Essays

Review: The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment
Cover image of "The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians by James Patterson and Matt Evers

The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians, James Patterson and Matt Eversmann. Little, Brown, and Company (ISBN: 9780316567534), 2024.

Summary: A collection of first-person accounts from booksellers and librarians about why they love doing what they do.

“I want to make sure people keep getting books they want, books they like. I call it Book Joy, matching people with books that will bring them the most happiness.” –Kelly Moore

Kelly Moore is just one of the many booksellers and librarians who contributed first-person accounts of their love of working with books to this delightful book compiled by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann. In case you didn’t know, Patterson is not only a hugely successful and prolific writer of thrillers, he is a huge fan of booksellers and librarians–those who get books into the hands of readers. He’s given generous support to literacy efforts and grants to independent booksellers.

Here he lets them tell the story of why they love what they do. Kelly’s statement captures a common theme–connecting people with books they love. Some of their greatest joy comes when they help reluctant readers find books they love, turning them, degree by degree into readers. Part of the work is careful listening, picking up the cues that signal what a person may like. And sometimes it involves being a detective, using the few clues a patron or customer can offer to help them find that book they are looking for.

The other big theme is that these people love books and reading. It is so much more than checking out books or ringing up sales. They enjoy talking books, sharing something they’ve read that someone else may like. A friend of mine who is a bookseller is mystified by people who think they can be booksellers without loving books.

Perhaps this needs to be so because it is a challenging life. Both librarians and booksellers have a variety of administrative tasks that allow them to do what they love, from reading publications on new releases to select what they think their patrons will like, to unpacking and shelving, tracking sales and inventory and scheduling events. It’s awesome to meet authors at booksignings but there is a lot of setup to make it work for everyone.

Some started young, working as a page or a clerk and eventually managing a department of a library or owning a store. Others describe mid-career changes, often when a job was lost. Many had always been readers and even dreamed of pursuing working in a library or bookselling and realized they could no longer wait.

There was one serious note, which was the growing number of efforts to remove books from libraries that a small group deemed objectionable. It meant a job loss for one writer and courageous stands for others. One thing was clear, when communities heard and protested, this was often decisive.

Have you ever wondered what it is like to work in a library or a bookstore? This book will give you a good picture of both the joy and the work. If nothing else, it should give you an appreciation for what a special breed any dedicated bookseller or librarian is. If you haven’t noticed, this book is a good education. And if you have, this book will serve as a good reminder to find ways to support and appreciate their work. There are book deserts. if you are not in one, thank the people who make that possible and support their efforts to sustain their presence!

Review: Slouching Towards Bethlehem

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays, Joan Didion. New York: Open Road Media, 2017 (Originally published in 1968)

Summary: A collection of essays, most originally published as Saturday Evening Post articles describing Didion’s first years back in California, during the height of the hippie movement.

I never read Joan Didion’s work while she was alive. Only in recent years have I developed a taste for essays, and as I read essayists, Didion’s name comes up repeatedly as a master of the craft. This work is her first non-fiction (she published a novel, Run, River, in 1963). This set of essays, most of which first appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, were mostly written between 1964-1967. These were her first years back in her home state of California after eight years of working for Vogue in New York City, to which she eventually returned.

The essays capture the ethos of California in the mid-1960s, the mix of sunny optimism, the agricultural belt of the Sacramento Valley, where she grew up, the nervous lassitude of Los Angeles when the Santa Ana winds rise, and the outlaw fighter John Wayne after he “licked the Big C” the outlaw cells that had threatened his life when she was on set covering the making of The Sons of Katie Elder, Wayne’s 165th film. In stark contrast, she profiles Joan Baez and her Institute for the Study of Nonviolence. She describes Baez as “a personality before she was entirely a person, and, like anyone to whom that happens, she is in a sense the hapless victim of what others have seen in her, written about her, wanted her to be and not to be.”

