LIBRARY PATRON

This piece by Elinore Standard appeared in the (Bedford, Pound Ridge, NY) Record Review as
another in the ongoing series "My Reading Life".



LIBRARY PATRON


In pre-computer days, when you browsed through the library, you could look at the signatures on the withdrawal card in the back of the book to see who were the previous borrowers. This was a handy bit of information, lost now to our freak-out for privacy that we know isn’t even remotely private. Those names told you the book you were considering had been read by a fellow appreciator of mystery or romance or biography. I followed the path of people I thought of as good readers and their names were an endorsement, a seal of approval. Sometimes I’d look for a cryptic smiley face or an exclamation point, or an X, and I’d know whose mark it was and from that little sign, what they thought of the book.

Every now and then, I still find a signature card in an older book. The names in ink or pencil go back maybe to the 1950’s, and I take a long look at them in remembrance of readers who have since then moved away or died. I wonder what was going on in their lives at the time they checked out the book and I try to think about what was happening in the world. I try to picture them and hear their voices.

There is another kind of silent communication among library patrons, one that librarians would certainly frown upon, and that is the faint pencil corrections or comments made by anonymous proof readers of the many and inexcusable typos so often found in newer books. A book I read recently had one outrageous typo boldly circled on the first page and I thought, “Way to go!” Some books, despite all the spellchecking in the world, don’t seem to have been edited at all. I often itch to make the little circles or checks but I resist because such practice 1.) intrudes upon the reader, 2.) seems a bit priggish, 3.) defaces the book, 4.) might get me busted.

Sometimes I find things in library books, left there as bookmarks by previous readers. In a copy of Elizabeth Bowen’s “The House in Paris” (1936), recently borrowed through the Westchester (NY) Library System from the Eastchester Public Library, I have a student rush ticket from the 2002 season of the New York City Ballet. I will use it as my own bookmark and unless it disappears behind my bed, will tuck it into the book and send it back down county.

I’ve found letters and shopping lists and dried leaves in books, all traces of other readers. I know that librarians purge this trash when they check books in, but to me what escapes them is treasure.

When I was a graduate student, I would hurry right after class to the stacks and grab all of the books I’d need to do an assigned paper. If I didn’t get there first, they’d be gone and -- worse – perhaps hidden. Books get mysteriously squirreled away. Like hiding nuts, you need to remember where you put them.

At the Hiram Halle Library in Pound Ridge, years ago there was a patron who took cookbooks. She didn’t take them out, she borrowed them permanently. The librarians knew who she was but they could never really prove it. Cookbooks have always been expensive and the library had (and still has) a fine collection, many of which were gifts. It wasn’t just one book that went missing. The thefts happened regularly. The library was off the hook when suspect moved away from town, presumably to become the bane of another library.

Not all the thievery happened on the inside. Once upon a time, the Halle library had a fine, early American weathervane atop the cupola on the old schoolhouse section of the library building. Few people realized it was a treasure until the weathervane was stolen. Yes, thieves must have cased the place and one night climbed up and removed it. Insurance paid a little and a new weathervane was bought, but the original was gone forever.

When I first moved to Pound Ridge, an old tradition of Wednesday half-day closing was observed. The elementary school dismissed at Noon and Schelling’s market closed for the afternoon. The Halle Library was closed all day Tuesday and half-day on Wednesday. One afternoon of closing, as a Trustee of the Library I got a call from the Library’s security monitor to say the alarm had gone off. I threw my little .410 shot gun in the car and drove there quickly. With the gun properly broken and tucked under my arm, I raced up the path only to be followed by the local police who had arrived on my heels. I explained why I had come and they advised me to put the shot gun, away, and I did. Today I would have been blown to pieces. The front door was indeed wide open and the police entered cautiously, weapons at the ready. There, in one of the red armchairs in the foyer, a patron was sitting, reading. Except for him, the place was empty and the alarm was making an awful noise. The elderly man finally looked up, astounded, and the policemen asked him what he was doing in there.

“What?”
They faced him and asked again.
“What did you say?” He adjusted his hearing aid.
They asked once more and he responded, “I’m reading.”
“How did you get in?”
“The door was open.”
“You can’t be in here, the library is closed.”
“No, the library is open,” he insisted.

This went on, back and forth. The distinguished patron became flustered. The police were adamant. I told them I recognized the man and by this time, the officers realized that with his hearing aid turned off, he couldn’t hear a thing -- not the claxon sounding in the space all around him, not their arrival. Forgetting the days of closing, the patron had walked to the library as usual, found the door unlocked, went in, got comfortable, and had himself a read.

The policemen made the patron leave, although he did so reluctantly. They shut the library door firmly and locked it. They warned me not to run around with a shot gun. They returned to their cruiser to write up the report of another exciting small-town incident.

Nobody got arrested. Nobody was dead.

Happy Ending.

* * *
Elinore Standard is the co-editor of “Bookworms:
Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading” (Carroll & Graf, 1997)

BOOKS FOR THR MASSES

This piece by Elinore Standard first appeared as one in an ongoing series in The Record Review titled "My Reading Life."

Works mentioned in this piece: "City Journal," Love in the Valley, Literary Taste And How To Form It,


BOOKS FOR THE MASSES



In a recent article in the urban policy magazine,“City Journal”, titled “The Classics in the Slums” by Jonathan Rose, the author states that the classics in “the canon” – that is, the received list of “great” books acknowledged as necessary to an education – enabled “the masses” to become thinking individuals. “Until fairly recently,” Rose says, “Britain had an amazingly vital autodidact culture, where a large minority of the working classes passionately pursued classic literature, philosophy and music.

In the last part of the 19th Century and beginning of the 20th, self-taught working class people read the classics in part because contemporary literature was too expensive. A home library could be built up, Rose says, “by haunting used-book stalls, scavenging castoffs, or buying cheap out-of-copyright reprints,” all offering only yesterday’s authors.

Welsh collier Joseph Keating (b. 1871) said, “Volumes by living authors were too high-priced for me. Our school-books never mentioned living writers; and the impression in my mind was that an author, to be a living author, must be dead; and that his work was all the better if he died of neglect and starvation.”

Rose continues: “In the mining towns of South Wales, colliers had pennies deducted from their wages to support their own libraries, more than 100 of them by 1934. The miners themselves determined which books to buy. There were sophisticated literary debates down in the pits, where one collier heard high praise for George Meredith. That evening, he tried to borrow Meredith’s ‘Love in the Valley’ from the local miners’ library, only to find 12 names on the waiting list for a single copy.

“‘Every miner has a hobby,’” explained one Welsh collier. “‘It may be a reaction from physical strain. The miner works in a dark, strange world. He comes up into light. It is a new world. It is stimulating. He wants to do something…Think what reading means to an active mind that is locked away in the dark for hours every day!’”

The English playwright, novelist and essayist, Arnold Bennett (1867-1931) understood the potential of a vast new reading public and believed in getting this public to read by whatever means. Born in the heart of Staffordshire in what is known as “the potteries”, --six towns that later formed the city of Stoke-on-Trent, Bennett wrote fiction about the drab lives and ugly surroundings of working class and middle class people he grew up with.

He also wrote “Literary Taste: How To Form It” first published by A.P. Watt in 1909. “Literary Taste” is an exhortation, a sermon, a plea for self-improvement through reading. The Education Act of 1870 produced what Bennett called “a new, eager reading public with no tradition of self-culture by means of books.” In a pre-public free library era, he set out to show people how they could develop literary taste by scrimping to buy books, by diligent and regular reading of certain works, and by thinking about this reading.

“Literary Taste” contains three of the most delicious reading lists you’ll ever find and I am happy to announce you can read it all on-line for absolutely nothing if you go to
www.readbookonline.net, a site containing 200 of the best novels of the 20th Century. Arnold Bennett would be astounded and pleased to think that many works on his own list can come to your virtual personal library completely free of charge.

In 1909, the total cost of Bennett’s 335-volume library was about £26, or, as Bennett points out, sixpence a day for three years. Figure a pound was worth about $5.00 back then and understand a worker made perhaps that much in a week, it isn’t as inexpensive as it sounds, but still…

“When you have read, wholly or in part,” Bennett says, “a majority of these 335 volumes with enjoyment, you may begin to whisper to yourself that your literary taste is formed; and you may pronounce judgment on modern works which come before the bar of your opinion in the calm assurance that, through to err is human, you do at any rate know what you are talking about.”

He divides the literary holdings into three periods: The first is from the beginning of literature to John Dryden or roughly to the end of the 17th Century. He eliminates The Bible from his list because he assumes everybody already has one. This list includes Bede, More, Chaucer, Donne, Milton, and Shakespeare, of course.

Period Two goes from William Congreve to Jane Austen or roughly the entire 18th Century into the 19th. Here we find Locke, Newton, Defoe, Addison and Steele, Adam Smith, Gibbon, Malthus, Pope, Gray, Cowper, Blake and Robert Burns.

Bennett’s Period Three extends from Scott through the 19th Century. As Rose points out in his “City Journal” piece, material under copyright – all the new stuff – then as now, costs more. So Bennett’s third list is the most expensive because it contains a larger proportion of copyright works. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Tennyson, Browning. Lamb, Thackeray, Dickens, Trollope, Stevenson are on the fiction list, and Darwin, Newman, Hazlitt, Macaulay, and Carlyle, among others, are on the non-fiction list.

There is a lot about Arnold Bennett on the website of the Stoke-on-Trent City Council Libraries. www.stoke.gov.uk/council/libraries. This excellent site has many links and you can find information, for example, about the well-known local potteries. You can read a lively and slightly nasty exchange between Arnold Bennett and Virginia Woolf (she says he has a most peculiar accent), you can get maps and find out what is happening locally, and you can print out a recipe for “Omelette Arnold Bennett” created just for him by a famous chef during Bennett’s day.

