Through a Glass, Dreamily

My morning drive to Northport was made interesting by virtue of light rain. Traffic was nonexistent. I was able to stay under 40 mph and leave the wiper speed on low. Pulling off the road for a minute, I captured this impressionistic view of Fischer’s Happy Hour Tavern through the rain-streaked windshield.

Now, unprepared with new thoughts this evening, I’m pleased to have rediscovered the commentary on Kipling I thought was lost forever, and here it is:

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Another family member writes, “What's up with those people who read the last page of the book first? I know lots of people who do, but it wouldn't occur to me in a million years to want to do that.” Me, either, Maiya. What’s up with that, indeed? But, well….

When I couldn’t sleep the other night, I got up to read for a while and picked up a strange little novel by Rudyard Kipling. In childhood I loved The Jungle Books (which my father and I read together over and over), but how different an author can appear at different stages of a reader’s life and when a different book is in question! THE LIGHT THAT FAILED is a rather horrid little story, I must say.

It begins with two unhappy children, unrelated orphans being raised by the same dreadful woman. The children buy a handgun, and the reader thinks murder is at hand, but no…. Then we skip ahead many years and find the young man on the banks of the Nile, determined to make his way as an artist by first becoming a wartime newspaper illustrator.

Later, back in London, Dick finally recognizes at last that he must be true to Art and not sell his soul for easy popularity. How does he come to see this? By running into Maisie, the companion of his childhood, also determined to be a painter, also focused blindly (as it were) on Success, as he was up to that point.

Well, Dick and Maisie do not make a pair, because she will not. When he goes literally blind, however, a friend of his travels to France, where Maisie has gone to study painting, and brings her back to nurse the man who loves her. But that doesn’t work, either. She is too selfish and runs off without even bidding him a proper farewell.

Backtrack to another woman, hired as Dick’s model, who set her cap for the artist’s best friend and mentor/benefactor. Dick foils the plan, but the woman reappears later to destroy the last masterpiece Dick paints before his eyes give out!

Thus both wickedly selfish women are booted offstage by the author, and Dick dies in his friend’s arms, off on a battlefield somewhere.

Was it a battlefield? Where? I can’t say because, while I did not read the last page of this book first, I did lose patience and skipped several chapters, turning to the last page out of curiosity. Enough!

Browsing

Yesterday morning on the way to Northport, I had in mind a picture of the beech tree at the 90-degree corner where M-201 comes downhill and turns left onto Waukazoo. Turning onto Waukazoo myself, I parked the car and walked around the corner and back up the hill, but the shot I’d mentally visualized wasn’t there. The sidewalk was snow-covered and slippery, footing precarious. I walked carefully, watching every inch of pavement I had to traverse. The image above was my reward. If I’m not too stubbornly focused on what I think I want to see—if I can be open to whatever presents itself--walking with a camera opens my eyes to ephemeral beauties like these cottonwood leaves visible under wet snow in the street.

This is the way I usually approach a library or a bookstore, too. I may go in with a title in mind, but if that book isn’t available, I won’t leave empty-handed, any more than I would leave a potluck dinner hungry because no one had brought, say, Southern fried chicken. Spending as much time as I do in my own bookstore world, there are still days when I browse the shelves and come upon something that wouldn’t have leapt to my mind without the visual stimulus.

Yesterday in the drama section, my browsing turned up “Playboy of the Western World, by Synge. I'd seen the play in high school, but how much could it mean to me then? Now, on the heels of having read THE WILD IRISH (Robin Maxwell) and MY DREAM OF YOU (Nuala O’Faolain), and with documentation of the birth in Fermoy, County Cork, on December 13, 1886, of the grandfather I never met, the play fair jumps into my hand! I begin reading and now, even without actors on a stage in front of me, this place and these people are familiar. I wouldn’t have thought to look for it, but it was a happy accident.

Another book that called my name as my eyes scanned the shelves yesterday afternoon was DINNER AT ANTOINE’S, by Frances Parkinson Keyes. A popular writer from another era, Keyes is an author I know well by name. Seeing her name on a book spine, I told myself I should know her better than that, and here’s the moment come. (One Louisiana book scout comes around every few years, always looking for DINNER AT ANTOINE’S. He says that in New Orleans the demand for this title is constant. Reading it in New Orleans would be, I suppose, like reading ANATOMY OF A MURDER in the U.P.) The story opens in January of 1948. Almost sixty years ago! No time to lose!

