Books from our Baby Boomer Youth

For Baby Boomer high school and college students, certain books epitomized youth, freedom, nonconformity, coolness, intensity, and a refusal to be impressed by or controlled by "The Establishment." These books made us feel that our generation, and we personally, could be different, challenge the status quo, make our own rules. They are redolent of rebellion, irreverence, spirituality (sixties versions), politics, and of course, "sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll." The books do not "belong" to our generation; some of them are still widely read. But many of them are products of a specific time in history: the sixties and early seventies. For a trip down memory lane for those who came of age during that time, cast your mind back to your late teens and early twenties, and see if this sampling of books looks very, very familiar...

The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath
Catcher in the Rye (and the other novels and short stories), by J. D. Salinger
Cat's Cradle (and many other novels), by Kurt Vonnegut
A Coney Island of the Mind, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe
Eros and Civilization (and other works), by Herbert Marcuse
Howl and Other Poems, by Alan Ginsberg
The Making of a Counter Culture, by Theodore Roszak
On the Road (see also The Dharma Bums and other novels), by Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken Kesey
The Politics of Experience, by R. D. Laing
Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion
Steppenwolf (see also Siddhartha and other novels), by Hermann Hesse
The Stranger, by Albert Camus
Summerhill, by A. S. Neill
The Wisdom of Insecurity, by Alan Watts
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig

Some of these titles are impossible for me to reread now, but they meant a lot to me at the time, so I honor them for that.

(As I look over my list, I see that these books are almost all by male authors. Although this is distressing, it is not really surprising, because the time in question is just before and at the beginning of the Second Wave women's movement, when many influential books by women started to appear. Soon I will write a separate post about some of those books.)

Carol Shields

If you have not read Carol Shields' novels, please put them at the top of your to-read lists. This Canadian author wrote some 20 books, all wonderful, but I particularly recommend three. Her first big success, "The Stone Diaries" (1994), won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Governor General's Award. It is the story of the long life of an "ordinary" woman, Daisy Goodwill; it explores the concept of how we understand our own lives. "Larry's Party" (1997) tells the story of an equally "ordinary" man who works as a florist and then, surprising himself and everyone else, becomes a famous builder of garden mazes. The title refers to the dinner party that takes place at the end of the novel, one at which Larry's current lover and his two ex-wives are present. "Unless" (2002) tells of a mother and her bafflement when her college-age daughter inexplicably starts silently panhandling on the corner of a busy Toronto street. All three novels are very original, beautifully written, with an almost Woolfian lyricism, yet are very concrete and down to earth as well. Sadly, Carol Shields died in 2003; she is greatly missed.

Ms. Magazine

I recently posted about two resources for books about women: Virago Press, and the Women's Review of Books. Another valuable resource, one which I have subscribed to and read for many many years, is Ms. Magazine. Ms. provides a wealth of information and inspiration regarding women's issues: political, social, economic, health, art, and much more; it also occasionally publishes fiction and poetry. Here I want to highlight the numerous book reviews in every issue. Reviews cover fiction and nonfiction, on a wide variety of topics and by a wide and inclusive variety of writers. The current issue (Winter 2010), for example, reviews such titles as "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks," by Rebecca Skloot; "Shadow Tag,"by the noted Native American novelist Louise Erdrich; "Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism's Work is Done," by the well-known media studies scholar Susan J. Douglas; "The Unfinished Revolution: How a New Generation is Reshaping Family, Work and Gender in America," by Kathleen Gerson; and "Princess Noire: The Tumultuous Reign of Nina Simone," by Nadine Cohodas.

A Literary Pilgrimage

A few summers ago, after attending a conference in Canterbury, I took some extra days to travel in England. I had been to London several times, but had spent little time in the English countryside. It was beautiful, green, and pastoral, just as I had imagined it. I spent some time in Oxford and Bath, both wonderful, as was Canterbury. But the highlight of the trip was my pilgrimage to the tiny, idyllic-looking village of Chawton, where Jane Austen spent her last and, from most reports, happiest and most productive years. Austen, with her mother and sister, lived in a cottage provided by one of her brothers who lived in a mansion nearby. To get there, I took a train, and then a bus, and then walked the last half mile or so. There it was in front of me: the place where my most-loved and most-revered author had lived! There were a few other visitors, but it was mainly quiet and peaceful. I walked through the garden and then through the small but charming house. I stood in her bedroom. I saw the little table in the drawing room where she wrote. I was in awe, and felt so privileged to be standing in the very place where she had lived and where she had written several of her books. After I left Chawton, I went to Winchester Cathedral, where Austen was buried, and knelt to touch her grave marker on the floor of the Cathedral. Yes, tears came...tears of happiness at being there. It was truly a sentimental journey for me.