I like the encouraging tone of “Literary Taste” and for having been compiled 100 years ago, Bennett’s approach and his list hold up today. Often he explains why he has rejected a work one might expect to find included. He is always mindful of the pocketbook. As you’ll notice with us contemporary stone readers and compilers of lists, there is a passion, an obsession. And there is joy: Bennett says, “the spirit of literature is unifying, it joins the candle and the star.”


Elinore Standard elstd@aol.com
There is an excerpt about Arnold Bennett in
“Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading”
Laura Furman and Elinore Standard, Eds. (Carroll& Graf, 1997)

DETECTED, INSPECTED

This column by Elinore Standard appeared in The Record Review in August, 2004, as one in the ongoing "My Reading Life" series.

Works mentioned in this piece: Death in Dublin, Death of an Irish Lover, Death of a Joyce Scholar, Death of an Irish Tinker, Outsider in Amsterdam, Corpse in the Dyke, Blond Baboon, Love in Amsterdam, King of the Rainy Country, Roseanna, Laughing Policeman, Aqua Alta, Murder Down Under, Bony and the Mouse, Sands of Windee, Fade to Clear, Over the Shoulder, Underkill.


MY READING LIFE



DETECTED, INSPECTED


Come with me on a trip around the world to meet a few of my favorite detectives along the way.
We’ll travel eastward, stopping first in Ireland. Bartholomew Gill is, alas, no longer with us (he died in 2002) but we’ll look around the Dublin of his novels, the locale for more than 15 novels featuring brainy Dublin police Inspector of Detectives, Peter McGarr.

In such mysteries as “Death in Dublin”, “Death of an Irish Lover”, “Death of a Joyce Scholar”, and “Death of an Irish Tinker”, McGarr and Gill’s other characters evolve as the series progresses. His people change: they get older and wiser, they rise in rank, some leave the force,they marry, they split, they die. Gill’s writing is comfortable to read and I’m sorry he’s gone. I miss him already. Our local libraries have many of the McGarr novels and they are also available in paperback, generally published by Harper.

Hop across the Channel, now, to the Netherlands and the work of Janwillem Van de Wetering whose Commisaris of the Amsterdam police, and his subordinates, policemen Grijpstra and deGier have partnered in an enjoyable series that includes such titles as “Outsider in Amsterdam,” “The Corpse in the Dike,” “The Blond Baboon,” and others, now reprinted in paperback (many by Soho) and available on Amazon.

Although the murders in these books are brutal, there is a thoughtfulness and humanity on the part of the characters that sometimes borders on the quirky. DeGier is a tall, skinny, Zen-practicing cat owner and flutist and Grijpstra is an ageing and somewhat dissolute drummer. They worship their elderly boss and make inside jokes about just about everything.

In 1972, the late English writer Nicolas Freeling (1927-2003) actually had the nerve to kill off his own Amsterdam police Commisaris, Piet Van der Valk, after several successful novels. A “Guardian” obit of Freeling said, “He was tired of the tyranny of having to write the same story over and over again.” I always missed Van der Valk (“Love in Amsterdam” 1962, “King of the Rainy Country, 1967) but I did enjoy Freeling’s sop to his disappointed fans: two novels featuring Arlette Van der Valk, the widow. Freeling also wrote 16 novels set in and around the Alsace region of France with Henri Castang as the detective-hero in those. Good, but not as good, as the Dutch series.

Get on a coastwise freighter and make your way up the North Sea to the Stockholm of the early 1970s, and to climate and atmosphere as cold as the long, dim days of Nordic Winter. Swedish husband-and-wife writers, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo created 15 novels in a police procedural series featuring Martin Beck of the Stockholm homicide squad. Written before 1975, when Wahloo died, titles include “Roseanna" (1965) and “The Laughing Policeman” (1971) which was later made into a movie featuring Walter Matthau.

Martin Beck is solid and methodical and usually fed up with the general incompetence of the police force and the dehumanizing aspects of his job. His colleague, Lennart Kollberg, hates violence and refuses to carry a gun.

Should you wish to remain in Arctic emotional deepfreeze, check current detective titles by Swedish novelist Henning Mankill and Norwegian, Karin Fossum.

Thaw out, and head South, now, to watery Venice and the Inspector Guido Brunetti novels by Donna Leon. This is a fairly recent series, a dozen novels beginning in 1992, and Leon seems to write a new one almost yearly, so that’s good. I love it that Brunetti often comes home for lunch and as the reader, I get to share what he’s having. My favorite in this series is “Aqua Alta” (1996), set during the winter floods when many of the streets and sidewalks are under water and Venetians make their way about town on boardwalks hurriedly placed for that purpose.

Quick! Hop on QUANTAS or hurry to the stacks at your local library, or go on line, and order any of the many Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte books by Arthur W. Upfield (1888-1964) generally not in print but still available for sale through Amazon. These stories, set in flyblown small towns of Western Australia during the 1930’s to ‘50’s, are gems of description and in each one, Detective Inspector Bonaparte or “Bony” as he is called, uses his Aboriginal tradecraft and cunning to deal in interesting depth with a timely Australian problem: flood, rabbits, drought, wildfire, and to solve whatever crime that happens his way.

Upfield reprint titles include: “Murder Down Under” (Touchstone, 1998), “Bony and the Mouse” (Harper, 1991), “The Sands of Windee”, (Macmillan, 1985). Thinking in his own Dreamtime, the patient Detective Inspector Bony says, “Never race Time. Make Time an ally, for Time is the greatest detective that ever was or ever will be.”

At last, we make our way back home to San Francisco where we meet Allen Choice the young private eye in three recent novels by American writer, Leonard Chang. Chang studied philosophy at Dartmouth and Harvard and his work is pleasingly literary. His latest and most absorbing novel is “Fade to Clear” (St. Martin’s, 2004) in which the Korean-American PI works to find an abducted child and faces his own issues of resistance to personal commitment. The writing is a little “noir” in the tradition of the old-fashioned sleuths of Raymond Chandler, Ross Macdonald and Dashiell Hammett .

This Chang novel is set in San Francisco and moves around Silicon Valley. It includes generous lashings of Kierkegaard which may sound off-putting but is really not. . “Fade to Clear” has a third person point of view and is written in the present tense, something not easy for a writer to manage without annoying the reader. I am impressed by Chang’s insight into his complex characters and his willingness to try a little literary razzle-dazzle.

Chang has also written “Over the Shoulder” (Harper 2001) and “Underkill” (St. Martin’s 2003). In his website (www.leonardchang.com) remarks Chang says he is going to write more Allen Choice novels, how many more, “I’m not sure, but it feels like I’ve only started to delve into his character and family.” Chang’s first three Allen Choice novels have the makings of a durable series.

Of course, we could keep circling the globe, going around and around like the Flying Dutchman. We could return to Europe for George Simenon’s, Le Commissaire Jules Maigret of the Paris Police Judiciaire, probably (next to Sherlock Holmes) the most famous fictional detective that ever was. Maigret figures in 78 novels and 28 short stories, and at least 50 films. On sheer output, Simenon stands first. If we felt like it, we could head down to southern Africa, to Botswana and Alexander McCall Smith’s adorable and best selling Mma Ramotswe, the “traditionally-sized” proprietor of the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.

The frequent flyer miles are racking up. Oh, what pleasures such armchair travel can provide!


Elinore Standard is the editor, along with Laura Furman of “Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading" (1997, Carroll & Graf).

NOTHING LIKE JANE

This column is from the ongoing series "MY READING LIFE" by Elinore Standard in The Record Review, December, 2004.

NOTHING LIKE JANE WHEN YOU ARE IN A TIGHT SPOT

I don’t know how many times I’ve read Jane Austen’s novels, nor do I remember when I read the first one. I go to them when I am tired of reading thrillers in which people get sliced and shot and blown up. I go to Jane Austen when I can’t stand another saga of family dysfunction and abuse. I turn to Jane Austen when the nightly news says the world around me is collapsing beneath the weight of fear, violence, lying and rage. I read Jane Austen to recover.

My favorite stories, fiction and non, are about how women manage and how people change their lives. I enjoy humor when it is witty and dialogue when it is stimulating. I mind being preached to. I appreciate a loyal and self-reliant character. I like happy endings.

Lately I’ve tried other so-called “comfort” novels, while attempting to avoid the bodice-ripper Regency romances and the mystery “cozies”that are so often included in this genre. Right after the ugliness of the recent presidential election, I even went so far as to try Agnes Sligh Turnbull, an American writer of bestsellers in the 1950s through the 70s. Like Jane Austen, she often writes about clergy and pastoral politics and the genteel life. Turnbull’s settings, often in upper class, pre-World War II urban America evoke what has been called a “kinder, gentler, age.” However, this kinder age as portrayed by Turnbull -- in addition to being completely humorless -- discriminated against all minorities, was Stone Age in its treatment of women, and it assumed an ethno-centric, white male-dominated, ruling class society. People were polite, though, and they all wore hats.

After reading this appalling opening line (page 1) from Turnbull’s “The Two Bishops” (Houghton, 1980), I fled back to Jane Austen:
“The warm effulgence of the late June day fell upon
the Bishop’s garden here and there.”

