, has a career teaching at a university, as well as a reasonably happy marriage and her own children. Many of the differences among the three generations of women can be attributed to societal changes regarding women’s roles over the years, but some are due to the individual women’s personalities. Although in some ways the three generations are not close, love of family prevails. Samantha and her mother Kathryn become much closer as Samantha gets older and more established and secure in her own life, and Samantha does much to take care of her mother as Kathryn ages. The three main characters, along with the less major but still important characters of their fathers, husbands, and lovers, are realistic and believable. This is an intriguing and satisfying novel.