The Power of Books: "Tolstoy and the Purple Chair," by Nina Sankovitch

Among the many things books can do is to heal their readers. Nina Sankovitch’s book, “Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading” (Harper, 2011) tells of the author’s decision to try to heal her pain and grief over her sister Anne-Marie’s death by reading a book a day for a year. (Note the echo of Joan Didion's book title, "The Year of Magical Thinking," about her own grief when her husband died suddenly.) Books had always been important to the author, her sister, and her family, and so this decision made sense to her and to those who knew her. I imagine it would not make sense to everyone, but it does to me. This book describes the author’s relationship with her sister, the time she spent with her sister during her last months and days, and the sustenance she received from reading. Although I understand the motivation, and share the belief Sankovitch has in the power of books, reading a book a day is a challenge. I read an average of two books a week myself, and although I read quickly, this is a substantial commitment of time, especially for one who works full time, so it is hard for me to imagine being able to read a book a day. A former practicing attorney, Sankovitch did not work outside the home during the time period covered by the book, but did -- along with her husband -- take care of a family of four boys. Her family seems to have been remarkably supportive and accommodating of her "year of books." The important point here is that the author’s prescription for herself actually worked. She learned, she thought, she was reminded of memories, she was stimulated, she was entertained, she was awed, she was encouraged, she was comforted and supported by, and yes, healed by, the books. Of course she did not “get over” her sadness, but she felt connected to her sister and to the wider world through times and places near and far, and felt the universality of human experiences: birth, love, family, work, nature, the arts, war, illness, and death, among others. Although the book is only competently written, I loved it because of its obvious passion and because of the author’s absolute belief in the power of books. As I read, I marked many pages, and found many quotations that resonated with me. I offer just a small sampling below.
1. “Everywhere I have sought rest and not found it, except sitting in a corner by myself with a little book.” (Thomas A Kempis)
2. “Words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.” (Cyril Connolly)
3. “The lives in the books are breathing life into me, new life. And helping me learn how to keep her [the author’s sister] alive. In me.” (Sankovitch)
4. The last sentences in this book: “My hiatus is over, my soul and my body are healed, but I will never leave the purple chair [where she often read] for long. So many books waiting to be read, so much happiness to be found, so much wonder to be revealed.” (Sankovitch)

NOTE: On another topic: this is my 500th post on this blog! It is a great pleasure for me to share my thoughts and feelings on books and on reading-related experiences in this way. Thank you, Mary, for suggesting I start this blog, and thank you to the readers of the blog.

The Little Library That Could

I have written more than once here in praise of various types of libraries -- public, school, university, lending, mobile, etc. -- but it can never be said too often how important libraries are for communities, for children, for an educated public, to perpetuate knowledge and stimulate thinking, for enrichment, for enjoyment, and more. A story in today’s Parade magazine (9/25/11) struck a nerve, not only because I love and visit libraries often, but also because it reminded me of how important libraries are to equity and democracy as well. The middle class and well-off can always buy books, and have their own computers and other sources of knowledge and entertainment, but the less well-off are particularly dependent on libraries. The Parade story, titled “The Little Library That Could,” describes a library in the very small town of Parker, Arizona that is “struggling to stay alive” because of budget cuts. Already hours have been cut and staff laid off. In this area where “more than 25 percent of the people live below the poverty line,” residents depend on the library’s books, computers, reading groups, story times, lectures, movies, and free health screenings. “The library binds our town together,” says one resident, who adds that “It opens up a whole new world” for the town’s kids. It is also a place for teens to go after school. Local people have stepped up to the best of their ability, donating, fundraising, and even cleaning the library themselves. It is an uphill fight to preserve and maintain such small town libraries; I wish this library -- and every other public library, especially those that serve economically deprived areas -- success in keeping this essential institution alive. (I made a small donation to the Friends of the Parker Library; if you are interested in doing so as well, go to Parade.com/library.)