Karen Joy Fowler has written the delightful “The Jane Austen Book Club” (Putnam’s, 2004), in which she says, “Each of us has a private Jane Austen.” Fowler’s novel is more about the book club characters and why they read what they read than it is about Austen, but at the back of the book there is a generous bibliography and a chronological listing of what others through the years have had to say about the great Jane Austen. Fowler quotes Rudyard Kipling as saying, “Nothing like Jane when you’re in a tight spot.” (from “A Choice of Kipling’s Prose” ed: Craig Raine.) (Faber, 1987).

A chapter in a much darker recent novel, “Our Kind” by Kate Walbert,
(Scribner, 2004) has a reading group struggling to discuss Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” about which one character says, “I frankly, was confused, I couldn’t make heads or tails.” In comparing Woolf to Jane Austen, she adds, “Austen knew how to tell a story, and her books mean something. How many years later? You can read them again and again. In fact, I think we should read ‘Pride and Prejudice’ next…”

In “The Lesson of Balzac” (1905) Henry James said, “The key to Jane Austen’s fortune with posterity has been in part the extraordinary grace of her facility…” Such ease and simplicity may be the secret to the amazing survival and popularity of her work throughout two centuries. In her short lifetime she produced six novels which, given the fact she was a female (and an “Old Maid” as D.H.Lawrence called her) and getting published was hard enough without that. I wonder if there had been more Austen books written, would they seem as precious in the way they gently remind us today of the enduring foibles and follies of human nature.

Just to remind you, the six Austen novels, in order of publication: “Sense and Sensibility” (1811), “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), “Mansfield Park” (1814), “Emma” (1815), “Persuasion” (1817 Posth.) and “Northanger Abbey” (1817 Posth.). Although the books were not published in exactly the order they were written, they all deal with common themes such as the control of passion, miscommunication, the humbling of the vain and self-satisfied, and virtue rewarded. In addition, they all seem to be to be about money and the want of it.

“Northanger Abbey” of the six, is quite strange and it is the only one I have not persistently re-read. Perhaps this is because it seems like a juvenile exercise, which it pretty much is. Austen wrote it perhaps ten years earlier than any of the others but it wasn’t published until after her death. Unlike the other five novels, I find little comfort in “Northanger Abbey”. The three brother-sister pairs of characters seem farcical at times and, as I do with other novels old and new, I find myself becoming impatient.

Mark Twain didn’t exactly love Jane Austen’s work. He said, “Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice’, I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” Among other non-appreciators are Joseph Conrad, “What is it all about?”; Rebecca West, “...you will see women haggard with desire or triumphant with love…”; H. G. Wells, “A certain ineluctable faded charm. Like some of the loveliest butterflies – with no guts at all.” And so on… Of course, there have always been detractors but the appreciators far outnumber them.

In “A Room of One’s Own,” Virginia Woolf said of Jane Austen: “Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching…”

For me, as a reader in the 21st Century, these brave qualities are what make Jane Austen so reassuring, over and over again.

ALL THAT HARD WORK

This column by Elinore Standard appeared in a November, 2004 Record Review as one in the ongoing "My Reading Life" series.

Works mentioned in this piece: Traces of Thomas Hariot. A Brief and True Report,



ALL THAT HARD WORK

“The Traces of Thomas Hariot” by Muriel Rukeyser (Random House, 1970) is an ambitious biography taken on by Rukeyser, (1913-1980) who is best remembered as a distinguished American poet.

Thomas Hariot, (1560-1621) – tutor to Ralegh (today an “i” is added), friend of Francis Drake and Christopher Marlowe -- went as a surveyor and historian to the New World. He set out from Plymouth as part of Richard Grenville’s 1585 expedition to explore and record the “Virginia” wilderness. Hariot’s (spelling in the 16th Century was ad hoc: one can use “Heriot”, “Harriott”, “Herriot”, “Herriott” or any variation) only surviving book, “A Brief and True Report” was the first writing in English about America. It was published in 1588, three months before the sailing of the Spanish Armada.

Respected in his day and forgotten in ours, Hariot was a mathematician, alchemist, naturalist, and astrologer who investigated intellectual powers of change and magic – enough to get anybody in trouble with the Star Chamber – and Hariot (unlike some of his close friends including Raleigh) survived a long stay in the Tower of London.

To me, “The Traces of Thomas Hariot” is as much about the process required to produce a first-rate biography about an historical figure who left little written record as it is about the figure himself. I’ve owned “The Traces of Thomas Hariot” since 1970, and I always wondered what made Rukeyser choose so difficult a subject. I get the feeling the work took on a life of its own as it progressed -- as these things often do.

She began her inquiry into Thomas Hariot while teaching poetry at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville. There are hints and glances at Hariot in work by Raleigh, Marlowe, Spenser, Roger Bacon, Donne and other Elizabethans, and Rukeyser asked herself and her students, “Who was he? Where was he to be found?” There was little written about him, but there were clues and what Rukeyser calls, “excitements”.

In the early 1960’s, she commenced a search for Hariot papers and materials in England and examined sources in museums and private libraries; the clock began running. She waited years for Hariot’s own papers to be published so that what she was saying about him could become verifiable. As she worked in the British Museum with microfilms of the Hariot papers, a fellow scholar informed her publisher that her work should not be published because Rukeyser was not consulting original manuscripts. She found another publisher. A friend wrote, “By now, it is an obsession with you, and these obsessive things sometimes turn out well.”

She hits pay dirt in the library at Alnwick, the home of the present-day Duke of Northumberland whose forebear, The “Wizard” Earl of Northumberland, had been Hariot’s patron. She had been given permission by the Duke to visit two years earlier and she appeared unannounced, acting boldly on a rather old invitation. The day came when she finally met the Duke. “He came toward us, and I began to show him the papers of his family with which I was working. I told him some of what I was after. He put his head on one side, with its legendary red hair, and the turning point of all my endeavor came. He said, ‘It’s very much like fox-hunting.”

She goes to Raleigh country in Dorset, England, and a place called “Nag’s Head”. In the U.S. she goes, as Hariot once did, across the sandbars in Roanoke Sound, North Carolina, to Kitty Hawk, Nag’s Head and Hattaras. Back in England, she meets and interviews descendants of Raleigh and Hariot and of the many others connected to the expedition.

In Madrid, Rukeyser gets access to the archives of the Spanish Duke of Medina Sidonia, to complete the account of the “other side” of the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Then back she goes to London in 1968, to Syon House, a Northumberland residence where Hariot ended his days. She discusses the possible planting of a Hariot Trail, so that the New World plants and trees described in “A Brief and True Report” might also be set out on the present-day site of Hariot’s former home and laboratory.

Years pass and one can see that as Rukeyser proceeded, she got sucked deeper and deeper into the black hole of research. You get the feeling that some of it was drudgery and a lot of it was fun. You understand that Rukeyser, a person with the time and the means, could afford the expense of foreign questing. You are aware that her own distinguished reputation as a poet and teacher gave her credibility and entrée, and you realize that she had an international network of friends and acquaintances and what they used to call “connections” in academia and publishing.

At the end of the book, there is an eleven-page partial reading list and citation of 300 sources. Her Acknowledgments list is long, including: “To Sarah Lawrence College and to my students there, whom I first set the errand of searching with me for the traces of Thomas Hariot”.
As she concludes the book, Rukeyser describes herself as “exhausted” and accepts that there are gaps in the story of Hariot she can never possibly fill. To make the challenge greater (in those pre-digital days before fax, e-mail, Google, hard-drive backup and Jet Blue), the second publisher lost her manuscript and they lost treasured illustrations. Rukeyser compares the long delays for the book with “Hariot’s long story of delay and failure.”

And you know what? I am going down deeper and deeper into my own interest in what Rukeyser went through in order to produce a responsible biography. I am much more fascinated by that process than I am by Thomas Hariot! I Google “Muriel Rukeyser” and I come up with 10,000 results! This is enough to feed the most voracious obsession! I Google “Thomas Hariot” and I find 4,700 –- amounting to many, many pages of references and endless pathways to follow. Practically all of the Rukeyser entries have to do with her poetry; few have to do with Hariot. I get tired of paging through. Unlike Rukeyser, I give up.

Elinore Standard is the co-editor of “Bookworms: Great Writers and
Readers Celebrate Reading” (Carroll&Graf, 1997).

FOR THAT PERSON WHO HAS EVERYTHING

A "MY READING LIFE" column by Elinore Standard as it appeared in the December, 2004 issue of The Record Review.

Works mentioned in this piece: Gigi-Gugi, Interior Desecrations, Gallery of Regrettable Food,
Philadelphia Main Line Classics, Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia.


FOR THAT PERSON WHO HAS EVERYTHING




Ah, what to get that person who has everything? A book is usually a safe
and often welcome choice. I remember the time long ago when I pouted my way through Christmas and several days thereafter because the books I had hoped for were not beneath the tree. My parents thought it was a waste of good money to buy something that could be so easily borrowed from the local library.
Now it is more convenient to buy a book online than it is to drive to a bookstore. By using e-mail you can have Amazon send boxes of books to your door, and because we live in such a crazy world, you can pay for them with virtual plastic. Too tempting by half, but there are always ways to rationalize.
One way I trick myself is to buy books for somebody else, getting the vicarious thrill without the guilt of spending (hear this, O my parents!) money on myself. I recently heard Daniel Pinkwater reading Chih-Yuan Chen’s’s “Gugi, Gugi”( Kane/Miller, 2004), a children’s book about a family of ducks and an extra large egg that rolls into their nest (“Mother duck didn’t notice, she was reading!”) on NPR and it sounded so charming I knew I’d have to order it for my granddaughter, but lucky duck me, I’d get to see it first.
I recently saw an ad in “Publishers’ Weekly” for “Interior Desecrations: Horrible Homes From The Brass Age of American Design” by James Lileks (Crown, 2004) and I thought, hmmmm, this could be good. I recollected a split-level with its avocado-hued kitchen and a New York City apartment with avocado trees growing from pots nobody ever watered, brown-tipped leaves sprawling across a grimy ceiling. I thought of orange and white daisies on contact paper, and brown upholstery. I saw fake wood paneling and shag, shag, shag. Was it this horrible? Could it possibly have been The Age of Aquarius? Mr. Lileks brings it all back in a compendium of bad taste. Spare us a 70s home décor revival; current lifestyle rage for the 40s and 50s is bad enough.
I don’t know who you’d actually buy this book for. Not for your mother -- I hope not. You might get it for yourself, just for reassurance about the way we do not live now.
If you want to really make yourself queasy, try “The Gallery of Regrettable Food” by the same author. Salt! Sugar! Starch! Oh, boy, it is all there in revolting photographs the author gathered from various magazines and cookbooks, heavy on the 1940s. You can get both of Mr. Lileks’s books – packaged together by Crown – from Amazon for about $30.00.
“Gallery of Regrettable Food” includes such sections as “Cooking With 7UP”, “The A.1 Guide To Better Sex”, “Submit To The Power Of Ketchup”, PLUS! The really awful photographs, This book is so much fun and if you enjoy it, you’ll love Mr. Lileks’s website, “The Institute of Official Cheer”. That’s www.lileks.com. James Lileks has a regular column in the Minneapolis
“Star-Tribune” and he gets crazy stuff from the newspaper’s archives and from unconventional far-flung sources. The site has links to his collections of matchbooks, postcards, motel architecture, 70’s figure skating costumes and routines, etc., all with his own funny and often raunchy commentary.
There is one link I laughed my head off at: the illustrated “Dorcus Collection” presumably a long-forgotten men’s clothing line. Lileks has a good time with the black and white fashion photographs and his ad copy describes “Miracle Breethe-Thru shirts for hot days on the links or our swank, absorbent evening wear.” Now that’s Dorcus! I say “presumably” because it dawned on me Liluks made it all up.
Perhaps just a quick browse through the old recipe books at the back of your own kitchen shelves will satisfy an appetite for pure camp. I’ve got a real honey titled “Philadelphia Main Line Classics" put out in 1982 by The Saturday Club of Wayne, PA, and now in its seventh printing, a total of about 80,000 copies, thank you very much. I am impressed by the fifteen or so recipes for dips: curry dip, hot clam dip, deviled ham dip, caviar dip, crab dip, blue cheese dip, and so on, almost all based on a lot of cream cheese. Remember sour cream and dry onion soup mix: the ubiquitous dip for potato chips? Those were dippy days.
This is your basic Lileks-style canned cream soup, mayonnaise and crustless white bread recipe book, backed up by staples like canned onion rings and bottled artichoke hearts, frozen Cool-Whip and, yes, that universal solvent -- Cheeze Whiz. This collection puts the retro back into retro, heavy on the canapés. And, think: no offensive garlic or exotic spices to annoy your palate!
Maybe down there in Philadelphia they are still serving this stuff. I wouldn’t be surprised; they certainly were when I left. True confession: I like a lot of it and right this minute, I wouldn’t mind having a nice hot helping of celery casserole, (p. 283).
And if the domestic arts are not their thing, and you are desperate and really can’t think what to get that somebody, there is the “Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia”, (printed in Germany by Steidl/Fuel) containing photographs, drawings, and text, all part of a personal collection of over 3,000 tattoos signifying gang, clan, and ethnic membership gathered over years by prison attendant, Danzig Baldav. This may be an idea for an ambitious US prison worker or anthropologist in need of a thesis topic. We Americans could also use our own decoder for all that body ink.


Elinore Standard is the co-editor of ‘”Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading” (Carroll&Graf, 1997).

LONGITUDE, COD & FRIED CHICKEN

This "My Reading Life" column appeared in The Record Review in September, 2004 as
one in an ongoing series by Elinore Standard.

Works mentioned in this piece: Longitude, Cod, Salt, Hiroshima, Blues, A Cow's Life,
Secret Life of Dust. Sweetness and Power, Sex, Fried Chicken, Apple Pie, Spam


LONGITUDE, COD and FRIED CHICKEN


Dava Sobel surprised everybody, including herself, when her popular account
of the 18th Century measuring of Longitude (Walker, 1995) became a bestseller.
I remember taking the little paperback version on a cross-country flight and by
the time I landed in California, I had gained appreciation of the marine
chronometer or clock that would keep precise time at sea.

Not far behind “Longitude” came “Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed
the World” (Walker, 1997) ” and “Salt: A World History” (Walker, 2002), both
by Mark Kurlansky. (Notice that Walker appears to have got the early lock on
publishing these successful one-subject books).

Although “Cod” got better reviews, to me “Salt” is more interesting. Think about
salt as a source of wealth, state monopoly and means of exchange. See it as a
preservative: salted fish, cheese, meat, and vegetables (think: pickles) were
main staples in practically every culture. Know that salt is as essential to the
everyday cook as it is to the chef at Nobu. A first century A.D. recipe from
Apicius begins: “Pluck the flamingo, wash it, truss it, put it in a pot; add water,
salt, dill and a bit of vinegar…”

In this genre of one-subject titles John Hersey got there early on with
“Hiroshima” (1946) and then with “Blues” (Knopf, 1987) a loving tribute to
fishing and to the less-than loveable bluefish (around our house known as
“the rat of the sea”). Hersey includes poems about fish and fishing by Homer,
and by modern poets including James Merrill, Elizabeth Bishop, Ted Hughes
and Marianne Moore. Since knowing what to do with a bluefish once you’ve
caught it is important, he provides several recipes (heavy on the garlic,
rosemary and mayo—anything to subdue the nasty taste) that offer hope for
making your bluefish palatable. The real trick to cooking a bluefish is to cause
it happen within minutes of it being caught and gutted.

Maybe try “A Cow’s Life: The Surprising History of Cattle and How The Black
Angus Come To Be Home On The Range” by M. R. Montgomery (Walker, 2004).
This little book traces the evolution of domesticated cattle and, among other
things, walks us through a day in the life of a Montana cow.

Perhaps you’d be interested in “The Secret Life of Dust: From The Cosmos To
The Kitchen Counter, The Big Consequences of Little Things”, by Hannah Holmes
(Wiley, 2001) and dedicated to “My big, fat muse, P. Earth”. Holmes, who says
she grew up in a household with a microscope on the kitchen table, concludes
the universe is growing dustier with every passing million years. She says that
ultimately dust will insulate the stars and the night sky will darken. “And then,
like an old newspaper in the attic, the worn-out universe will gradually disappear
under the thickening dust.”

“Coal: A Human History” by Barbara Freese (Perseus, 2003), takes us into
another dimension, into the seams of coal beneath the earth. This is not so much
a history of coal mining as it is a social, political and environmental history and
explication of the world-changing essence of coal. Freese quotes Ralph Waldo
Emerson who wrote about coal in the mid-19th Century: “Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to
Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever
it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat,
to make Canada as warm as Calcutta; and with its comfort brings its industrial power.”
Freese thinks we may go back, someday, to using coal that, “for all its faults,
brought us through a sort of prolonged industrial childhood and ultimately gave us
the power to build a world that no longer needed coal.”

Digging deeper, there are the classic academic works on commodities such as
Sidney Mintz’s ambitious work, “Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in
Modern History” (Penguin, 1985). Most of these one-topic books can be found in
the 500 section at your library, a repository of the esoteric, the exquisite, the obsessional.
Go in there and you’ll emerge with an armful of books on subjects you never thought
for a minute about and then spend happy hours reading about cows or coal, or maybe
even dust.

One book you probably won’t find in the 500 section is “Sex” by Madonna,
a coffee table-sized book (Ediciones B, 1992) whose first printing sold out in a week.
A photo album about Madonna’s sex rather than, well, just sex, the book is long out
of print and now collectible with prices at Amazon starting at $125 and going to more
than $350. The only copy in the my local library system was, no big surprise, listed in
the catalogue as “missing.”

You might want to try, “Fried Chicken: An American Story” by John T. Edge
(Putnam, 2004) which lists 34 “favorite chicken houses” in 14 states with commentary
on their specialties. You can read about Cape May Onion-Fried Shore Chicken,
for example, and even try out a recipe for it. KFC, eat your heart out! For something
to go with your chicken, Edge has also written “Apple Pie”.

Perhaps you’d care to dig into “Spam: A Biography” by Carolyn Wyman (Harvest, 1999).
This is spam the ham product in a can, not the junk e-mail waiting for you when you
fire up your computer.

Try to think of something nobody else has done, which is about as tough as
finding a subject for a biography or a dissertation. I can think of a couple of topics I
wouldn’t mind spending time writing about – amber, for example. Amber is so Baltic, so organic, so ancient. It might be interesting to write about boxcars. Yes, boxcars might
be good.Think of all the logos on those long lines of boxcars, hundreds of them, that took forever to trundle through the railroad crossing as you watched from the back seat of
your father’s DeSoto. I Googled “boxcars” and found 99,000 entries, so figure it has,
alas, as editors are so fond of saying, “ been done.” For the fun of it, go to www.nonotuck.us./kens/boxcars / and you’ll see pictures of all sorts of railroad
freight cars, a handy reference for all your trainspotting needs.

Then, I Googled “amber” and found myself on Page One of 6,420,000
entries. Pretty daunting for the would-be writer of a small book on a single
interesting topic.


Elinore Standard is the editor, along with Laura Furman, of
“Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading."
(1997. Carroll & Graf)

DOGS! DOGS! DOGS!

