The Way It Is, The Way It Was

Golden trees along M-115 on Monday 

The season --

 

Not every autumn is as colorful as this year’s fall in Leelanau County, which was, to me, surprisingly beautiful -- surprising, since I never remember what factors go into making fall color particularly vibrant and therefore had no idea what to expect. (For others like me who forget from one year to the next, here is the full explanation.) But the season was spectacular, as it turned out, and many of us could not stop trying to store the beauty. Now not much red and orange is left – mostly gold and brown -- and even the gold fades a little more every day, as more and more trees let the winds strip their branches bare.

Corner of woods near my home on Tuesday morning

Sunny Juliet and I had our last agility session for the year and are on our own now until late spring 2025. Also, because of live traps set in the yard for Mr. Porcupine, Sunny does not have her usual at-home freedom. So I take her on-leash beyond the yard, where we can have tennis ball play (off-leash) in the neighbor’s driveway through the orchard, and we go for our long walks at least once a day, sometimes twice. As for those porcupine traps, though, I’ve pretty much lost hope of any result. Mr. Porcupine seems to be finding enough to eat without being tempted by baited traps….

 

Two leashes joined give her much more than an extra inch!

Combining business and pleasure --

 

Monday took us to Cadillac, where I visited a photographer’s warehouse to stock up on jigsaw puzzles for holiday and winter bookstore visitors, afterward meeting a dear friend from Kalamazoo who brought me books I was purchasing from an estate down her way. The deal was arranged by others, my friend taking responsibility only for delivery, but our rendezvous gave us an opportunity to catch up on each other’s lives, which we enjoyed despite a very strong, cold wind across Lake Cadillac that day. 

The library in Cadillac was our rendezvous point.

Lunch was a picnic -- in the cold wind!

A beautiful beech tree nearby had a warm look.

Sadly for Ms. Sunny Juliet, finding the photographer’s warehouse and making my purchase took longer than expected, so we didn’t have time for the dog park. Laurie was willing to look for it with me after our picnic lunch (in the cold wind), but by that time I only wanted to get home again, where tennis ball play plus a good walk made up to Sunny for all her boring time in the car -- I hope!

 

Driving back from Cadillac on M-115, for several miles I noticed the brilliant red of Michigan holly berries, but with a car behind me I didn’t try to pull over and stop. In the morning, on my way southeast, driving into that bright rising sun, I hadn’t noticed those reds at all; then, going back, noticing, I thought there would be more down the road that I could stop and capture with my phone camera. But no -- most of it was right there close to Cadillac, and I didn’t spot any at all on M-37. However – surprise! When I picked up my mail at the post office in Northport and found a letter from a friend in the U.P., what did I find enclosed with the letter but a photograph of Michigan holly! 

Having friends, seeing friends, talking with friends, letters from friends -- what would we do without them?

 

 

Reading the past –

 

After reading, one after the other, all four of Albert Murray’s semi-autobiographical novels, taking him from boyhood and schoolboy through music tours to his vocation as a writer, I’ve now been reading Murray writing not of a fictional self but as himself in South to a Very Old Place, a book in which he visits -- not for the first time but this time as a writer preparing a book -- various scenes of his earlier life: New York, New Haven, Greensboro, Atlanta, Tuskegee, Mobile, New Orleans, Greenville, and Memphis. The stuff of racial conflict omitted from his fiction comes out strong in these memoir essays. He pulls no punches. Still, white as I am and can’t help being, I find comfort in the cadences of his language, even in the way he and his refer to their towns – Lana, Beel, Ham (that last, Birmingham, is not given its own essay title, but the name comes up often).

The book I find myself telling people about these days, though, was published in 1833. Three Years in North America, written by James Stuart, Esq. (1775-1849), and published in New York by J. and J. Harper from the second London edition, is an account of the English author’s time spent touring the North American continent, the second volume taking him by stage from New York through Washington, D.C., down the Eastern seaboard, through the slave-holding South (often on horseback), back north up the Mississippi and Ohio by steamboat, and to St. Louis, Cincinnati, Hoboken, etc. 