"Women Artists in Interwar France," by Paula J. Birnbaum

My University of San Francisco colleague Paula J. Birnbaum, of the Art Department, has just published a wonderful book on women artists, titled "Women Artists in Interwar France: Framing Femininities" (Ashgate, 2011). Birnbaum became curious about the women artists who belonged to a group called Societe des Femmes Artistes Modernes (FAM), and wondered why so few of them are known today. During the course of her research, she met some of the descendants of these women artists, found archives and artworks that had long been out of sight, and did a great amount of detective work in order to bring the artists' work back to light through her book. The stories of these women artists are fascinating, sad, and inspiring, and Birnbaum tells the stories well, in the context of art history as well as the context of gender studies. The book contains 58 gorgeous color plates of paintings, as well as a generous number of black and white photos of art works and of artists. Artists whose work Birnbaum focuses on include Suzanne Valadon, Maria Blanchard, Alice Halicka, and Marie Laurencin. Birnbaum writes about why these artists often chose subjects such as maternity; what their relationships were with their husbands, lovers, art dealers, and others; and how being part of FAM influenced them, among many topics. She truly celebrates these women artists, mourns their "near-total erasure," and reminds us of "the need for feminist art historians to continue our scholarly research and our work to ensure women their proper place in art publications, acquisitions, collections, and exhibitions." I was fortunate to watch some of the evolution of this book, as Paula and I were often at the same writing retreats and sessions over the past few years, and then just this week I was able to hear her speak about her book at our college Writing Salon. Paula is obviously passionate about her topic, and she has done a great thing by bringing the work of these interwar women artists to our attention in this informative, thoughtful, and beautiful book.

Ambrose Bierce: Brilliant Cynic

An article in the October 2011 issue of the Atlantic notes that the Library of America is finally issuing a collection of Ambrose Bierce's best-known writings. Unfortunately, this brilliant 19th-century writer and thinker is not much remembered nowadays. The author of the Atlantic article, Benjamin Schwarz, speculates that this is because "although Bierce wrote exemplary American prose, his unrelieved pessimism rubs deeply against the American grain." Bierce was part of an abolitionist family, fought bravely in the Civil War, was nearly killed, and emerged from the war believing that war was "nothing more than a meaningless and murderous slaughter" (Schwarz). But (Schwarz again) "his ordeal gave birth to a lonely, stoic, and bitter rectitude, a sensibility that was the impetus of his career as a writer and of his compressed, astringent prose style." Bierce is best known for his "Devil's Dictionary," which Schwarz labels "a Swiftian tour de force" and "among the most eccentric books in American literature." His work is so fierce, so smart, and so uncompromising that it both makes one laugh (he is very cutting and very funny, although in a bitter way) and makes one feel that the state of America and the world is intolerable. Still, I think we need writers like Bierce, and wish we had a Bierce alive now to comment on what is going on in the United States and the world today.

Memorable Sports Novels

I am not a big sports fan, but I can understand the pleasures of getting involved with sports, whether playing them or watching and following them. When I was in high school (I went to two), I enthusiastically cheered my schools’ teams, and whether they won or not seemed life-or-death important. When I was in my mid-to-late teens living in Michigan, my family followed the Detroit Tigers baseball team avidly, attending games, watching games on TV, and listening to games on the radio when we were traveling. I even remember when I pulled back from that enthusiastic support for the team, because it was too devastating when they lost. It is hard for me now to remember such strong feelings about sports! I do, in a general sort of way, support our local (San Francisco) teams: the 49ers and the Giants in particular. My husband is a big sports fan; he plays tennis himself, and watches tennis, baseball, football, basketball, soccer, and occasionally other sports as well, occasionally live but mostly on TV. I sometimes sit down for a few minutes to watch too. But I prefer -- big surprise! -- to read fiction about sports, when it is well written and about something larger than the sports themselves. Below is a list of some of the best sports novels, many by some of our best American writers. I can’t claim to have read them all, but I know at least a bit about each of them, and they are all highly regarded critically. Note that the most predominant sport represented is baseball, which apparently truly is “the great American pastime.”