The following appeared in the Record Review in April, 2004 as another in Elinore Standard's ongoing "My Reading Life" column.

Works mentioned in this piece: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Catcher in the Rye, Dog Fighter, Incredible Journey.


DOGS! DOGS! DOGS!


I am spacing out the chapters, dragging my feet, not wanting to finish Alexandra Fuller’s memoir, “Don’t Let’s Go To The Dogs Tonight” (Random House, 2001). It is the story of her girlhood on various remote farms in post-Colonial, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe Nyasaland/Malawi and Northern Rhodesia/Zambia. and Fuller has taken me right there with her, as part of her unruly, unprotected life.

During the 1970s and 80’s, the parts of these countries Fuller’s parents inhabited were geographically and physically inhospitable, and to hard-luck white farmers, scratching an existence out of tick-bitten cattle and low-grade tobacco in remote places, it was also dangerous. Land mines and trigger-happy juvenile soldiers were among the outside hazards sometimes too fantastic to take seriously when everyday life was so full of its own pressing danger.

While it instructs the reader about the contemporary geopolitical realities of region, Fuller’s book is as much the story of her alcoholic, bi-polar mother, a gorgeous, overburdened farmwife, horsewoman, barefoot doctor and veterinarian, big reader and major dog-lover. Somehow, Fuller writes about this amazing character with affection and candor. Both parents were racists as were most whites during that time and in that place. They were the “bosses”, yet they were dependent on local people for practically everything, including security, during long years of civil war and general upheaval. Of herself, Fuller says, “I am African by accident, not by birth. So while soul and heart, and the bent of my mind are African, my skin blaringly begs to differ and is resolutely white.”

As you go through Fuller’s chaotic childhood with her, you wonder how anybody in that family ever survived in the thick, swampy lands where they settled. And the fact is, three didn’t. Three of the Fuller children died early: one a baby, of meningitis, the next a toddler, by drowning, the third at birth. Nicola Fuller blamed the deaths of her children on “bloody Africa” and this rage and sorrow helped drive her mad. “All of us are mad, but I’m the only one with a certificate to prove it,” she observes.

Alexandra, “Bobo”, and her older sister, Vanessa, “Van”, accepted Nicola’s emotional peaks and troughs and despite Nicola;s haphazard parenting and the gruffness of their quixotic father, the sisters seemed to have managed the resilience needed to withstand the general craziness and ever-present danger surrounding them.

The book takes its title from lines by A.P. Herbert:
“Don’t let’s go to the dogs tonight,
For mother will be there.”

“The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time” is about a whole lot more than a curious incident. The narrator of Mark Haddon’s first novel (Doubleday paper (2003) is Christopher Boone, a 15-year-old autistic savant who calms himself by doing advanced mathematics in his head. Christopher’s compulsive everyday behavior is usually so impossible it would drive a saint crazy. People who come in contact with him lose patience and their own loss of control triggers Christopher’s fear-driven violence.

Haddon understands exactly how Christopher’s mind works and the unique point of view he produces is so realistic and elaborately interior, it makes you marvel at Haddon’s capacity for empathy. In addition to his clever line drawings, Haddon includes simple and complicated math problems (with solutions) and, best of all, he lays out on a simple grid an clear way to determine prime numbers. After you read “Curious Incident” prime numbers need never again be a mystery!

Were it not for the occasional strong language, “Curious Incident” could easily replace the overtired “Catcher in the Rye” as required reading in the high school curriculum. Some schools will be brave enough to adopt it and the book’s real concerns about loyalty, honesty, tolerance, and equality will provide a platform for interesting classroom and reading group discussion.

You know the saying, “I wouldn’t wear it to a dog fight”? Two dogs fighting each other is troubling enough to watch but think about a dog fighting a man when the fight is to the death. Vicious. And people watch and make bets and cheer. This is outlawed cockfighting carried to an extreme -- and what, exactly, do you wear? The young women at the fights in Marc Bojanowski’s “The Dog Fighter” (Harper, 2004) wear dresses and pearls and they smell good, and they attend as ornaments, hanging on the arms of powerful men.

Set in Baja Mexico during the 1940s, this disturbing and brutal first novel introduces characters who could be described as “evil” if that word weren’t recently so degraded. The narrator, a dog fighter, writes about his life looking back over many years, and uses choppy sentence fragments, run-on sentences, misspellings, and he makes all the mistakes in grammar and usage made by a badly-educated, inexperienced, but talented and articulate writer. Reading this book requires effort. The reader gets stalled, has to re-read, and often has to stop and interpret the meaning. Occasionally, it requires paging back to sort out characters and events. Some readers will have no patience with this kind of annoyance but after finishing sixty pages or so, I found I was into it and had gotten used to the narrator’s voice.

The unsatisfying ending confounds the reader and leaves her wondering what, exactly, happened. I stuck with this book, often compelled by its brutality. I won’t go back to figure out the ending. Enough is enough.

I admire the confidence and daring of this first-time novelist and it will be interesting to see what critics say about Bojanowski when the book is formally published in August, 2004.
Enough is also enough with “The Dogs of Babel” a first novel by Carolyn Parkhurst (Time Warner, 2003). A beloved wife climbs to the top of a backyard tree and falls/jumps. She leaves behind signs and symbols that will help her grieving husband unravel the mystery of her death. He decides to teach the family dog, Lorelei, the only witness to the accident, to talk. There is a lot in here about real experiments with talking dogs, some involving appalling cruelty (see “Dog Fighter” for more animal cruelty) to the animals. The husband toils along with flash cards, and so on. Dear me. Poor Lorelei. Call the Humane Society.

So much for a spate of reading on a single topic: such an artificial and hokey effort is bound to produce disappointment. It did bring me to “Let’s Go to The Dogs Tonight,” an experience well worth plugging away for. If you want a real dog story, go read “The Incredible Journey.”


Elinore Standard is the co-editor with Laura Furman of "Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading" (Carroll & Graf, 1997.)

MEMOIRS

This piece titled MEMOIRS is from the regular “My Reading Life” column by Elinore Standard in the Record Review – September, 2004.

Works mentioned in this piece: Deceits of Time, Best Awful, Liar’s Club, One Writer’s Beginnings, Darkness Visible, An Unquiet Mind, Spiral Staircase, Road Song, Between Meals, Images and Shadows, A Cab at the Door, Midnight Oil


In “Deceits of Time”, by Isabel Colegate (Viking, 1988), one character says, “Like all stories, the story of a life could only be an approximation to the truth, or perhaps a parallel.” She goes on go say these approximations, “…did not mean that one should stop testing them against such discoverable truths as one could lay one’s hands on.”
Carrie Fisher was interviewed by the New York Times about her new novel, “The Best Awful” (Simon & Schuster, 2004) and said, “I was going to write this as a memoir, but then I couldn’t do a memoir. The truth is a very stern taskmistress, and I can’t adhere to it. I have a very bad memory.”
Although I have not written a memoir myself, I do read many of them. I read memoirs mainly to test the reality of my own life and to see how, by comparison, I’m doing.
Memoirists walk a fine line between fact and fiction. Every time you see a line of dialogue in a memoir, you know it is a reconstruction of a moment, and perhaps, as Carrie Fisher says, it is all an unreliable memory casting back over years. “The Liars Club” by Mary Karr (Viking, 1995), with its rich and plentiful dialogue, really reads like fiction, but does it matter? If Karr says it’s a memoir, then it is a memoir. Hers is another dark, crazy, desperate American childhood, and “Liars Club” is the story of growing up in an alcoholic family in a refinery town on the Texas Gulf Coast.
I like a makeover. My preferred memoirs are those by people who, by changing their lives, emerge from major trouble into happiness and productivity. Generally, a secure and happy life makes for ho-hum reading. A major exception to this observation is Eudora Welty, whose “One Writer’s Beginnings” (Harvard, 1983) tells of a quiet Southern girlhood in a comfortable household with wonderful parents. At the end of this gorgeous little work, Welty concludes, “As you have seen, I am a writer who came of a sheltered life. A sheltered life can be a daring life as well. For all serious daring starts from within.”
Many memoirs seem to tell of a before and an after, an emerging from darkness into light. William Styron’s “Darkness Visible” (Random House, 1990) looks at his long journey out of alcoholic paranoia and suicidal depression. He describes the despair of his sickness and the tormented road back to a productive life. He likens his return from the abyss to the “ascent of the poet, trudging upward and upward out of hell’s black depths” and at last emerging into what he saw as “the shining world.”
Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison talks about hitting bottom in
An Unquiet Mind” (Knopf, 1995) a memoir about her struggle with manic-depression (she resists calling it “bi-polar disorder” which she thinks is too tame) throughout years of therapy and various drug treatments. “I was well on my way to madness,” she says, as she describes spinning wildly out of control and finally trying suicide. Thanks to intervention by loyal friends and to her own amazing resiliency, Jamison goes on to a distinguished career writing and teaching in a medical school about mood disorders. The spectacular highs of hypermania are addictive, she says, and even at her sanest, in some corner of her mind, she says she misses them.
“The Spiral Staircase” by writer and theologian Karen Armstrong (Knopf, 2004), is the story of an emergence of a different kind. Armstrong spent seven years of her young womanhood in a convent where she lived in an authoritarian community, accepting the discipline of the order. At the age of 24, she resigned her vows and then found herself cast adrift, fitting into neither the sacred world nor the secular. She heard voices, saw visions, hallucinated, had blackouts, fainted in public, and experienced general mental and physical collapse. Psychiatrists failed to help. Suicide seemed inevitable.
Like Jamison and Styron, Karen Armstrong had loyal friends and loved ones and a kind of personal strength that kept her going. Finally, no thanks to the psychiatrists, she was diagnosed as an epileptic, a sufferer of grand mal seizures. From that point, it was a long road back to a safe and productive life but there was enormous relief just in knowing she had something physical wrong with her that could be treated. Since then, Armstrong has fashioned a successful and fulfilling life, coming to peace with religion after a long struggle. She remains, to her great regret, an outsider and a sort of misfit.
One unforgettable account of emerging from darkness into light involves not a struggle with alcohol or drugs or depression, but a struggle to live through and overcome a horrible maiming which took place when the author was six years old. “Road Song” by Natalie Kusz (Harper, 1990) is now by way of being a classic. I’ve seen it on young people’s reading lists and I’ve taught it in writing courses. Written when she was 28, Kusz takes us back to the moment on a frigid Alaskan afternoon when she was attacked on her way home from school by a neighbor’s ravenous sled dog. In the writing, Kusz makes time stop. She nails us to the moment when the dog began tearing at her little body.
“Road Song” is a tribute to the sturdiness and faith of a family and their willingness, over a long haul of endless operations and hospitalizations, to stay together, to hope, and to persist after what the author describes as, “the thousand substitutions of new plans for old.”
I keep an annotated list of memoirs I’ve read. It is in alphabetical order and I add to it periodically so, by now, the list has grown long. In looking it over, I notice books on the list I thought I had forgot. I just discovered that A. J. Liebling’s “Between Meals” first published in 1959 and a strong and early entry on my list, is soon to be reprinted in a boxed set along with other Liebling works. I found Iris Origo’s “Images and Shadows” (Harcourt, 1970) in the local library and am glad to know it’s there because I don’t own a copy. V.S. Pritchett’s “A Cab at the Door” and “Midnight Oil” (Chatto, 1968, 1971), two volumes which take him from a childhood out of Dickens into adulthood are on my shelves and they can also be obtained through most library systems. These three writers are precious voices from what seems like a long-ago, far-distant past, voices echoing from a more hopeful world than the one we live in now.