Richard Wiseman, author of THE LUCK FACTOR, says his research shows that being open to the world, to whatever is there, to whatever happens, to whomever crosses our path, is an important aspect making up “luck.” He did an experiment to confirm this hunch. He left a 5-pound note (he would have used a $5 bill if he’d been in this country) on the sidewalk outside a café where he’d arranged to meet his subjects, already self-described as either “lucky” or “unlucky.” You might think that the "unlucky" people, trudging along with their heads down and feeling blue, would have been the ones to see the money and pick it up, but not so. Considering oneself “unlucky,” it seems, is not compatible with being open to positive possibilities. The subjects who considered themselves “lucky” were the ones who spotted the note on the ground, time after time.

Good news, both for those who consider themselves “unlucky” and for those of us who need reminders from time to time that good things as well as bad happen in the world, is that learning to be “lucky” is possible. At the end of his book Wiseman gives instructions to his “unlucky” subjects, and sure enough, they come back and report to him that their luck has miraculously changed! What did he have them do? I’ll have to refresh my memory with the book on Monday, but I do recall that one of their assignments was to talk to strangers.

People we don’t know, books we’ve never heard of, and lovely, ephemeral configurations of the natural world have a lot in common, it turns out. At least that’s true from one bookseller’s perspective.

First Things First, One Step at a Time--Usually

Well, the long account I'd written about skipping chapters to get to the end of a horrid book somehow got deleted before I could paste it in. Just as well, I guess. If a novel becomes so tedious that one turns impatiently to the last page, rather than reading more and more slowly to make the story last, why write paragraphs and paragraphs about it? The novel, in case you're wondering, was one of Rudyard Kiplings decidedly lesser works, THE LIGHT THAT FAILED. My advice is to read the JUNGLE BOOKS instead.

Good Women, Good Works

That’s Donna Brown in the red apron from Leelanau Christian Neighbors (LCN), all set to pour coffee at the Treasure Chest, Northport’s new (and presently the only) place for a good, hot breakfast. Donna and her son and business partner Chris plan to stay open all winter, which means that when Barb’s Bakery closes, the morning gang will migrate over to Waukazoo Street. (Dog Ears Books hosted coffee for two months last winter, but for me it meant hauling water in jugs from home. Donna and Chris have a kitchen!)

It’s fitting that Donna will be wearing the LCN apron when she serves Thanksgiving dinner at the Treasure Chest next week because she isn’t open for “business” that day: dinner is on the house, for anyone in the community who won’t be with family and wants to share the holiday spirit. Donna says it’s her family’s way of saying thank you to Northport. Homebound residents can have turkey dinner delivered, compliments of the Treasure Chest and volunteer drivers. Donna has received many donations of food and money for the dinner and is telling donors that everything above and beyond her costs for the day she will send on to the Food Pantry.

This is where Leelanau Christian Neighbors comes in. LCN is a coalition of county churches that operates two community food pantries and an emergency family assistance program. This year resources are already strained, in Leelanau as elsewhere in the country. Enter the apron project. Brainchild of Marilyn Zimmerman, member of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in Northport, an LCN affiliate, the apron is available in red, black, blue or khaki, with logo of contrasting color. Orders are being taken now. All proceeds beyond cost will go to LCN services: there are no administrative costs.

Marilyn hopes that by next summer LCN aprons will be worn by volunteers at all sorts of community events. Neighbors helping neighbors—that’s the idea. To request an apron order form that can be downloaded and printed, e-mail lcnapronproject@earthlink.net, or you can write to LCN at P.O. Box 32, Suttons Bay, MI 49682 to request one or more order forms.

Worth Waitiing For

Yesterday while David and I were in Traverse City and Bruce was minding the bookstore, Woody came to take the awnings down for the winter and—yes! to put up the new sign! It’s been eleven months since Dog Ears Books moved from Nagonaba Street to Waukazoo, and somehow we got through an entire summer and fall season without a real store sign, but oh, what a joy it is to drive into town and see this elegant addition. “It’s just like London!” exclaimed one friend and loyal customer. But it’s Northport! It’s another step in the Waukazoo Revival!

