Summer Books

The Optimist

I am a library user. Some might say a library abuser. I have no untoward intentions. In fact, my aims are nothing less than honorable. To read, perchance, to read some more. But my mental reach typically exceeds my practical grasp. I plan to read much more than I actually read.

The bookshelf that dreams are made of.

Unfortunately, advances at the local pubic library have exacerbated this deep-seated foible. In days of old, I would venture to the downtown Milwaukee Public Library. There, in the “New Books” section, hundreds of possibilities awaited. “Ahhh, the new A____ novel. Oh! Collected Essays of B_____! A biography of C_____! A catalog of the new painting exhibit by D_____!

The Lobby of the Milwaukee Public Library

Arms full, I’d stumble over to the unsuspecting clerk, who—these were the old days after all—would open…and date-stamp…and close…and desensitize…one book after another…and another… sliding them to my waiting tote bag (or two!) on the other side of the security gate. Smiling meekly, I’d sheepishly whisper, “See you in three weeks.”

But now, “There’s an App for that.” Our library system is united in a digital cooperative—a veritable NATO of novels and non-fiction—and the wonders of its collections (in 28 different libraries!) are lurking here on my phone, just under the latest, half-finished crossword.

So if I’m out for drinks and a friend mentions a recent great read? Push…swipe…type-type-type…send…and that book is on its way to a library branch three blocks from my house. Out for a walk with a podcast in my ear, I hear of a title or author that piques my interest. Swipe…type…and I’m on the waiting list. Suddenly curious about J. Robert Oppenheimer, bat sonar, or the history of the pencil? Satisfaction is just a few swipe-taps away.

Those taps, of course, turn into pounds of paper and ink. A tote bag here, a tote bag there, and I’ve got a shelf load of books that I’m “curious” about. Some, I will thumb through and set aside. Some, I will read in fits and starts—a chapter perhaps or a particular section. Some will hook me and drive me headlong all the way to the final page. Eventually, they will return to the tote bags and make the trek back to their public home, making room for the results of my latest tap-swipes.

The Rest of the Story

Parul Sehgal

I was in grad school during the Deconstruction years, trying to navigate the maze of English department “theory” asked rabbit-hold questions like “What is a story?” So I took a keen interest in Parul Sehgal’s lucid and provocative essay in the July 10 & 17th edition of The New Yorker, “The Tyranny of the Tale.” It’s about literature, to be sure. But it’s mostly about the growing prevalence of story in the culture at large.

Corporations craft “compelling brand stories.” Organizations shape their histories into “stories.” Politicians create life-stories to connect with voters (remember “A Place Called Hope”?). Memoirists edit the varied experience of their lives into a singular whole. Journalists turn the crazy world into a series of stories. (Seghal quotes a New York Times columnist who wrote in 2020 that the paper was changing “from the stodgy paper of record into a juicy collection of great narratives.”)

But Seghal asks the essential question: “What is it that story does not allow us to see?”

To do so, Seghal quotes a number of “story skeptics” who decry the “unconscious obedience” to the grammar of story. “Story lulls,” she writes. “It encourages us to overlook the fact that it is, first, an act of selection,” something that tends toward “closure and comfort.” And she offers examples of authors who are exploring “an alternative to story.” The 2022 Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux strives to capture the “unstoried self,” the pure “immanence of a moment,” which opts for searching for reality rather than inventing it. Virginia Woolf wants to capture “non-being.” (“Every day includes much more non-being than being.”) Lorrie Moore talks about “unsayable life.” And she quotes a powerful reminiscence by B. B. King who recalls witnessing a lynching, but doesn’t experience it as story: “My anger is a secret that stays away from the light of day. . . . I feel disgust and disgrace and rage and every emotion that makes me cry without tears and scream without sound.” But then he picks up a guitar and the notes find a way.

It’s worth a read. (Explore the idea more on the Slate Culture Gabfest, which discusses the essay in its July 12th podcast.)

Back to School

Rebecca Makkai

Yes, but we all love a good story, well-told, don’t we. One of the highlights of my recent reading life is Rebecca Makkai’s I Have Some Questions for You, a whodunnit that honors and departs from the genre in interesting ways. It’s narrated by a filmmaker/podcaster (aren’t we all, these days) who returns to her elite New England boarding school to teach a two-week class. While there, she becomes enmeshed in the controversy that surrounds the murder of her junior-year classmate, which has become a cause célèbre among true-crime enthusiasts. Was the wrong man convicted? Can her ambitious podcast students uncover new evidence? Why did the school’s beloved music teacher leave the school shortly after the murder? It’s a compelling whodunnit that also is a trenchant social commentary on contemporary online life.

Fake History

I’ve been on the library waitlist for Alexandra Petri’s U.S. History: Important American Documents (I Made Up) since April, and it took me only a few days to devour it once it arrived. Petri, an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post, is one our great satirists. Here, she joins the fray in school boards and university classrooms: “If you’re going to instruct all the educators in America to teach history what did not happen. . . . why not actually commit to the principle of the thing and insert all the bizarre documents that you think ought to be there. Get weird with it! If you’re going to lie about the past, lie big!” Among the wonders therein:

—”John and Abigail Adams Try Sexting,” in which those Revolutionary-era spouses, separated by the Atlantic, try to keep their marriage alive through letters:
“Peacefield (“old house”), Quincy, Mass., Apr. 1st, 1778.
Dear John,
What are you wearing?

—The edition of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking that hints at her past life (as a spy). “A false bottomed casserole dish can be used to store documents and microfilm, but do remember to remove the documents before baking!”

—”The Gettysburg Address” written by the ever walking-and-talking Aaron Sorkin. “Walk with me over this battlefield, Stacy.”

Also….Notes from Edgar Allen Poe’s handyman about how he handled the problem of that thump-thump coming from under the floorboards. A recently discovered picture book by Henry David Thoreau, Where’s Walden? And Allen Ginsburg’s original version of Howl, which was dictated to him by a stray dog in San Francisco: “I have seen the best canines of my generation destroyed by madness, barking hysterical sweatered….”

Guaranteed to deliver several out-loud guffaws.

Translate This!

If you are a reader, you’ve undoubtedly encountered books that were not originally written in our mother tongue. Translation is a hot topic in the literary world these days, following Pen America’s recent “Manifesto” that declares it to be a “creative art in its own right.” The New York Times Book Review recently explored the trials and tribulations of translators with several features about the art and practice of bringing a book from one language to another. There’s a roundtable discussion featuring several working translators, all of whom decry the publishing industry’s reluctance to bring works written in African and Asian languages into English. There’s a fascinating digital interactive feature that examines the mindset of a translator at work. And for the classically minded, there’s a look at how a single passage in Homer’s Iliad has been translated into English over the years, from George Chapman (1611) to Robert Fagles (1990) to Emily Wilson’s (2023).

Miłej lektury! 快樂閱讀, kusoma kwa furaha.

(For those keeping score at home, that’s “Happy Reading!” in Polish, Chinese and Swahili.

Have a good week!