Elinore Standard is the editor, along with
Laura Furman, of “Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers
Celebrate Reading” (Carroll & Graf, 1997).

SOUR GRAPES DEPARTMENT

This “MY READING LIFE” column appeared in the Record Review in April, 2004

Works mentioned in this piece; P.S. I Love You, Devil Wears Prada,
Nanny Diaries, Maneater, Winning, To Have and To Hold, DaVinci Code


SOUR GRAPES DEPARTMENT


Don’t let anybody tell you writers aren’t seethingly competitive and envious of their colleagues’ success. Behind that thin wince of congratulation are clenched teeth. It’s tough enough to be gracious about a contemporary’s critical success, but it is a whole lot easier to be graceful about that than it is to hear about some kid’s huge advance.

The 22-year-old daughter of Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister, just got a one million dollar advance from a US publisher for her novel, “P.S., I Love You”, plus $100,000 for a US film deal. The novel, written in longhand in three months, got rotten reviews in Ireland. Oh well.

So what if “The Devil Wears Prada” gets a lousy review in the New York “Times” Book Review? “Devil” is now high on the NYT bestseller list with (as of May, 2004, and climbing) 323,000 copies in paperback and 478,000 in hardcover, and Plum Sykes, the author, is crying all the way to the bank.

The young co-authors of “The Nanny Diaries”, (St. Martin’s, 2003) recently got a $3 million advance from Random House for follow-up books that are yet to be produced. It didn’t hurt that “Nanny” sold two million copies since publication, but still… Gigi Levangie Grazer’s “Maneater”, (Simon&Schuster, 2003) had a movie option for more than $1 million six months before the book was ever even published. Jack Welch, the former GE executive, just sold world rights for $4 million to Harper Collins for a business how-to book called “Winning”.

Aside from being unbecomingly envious, how do these enormous stakes affect me as a reader? I ought not to be affected, directly. I can either read the book or ignore it. But when a publisher, usually one unit of a conglomerate, forks out huge advances, it means it somehow has to make the money back. This means promotion and media (which the conglomerate also owns) hype. More and more, it means the bottom line is going to decide what gets published and what doesn’t. This makes it a whole lot harder for what we think of as literature to edge into print.
Even if an insultingly tiny advance is secured for a literary work, the publisher usually won’t spend a cent on publicity or on such frills as author tours, and the book, even if it is critically well-received, lives a short little life and then sinks like a rock.

Look at this! A full-page, back-of-the-Arts section ad in a recent New York Times. This ad, in bright pink, announces an ‘irresistible” new novel, “To Have and To Hold” (Broadway, 2004), by Jane Green. It reminds us that Green has sold more than a million copies or her previous novels. Interested? Here is the blurb: “Five years ago Alice gave her hand in marriage to a man who can’t keep his hands to himself. And by now, the man of her dreams has turned into a full-on cheating nightmare. But true happiness is about to find her in ways she never dreamed of.” The jacket illustration shows a man embracing a svelte woman with one of his arms extended behind her and the hand at the end of that arm squarely on the butt of another svelte woman standing nearby.

Four other paperbacks by Green are shown in the ad and here is a really amazing thing: on no cover illustration is there a head. Each one shows legs –- long legs, very long female legs – and one shows a nude male torso, but nobody has a head or a face. Why is this? Could it be that faces might make the bodies less fantastic?

I don’t know what this ad cost or who paid for it: Broadway Books, Green’s publisher, or maybe Book-of-the-Month-Club, or possibly The Doubleday Book Club, or perhaps Random House who issued an Audio CD version of “To Have and To Hold”. In any case, we know it cost plenty. Grrrrrrrrrr.

You’ve probably read Dan Brown’s “DaVinci Code” (Doubleday, 2002), just about everybody has. Aside from the inaccurate theology and history and stupid ending, the writing is terrible. I confess to finishing the book but then I threw it at the wall. I don’t even want to think about the amount of money this book has made. Spinoffs have become a regular industry.

Sour grapes? You bet! A heaping dishful of big, fat, juicy sour grapes!



Elinore Standard is the co-editor, along with Laura Furman of “Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading” (Carroll&Graf,1997)

LISTMANIA

LISTMANIA from the "My Reading Life" column in the Record Review, May, 2004

Works mentioned in this piece: Trollope's Autobiography, Kon Tiki, Spy Who Came In From the Cold, Women's Room, Name of the Rose, Reference Guide to Book Censorship, Chocolate War, A Wrinkle in Time, A Day No Pigs Would Die, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Native Son, So Many Books, So Little Time, Autobiography of Malcolm X, Madame Bovary, Beloved, Gravity's Rainbow, Leaves of Grass, Seabiscuit, Cider House Rules, East of Eden, Way We Live Now.





LISTMANIA



Some time ago, I began keeping a list of books I’d read and wanted
to remember. Then forgot to add to the list. I also never annotated it,
so I might have a title and an author, but who could remember what
the book was about? It is easier now that I can go online and Google
a book and I can easily access the local library system to find something
I might want to reserve. So maybe the failed list-keeping and the need
for a written list sort of x’d each other out. Still, I find scraps of paper
and post-its and dog-eared clippings that I carry about and sometimes
I do, sometimes I don’t, remember to look at them when I’m at the library
or in a book shop.

In his wonderful "Autobiography," written in 1883, just a year before he
died, Anthony Trollope observed, “That I can read and be happy while
I am reading, is a great blessing. Could I have remembered, as some
men do, what I read, I should have been able to call myself an educated
man. But that power I have never possessed. Something is always left;
something dim and inaccurate – but still something sufficient to preserve
the taste for more. I am inclined to think that it is so with most readers.”

If it is a list you want to jog your memory or to inspire you, go online to
Amazon, say, and find all kinds of lists. When I wrote a recent piece about
“Chick-Lit” I found a guide to at least 20 novels in that genre compiled
by somebody called “Avid Reader” If you feel like it, you can click again
and discover that Avid Reader’s name is “Vicky”. And so on.

The BBC has a book browser site and its “Reading The Decades” is a list
of about 150 books, spanning 1950 through 1989. It begins with "Kon Tiki"
by Thor Heyerdahl, (1950); "The Spy Who Came In From The Cold,"
John LeCarré (1963); "The Women’s Room," Marilyn French (1977);
"The Name of The Rose," Umberto Eco (1980); and so on. The BBC sites
have many more lists plus information about reading groups and book discussion opportunities.

The American Library Association is also a good source of lists,
including lists of books banned in the USA. One such list is taken from the
table of contents of Banned in the U.S.A.: "A Reference Guide to Book
Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries" by Herbert Foerstel,
(Greenwood,1994). Most of the 50 books on this list are young
people’s books and it includes Robert Cormier’s "The Chocolate War,"
Madeleine L’Engle’s "A Wrinkle in Time," Robert Peck’s "A Day No Pigs
Would Die," Maya Angelou’s "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings,"
and "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain. Many of the books
on Foerstel’s list were most frequently challenged between the
years 1990 and 1992 in schools and public libraries. 60% of the
challenges were brought by parents.

The ALA also has a list of challenged and banned books during the
years 1990 and 2000. This 100-title list includes most of the books
on the earlier list, plus a few new ones including a couple by Stephen
King and "Native Son" by Richard Wright.

Judy Blume, whose work always appears on challenge lists, says,
“It’s not just the books under fire now that worry me. It is the books
that will never be written. The books that will never be read. And all
due to the fear of censorship. As always, young readers will be the real
losers.” I don’t know about you, but if I think for a minute somebody
is telling me I can’t read something, then I’ll definitely make it my
business to read it.

