Month: June 2015

Libraries and Librarians in Literature

Posted by

122

If you’re looking for evildoing in literature, you might not find much of it in books that feature librarians, library users, and library scenes. Heck, evildoers who want to research their future evildoing probably do it on their home computers…

So, with libraries in lit, you often get characters who are likable and intelligent and other good things. Which might mean a little less drama, but still some nice reading. Nothing wrong with that once in a while!

For instance, it’s appropriate that Novalee Nation, a working-class woman always open to learning more, meets another kind person in a library. He is Forney Hull, who has a major impact on Novalee’s life after she was abandoned in Oklahoma by her no-good boyfriend in Billie Letts’ Where the Heart Is.

The also-working-class protagonist of Jack London’s Martin Eden makes the ambitious transition from sailor to writer partly by spending countless hours in the library educating himself.

In L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, Valancy Stirling likes to visit the library to get the latest book by her favorite author — an author who will affect her life in a way she can never imagine.

Chicago librarian Henry DeTamblen involuntarily jumps around in time in Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife. Another book in that genre, Darryl Brock’s If I Never Get Back, includes a poignant library scene in which the late-20th-century protagonist Sam Fowler sees a photo of the all-dead 1869 Cincinnati Red Stockings team he had recently grown to know in person.

Then there’s Carol Milford, who worked as a librarian for several years before moving to Gopher Prairie, Minn., to live with her new husband Dr. Will Kennicott in Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street. The liberal, free-spirited Carol tries to bring change to the narrow-minded, fixed-in-its-ways town, but is totally thwarted — ironically, even by a local librarian who doesn’t encourage reading. Can anyone say “wrong profession”?

Also less pleasant than most librarians is Hogwarts’ strict keeper-of-the-books Irma Pince in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels. Heck, she even makes it hard for Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore to use that wizard school’s library.

While Robin Sloan’s novel is more about a San Francisco bookstore, a secret society’s private library in New York City plays a significant role in Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore.

At-home private libraries are ruthlessly burned in Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451; a monastery library figures prominently in Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose; Mr. Rochester impersonates a gypsy during a memorable Thornfield Hall library scene in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre; the library is visited a number of times in Carson McCullers’ The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter; a college library is one locale in Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys; and the main branch of the New York Public Library is mentioned in Jack Finney’s From Time to Time.

In the nonfiction realm, a memorable book is the poignant Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World by Vicki Myron with Bret Witter. The formerly abandoned Dewey lives in an Iowa library, and becomes a feline celebrity.

There’s also The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the classic written with Alex Haley, in which the civil-rights leader recalls educating himself with the help of a prison library.

What are your favorite literary works featuring librarians, library users, and/or library scenes? Also welcome are your general thoughts on the value of libraries, your worries about adequate funding of these wonderful institutions, your recollections of library experiences, etc. 🙂

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

Note: Later this month, I have relatives visiting and then a conference, so I’ll probably skip doing June 21 and June 28 blog posts. I’ll still reply to comments posted under this June 14 column, though at times more slowly — and will definitely put up a new column the evening of Sunday, July 5!

—

For three years of my Huffington Post literature blog, click here.

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.

Sequels We’d Like to See

Posted by

163

After you read a great stand-alone novel or finish a wonderful series of books, do you wish the story would continue?

Of course, this isn’t possible if the author is deceased (though there’s the occasional ill-advised sequel by a different writer). And many novels don’t need a continuation — they ended perfectly. Still, one can dream, and this blog post will do that before it also asks which theoretical sequels you’d like to see.

When it comes to knowing what happens to cherished characters, readers this summer will get a chance at gratification (or disappointment) with the publication of Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman book featuring an older Scout and Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird. But that’s a rare instance of wish fulfillment, so let’s return to imaginary sequels.

As some of you know, my favorite novel is Jane Eyre, and thinking of a follow-up to that book seems almost blasphemous. After all, Charlotte Bronte wrote other books after Jane Eyre‘s 1847 publication while choosing not to revisit her most famous work. But if the 1855-deceased Bronte had lived as long as her husband (Arthur Bell Nichols didn’t die until 1906), who knows what she might have done?

In a hypothetical Jane Eyre sequel by Bronte, I would love to read more details about the title character’s marriage. And if Jane’s two-decades-older husband eventually predeceased her, what would her life have been like? Remarriage? Becoming a teacher again?

Daniel and Mirah’s time in Palestine, where they were heading at the end of George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, would also be something to see.

Worth reading, too, would be a chronicle of the later lives of the three memorable siblings (good and bad) in The Brothers Karamazov. I’ve read that Fyodor Dostoyevsky, if death hadn’t intervened, planned to write two more Karamazov books to complete a trilogy.

How would adult life work out for angst-ridden teen John Grimes, the semi-autobiographical protagonist in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On the Mountain? If John ended up having something like Baldwin’s career, that would be impressive!

If there were a sequel to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, I’d be very curious to know what happens to disillusioned “fireman” Guy Montag and the outcast band of book lovers he joined.

The last Harry Potter book concludes with an epilogue that gives readers a glimpse of Harry, Hermione, and Ron as adults. It would be great to see that fleshed out, and there’s a chance it could eventually happen. But J.K. Rowling is certainly quite busy writing her non-magical novels.

If the authors were alive to write sequels, I’d also want to know whether Ravic the surgeon of Erich Maria Remarque’s Arch of Triumph survives World War II and how Maria in Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls fares after things go south for her lover Robert Jordan during the Spanish Civil War.

And I’d be curious to know what Isabel Archer — yoked to a ghastly marriage while still young in Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady — ends up doing with her life. Isabel is smart, charismatic, and independently wealthy, yet wrestles with self-doubt and the restrictions and expectations women faced in the 19th century.

Days after I wrote the above paragraph, I reached a passage of The Master — Colm Toibin’s quietly engrossing novel about Henry James’ life — in which James’ niece Peggy asks her uncle if he intends to write a sequel to The Portrait of a Lady! Peggy is very dissatisfied with the momentous decision Isabel makes at the end of James’ 1881 classic.

Which novels would you like to see sequels to (in the case of deceased authors, theoretical sequels; in the case of living authors, sequels that are possible)? What would you like to see happen in those sequels?

(The box for submitting comments is below already-posted comments, but your new comment will appear at the top of the comments area — unless you’re replying to someone else.)

—

For three years of my Huffington Post literature blog, click here.

I’m writing a literature-related book, but still selling Comic (and Column) Confessional — my often-funny memoir that recalls 25 years of covering and meeting cartoonists such as Charles Schulz (“Peanuts”) and Bill Watterson (“Calvin and Hobbes”), columnists such as Ann Landers and “Dear Abby,” and other notables such as Hillary Clinton, Coretta Scott King, Walter Cronkite, and various authors. The book also talks about the malpractice death of my first daughter, my remarriage, and life in Montclair, N.J. — where I write the award-winning weekly “Montclairvoyant” humor column for The Montclair Times. You can email me at dastor@earthlink.net to buy a discounted, inscribed copy of the book, which contains a preface by “Hints” columnist Heloise and back-cover blurbs by people such as “The Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson.