A Few Precious Books from My Grandmother

Because my parents both came from large families (I have over 50 first cousins and countless second and third cousins, spread around Canada and the United States), and because they moved so much, we are not the kind of family that has a lot of family heirlooms passed on from generation to generation. But we are a family who loves books, as I have written before, and I do have a very small handful of books that were my late maternal grandmother's. These are very precious to me. One is a small (about 5" by 7") hardbound volume, with a flower-sprigged and gold-gilted cover, of Thomas Carlyle's "Sartor Resartus." It is inscribed to "Fleta" (my grandmother's wonderful old-fashioned name), "Merry Xmas! 25-12-06." My grandmother would have recently graduated from high school at the time. It says volumes to me that this book would be considered an appropriate Christmas present for a young woman; somehow I can't imagine many families or friends today giving such a gift (alas!). Another book has her full married name inscribed in it, so she got it a bit later: an even smaller volume, in a dark green hard cover, titled "Masterpieces of the World's Best Literature, Vol. 8" (1905). I am not sure what happened to the other volumes in this series; perhaps some of my aunts, uncles, or cousins have them, or perhaps they have been lost over time. Some of the selections in this book, listed alphabetically by author's last name (this volume contains S-Z) and with great leaps through history, are essays, poems, stories or excerpts by Shelley, Smollett, Socrates, Sophocles, Stowe (Harriet Beecher), Thackeray, Tolstoy, Trollope, Turgenieff (the spelling this book uses), Washington (George), Whitman, Wordsworth, and Zola. Note that in this book, the "world's" best literature was heavily English, with a very few token Greek, Russian, and French authors represented. A third book, still smaller, with a textured brown cover and with my grandmother's married name written in her own handwriting on the flyleaf (why do we seldom use the word "flyleaf" nowadays?), is Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha"; this particular volume was published in 1898. These three lovely little volumes -- all so full of character, beauty, and literary history -- sit on my bookshelf, representing my family and in particular my dear grandmother (a teacher as well as mother of seven). I cherish them.

"Suburban Dreams"

My friend Beth Yarnelle Edwards has had exhibitions of her art photography all over the United States and Europe, and in India. Her work has been featured in many publications, including Harper's and The New Yorker, and has received multiple awards. Now she has had a book of her photographs published by Kehrer in Germany; there is also an English language version, soon to be available in the United States. These stunning color photographs are windows into middle class life in Silicon Valley, California, as well as in France, Germany, Spain, and The Netherlands. They are impressive in their composition and fascinating in what they reveal. One could spend a long time looking at all the telling details in each photograph. There's an older couple in their kitchen, several teenagers and children in their suburban bedrooms and playrooms, and several people in bed, just to name a few subjects. The settings are various rooms of various houses, often elaborately overdecorated but sometimes artistically spare, as well as driveways with basketball hoops, and garages. Each one suggests a whole world. Viewers become curious about the individuals, about the families, about the cultures that are portrayed; our imaginations are engaged. This book is a large, handsome one, beautifully produced; each photograph has its own page. There are introductory essays by the critics Robert Evren and Christoph Tannert that are illuminating, putting Edwards' work in context and helping readers see some of the artistic subtleties of the work. This is an impressive collection of photographs.

"Cross Channel"

On 5/21/11, I posted about how much I liked the stories in Julian Barnes’ new book, “Pulse.” I have now just read a much earlier collection of his stories, “Cross Channel” (Knopf, 1996). As you might guess from the title, these stories feature the visits, brief or extended over many years, of British people to France. The stories take place over a period of 300 years, and they capture some of the fraught feelings of the British about France: fascination, attraction, mystification, suspicion, arrogance, inferiority, superiority, envy, and more. I found some of the historical stories less appealing than those from the 20th century, but that is just my personal preference. The story I liked best was a haunting one titled “Evermore,” in which the main character takes a week every year to go to France and visit the grave of her brother, who died in World War I. On the way, she honors not just her brother but all the war dead by visiting other soldiers’ cemeteries along the way. She is old herself now, but she has made this honoring of the war dead her life’s work, and she will continue doing so until she cannot do it any longer. I had mixed feelings about this collection, but as I said, that might be due to my own preferences regarding time periods and subject matter. In any case, this theme -- the British in France -- is an interesting organizing principle, and Barnes, as always, writes intriguingly and well.

Memorable Children in Novels

I have posted lists of memorable characters (3/6/11) and memorable settings (3/11/11); today I list some memorable child characters in novels for adults. Some of these are children throughout the novels in which they appear; some start as children and grow up during the course of the novels. Some of these child characters are memorable in a positive way, some in a frightening way. They are a very diverse group. But in all cases, the authors’ portrayals of these children are vivid, and stay in my mind even sometimes decades after reading the novels.

- Pip (in Great Expectations)
- Jane (in Jane Eyre)
- Jude, called “Little Father Time” (in Jude the Obscure)
- Maggie (in The Mill on the Floss)
- Susan, Rhoda, Jinny, Louis, Bernard, and Neville (in The Waves)
- Miles and Flora (in The Turn of the Screw)
- Antonia (in My Antonia)
- Ralph, Jack, Simon, and Piggy (in Lord of the Flies)
- Sandy and Rose (in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)
- Frankie (in The Member of the Wedding)
- Scout (in To Kill a Mockingbird)
- Phineas (in A Separate Peace)
- Holden Caulfield (in The Catcher in the Rye)
- Owen Meany (in A Prayer for Owen Meany)

"The Year We Left Home"

I think Jean Thompson is a wonderful writer, and have enjoyed reading her books ever since I discovered her fiction in about 2007. So I was pleased to read her latest book, “The Year We Left Home” (Simon & Schuster, 2011). This novel portrays an Iowa family over a period of thirty years, from 1973 to 2003. The Ericksons -- father, mother, and four children, as well as their various relatives -- are rooted in Iowa, but some of the younger generation feel the eternal call of young people to go “away” –- somewhere bigger and better and different. Yet there is always the countervailing call of the place and community called “home.” This push-pull between home and away, between the old and the new, between the known and the unknown, is a major theme in the novel, as is the eternal theme of the deep, primeval connection with family. The family events take place against the backdrop of national events such as the Vietnam War and its aftermath for veterans, the women’s movement, and the vicissitudes of the economy. The characters are very believable, and the story is compelling.

"The Love of My Youth"

I remember discovering Mary Gordon’s work when she published her first novel, “Final Payments,” in 1978; what a jolt of originality that novel was, and all her succeeding novels, stories, and nonfiction have been! So of course when I saw she had a new novel out this year, I found and read it. “The Love of My Youth” (Pantheon, 2011) tells the story of Miranda and Adam, who were the loves of each other’s lives during high school and college, until a great betrayal took place. While they were together, they spent one glorious summer in Rome; they now meet in Rome again, by chance, some 35 years later. They are each happily married now, with children. Wary of but drawn to each other, they spend three weeks walking, seeing the sights, sitting at cafes, and –- most of all –- talking. Gradually they relearn about each other. The novel goes back and forth between Miranda’s and Adam’s past and present together. This novel is a love letter to young love, as well as to the city of Rome, whose light and beauty is described in gorgeous detail. But to me -- probably influenced by being about the same age as the protagonists -- this novel is most of all about our relationships with our pasts. How did we get to this stage in our lives? What is our relationship now with the people we were all those years ago -- years that seem long and at the same time fleeting? How would our lives be different now if we had done this instead of that, been with this person instead of that one, moved to this city instead of that one? What happens when our pasts and presents collide? Have we kept the intensity of feelings we had about those dramatic and intense times in our lives -- especially the years of late adolescence and young adulthood? Or have we mellowed, moved beyond them, even let them go, as we have gone on to live our adult lives in predictable and unpredictable ways? “The Love of My Youth” brings all these questions to the fore.

On E-Readers and Libraries: No Comment

The following two items are among those in the "Fresh Ink" column of the San Francisco Chronicle's "Books" section today (5/22/11, p. G8) -- a telling juxtaposition. As Ms. Magazine's last page of each issue, a compendium of outrageous ads and other affronts, is titled: "No Comment."

Item 1: "Amazon.com has reached a milestone: The company now sells more e-books than printed books. For every 100 printed books sold, the retailer said, it sells 105 e-books. The company introduced its e-reader, the Kindle, in 2007."

Item 2: "Charles Simic, the poet, has written a powerful piece on the importance of public libraries. 'I don't know of anything more disheartening than the sight of a shut down library,' he writes in the blog post at the new York Review of Books (www.nybooks.com). 'Their slow disappearance is a tragedy, not just for those impoverished towns and cities, but for everyone everywhere terrified at the thought of a country without libraries.'"