Two Organizations Promoting Women's Writing

As a longtime feminist, I can remember when books by and about women were much less available than they are now. The current far greater proliferation didn't just happen: many writers, readers, publishers, academics, journalists, activists and others worked very hard to create structures and possibilities for more publications by, for, and about women. Here I would like to give credit to two entities that have been extremely influential in this area: Virago Press and the Women's Review of Books.

Virago Press (www.virago.co.uk/) began in 1973 in England. The founders of the press recognized that biases on the part of publishers, reviewers, academe, book distributors, and others all kept many worthy books by women writers from being published or kept in print. The publisher's mission was and is to discover, or in many cases rediscover, these books, many of which had fallen into obscurity. Virago calls itself "a feminist publishing company," and is now the largest women's imprint in the world. After studying English literature in college, where we were still assigned mostly books by white male Western authors, I remember my joyful discovery of Virago books, especially the "Virago Modern Classics" series, with their beautiful green-bordered covers. Some of the great authors whom Virago published -- authors who might have been lost to us otherwise -- were Vita Sackville-West, Rosamond Lehmann, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Dorothy Richardson, Mary Webb, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Rose Macauley, Mary Olivier, and Rebecca West.

The Women's Review of Books (www.wcwonline.org/womensreview)was first published in 1983 by the Wellesley Center for Women at Wellesley College. Its goal was "spreading the news about the scholarship emerging from the then new field of women's studies and about creative writing -- fiction, memoir, poetry -- that examined women's experiences" (from the website), and it has continued to spread that news. It publishes not only reviews and essays but also poetry and photography. It is an essential resource for those of us who love, read, and write about books by and about women. I am a longtime subscriber, and I find every single issue both enjoyable and useful.

Reading Friends

I am fortunate to have several friends who are as passionate about books as I am. We discuss books, pass books on to each other, exchange book recommendations, give each other books for birthdays and holidays, and go to bookstores together. But most especially: we talk, talk, talk about books. The best, longest running, most continuous book conversation I have had is with C., a close friend whom I have known and discussed books with for 39 years. Although we haven't lived in the same city or even on the same coast since grad school, we manage to talk about books by phone, mail, e-mail, and in person often. Our tastes in books are not exactly the same, but overlap substantially. We understand the kinds of books each other likes. We send each other books. When we ARE in the same place, one of the things we often do is go to bookstores, browse, and point out recently-read books to each other, giving thumbnail summaries and reviews as we go. When I saw her last month in her city, that is exactly what we did, and we enjoyed it thoroughly. I value C.'s recommendations highly, I treasure our years of conversations about books, and I love the way that books form one of the major bonds between us.

"One Writer's Beginnings," by Eudora Welty

A few days ago, I wrote about three recent books on reading and writing. Today I am writing about an older such book, a classic in the genre, a must-read: "One Writer's Beginnings," by Eudora Welty (Harcourt, 1983). The book is divided into three parts: Listening, Learning to See, and Finding a Voice. It is a mixture of memoir and thoughts on books and writing; it clearly and delightfully illustrates the influence of childhood on writers and readers. Welty remembers her parents' great love of books, their sacrificing to buy books for her, and their gentle encouragement of her fascination with books and writing. She provides much indirect advice for both writers and readers. The book also weaves in various strands related to growing up in the South, education, families, race, and much more. It is enhanced by several pages of family photographs.

There are so many passages I would like to quote, but I will confine myself to three excerpts:

"It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time that I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself" (pp. 5-6).

"I live in gratitude to my parents for initiating me -- and as early as I begged for it, without keeping me waiting -- into knowledge of the words, into reading and spelling...My love for the alphabet, which endures, grew out of reciting it, but, before that, out of seeing the letters on the page. In my own story books, before I could read them for myself, I fell in love with various winding, enchanted-looking initials...at the heads of fairy tales" (p. 9).

"Ever since I was first read to, and then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn't hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn't my mother's voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself. The cadence, whatever it is that asks you to believe, the feeling that resides in the printed word, reaches me through the reader-voice" (pp. 11-12).

As this book is an adapted version of a set of lectures that Welty gave at Harvard, and as these lectures are available on CD (Harvard University Press, 1984), we are fortunate to be able to hear that "reader-voice" quite literally. Hearing Welty's own voice is a wonderful pleasure that further deepens our appreciation of her work.

Welty (1909-2001) wrote five novels and several collections of short stories. I especially recommend two of her novels, "Delta Wedding" and "The Optimist's Daughter," as well as "The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty."