Authors in Appreciation of Tea

I have written here (e.g., on 2/2/10) and elsewhere on the role of tea in literature. Today I would like to pass on some wonderful quotations on that topic from well-known authors. My source for these quotes? I have in my possession a small collection of coasters ("Quotesters," from Letterary Press) that I have reason to believe (in my family role as Santa's helper) will show up in my Christmas stocking next week. Of course to preserve all illusions, I should wait until after Christmas to pass on these quotes, but I am assuming my readers do not include anyone under six years old... Here are a few of those quotes, each of which I thoroughly relish:

-"There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
-"Wouldn't it be dreadful to live in a country where they didn't have tea?" -- Noel Coward
-"I smile, of course, And go on drinking tea." -- T. S. Eliot
-"One sip of this will bathe the drooping spirits in delight, beyond the bliss of dreams." -- John Milton
-"There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea." -- Henry James
-"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me." -- C. S. Lewis

I dedicate this post to two dear friends: my late friend C. and my friend B., with each of whom I have shared dozens, perhaps hundreds, of cups of tea over the years.

"A Moveable Feast," by Ernest Hemingway

I have read several books and articles by and about Ernest Hemingway this past year or so, including re-reading "The Sun Also Rises" (see my post of 2/27/11) and reading Paula McLain's novel about Hemingway's first wife Hadley, titled "The Paris Wife" (see my post of 7/1/11). Now I have just re-read -- or actually listened to a books-on-CD reading of -- "A Moveable Feast," Hemingway's memoir about his time in Paris between 1921 and 1926, when he was a young writer just getting started on his fiction, and enjoying the pleasures of Paris, despite his poverty. He writes of the cafes and the bars where he ate, drank, wrote, and met friends, often other writers. He describes his interactions with such writers as Fitzgerald, Stein, Joyce, Ford Madox Ford, and Pound. The first time I read this book, many years ago, I just enjoyed reading about Paris and famous writers; the book is evocative and enjoyable, and I must admit the literary gossip was fun to read. I experienced some of these feelings this time as well, but I couldn't help noticing that under his "modest" self-presentation, Hemingway was happy to condescend to certain others and even present them in an unflattering light, under the guise of just telling what happened. Often he presents himself as the kind, helpful, and loyal friend, while slightly disparaging the other writers. He starts by praising Stein but ends by subtly running her down. Ford Madox Ford is portrayed as unpleasant and deluded. Fitzgerald is presented as pitiful, ruined by his wife, insecure sexually, and a hypochondriac. The scene in which Fitzgerald supposedly comes to Hemingway for sexual advice seems both unfair to Fitzgerald and self-serving on Hemingway's part. I still definitely enjoyed this book, and there is much to like about the portraits of Paris, writers, and the writer's life. I was just a lot more aware, this time, of the way the book was constructed to put Hemingway himself in a good light and others less so.

"The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories," by Don DeLillo

I must start by saying that I have not read any of Don DeLillo's acclaimed novels. Somehow they didn't sound like "my kind of" novels, although I would likely admire them in an abstract way. I thought of them as being among the the rather arid, experimental fictions that I mostly avoid. But something about the reviews of "The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories" (Scribner, 2011) made me decide to read it. The stories are much more accessible than I expected. But what floored me was that they do what the best fiction does: they create a cracklingly electric world, one both startingly original and yet hair-raisingly recognizable. Not all the stories made me feel this way, but the best of them did. "Midnight in Dostoevsky" and "Hammer and Sickle" are both mesmerizing. But the most amazing experience was reading the title story, "The Angel Esmeralda." Bleak, searing, gripping, incantatory are all adjectives that come to mind. The story features two elderly nuns, Gracie and Edgar, who regularly visit the worst blasted-out landscapes and tenements of the Bronx, bringing food to the unfortunate, the alienated, the drug-addicted. We experience the events of the story through the consciousness of the older of the nuns, Edgar. The author's descriptions of the setting are other-worldly and intensely disturbing. Yet somehow in all of this there are notes of hope. The two nuns have caught glimpses of a young girl, Esmeralda, apparently living by her wits, perhaps in one of the stripped down carcasses of automobiles; they try to catch her to help her, but she is elusive. Something terrible happens, but out of the tragedy, an improbable sort of miracle happens as well. This story was one that gave me shivers. I think that I now need to go back and read some of DeLillo's novels....

The Kindle Dilemma

I have not been a friend or advocate of e-readers (Kindles, Nooks, and others), fearing that they signal the diminishment of, and perhaps eventually even the end of, my beloved "real" books, books with pages and covers. But I have been persuaded by many friends and family members that they are useful for travel, useful for getting books immediately on demand, etc. My daughter recently said, "Mom, I have to tell you something you won't like," causing me a flash of worry, until she mischievously continued, "I got a Kindle!" In her case, she uses it for commuting to her job downtown on public transportation, as well as for her frequent travel by air, and finds the Kindle easy to carry and use in those situations. I continue to resist getting one myself, but I am not protesting them as vehemently as I used to, as I foresee that eventually it will be one of those items that "everyone" has, and eventually I will probably succumb and get one. In matters of technology, I am usually a "late adopter," and will be so for this device as for others in the past. At that point I will have to "eat my words." So I am now, with sadness and apprehension, stopping (at least most of the time!) speaking out against them. Now I can only hope that the e-reader and the traditional book will continue to co-exist, each having its advantages and its uses at different times and in different situations. (But why do I feel somewhat sorrowful and defeated as I type this post...?)

A Backlog of "Nation" Magazines

I love the Nation magazine, as I wrote here on 2/7/11, but because the issues come every week, they tend to pile up. As I said in my post of 4/6/11 about my "magazine pile," New York and The New Yorker also come every week, but I usually read them more quickly. The Nation, although it is important to me, is a bit heavier, more demanding, more serious, more earnest, more political than the other two. I admire and value it very much, I learn much from it, and I get information and ideas from it that I don't get elsewhere. But in general it is not something I eagerly pick up for pure enjoyment the way I do the other two magazines, and several others I subscribe to that arrive (thankfully!) less frequently. Today I noticed that almost three months of back issues of The Nation had piled up, so despite my waiting piles of papers to grade, I set aside a couple of hours to plow through -- and I mean PLOW through -- these backlogged issues. I admit I skipped and skimmed a fair amount, especially as some of the articles were no longer timely. But I thoroughly enjoyed my immersion in the Nation, and felt I had achieved something by powering through the whole pile. Whew!

What They Were Reading in Muncie Over 100 Years Ago

There's a fascinating essay in the 11/27/11 New York Times Book Review about the recent discovery in Muncie, Indiana, of old handwritten Muncie Public Library records. A researcher "discovered crumbling ledgers and notebooks identifying every book checked out of the library, as well as the name of the patron who checked it out, from November 1891 to December 1902." What a treasure trove! The researchers cataloged and digitized the information, with the resulting database providing "one of the few authoritative records of American reading." Some of what they found: "Women read romances, kids read pulp and white-collar workers read mass-market titles. Horatio Alger was by far the most popular author....Louisa May Alcott is the only author who remains both popular and literary today....The remaining authors at the top of the list...have vanished from memory." Some read the "classics," but not many. This is all not so very different from today....

Buy Holiday Gifts at Independent Bookstores!

I would like to urge readers, as I did last year, to buy as many as possible of your holiday gifts in independent bookstores. Books make great gifts, and we need to support our wonderful independent bookstores.

On another note: I have been posting less the past couple of weeks, as it has been a very busy time at work; in addition, I was finishing two articles with deadlines. I will be back to more frequent posting soon. Thanks for checking and reading the blog!