More Horse Stories

Saturday morning brought unexpected sunshine on bright fallen leaves, and we had more of the same today. Oak trees along Grand Traverse Bay looked as delicious as buttered toast. The cherry orchards have too many colors to name, all mingling richly together.

Meanwhile, indoors, I’ve discovered a contemporary series of horse stories for young girls. The appeal of “Heartland” is both modern and timeless. Characters use cell phones and computers, and the young horse trainers use techniques like T-touch massage and “joining up” to bring traumatized animals back into trusting relationships, but central plots still involve humans and horses and the age-old bond between them. OUT OF THE DARKNESS (Heartland #7), for example, tells the story of a racehorse injured in a stable fire, sent to Heartland as a last resort. Gallant Prince is a prisoner of his fear, locked in a dark past and so unmanageable that he is dangerous to those trying to help him. Moreover, his nervous restlessness quickly spreads to the rest of the horses at Heartland.

Can Gallant Prince be saved? What of the threat of bad publicity for Heartland if this rescue mission fails? And where is the stable boy who loved this horse but locked himself away emotionally after the fire? The happy ending is not a surprise but doesn’t feel contrived. Amy is often discouraged and fearful herself and has to through her own self-doubt (when others would have had her give up), along with Prince’s terror, but even that is only part of the story. Only 15 years old, Amy’s life is full of challenging physical work, school and homework, personal and social questions and uncertainties.

I found this young people’s novel so thoroughly engrossing that David couldn’t help laughing. I didn’t care. I was 15 years old last night, training horses in Virginia!

Book People

Rose Hollander, publisher of her late husband’s book, SAVING THE FAMILY COTTAGE, and Lynne Rae Perkins, author/illustrator of many children’s books and winner of the 2006 Newbery Award for CRISS CROSS, wanted to do something in return for local booksellers and librarians, so they invited a group of us to dinner at Rose’s house, after which we all walked the length of Suttons Bay (almost) to Lynn’s for dessert and a visit to her studio. The entire evening was a rare treat. Dinner, dessert and the studio were all outstanding. We also enjoyed the chance to spend time with Rose and Lynne and with each other.

Most days I see Deb Stannard of the Leelanau Township Library after we’ve both finished our work days: there we are, standing in the grocery store aisles, gazing at vegetables and hoping for dinner idea inspiration! I may run into Sylvia Merz of the Leland Township Library once or twice a year, usually only for a few minutes. Barbara Siepker’s Cottage Bookstore in Glen Arbor is a long way from my Dog Ears Books in Northport, as are the fantastic public library in Traverse City and the iconic Horizon Books on Front Street. An opportunity to enjoy wine and hors-d’oeuvres, relax over dinner and stroll the quiet, dark street of a small town with other book people, sharing news of our latest author and book “finds,” was a little bit of heaven. Thank you, Rose and Lynne! What a gracious and memorable gift you gave us all!

Great Story

This morning's e-mail brought my daily "Shelf Awareness" newsletter, with a story so wonderful I asked the editor for permission to quote it here in full. Read on:

"Why Not Catch 21?: The Stories Behind the Titles

"The following is in essence the title chapter from Why Not Catch 21?: The Stories Behind the Titles by Gary Dexter (Frances Lincoln, $16.95, 9780711227965/0711227969), an expansion of the author's Sunday Telegraph column that tells the origins of the titles of 50 great works of literature. This excerpt, the story of the title Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, published in 1961, is in the British English of the book, a situation Yossarian might call fubar:

"'Catch-22' has passed into the language as a description of the impossible bind:

"Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. 'Is Orr crazy?'
"'He sure is,' Doc Daneeka said.
"'Can you ground him?'
"'I sure can. But first he has to ask me to. That's part of the rule.'
"'Then why doesn't he ask you to?'
"'Because he's crazy,' Doc Daneeka said. 'He has to be crazy to keep flying combat missions after all the close calls he's had. Sure, I can ground him. But first he has to ask me to.'
"'That's all he has to do to be grounded?'
"'That's all. Let him ask me.'
"'And then you can ground him?' Yossarian asked.
"'No. Then I can't ground him.'
"'You mean there's a catch?'
"'Sure there's a catch,' Doe Daneeka replied. 'Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy.'
"Orr is crazy, and can be grounded, but if he asks to be grounded he is sane--and he can only be grounded if he asks. Joseph Heller complained that the phrase 'a Catch-22 situation' was often used by people who did not seem to understand what it meant. Given the mental contortions of the catch, this is not surprising. He even described receiving a letter from a Finnish translator, which said (in Heller's paraphrase): 'I am translating your novel Catch-22 into Finnish. Would you please explain me one thing: What means Catch-22? I didn't find it in any vocabulary. Even assistant air attaché of the USA here in Helsinki could not explain exactly.' Heller added: 'I suspect the book lost a great deal in its Finnish translation.'