Bang the Drum Slowly, by Mark Harris (baseball)
The Great American Novel, by Philip Roth (baseball)
The Harder They Fall, by Budd Schulberg (boxing)
The Legend of Bagger Vance, by Steven Pressfield (golf)
The Natural, by Bernard Malamud (baseball)
North Dallas Forty, by Peter Gent (football)
A River Runs Through It, by Norman Maclean (fishing)
Shoeless Joe, by W. P. Kinsella (baseball)
The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford
The Sweetheart Season, by Karen Ann Fowler (women’s baseball)
You Know Me Al, by Ring Lardner (baseball)

"State of Wonder," by Ann Patchett

I just finished listening on CD as the actress Hope Davis read “State of Wonder” (Harper, 2011; HarperAudio, 2011), the new novel by Ann Patchett, the author of the wonderful earlier novel “Bel Canto.” This book is eventful, suspenseful, psychologically fascinating, and sometimes painful. Dr. Marina Singh, who works for a big pharmaceutical company, is sent from Minnesota to the Amazon to find out what happened to her colleague Anders Eckman. He, in turn, had been sent there earlier to find out what was happening with the top-secret research Dr. Annick Swenson was doing there on behalf of the company. To complicate matters, Dr. Swenson had been Marina’s professor in medical school many years before, and was witness to a traumatic episode during Marina’s residency that made Marina change careers from medicine to pharmaceutical research. In any case, the trip to the research site is filled with obstacles, and once she reaches it, she learns amazing facts, endures difficulties, yet finds a certain satisfaction in her time there. As in her past, she has mixed feelings about Dr. Swenson, yet she gains a new relationship with her. She gets to know the Lakashi people among whom Dr. Swenson and a small, secretive group of scientists are doing the research. She becomes attached to a deaf child, Easter (what a symbolic name!), who is an integral part of the story, including in the climactic surprise ending. There are important ethical questions to be wrestled with, about the drugs Dr. Swenson has discovered, about whose life is worth how much, and about what tradeoffs may need to be made. The descriptions of the Amazon and the jungle are vivid, and somehow both oppressive and liberating. Both Marina and Dr. Swenson are well-drawn, compelling and complicated characters, and Marina’s journey toward Dr. Swenson creates “Heart of Darkness”-like reverberations. Although this is not the type of novel I am normally drawn to (with its overwhelming and dangerous jungle setting), I am glad I read (listened to) it. It is perhaps not quite as magically entrancing as “Bel Canto” was, but it comes close.

Two Memoirs of "Missionary Kids" in India

I recently read two memoirs by authors who had been the children of missionaries in India, as I was: “Ramblings with Ruth” (Quiet Waters, 2004), by Sam Schmitthenner, and “Sepia Prints” (Kindred, 1990), by Viola Bergthold Wiebe.” These memoirists' childhoods in India were both much earlier than mine; Schmitthenner’s children were contemporaries of mine at school, and Wiebe’s son became principal there some time after I left. But they write of the same areas in South India that my family lived and went to school, and they write of many similar experiences; thus their books are very evocative for me, as I am sure they are for others who share these experiences. In particular, the parts of both books about Kodaikanal School (“Kodai” for short), the boarding school where my brothers and I went, evoked much nostalgia in me. Although that time in my life was decades ago, it is still -- for me, as for most Kodai alumni -- a critically important part in our lives, and one we will never forget. One of the joys of modern technology is that Facebook and Kodai listservs have brought many of us back in touch. I know that many people feel nostalgic for their school years and experiences, but in our case, there were two extra elements intensifying those school experiences: first, that of living in boarding school, making school an even more all-encompassing experience than in day schools; and second, that of being members of mostly American background living in a (to us) foreign country, being both “of” and “not of” the country where our school was located. This was the beloved country of our childhoods, yet it was not our own country, and almost all of us returned to the United States or Canada. Nowadays Kodai is an international school, the majority of students are Indian, and students come there from around the world as well; despite these changes (and they are good ones), the spirit of the school and its experiences for its students appear to continue in many ways the traditions we remember. A recent reconnection with Kodai, for me, is that one of my nieces studied there about nine years ago, and another is studying there right now for her junior year of high school. What an experience this is for her! And for my brothers and me, it is so interesting to read about and see pictures of her experience there, bringing back many memories for us. I have also reconnected to that time through my research and writing on “missionary kids” and “Third Culture Kids.”