 

Stuart was horrified by slavery, noting that even those enslaved people who were treated “well,” such as hotel restaurant servers, did not have beds but slept in the hallways on the floor without blankets, and after an extensive tour of Southern states, he met with many white Americans in northern states who had fled north because of slavery’s evils, though the possibility of civil war did not seem on many minds.

More and more leaves are on the ground now.

A very fact-oriented writer, Stuart gives population numbers for every city and town he visits, the width of every river traveled or crossed, cost of transportation, lodging, meals and just about anything else that can be assigned a dollar amount. At the same time, his observations and descriptions keep the account lively, and he also elicits opinions of everyone with whom he has conversation and gives his own opinions of people and places and customs and manners.  

 

Very early in the book, he attended a meeting of Congress in Washington, D.C., and he contrasted the dignity of that assembly with his own country’s Parliament (where even today interruptions and jeers are common). What struck me more, however, was the content of legislative discussion he described that day, providing lengthy quotes. A bill had been put forward to propose that the U.S. post offices be closed on Sunday. (I don’t know if a postmaster worked Sundays then or if, as has been the case all my life, the window to purchase stamps and send packages was closed but the lobby was open so that post office boxes could be accessed by their holders and mail dropped off.) The arguments given against the bill were beautifully and impressively articulate. There were several “Because” paragraphs, but I will quote only one, and that only in part to give a flavor of the objections to the bill: 

 

“Because, The bill violates that equality which ought to be the basis of every law, and which is more indispensable in proportion as the validity or expediency of any law is more liable to be impeached. If ‘all men are by nature equally free and independent,’ all men are to be considered as entering into society on equal conditions,--as relinquishing no more, and therefore retaining no less one than another of their rights. Above all are they to be considered as retaining an ‘equal title to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.’ While we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe the religion which we believe to be of Divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us. If this freedom be abused, it is an offense against God, not against man: To God, therefore, not to men, must an account of it be rendered. 

 

(I said I would quote the paragraph in part, but stopping halfway through seems wrong. It goes on.)

 

As the bill violates equality, by subjecting some to peculiar burdens, so it violates the same principle by granting to others peculiar exemptions. Are the Quakers and Mennonists the only sects who think a compulsive support of their religions unnecessary and unwarrantable? Can their piety alone be entrusted with the care of public worship? Ought their religions to be endowed, above all others, with extraordinary privileges, by which proselytes may be enticed from all others? We think too favourably of the justice and good sense of these denominations to believe that they either covet pre-eminence over their fellow-citizens, or that they will be seduced by them from the common opposition to the measure.” 

 

That gives a fair idea, I think, of the quality of argument in the legislature in the first half of the 19^th century. Basically, opposition to the bill rested on freedom of conscience and separation of church and state, and those arguing against it saw not only rights violated if religion were to be a part of government but religion also weakened if the separating wall were removed, because it would be then as if the law said that religious practice could only be ensured if churches were backed up by government, that faith alone would not compel adherence.

 

This was the United States in the 1830s, almost two centuries ago. Look around the world, these legislators said, and see what harm has been done by state religions, not only to individuals but to religion itself. 

 

“…It is perhaps fortunate for our country that the proposition should have been made at the early period, while the spirit of the revolution yet exists in full vigour. Religious zeal enlists the strongest prejudices of the human mind, and when misdirected, excites the worst passions of our nature under the delusive pretext of doing God service. Nothing so infuriates the heart to deeds of rapine and blood. Nothing is so incessant in its toils, so persevering in its determinations, so appalling in its course, or so dangerous in its consequences. The equality of rights secured by the constitution may bid defiance to mere political tyrants, but the robe of sanctity too often glitters to deceive. The constitution regards the conscience of the Jew as sacred as that of the Christian, and gives no more authority to adopt a measure affecting the conscience of a solitary individual, than that of a whole community. The representative who would violate this principle would lose his delegated character, and forfeit the confidence of his constituents. If Congress shall declare the first day of the week holy, it will not convince the Jew nor the Sabbatarian. It will dissatisfy both, and, consequently, convert neither. Human power may extort vain sacrifices, but Deity alone can command the affections of the heart. It must be recollected that, in the earliest settlement of this country, the spirit of persecution, which drove the pilgrims from their native homes, was brought with them to their new habitations; and that some Christians were scourged, and others put to death, for no other crime than dissenting from the dogmas of their rulers.”