"There are no catches 1 to 21, or 23 onwards, in the book. 'There was only one catch and that was Catch-22.' Like the final commandment left at the end of Animal Farm, Catch-22 is an entire rule-book distilled into one lunatic decree. Its very uniqueness meant that Heller had to think carefully before naming, or numbering it. And his choice was--'Catch-18'.

"In World War II Heller was a bombardier with the 12th Air Force, based on Corsica, and flew 60 missions over Italy and France. Yossarian in Catch-22 is a bombardier flying the same missions. Rotated home in 1945 and discharged as a First Lieutenant with an Air Medal with Five Oak Leaf Clusters, Heller took a degree at New York University, then an MA at Columbia, before working in New York as an advertising copy-writer. In 1953 he began writing a book called Catch-18, the first chapter of which was published in the magazine New World Writing in 1955. When, three years later, he submitted the first large chunk of it to Simon & Schuster, it was quickly accepted for publication, and Heller worked on it steadily--all the time thinking of it as Catch-18--until its completion in 1961. Shortly before publication, however, the blockbuster novelist Leon Uris produced a novel entitled Mila 18 (also about the Second World War). It was thought advisable that Heller, the first-time novelist, should be the one to blink, and the title was changed. Heller said in an interview with Playboy in 1975: 'I was heartbroken. I thought 18 was the only number.' The first suggestion for a replacement was Catch-14, but Robert Gottlieb, Heller's editor, felt it didn't have the right ring. 'I thought 22 was a funnier number than 14', Gottlieb told the New York Times Review of Books in 1967. Heller took two weeks to persuade.

"But the journey from 18 to 22, although tortuous, was worth making. The reason is this: 22 has a thematic significance that 18 or 14 do not.

"The doubling of the digits emphasizes a major theme of the book: duplication and reduplication. When the book was first published, critics objected to its monotony and repetition. 'Heller's talent is impressive,' said Time magazine, 'but it is also undisciplined, sometimes luring him into bogs of boring repetition. Nearly every episode in Catch-22 is told and retold.'

"This is true. In Catch-22 everything is doubled. Yossarian flies over the bridge at Ferrara twice, his food is poisoned twice, there is a chapter devoted to 'The Soldier Who Saw Everything Twice', the chaplain has the sensation of having experienced everything twice, Yossarian can name two things to be miserable about for every one to be thankful for, all Yossarian can say to the dying Snowden is 'There, there', all Snowden can say is 'I'm cold, I'm cold', Yossarian overhears a woman repeatedly begging 'please don't, please don't', and Major Major is actually Major Major Major Major. The critic JP Stern identified a pairing approach to the characters:

"Most figures in Catch-22 are arranged in pairs; e.g., the medical orderlies Gus and Wes; the HR clerk Wintergreen and the Chaplain's orderly--both nasty characters; the two CID stooges; Major Major and Captain Flume--both persecuted; Generals Dreedle and Peckem--both harshly satirized; Snowden and Mudd--both dead; Piltchard and Wren--both enjoy combat missions; Aarfy and Black--men without feeling; Nately and Clevinger--upper-class college boys, both get killed; the nurses, Duckett and Kramer.

"The mad pairing reaches its apotheosis in the catch itself. As the novel says: 'Yossarian saw it clearly in all its spinning reasonableness. There was an elliptical precision about its perfect pairs of parts that was graceful and shocking, like good modern art, and at times Yossarian wasn't quite sure that he saw it at all, just the way he was never quite sure about good modern art...'

"Doubling is thus a stylistic device suggestive of the qualified nature of reality. Nothing is singular, unblurred or unambiguous. The title, with its doubled digits (2 representing duality, itself doubled to make 22) conveys this in a way that Catch-18 could not.

"It seems clear therefore that what happened when Simon & Schuster found out about Leon Uris's book was a piece of great good luck."