Her title essay, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, recounts her time in 1967 in Haight-Asbury during the “summer of love” where youth from all over the country flocked to San Francisco signaling an unraveling in the social fabric of the country, an inchoate longing. She describes the people she met, the flophouses like The Warehouse they lived, the prodigious use of drugs, and the do-gooders like Arthur Lisch with utopian visions who ended up caring for kids when they crashed, and the Zen alternatives to trips. Already, the demise of Haight was apparent to some.

“Personals,” the second section collects articles with a more interior focus: her notebook keeping, thoughts on morality and self-respect (“Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home”). She reminds us of 1960’s monster movies and what is like to go home when it is no longer home.

The final part, “Seven Places of the Mind” take us from Hawaii to Alcatraz to Newport and to her eight years in New York. The essay on Newport, “The Seacoast of Despair” gave voice to my own experience of the lavish mansions of a bygone age, sterile and sad. In New York, she describes the point at which she stopped believing in “new faces” and felt herself becoming increasingly estranged from the whole scene, rescued by her husband who took a six-month leave that turned into a long-term residence in California.

There is so much of interest here. Didion masterfully crafts sentences and tells non-fiction stories. She is a keen observer of herself, the places where she visits or lives, and the times through which she was living. Whether profiling the famous or the unknown, like Comrade Laski of the Communist Party of the United States of America, she opens our eyes to both their individuality and the ways they serve larger than life roles as types.

Some of us are at a point of reflecting back over our lives, and summing up what they’ve meant. These essays were a lens to consider at least a part of that life. I’m intrigued enough to read more of her insights on the times we have both traversed and how she made sense of them. It strikes me that we had so many dreams of changing the world and indeed, the world has changed, but not as we expected. I wonder if Didion was as surprised and unsettled as I find myself in looking at the the world sixty years later. Or did she indeed foresee the center that cannot hold and the beast slouching toward Bethlehem?

Review: These Precious Days

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

These Precious Days, Ann Patchett. New York: Harper Collins, 2022.

Summary: Essays on family, friendships, the life of writing and bookselling, and mortality.

I’ve read most of Ann Patchett’s fiction, loving the writing if not always the ways her stories resolve (or not). I personally consider The Dutch House one of her best, along with Bel Canto. This is my first foray into her non-fiction, and I thought these essays revealed more than the character of Ann Patchett, particularly of her love of friendship and love of both writing and bookselling. It was a collection that reflects on marriage, on our families, on the literary world, and on mortality.

The title essay does all of this. “These Precious Days” is a lengthy account of her unlikely and mutually transforming friendship with Sooki Raphael. Sooki was the personal assistant to Tom Hanks, who Patchett met on an interview with Hanks. Further contacts with Hanks, including asking him to narrate one of her audiobooks led to continued contacts. During one of these, she learned Sooki had undergone surgery and treatments for pancreatic cancer. Staying in touch she learned of the cancer’s recurrence and Sooki’s plans to explore clinical trials. Patchett’s husband, a physician at Vanderbilt, learned of this from Ann, and was aware that Vanderbilt was running a number of clinical trials for pancreatic cancer. This led to Sooki coming to live for several months in Ann and Karl’s basement suite (at the height of Covid-19). The essay beautifully recounts the ways this unexpected friendship transformed both of their lives, as well as the beauty of Ann and Karl accompanying this woman in ways that never diminished her dignity while generously supporting her as she fought this beastly cancer.

In other essays, Patchett describes her three fathers and how each influenced her life. She discusses her decision to not have children, the people who insisted she should, and the intrusive questions she sometimes has faced when she would prefer to talk about her work. She writes about her mother, who often was mistaken as one of Ann’s sisters, due to her youthful beauty. She introduces us to Tavia Cathcart, the bombshell high school friend who moved from acting to becoming a premier nature interpreter, and how their friendship evolved as both she and Ann grew into their adult selves.