 

Surprisingly, I'm sure, to many Americans of today, the legislators of the 1830s did not even exclude atheists from the right to freedom of conscience. We were not a "Christian nation," they said. In other words, we don’t want to repeat the mistakes of the Puritans, now that we have a constitution guaranteeing freedom of conscience to all. “Fortunate,” they said, that this question is before us now and can be settled so as not to plague us in the future. Little did they know! 

But I don't want to close on a note of despair. Tomorrow is another day. And as long as we care about the future, there is hope for the future.

Tuesday turned strangely warm again and closed with grey clouds.

Are You a Romantic?

Every business day, I get a newsletter called “Shelf Awareness” in my e-mail, delivering the latest news from the world of books, bookshops, booksellers, libraries, writers, and publishers. When owner-booksellers retire, a shop either closes or comes under new ownership. Sometimes, beforehand, there’s an announcement of a shop for sale. 

 

I’ve always kind of wondered how the numbers compare, old shops closing vs. new shops opening. It’s hard for me to tell, because I get both kinds of news. Also, shops like mine, selling majority of used books -- or some may sell no new books at all -- often don't get counted. But I can’t help noticing lately how many new shops are opening with a plan to specialize in romance books. 

Romance readers are coming out of the closet, no longer hiding their reading preference as a guilty pleasure. According to the New York Times, print sales of romance books almost doubled in only three years, from “18 million copies in 2020 to 39 million in 2023,” and specialty bookshops have boomed along with the books. 

 

When it comes to genre fiction, I generally reach for mysteries. Although now and then I yield to the temptations of potato chips and “chick lit” (usually stories featuring bookshops or set in Michigan), in general science fiction, fantasy, horror, and romance do not usually appeal to me. Don’t get me wrong! I have no quarrel with the readers of these genres. (Some order their books through my shop!) When it comes to escape reading or what I call “comfort books,” there are different roads for different tastes. 

My taste: A country road

My own choices in comfort books tend more in the direction of children’s or teen novels I remember loving years ago (Palmer Brown’s The Silver Nutmeg; Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy series; Anne of Green Gables and the sequels; or Farley’s The Black Stallion or Marguerite Henry’s wonderful horse stories) – or, other times, novels or memoirs set in the past (most recently, Mary Webb’s enchanting Precious Bane). Little Women is a book I still find romantic, despite its formulaic construction. When Jo and the professor finally kiss under the umbrella (absolutely NOT in the balcony of a theatre, as one modern film version has it!) and speak their simple words of love to each other, how could any love scene be more moving than that?

At Dog Ears Books TODAY!

Years ago, as the young, stay-at-home mother of a toddler, I fell briefly into a romance habit at an old bookstore in Traverse City, Arnold’s on Union Street. Many will remember the place. Mrs. Arnold had an almost unlimited stock, it seemed, of paperback novels featuring young women in love and newly wed, all written by a writer named Kathleen Norris – not the Kathleen Norris (b. 1947) of Dakota but an earlier KN (b.1880). Those books were definitely like potato chips: always another! After a while, though, I started to become annoyed. All the young, beautiful heroines grew ever younger-looking and more beautiful in their times of trial and poverty! How, I wondered, did that work? But a much more annoying trick of the author’s was her repeated reach for a deus ex machina to dissolve the heroine’s deepest existential problems.

 

Let’s say (as often happened) that the main character married a handsome ne’er-do-well who could not support a family, perhaps even turned out to be an alcoholic. Divorce was unthinkable in the Kathleen Norris code of morals! No, her heroine could absolutely not choose divorce, even with a “Mr. Right” standing in the wings! That left the novelist two possibilities for reaching a happy ending: either the inconvenient husband could die, or it could be discovered that the marriage, for whatever reason, had never been valid in the first place. Either way, the beautiful, long-suffering protagonist was set free to marry the loyal, upstanding man who had loved her so chastely all along. Mighty handy! Perhaps a little too handy?

