The Adams Family
Any reading life is marked
from time to time by unexpected coincidence. I have been reading The Adams
Family, by James Truslow Adams (no relation to the others, he says), published
in 1930. The book deals with four generations: John Adams, b. 1740, one of
America’s Founding Fathers and second President of the United States; his son, John Quincy Adams, b. 1768,
our sixth president; JQ's son, Charles Francis Adams, b.
1886, U.S. Minister to England under Lincoln; and finally Henry Adams, who, unlike
the three generations before him, never really seemed to “find himself” but who
did write The Education of Henry Adams, not at all
the book one might expect from its dry title and deserving of its
place on Modern Library’s Top 100 books list.
The descriptions of the first
two generations of Adamses (I’m almost more than halfway through the JTA book),
both as they describe themselves and as the author and others describe them,
are frank and occasionally startling. John was generally seen as jealous and
vain, mistrustful to the point of near-paranoia. John Quincy, a skilled
diplomat (a quality that did not come down to him from his father), was
nevertheless cold, overbearing and harsh. But as much as the personalities of
John and John Quincy, I have been fascinated by the picture of American
politics during the Revolutionary Period and the first decades of the new
country.
Well, now (this is the
coincidence) I pick up the current New York Review of Books (June 5, 2014) and find reviewed three new books on
the Adams family, one on John Quincy and two focused on his wife, the first a
biography, the second her own writings. The last of the three I will definitely
have to read!
Not the Book I Expected
Impatiently as I awaited Men
Explain Things to Me, by Rebecca
Solnit, I admit that I anticipated a funnier book. The first, the title essay, is as funny entertaining now as when I read it online (and David laughed aloud when I read it to him), but the second chapter essay is all about violence against women,
worldwide, from rape to murder. Very serious, very well done – not what I’d expected at all,
but I couldn’t put the book down without reading it cover to cover. The essay
(the chapters are essays, written at different times and collected in this book
for the first time) on Virginia Woolf was particularly insightful, lovely and
haunting.
To spin the web and not be caught in it, to create the world, to create your own life, to rule your own fate, to name the grandmothers as well as the fathers, to draw nets and not just straight lines, to be a maker as well as a cleaner, to be able to sing and not be silenced, to take down the veil and appear: all these are the banners on the laundry line I hang out.
So now I am recommending Men Explain
Things to Me and looking forward to
reading other books by Rebecca Solnit.
Notes and Reminders
As for Ice Caves of
Leelanau, I should note here that every
copy I have on hand is spoken for (I won’t have more until July) and I’m
not taking any more names for reservations (for fear of having more
reservations than books and because I really need to have a few books available
for people who walk in the door asking for them), but I have many other
wonderful, beautiful, fascinating books worth attention and deserving homes! An entire bookstore full of them!
Also, please don’t forget that Dog
Ears will be celebrating its 21st birthday three weeks early (so as
not to conflict with the 4th of July), on Friday, June 13, with
readings by eleven poets from the beautiful new Poetry in Michigan/Michigan
in Poetry book from New Issues Poetry
& Prose in Kalamazoo. Michigan art and poetry in gorgeous anthology
published in Michigan – this one is a lifetime keeper, for sure.
Confession (or Resolution, or Warning)
I am carrying out a plan this season to be more selfish. As a child, I was tagged the "selfish one" of the three (I was also the oldest), but in my adult struggle to overcome that quality, I sometimes feel I've gone too far. My business -- and you know I love my bookshop! -- doesn't give me much time off in the summer, and summer (the Up North reward for surviving winter) is also the time when social engagements and yard chores also kick into high gear. So I'm taking a stand: no more summer meetings for me. I have to draw a line somewhere, and that's where I'm drawing it. No more meetings! It's more important for me to set aside time to draw something besides lines....