[Many thanks to Gary Dexter and Frances Lincoln!]

While It's on My Mind (i.e., before I forget)

In A SHORT HISTORY OF MYTH, as Karen Armstrong traces the history of humanity’s search for transcendental meaning, one of her early claims is that Paleolithic man, a hunter, developed myth to assuage his discomfort over having to kill animals to survive. (Would this same power of myth to accommodate the spilling of animals’ blood not be available also as a force to allow men to slay one another? The question is not raised.) Myths, Armstrong says (and this would be true in any age) give meaning to human life by expressing the inexpressible. Some legendary or historic event, thanks to having been mythologized, recurs in present time, and within the context of ritual re-enactment, participants experience its truth first-hand. Participants are also called by the myth to ethical action--broadly construed, I would add, ethos being what it can be from one culture and time to another.

Armstrong's historical survey traces the widening Western rift between mythos and logos, beginning with Greek rationalism but widening greatly with the rise of experimental science in the 16th century. Today, she notes, the very word ‘myth’ is generally taken to signify ‘not-true.’ At the same time, our need for myth has not disappeared. Hence some of the “very destructive modern myths … [that] ended in massacre and genocide.” Human beings cannot live without meaning, even if that meaning brings death. Reason alone “cannot deal with … [our] deep-rooted, unexorcized fears, desires and neuroses.” Neither can reason alone move us to compassion for one another or concern for the earth and its resources. For those reasons, Armstrong says, we stlll need myth, but we need to create new myths for our modern selves.

The survey is illuminating, but I wonder at the idea that self-consciously created myth can take the place of that which grew up organically within a culture. Armstrong’s concluding suggestion is that we turn to art and literature in general, novels in particular, to fill this spiritual void. I am unconvinced.

Even without the bleakness of her fictional examples, there is no communal experience, no ritual practice, in the reading of novels. Moreover, each novel is its own world, none giving the experience of mythic recurrence, and while it is true that the “exercise of make-believe … breaks down barriers of space and time and extends our sympathies,” it does not necessarily follow that we are renewed or uplifted or that our hearts are made glad by this journey out of ourselves. One of John Updike’s novels, IN THE BEAUTY OF THE LILIES, brilliantly captures the American 20th-century zeitgeist in three generations and deserves to be considered a classic, but my overwhelming feeling upon reaching the last page of that book was relief. A myth needs to empower, not paralyze the spirit.

Singing in a choir, playing an instrument in a group with others, preparing and serving a holiday meal, planting and caring for a garden—any of these activities, it seems to me, is more likely than novel-reading to fill the void left by absconded myth.

“Only a novel”? No, that’s not what I’m saying. (How could I reject Jane Austen that stupidly?) No, certainly a good novel is art and worthy of our time and our attentive response, including discussion with others. Fiction can challenge, give new perspectives, open minds. But its lingering effect is more like a series of penetrating questions than a list of comforting answers.

Religion cannot do the work of science, science cannot do the work of religion, and fiction does not do the work of either. It has its own realm and its own virtues. We overburden it at our peril.

Snowy Morning

Woke up to our first real snow on the ground this morning. Yesterday’s barest dusting on the walk was too faint to count, and there was none of grass or trees, whereas today’s, as you see, was lovely. It was also the perfect medicine for getting me in the mood to plan with other Chamber members for our holiday events in Northport (all of which will be listed on my regular website any minute now).

One of my first delightful tasks at the bookstore this morning was to put in another new book order, the third this week. I’m stocking up on board books for young children; had to have TAP DANCING ON THE ROOF and RUNAWAY GARDEN (also children’s books, the latter a National Best Books 2007 award-winner); couldn’t leave out GHOST MOUNTAIN BOYS, a new book on World War II featured in this week’s Leelanau County Enterprise. This time of year I have new-new books arriving every week, and it’s fun and exciting.

Last night I finished HILLBILLY WOMEN, by Kathy Kahn, an out-of-print book I was reading in ragged paperback months ago and mislaid somewhere far from home, replacing it recently with hardcover. The women are smart, tough, hard-working, resilient and canny. They know the odds are stacked against them, but they’re not about to give up. I look at their pictures and wonder (copyright date 1972) where they are now. My grandmother was one of them except for geography. I miss her.