Also available -- and only $9 each!

(One of the charming side features of Ms. Norris's novels was the California setting. The main character always had a garden and always made wonderful little suppers of fresh vegetables.)

 

Such were the romance novels of the early 20^thcentury. (When I reluctantly confessed this stretch of my reading life to my mother, she shrugged and said airily that she had read many Kathleen Norris books. I had no idea!) Romance readers now expect more in the way of “sizzle,” it seems. A very different, protofeminist view of romance, broadly understood (see below), can be found in the sometimes-strange novels of the sometimes-anonymous Elizabeth von Arnim. 

 

Years ago, when I announced myself to the world as a romantic pragmatist, a fellow philosopher friend said divorce had cured her of romance, but by romantic I didn’t mean hearts and flowers and Valentine’s Day dinners. I had in mind the older, broader sense, that of the Romantic period in art and literature: a return to nature, valuing feelings along with facts, even striving toward “impossible” goals. 

My romantic meadow: native grasses, wildflowers

The Artist understood. Once he and I talked about the most romantic books we’d each read, both having in mind a novel clothed in mystery and something like fantasy (though not ‘fantasy’ as the genre called that is understood today). His was Hudson’s Green Mansions; mine was (I’ll give the English title) The Wanderer, by Alain-Fournier. When I described the French novel to David, it reminded him of Hudson’s book, and when I read Hudson’s Green Mansions for myself, I could see a similarity with The Wanderer, a similarity not in the stories or settings but in a dreamlike mood the two books shared.

 

What does the word ‘romance’ mean to you, and what do you think of as a ‘romance' -- or a 'romantic' novel? Is romance in your mind a narrow genre – and if so, does it appeal to you? If you read in the genre, who is your favorite author, and why? Or do you look for romance in the classics – say, Jane Eyre? Or maybe you see 'romance' as I do, following the period of art and literature known as Romanticism. There are no wrong answers!

 

But heavens! So many questions! Will anyone be brave enough to answer any? I only have one friend who says she never reads fiction, so I won’t expect a comment from her....

 

Next question: What do you think explains this surge in romance reading? I’ll tell you what I think one reason is (not that anyone asked). I think the gruesomeness of American politics at this juncture in our history is sending people of all ages, more and more, to romance and fantasy and all manner of speculative fiction. The real world is too much with us! How can we even sleep at night? As for me, I have now hit my bottom line, and I’m digging in my heels, and here it is: 

 

I’ve refrained from name-calling, treated those whose views oppose mine with respect, sent love to all, but now I’ve reached the end of my rope, because the bottom line as I see it is that no matter what anyone’s most dearly held opinions are about the economy, about immigration, about abortion, about the war in Gaza or the war in Ukraine or equal rights for all Americans, about minimum wage or social security or the cost of health care, affordable housing or the border with Mexico, the composition of the Supreme Court, the existence of the Electoral College, space travel or cryogenics — whatever anyone’s views about any of these or any other issues may be, putting a sociopath in the White House (for the second time!) is not the answer. Crazy is not the solution to a single problem. Crazy rights no wrongs. And if you vote for crazy, you cannot, in truth, call yourself sane or good or righteous, regardless of how often you go to church or pray over your dinner table. 

 

Should I have thought longer about making such a public statement? Crawled back in the closet and prayed about it some more? Kept quiet lest I hurt someone’s feelings or lose a friend or put my business in jeopardy? There is too much at stake.

 

(And by the way, if you vote third party or don’t plan to vote at all — because you think the Democrats’ candidate is “just as bad” or you see her as a warmonger — the effect will be just as if you had voted for crazy, and you know it, so don’t pretend otherwise. You’ll be putting crazy back in the White House, so don’t expect “policies” of any kind.) 

 

So I'll say it again. Crazy is a solution to nothing. Crazy rights no wrongs. Crazy is what the rule of law, with all its human flaws and shortcomings, is designed to prevent. And I am enough of a romantic that I have not given up hope for this country – my country! – that I love and for our beautiful world.

To my Republican friends: 

If your biggest concern is eliminating abortions, and you don’t care about anything else if only you can accomplish it, work toward that end. Devote your money and time and energy to providing pregnant women with support. If you’re most worried about the gun industry's being allowed to continue to market and sell military-style assault weapons to civilians (whether you own stock in the industry or believe you would be able to defend yourself against the U.S. army and U.S. Navy and Air Force if you and the government disagreed — whatever!), spend your time and energy and hard-earned income on that issue. But don’t vote for a lying sociopath and trust him to make your dearest dreams come true. That has never been his mission. It’s HIS dearest dreams that matter to him, and nothing else, and there is more honor among thieves than there is in DJT’s promises.

"Donald Trump is not cognitively fit to be president. The presidency is a position that requires an occupant able to act strategically and carefully. That Trump is not such a person is obvious if you watch the man. And so, for years, his supporters have said: Don’t watch the man. Don’t listen to what he says. Look at the results. But those results reflected the power and ability of others to check Trump, to inhibit him when he could not inhibit himself. It is not just the man who is now unfit; it is the people and institutions that surround him.” - Ezra Klein, “What’s Wrong with Donald Trump?” 10/22/2024

It’s worth looking up and taking the time to read or listen to Ezra Klein’s whole piece. It’s in the New York Times but also available as a podcast from many, many online sites you probably use. His basic point (for those who will not follow through on my suggestion) is that Trump isn’t any different from what he ever was, so it’s not senility we should worry about. The reason there weren’t more disasters during his presidency was that there were people holding him in check and, when necessary, not acting on his orders (e.g., to cut FEMA funds to California because Californians were not his diehard supporters), whereas this time around, should he be elected again, he will be surrounded only by loyalists and sycophants, and there will be little restraint on his impulses. 

 

To all:

You didn’t expect this abrupt change of course in today’s post? Neither did I when I set out to write about the surge in romance novels and bookshops. But here it is, all of it, and there’s a little more on one of my other blogs, “Without a Clear Focus,” a piece on my #1 most beloved philosopher, Henri Bergson, whose birthday was October 18 and someone I take as an exemplar.

There. I've said my piece. Bye-bye for today.

Look Behind You!

 

I turned around, and, with the sunrise is behind me, I loved this view.

Sunny Juliet is always ready for outdoor fun, but our style will be somewhat cramped for a while, because after spotting a very large porcupine in the yard (luckily, Sunny was in the house at the time), borrowing a live trap, and watching a couple videos online, I decided I did not have the necessary confidence for Stage 2, i.e., the release of the porky into the wild (far from my home) all on my own. And so, while Trapper Ron is on the job for the next two weeks, Sunny and I will be coming and going from the house with a stout leash between us. 

 

A friend suggested “maybe he’d leave you alone if you put out a salt block. They like salt." I thought, How about a welcome mat, too? Really, they are so cute, so droll! But they did a lot of expensive damage to a neighbor’s house and ate many tires off cars in my husband’s woodland past, and, if a dog tangles with a porky, consequences can be potentially life-threatening. It isn’t simply an inconvenient, no-fun headache, like a dog-skunk encounter.

 

So that’s a little news from the outdoor home front, where we also had our second morning of hard frost at our place. The two frosty mornings were not consecutive, however, and now Leelanau is in for a nice little stretch of sunny days, with highs of 60 degrees and above – perfect for enjoying the beautiful fall color, which is what inspired several of today’s photos.

Sunrise, still from behind me, has reached across the field to trees.

Looking at sunrise-lit trees glimpsed under cherries still in shadow.

As for the bookish home front, I have been doing everything possible to postpone coming to the last page of Precious Bane, by Mary Webb. Since bane is something poisonous, toxic, while what is precious is dear and beloved, the title (which comes from an oft-repeated phrase of the narrator) presents us with an oxymoron. Or should we see it (as Susan Cain might) as paradoxical but all the truer to life by reason of acknowledging paradox? Do you think a paradox is a contradiction?