Writer and editor Sara Nelson’s delectable "So Many Books, So Little
Time: A Year Of Passionate Reading" (Putnam’s, 2003), chronicles a
year dedicated to reading. To begin, she set out a list of 52 books
and then started reading, a book a week. The list quickly came apart.
Life, as she describes it, happened. She says, “In reading, as in life, even
if you know what you’re doing, you really kind of don’t.” Her original
list began with "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," went on
alphabetically to "Madame Bovary," by Balzac, "Beloved" by Toni
Morrison, "Gravity’s Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon, "Leaves of Grass"
by Walt Whitman and so on.

Each chapter in her book describes Nelson’s everyday life through
reading during the year. As an appendix, Nelson includes the
annotated list of books she actually did read which numbered a lot
more than 52, although not all of them made it onto her list. Some
she forgot to list or lost track of.

Sara Nelson also lists what is in “The Must-Read Pile” on her
bedside table. Among the titles: "Seabiscuit," "The Cider House
Rules," "East of Eden," and Trollope’s "The Way We Live Now."

"So Many Books," is, of course, a book I wish I had written myself.
It has just the right blend of life and literature and it speaks to those
of us who are crazy for books and maybe even crazier for book lists.


* * *
Elinore Standard is the co-editor, along with Laura Furman, of
"Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading."
( Carroll & Graf, 1997.)

BOYS' BOOKS OR LAD LIT?

My Reading Life

Monday, March 10, 2008

BOYS' BOOKS OR LAD LIT?

From the "My Reading Life" column in the Record Review -- April, 2004

Works mentioned in this piece: Bridget Jones's Diary, Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Love Monkey, Bastard on the Couch, Booty Nomad, Kidnapped, Treasure Island, 1,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Road to Home, High Wide and Lonesome, Parade's End, Regeneration, Eye in the Door, Ghost Road, Birdsong, Charlotte Gray, Girl at the Lion D'Or, Honor Bound, Brotherhood of War, The Corps, Men at War, Retreat, Hell, Dog Soldiers, Things They Carried, Going After Cacciato, In Country, Silent Men, Slingshot.

BOYS' BOOKS OR LAD LIT?


Oh, No! It had to happen. The New York Times informs us there is a new genre out there that publishers hope will “turn the vulnerabilities and anxieties of young men into a commercial tsunami equal to that created by books like "Bridget Jones’s Diary" by Helen Fielding, (more than two million copies sold) and "The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing" by Melissa Bank, which has sold about one million.” Titles mentioned in the NYT piece include "Love Monkey" by Kyle Smith, "The Bastard On The Couch," by Daniel Jones (Smith and Jones?) and "Booty Nomad" by Scott Mebus. I have no interest, that is zero interest, in reading any of these and I don't know a man, young or old, who would, either.

This so-called “Lad Lit” is a different kind of book than what I think of as “Boys’ Books.” When I was a kid, there were many boys’ books I didn’t read -- probably because they seldom included girl characters. Such boy books as "Kidnapped," "Treasure Island," "1,000 Leagues Under the Sea," "Huckleberry Finn," or "Tom Sawyer," I read only if I had to for school. Later on, books by Horatio Alger, Joseph Conrad, Brett Harte, Daniel Defoe, and Herman Melville, fell into the boy book category as far as I was concerned.

Vartan Gregorian has written about his life in "The Road To Home" (Simon&Schuster, 2003) and he describes reading as a child in Tabriz, Iran, “…late into the night, with the help of kerosene lamps, often secretly, past my bedtime.” He says reading became a compulsion and, of course, it was an escape. He read boy books and, as he says, “…lived vicariously the lives of such protagonists as Robinson Crusoe, Jean Valjean, the Count of Monte Cristo, the Three Musketeers, Romeo, Werther, Sinbad, Kim…” He says, “The protagonists of many books I read became lifetime companions.”

I was grown up when I quit avoiding boys' books. I remember listening on tape to "High, Wide and Lonesome," a boyhood memoir by Hal Borland. Borland’s wonderful account of homesteading days in an isolated “soddy” cabin made of earth in the high prairie of Colorado is a book I recommend to every young person and to older people for whom, like Borland, this country’s frontier past is not ancient history.

Not knowing much about World War I, I read the four novels which make up Ford Maddox Ford’s dark and tragic "Parade’s End," (Knopf, 1924-1928) a sequence about Britain before, during and after the war. Pat Barker’s haunting WWI Billy Pryor trilogy: "Regeneration," "Eye in the Door," and "The Ghost Road," (Random House) deals with, among other things, the harrowing war in the trenches of France and the psychiatric treatment of shell-shocked veterans throughout and after the War. Also about World War I and written in the 1990’s are Sebastian Faulks’s "Birdsong," "Charlotte Gray," and "Girl at the Lion D’Or."(all Random House).

I’ve racketed through most of W.E.B. Griffin WWII war/adventure books grouped in series with titles such as “Honor Bound”, “Brotherhood of War”, “The Corps”, “Men at War”, and so on -- a total of more than 25 novels, some of them close to 500 pages long. Many characters stay around throughout the series, there are a few good women characters and there is more than enough history and action plus a little romance to keep this reader interested. Right now, I’m working on Griffin’s "Retreat, Hell" (2003) a big, thick novel that is also a history of the American role in the Korean War.

I read Vietnam novels. Robert Stone’s (do not confuse with Oliver Stone) "Dog Soldiers," his second novel ( Houghton,1973), brings the war home in body bags filled with dope. Stone is one of those tough, macho writers whose work is heretical, sardonic and bleak. In my opinion, although his books have always sold, Stone has never been properly renown and this may have more to do with Stone himself than it has to do with the quality of his writing. Also on any Vietnam War reading list should be Tim O’Brien’s "The Things They Carried" (Houghton, 1990) and "Going After Cacciato."(Delacorte, 1978) and Bobbie Ann Mason’s "In Country" (Harper, 1984), all now available in paperback reprints.

Right now, my favorite Vietnam book is "The Silent Men" by Richard Dickinson (Rugged Land, 2002) about a US Army sniper in the Mekong Delta. This is by far the most unsparing Vietnam book I’ve come across and I don’t know what happened to it, although it still exists in a few local libraries. After a few good reviews, it sank. Too real, too true, snipers too scary, maybe, and not promoted by the publisher, most likely. "Silent Men" should become a movie. Supposedly, it is the first of future books about the sniper main character but 'Silent Men" is going to be a tough act for Dickinson to follow.

Dickinson’s book is set during the same time and place as Ed Vick’s novel/memoir, "Slingshot" (Bedford Press, 2002). Ed is putting the proceeds from the book into a Vietnam veterans’ families fund he started.

It’s not all modern war for me. I raced through the Napoleonic War seagoing series by Patrick O’Brien – all 21 volumes. I read them with maps and charts and I have considered starting again from the beginning. I always liked C. S. Forester’s Hornblower who is the prototype for the O’Brien books, and I tried Dewey Lambdin’s series which I couldn’t get into. These are all boys’ books but I know many women who’ve read them with the greatest pleasure. One friend said women like the O’Brien books because medical man/spy Maturin is so inept at sea and in battle that women sympathize. The heroic character of Aubrey, she says, is like so many husbands: steadfast and true lovers by long distance and happiest when they’re away at work. Put them into portside domestic reality for two weeks and they can’t wait to ship out.
Lad Lit books aren’t doing so well but I can’t work up too much sympathy. In June (for Fathers’ Day?) we’ll see an essay anthology edited by Daniel Jones titled "The Bastard on the Couch: 27 Men Try Really Hard to Explain Their Feelings About Love, Loss, Fatherhood, and Freedom" (Morrow, 2004) The publisher, in a 50,000 printing, is hoping this collection will build on the successful "The Bitch In The House" edited by Cathi Hanauer (Morrow, 2002) who happens to be Jones’s wife. Will women want to read about what the bastard on the couch really thinks?

A March, 2004 issue of “Publishers’ Weekly” asks, “What if publishers created a subgenre and nobody read it?” and a Borders fiction buyer says, “The only place Lad Lit exists as a viable genre is in the imaginations of the publishers.” As PW puts it, the fact is, sales are slow and reviews aren’t helping. So far there don’t seem to be enough young male buyers to keep the subgenre going and it could be the market will decide the end of it.

They can keep their Lad Lit. I’ll stick to Boys’ Books.

***

Elinore Standard is the co-author with Laura Furman of "Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading" (NY: Carroll&Graf, 1997.)

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CHICK LIT

CHICK LIT Appeared in the Record Review column, "My Reading Life" in March, 2004

Works mentioned in this piece: Frost in May, Red Pottage, Good Behavior, In A Summer Season, The Beth Book, Return of the Soldier, Durable Goods, Balkan Trilogy, Levant Trilogy, Human Croquet, Lost Garden, In Country, Bridget Jones's Diary, Devil Wears Prada, I Don't Know How She Does It, Nanny Diaries, Good In Bed, In Her Shoes, Bet Me.



In a recent interview, the young Irish writer, Cecilia Ahern, said, “I didn't know what chick lit was, I thought people were calling me a chick. I don't quite understand it. I don't know who made up the term, it must have been a man."

I agree with Ahern about who probably originated the term, and confess to using it sometimes when I refer to a certain kind of frothy contemporary fiction that appeals mainly to women, including me. Sometimes. In these books, female characters tend to be single, twenty-five year old urbanites running around in four-inch Manolos with nothing going wrong in their lives a birdbath Bellini won’t fix.

But wait. What about Jane Austen? She wrote novels about women and about their everyday tribulations. We know from Jane Austen, down to the farthing the yearly income and expenses of many of her characters. We know what a new hat cost. We also know about a young woman’s romantic prospects and about her internal life. We understand her little worries, her foibles, her machinations. We follow her sympathetically to the end, when she usually gets the man, if not always the right one.