There is a healthy dose of gentle humor. She recounts her adventures with her friend Marti in Paris, and the tattoo she never got. She tells the story of a caller who insists on bringing her a letter documenting an award she had received from the Veterans of Foreign Wars, found in a nightstand that had once belonged to her. Then there is an incident where Karl comforts a woman worried about her baby’s development by offering the woman $20,000 to adopt the child! No way, and the woman stopped worrying. She describes her year when she gave up shopping. She recalls the Thanksgiving when she stayed at her college and decided to cook Thanksgiving dinner for her friends–from scratch! She writes about her husband’s love of flying–and of his insistence on finding deals on used planes. She reveals her on again, off again embrace of knitting.

She offers us glimpses of the literary world. Under her hand you find yourself drawn successively into Kate DiCamillo’s works for children and the work of Eudora Welty. In “A Talk to the Association of Graduate School Deans in the Humanities” she chronicles her experience in the MFA program at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop with her friend Lucy, her one interview for a faculty position and how failing to get that position gave her the chance to write. She speaks of the joys of owning a bookstore and the important lesson she didn’t learn in grad school–“if you want to save reading, teach children to read.”

Patchett recounts her own memento mori moment upon being elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an honor reserved to 250 living members. She describes the portrait gallery in the Academy with photos arranged in order of members induction, going back to Samuel Clemens in 1898 up to her own picture in 2017. As she went back in time she realized she was moving increasingly from the company of living members to the deceased. At some point they all were. She realizes this will be true of her. She describes the simple card she receives with the death of another member, forty between her induction and the time of writing, including John Updike, who she had been so thrilled to be seated with at her own induction. She remembers his handing her the certificate of membership, a check, and giving her a fatherly kiss on the cheek.

Patchett brings to these essays the same insightfulness into the complexities and wonders of human beings, their relationships, and their lives as she does to the characters in her novels. One senses we are seeing all of this woven together in another story, that of the author, who writes with increasing appreciation of “these precious days” in her circles of family, friends, and acquaintances. And it nudges us to be mindful of similar “precious days” with the people and in the work we love.

Review: Conscientious Objections

/ rtrube54 / 6 Comments

Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology, and Education, Neil Postman. New York: Vintage, 1992.

Summary: A collection of essays of social criticism, considering our communications media and rhetoric, education and its purpose, and technology and how it shapes society.

It has been some time since I’ve read Neil Postman. Twenty years ago, I appreciated his trenchant critique of television and how it was making us dumb, long before critiques of the internet, and of his concerns about how technology was shaping modern society. This collection of essays, which I’ve finally gotten around to reading, revisits some of the same themes, but what I found different (or perhaps didn’t remember) is the biting wit of these essays–these feels like Neil Postman unfiltered–or at least less filtered. Many were originally spoken presentations, which perhaps accounts for some of the difference.

He opens with a critique of the idea of “social science” and would place himself in the camp of those who deny that this is a science at all, calling it “moral theology.” He includes himself in his critique and argues that “social scientists” are story tellers, reminding us in fresh ways of the nature of the human condition and the character of human society. He then considers the purpose of education. Is it to inculcate our culture or to defend us against it? He would argue for the latter and particularly the importance of teaching an awareness of the nature, uses, and power of language.

At times, he can be tongue-in-cheek, as in his essays “The Naming of Missiles” and “The Parable of the Ring Around the Collar” (some of us remember this and other commercials, to which he alludes). He treats these as modern redemption tales. “Megatons for Anthromegs,” “Future Schlock,” “Safe-Fail,” and “My Graduation Speech” are additional examples.

As in Amusing Ourselves to Death, there are several essays on the influence of television on our habits of discourse. “A Muted Celebration,” on the two hundredth anniversary of The Columbian, discussing the decline of literary magazines with the rise of other media. “The News” explores the problems inherent in trying to cover the news of the day on television in 22 minutes or less (I wonder what he would have thought of 24/7 news outlets). “Remembering the Golden Age” considers the period of 52 minute plays written for television by the likes of Paddy Chayevsky, Rod Serling and Gore Vidal for series such as The Kraft Television Theatre.

Many of the tongue-in-cheek essays discuss the language games we play to deceive or cover despicable things in sanitary language. In one essay, he highlights a thinker, Alfred Korzybski, who he believes deserves more attention, because he “helped to heighten our awareness of the role of language in making us what we are and in preventing us from becoming what we ought to be but are not yet.”

Perhaps worth the price of admission is his essay on “The Disappearance of Childhood.” If you have not read Amusing Ourselves to Death, this essay argues how our new media are contributing to the destruction of the idea of childhood, treating children as little adults, or indiscriminately exposing them to the adult.

This collection is a good introduction to Postman’s longer works, covering in brief many of the themes he develops in greater length in them. Reading him thirty years down the road, I’m struck with how prescient he was in many respects, anticipating how media shapes us (even before social media) and how technology is not neutral but value-laden. He anticipates the decline of print media, and warns us of the dangers of the manipulation of language, so much the greater in our “post truth” generation. While the book is dated, it is a valuable piece of social history, indeed of “moral theology,” that indicates that we had been warned of what was coming.

Review: On Literature

/ rtrube54 / 1 Comment

On Literature, Umberto Eco. New York: Harper Via, 2005.

Summary: A collection of occasional writings on literature and literary criticism, many adapted from conference presentations given over several decades.

If you are familiar at all with Umberto Eco, it may be through one or more of his novels: The Name of the Rose, Foucault’s Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, or one of the others. These were written late in an academic life of amazing breadth: a medievalist, philosopher, a literary critic and a specialist on semiotics, the science of signs and the making of meaning. He was also known for his amazing personal library of nearly 50,000 volumes between his two residences.

The writings in this collection represent conference presentations and articles, mostly of an academic nature given over a couple decades, on various questions and problems in literature. One senses the massive intellect and library of Eco in reading these essays, by turns fascinating, and at other times, utterly obscure, as when he writes on Nerval’s Sylvie or Camporesi. I found most of the essay on Borges challenging because I’ve read nothing of Borges, but he uses it to discuss his theory of influences in literature, illustrating with how this worked with Borges and his writing of The Name of the Rose.

Many of the writings concern different aspects of understanding literature. For example, his article on Wilde was one of the best for exploring the nature of aphorism and paradox–aphorisms may often be contradictory while paradoxes hold the contradiction together to reveal a larger idea. The collection opens with a more general discussion on some of the functions of literature which may be read simply for pleasure, may keep a language alive, and requires a certain integrity of the reader–we cannot read anything into literature we want. Above all, literature tells us our own story–and teaches us how to die.

His discussions of literary works range from Dante’s Paradiso, which he believes is the best of Dante’s tri-partite Divine Comedy, to an exploration of the style of The Communist Manifesto, a wonderfully succinct summary of the work. His presentation on James Joyce, “A Portrait of the Artist as Bachelor” is a wide-ranging exploration of the influences on Joyce during his undergraduate education as they turn up in works ranging from Finnegan’s Wake to Ulysses.

For many of us who would read more deeply, there is much to be gained in his explorations on symbolism, style, and poetics. We see that library at work in his presentation on intertextuality and levels of reading. We never merely read a book but books talking to other books, absorbed into the lives of writer and reader.

The final essay, “How I Write,” is a must read for anyone who has read and wondered about Eco’s novels. He describes how The Name of the Rose developed around the idea of a monk poisoned while reading in a library and how the images of a pendulum and a trumpet grew into Foucault’s Pendulum. He describes how he constructed their worlds and created a style. Unlike Wendell Berry, we learn that Eco made friends with the computer.

Who should read this? First of all, if you are a fan of Eco, you will find much to enjoy. Also, if you want to understand how literature works, Eco will raise ideas that make you think afresh about the transaction of one person putting words to a page, drawing not only upon her own imagination but all those who, consciously or not, influence the writing, how a writer seeks to “mean,” and then the ways what is written is apprehended by the reader, each who has his or her own prior influences and predilections. It is actually quite an amazing world we bibliophiles inhabit, one which only gains in fascination as it is examined. But prepare to work…and to be humbled by what remains obscure.

Review: Spiritual Formation for the Global Church

/ rtrube54 / 3 Comments

Spiritual Formation for the Global Church, Ryan A Brandt and John Frederick, editors. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2021.

Summary: A collection of contributions reflecting the global and catholic conversation around spiritual formation including theological study, elements of worship, and mission in contemporary cultures as formation.

In many areas of faith and practice, we are seeing increased representation of global voices bringing the wealth of their gifts, insights, and unique expressions to the conversation. This volume represents just such a project in an area that has largely been a Western conversation: spiritual formation. This edited collection introduces us to Australian, Asian, African, and Latino perspectives on spiritual formation, and in the process both recovering and revealing spiritually formative thought and practice often neglected in the West.

After an introduction by the editors discussing the awakening movement of spiritual formation as well as the three foci of the volumes, the contributions are presented under three parts.

Part One: Biblical and Theological Study as Spiritual Formation

Michael J. Gorman argues in the opening essay in this part that biblical and theological study in itself can be formative, destroying the lines between “academic” and spiritual. In “Theological Education and Spiritual Formation” by Sammy Alfaro, the author offers an inspiring account of how the Bible Institute approach to theological training of pastors, usually in the church context, weds academic work and spiritual formation. Alfred Olwa. in the African context, discusses how a biblically faithful approach to scripture is spiritually formative. Finally, in “Spiritual Theology and Spiritual Formation: An Integrative Methodology for a Global Approach,” John H. Coe explores how the interdisciplinary work of spiritual theology, drawing upon scripture, the Holy Spirit, and human experience, lends itself to contextualization in various global contexts.

Part Two: Acts and Elements of Worship as Spiritual Formation

“Liturgy and Spiritual Formation: Engaging with Evelyn Underhill’s Prayer Book” by Robyn Wrigley-Carr recounts her use of the prayers collected by Underhill for both retreats and worship. I found this so fascinating that I bought Wrigley-Carr’s book! Markus Nikkanen exegetes the Corinthian texts on the Eucharist, showing that participation is a form of covenantal transformative remembrance that is spiritually formative. “Sacrifice and Surrender as Spiritual Formation,” by John Frederick and Jonathan K. Sharpe, is a study in Ephesians of how works of love in the church context, including confession, constitute surrender to Christ. The section closes out with an essay by Ryan A. Brandt calling for our recovery of an understanding of the beatific vision, drawing upon Augustine.

Part Three: Christ, Contemporary Culture, and Spiritual Formation

In “Old Testament Ethics and Spiritual Formation,” S. Min Chun, a Korean scholar, outlines from Leviticus 19 a holistic vision of holiness in its theological, economic, and social aspects. Le Chih Hsieh, a Taiwanese scholar, diagnoses the Epicurean elements in the “little happiness” focus of postmodern Taiwan culture and contrasts it with 2 Peter’s focus on the grand vision of life in the kingdom. “The Holy Spirit, Supernatural Interventionism, and Spiritual Formation,” by J. Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, argues for the place of supernatural manifestations, often in the context of spiritual warfare, as a neglected aspect in the West of life in dependence upon the Holy Spirit, a commonplace in the author’s West Africa context.
HaYoung Son closes out this section with a wonderful meditation on two instances of failure in the life of the apostle Peter, on the sea, and in the threefold denial and how these are reframed by the faithfulness of Jesus.

This is not only spiritual formation for the global church but also from the global church that will enrich the spiritually seeking reader of any culture. I particularly welcomed the focus on theological study as spiritually formative. We far too often bifurcate these to the loss of both. I noted how many of these essays begin with a text or texts, carefully handled, culturally appropriated, and then generalized for the wider church. I appreciated the inclusion of practices that were in my spiritual “blind spot,” particularly contemplation of the beatific vision, and communal confession. Le Chih Hsieh’s focus on Epicureanism makes me wonder how widespread this is in the American context. I sense it present in many “prosperity gospels” that lack for a kingdom-sized vision of the work of Christ. Read this to gain an appreciation of the rich work of God beyond North American shores!