 

Rather than provide a link to a standard source for Mary Webb's novel, I’m sending those of you who can’t wait to hear more about it to a blog post I found online, because I think the “literary gypsy” loves Precious Bane as much as I do, and I love it so much that I ordered a couple of new paperback copies for my shop, in hopes of sharing the book with others. It is a story in which we look behind us to a very different time, and the dialect is archaic and regional, but a reader falls right into its magic. At least, this reader did.

But here is the rising sun, which I can't deny you.

  

The porcupine’s appearance and a couple other minor challenges, on top everyone’s current major obsession (campaign season, dontcha know), had me in a rather downbeat mood for a day or two, and I feared that if I came to the end of Mary Webb’s novel during that time, it might just be the straw that broke the camel’s back, so I set Prue’s story aside for two nights and read a couple cozy mysteries back to back, and by Wednesday evening, with Trapper John’s promise of action on the porcupine front and a beautiful sunset, my courage returned. Below is the brilliant sky following the setting of the sun on Wednesday -- but for a more unusual and even more enthralling sight (in my opinion), take a look over on my photo blog, A Shot in the Light, to see what I saw when I turned around. At sunset as well as sunrise, it often pays to turn around and look in another direction. 

Medicine for Moody Times

Sometimes even mornings seem dark and brooding.

 

God forbid that I should say a word against a public library, but nothing will take the place or a rack of a shelf full of books by one’s own chair, close to a well-adjusted light, whether it be a lamp or a window. Everyone’s shelf will contain different books, and the books which give joy to youth may not delight age, but the pleasure of reading continues. I see to-day greater anxiety written on the faces of my millionaire friends than I do on the faces of the poor men who resort day after day to our public libraries, there to solace themselves with a book. In an established love of reading there is a policy of insurance guaranteeing certain happiness till death. 

 

-      A. Edward Newton, End Papers: Literary Recreations (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1933)

 

Newton was writing during the years of the Great Depression (“What was so great about it?” a young person might ask, and that would be a good question), when no doubt his “millionaire friends” had plenty of anxiety. But anxiety is not limited to millionaires, nor to periods of economic depression, so it is all the better insurance to those of us further down in the world’s financial hierarchy that public libraries still thrive in our United States and that personal, private collections of books can be had for very little -- though an occasional splurge, like the occasional cheesecake wedge for dessert, is not always to be resisted.

Newton, an American, was a serious high-end book collector, and his specialty was English literature – that is to say, he preferred books from “across the pond,” as he put it. For others he recommended Americana, specifically Walt Whitman; for himself, however, a book lacking any mention of Dr. Johnson rarely attracted him. Moreover, urban to the core, he had no interest in the world of nature. 

A noted exception to his Johnson/no nature rule was the fiction of Mary Webb, and he lauded her books so highly that I rushed to my bookshop shelves to find Precious Bane, smuggled it home that very night, and began reading Webb's masterpiece as soon as I closed the cover on End Papers.  

 

 

…It was a wonderful thing to see our meadows at Sarn when the cowslip was in blow. Gold-over they were, so that you would think not even an angel’s feet were good enough to walk there. … Every way you looked, there was nought but gold, saving towards Sarn, where the woods began, and the great stretch of grey water, gleaming and wincing in the sun. Neither woods nor water looked darksome in that fine spring weather, with the leaves coming new, and buds the color of corn in the birch-tops. Only in our oak wood there was always a look of the back-end of the year, their young leaves being so brown. So there was always a breath of October in our May. 

 

-      Mary Webb, Precious Bane (NY: Dutton, 1926)

 

 

Blooming cowslips (Michigan’s marsh marigolds) were known as paigle, or keys of heaven, to the natives of Mary Webb’s Shropshire meres. A much-neglected classic, I was ready to agree, after only two chapters of the novel. 