What about the wonderful novels by female writers in the “Virago Modern Classic” paperback republications from Penguin and Dial issued in the 1970’s and 1980’s? (Virago: a bold, shrewish woman) This collection brought us delicious out-of-print or overlooked titles by 20th Century female writers such as Antonia White, ("Frost in May"); Mary Cholmondeley, ("Red Pottage"); Molly Keane, ("Good Behavior"); Elizabeth Taylor, ("In A Summer Season"); Sarah Grand, ("The Beth Book"); and Rebecca West, ("The Return of the Soldier").

I’ve enjoyed novels by many contemporary women writers, including Elizabeth Berg, ("Durable Goods"); Olivia Manning, ("The Balkan Trilogy" and "The Levant Trilogy"); Kate Atkinson, ("Human Croquet"); Helen Humphreys, ("The Lost Garden"); and Bobbie Ann Mason ("In Country") who write about women’s lives. Although all of these books are by women and usually for women, I can’t say that any should be labeled “Chick Lit” because the writing is too fine and the books have endured long beyond summer vacation.

Somewhere in between Jacqueline Susann and Candace Bushnell, the “Chick Lit” label has emerged, at best typified by Helen Fielding’s wildly successful "Bridget Jones’s Diary," (1998). Bridget Jones is a joyous book and one reviewer observes it “struck a chord with all kinds of readers revealing the lighter side of despair, self-doubt, and obsession.”

At its worst, the chick lit genre is represented by Lauren Weisberger’s "The Devil Wears Prada," (Doubleday, 2003). Former fashion assistant Weisberger’s writing was called “inept and ungrammatical,” by one reviewer. Many cuts above Prada are "I Don’t Know How She Does It," a debut novel by Allison Pearson (Knopf, 2003) and "The Nanny Diaries" by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus (St. Martin’s, 2003). Both these novels, although they fall into the “chick lit” category, are bright, witty and smart.

In 2001, Jennifer Weiner’s "Good In Bed" (Pocket Books) got decent reviews and appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. HBO has optioned rights to make the novel into a series. Look for "In Her Shoes," Weiner’s 2002 story about two sisters who are total opposites. Weiner’s dog, Nifkin, who has a major role in "Good In Bed," can be seen on Weiner’s website.

Coming soon will be "Bergdorf Blondes" by Plum Sykes (Miramax, April) about an English “Champagne-bubble” cutie, just arrived on the turf of Park Avenue trust-fund, botoxed femmes. Another St. Martin’s writer, Jennifer Crusie, has a new novel, "Bet Me," which the publisher describes as “about long shots, risk management, true love, and great shoes.” We’ll see about these two.

Hanne Blank, writing in the September, 2003, Baltimore “Citipaper,” says, “Average readers, perhaps influenced by the jelly-bean-colored covers, tend to assume that the average Chick Lit book is the prose equivalent of a Happy Meal.” This is funny and generally, but not always, true -- and like most catchall categories, the range of quality within it is so broad it goes from really cheesy to interesting and occasionally important.

Unfair though it may be, the “Chick Lit” label has come to signify trashy books read only by women and that’s insulting not only to the writers but also to the minds and literary tastes of the people who buy and read their work.
* * *

Elinore Standard is the co-editor, with Laura Furman, of "Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading." (NY: Carroll & Graf, 1997.)

JUNKIE

"Junkie" -- First published in the "My Reading Life" column of the Record Review, April, 2004

Works Mentioned in this Piece:
Secret Garden, Poor Little Rich Girl, Five Little Peppers, Prince and the Pauper, Boxcar Children, Children of Other Lands, Flying Carpet, Complete Book of Marvels, Red Pony, Wayward Bus, Cluny Brown, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Beach Red, 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, American Guerilla in the Philippines, Hiroshima, Up Front, Canterbury Tales, Beowulf, Four Saints in Three Acts





JUNKIE

My name is Elinore and I am a reading junkie. If there were a step program for this addiction, I’d be in it. Actually, no I wouldn’t. I really don’t want to change and I don’t see any reason to, not at this point in my life.

If I were a kid, they’d be saying:

“Go outside and get some fresh air.”
“Take your nose out of that book.”
“You’ll ruin your eyes.”
“Sit up straight, you’re all hunched over.”
“Do something useful for a change.”

Then, I read covertly and feared getting caught. I snitched a little time here, sneaked a little there, and experienced the thrill of thinking I was doing something wrong. Once, when I was supposed to be practicing the piano I propped up a novel on the music stand and was running mindless scales just to make the sound and my mother, who had been ironing in the basement, sneaked up and gave me such a whap, it knocked me off the piano stool.

I trudged a mile to the municipal library, going up the steep granite steps, through the heavy bronze doors, and down the hallway, past the police station with the two-cell jail. The library occupied a large one-room space with a corner for children’s books. There I found The Secret Garden, The Poor Little Rich Girl, The Five Little Peppers, The Prince and the Pauper, and The Boxcar Children. Some books I read more than once, reviewing the delicious details and thinking about lives and times quite different from my own. Nobody drove me to the library and nobody directed my reading. I got there by walking, and I read what I pleased. My library card was a passport to freedom.

My grandmother gave me Children of Other Lands, a large book that described places such as Lapland and Fiji. It had maps with clouds puffing winds and sea serpents bobbing through wavy waves and compass roses and little vessels making their way under full sail. Some maps had white spaces -- terra incognita -- lands yet unexplored. But a great portion
of the world, including Canada and Australia, was colored British Colonial deep pink.
Consider this bit written for children late in the 19th Century by Robert Louis Stevenson and understand that since then we have evolved at least a little:

Little Indian, Sioux or Crow,
Little Frosty Eskimo,
Little Turk or Japanee,
Don’t you wish that you were me?

It goes on and it gets worse. You don’t want to know.

Although we may have been reading stuff like the above, we were taught geography as a separate subject. In fifth grade, I was introduced to books by the American adventurer and explorer, Richard Halliburton, who described his world travels to places such as the Taj Mahal and Mt. Everest. In those pre-TV days, Halliburton’s "The Flying Carpet," "Seven League Boots," and "Complete Book of Marvels" included photographs he took from an upside-down airplane! We drew maps (lots more British Colonial pink) and filled in the boundaries, cities and capitols. We drew sheaves of wheat and smoke stacks and sutured the lands with hatch-marked railroads. We memorized all of the counties in the state and named the Great Lakes from West to East. We knew where to find Sault St. Marie and the Skagerrak and the Kaategat. From the geography books of the day, we learned about Suez and the Panama Canal and the Cape of Good Hope and Cape Horn. In quizzes we wrote out the fastest route to get from New York City to, say, Hobart, Tasmania.

At home, there was a six-shelf bookcase which held many works of current fiction that were there because my parents failed to return them to the Book-of-the-Month Club, so I had handy access to books such as Steinbeck’s "The Red Pony," and "The Wayward Bus;" Marjory Sharp’s "Cluny Brown," Betty Smith’s "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," P. Bowman’s "Beach Red," Captain Ted W. Lawson’s "30 Seconds Over Tokyo," Ira Wolfert’s "American Guerrilla in the Philippines" and John Hersey’s "Hiroshima." This kind of reading gave me a kind of premature look into worlds of adult love and war. I memorized all of the captions on the Willy and Joe cartoons in Bill Mauldin’s "Up Front." I read cartoon collections by Bennett Cerf and humor by Max Schulman. At the age of thirteen, I was giving myself a liberal education.

After high school, I went to a major university that had a strong English Literature department. Willy-nilly, I read a lot of good stuff beginning with "Canterbury Tales" and “Beowulf”, but I don’t remember required reading going much beyond literature from the mid-1930s. I went through a bohemian period that amounted to hanging around the one coffee shop downtown, listening to a scratchy recording of Virgil Thompson and Gertrude Stein’s “Four Saints in Three Acts.” On my own, I read Arthur Koestler and H.L. Mencken and painted my room black.

After graduation, when real life was supposed to begin, I was so busy working I had to suspend serious reading. About a dozen years passed until my life attained the kind of orderliness and stability I needed to really read. I then embarked on what I can only think of a grand indulgence and what writer and teacher Robert Alter calls a “privileged pleasure.” I read through works by some authors and went from one line of reading to the next and from that on to another. I delved. I wallowed. I basked. I embraced the reading habit and, once again, I was hooked.

* * *

MY READING LIFE is an ongoing series by Elinore Standard, co-editor along with Laura Furman of Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading (NY: Carroll& Graf, 1997.)

MY READING LIFE -- INTRODUCTION

Greetings from Vermont, fellow readers.

With this first posting, I offer ongoing reprints of a column I write for the Record Review in Bedford, NY. R.J.Marx is the editor of this prizewinning hometown newspaper and I thank him for providing the interest and the space for such musings about the stuff I've been reading.

"My Reading Life" is not a book review. It is a casual musing about books I've read and might read. It is the discreet story of my life told through what I read. I am not a literary snob as you will discover as you browse through these offering. In fact, my tastes are relatively lowbrow. I read "Publishers' Weekly" and I often reflect on the books I find reviewed there, often weeks before publication.

I live in Vermont, a healthy place for the determined reader. There are still independent booksellers in little towns tucked in the valleys between the mountains. Somehow, the casual and unfrazzled Vermont way of life, plus the long, hard winters, makes reading for pleasure more possible here than it might be elsewhere.

So I've decided to share "My Reading Life" with the wide world Out There. You'll know if something resonates and I'll be pleased to hear what you have to say.