It is October now in Leelanau, always a quixotic month and this year alternating summer and autumn from one day to the next. By Sunday, had it settled down? Full, peak color and cold rain seemed to say yes, and while the colors gleamed in the rain, my mood was sad, or at least bittersweet. Although the Artist always used to say he loved the leafless trees in November and the time when the “bones of the earth” are laid bare, my memory calls back so many slow county cruises in October (following a getaway to the U.P. or Lake Huron in September) that seeing the beauty of the dying leaves by myself feels almost unbearable. 

Luckily, for whatever grip on sanity I possess, there is Sunny Juliet. Like October, Sunny has a variety of moods. Here is an introduction to a few of them, as demonstrated this past mid-October weekend.  

Looking goofy

Caught a mole!

Pretending it's time to get up.

Homework!

To my way of thinking, there is nothing like books and dogs to chase away the blues of politics and the approach of winter. 

Dark is coming earlier and earlier.

But can you see the tiny sliver of moon? Look closely!

Figuring Things Out

Morning clouds, October

This could be a short post. We'll see! If I were writing about all the things I have not figured out, it would be long, but I’m taking the easy way out. 

Happy girl!

First (because I know that’s why many of you tune in), Sunny and I are making great strides in our agility sessions with Coach Mike. I’m able to keep more of the course in my head at once, and our race from one station to the next is becoming smoother all the time. If there were an indoor agility course in Leelanau Township, I would be more than willing to continue through the winter. 

Scene of someone's adventure glimpsed on our way to agility --

(Parenthetically, in answer to the often-asked question, “How late in the season will you keep the bookstore open?” the answer is that Dog Ears Books will be open all winter. Come November, weeks will be shorter [Wednesday through Saturday], and days will be shorter, too [11 to 3], but weather and roads permitting, the shop will be open four days a week.)

 

I’m pretty sure I have the answer now to why Albert Murray is not better known as a writer of fiction. By now well into the fourth of his semi-autobiographical novels, more and more I realize that while his characters and settings are vivid, the world large and complex (from Alabama to Hollywood to Paris and back to New York), there is simply no conflict. The narrator makes a single mistake as a boy, is saved from the consequences by one of his boyhood idols (an understanding and sympathetic character with the wonderful name of Luzanna Cholly), and from there on there are no obstacles in Scooter's life path. When he learns a secret about his parentage, he takes in the new knowledge without a moment’s angst, and it never troubles him later, either. He is given a string bass and within months is touring the country and the world with one of America’s top dance bands. All women want him, no men are ever jealous, and the woman he wants to marry waits contentedly for his return. Marked out from the beginning for great things, he is the golden boy from start to finish, with everything falling into place for him. 

 

Just as Murray decried interpretations of the blues as music of suffering, he had little patience for stories of Black victimhood. He heard the blues as celebratory, not moans of misery, and he wrote his hero’s progress through the world as a story of success, and that’s great – except that we don’t see Scooter triumphing over anything, because nothing ever blocks his way. There is no agon to make him a protagonist. 

 

I say all this more as explanation than critique because I am still very much enjoying these books and looking forward to rereading them in years ahead. Any one of so many little vignettes, e.g., a scene in a barbershop, is as delightful as many a short story from a less-skilled writer, and discussions between characters about history, literature, and music are endlessly fascinating. I’m no longer troubled by neglect of Murray as a novelist, though, because I see what’s missing in his books as fiction: there is no tension, conflict, struggle, and so no real drama. 

 

It’s hard to believe that Murray’s own life was as velvet-smooth and free of difficulty as Scooter’s road. Life is never that easy for anyone! But he apparently felt free to leave out the bumps in the road, thoroughly covered as they had been by other Black writers. I’ll be interested to read this author’s nonfiction work and see how it compares to the fiction: Next up on my Murray agenda is The Omni-Americans: Black Experience & American Culture.

An already colorful curve in the road --

We should have peak color here in Leelanau by next weekend, although I almost hate to see it build to a climax, knowing that the gales of November will soon follow. And we still need rain! But who can argue with blue skies and the warm, albeit temporary, palette of our upper Midwest trees in autumn? 

So here it is for today – dog, books, outdoors. Because that’s my life. 

Wait for it...

...to turn blue!