Reader Roundup

Hi all!

I’ve spent the last week tirelessly investigating Spotify—an investigation that involved lots of Broken Social Scene, Bat for Lashes, The Hold Steady, and Iggy Pop. I suggest you jump on the bandwagon now, before the commercials get too long and irritating.

Aside from the fascinating Plagues and Pleasures on the Salton Beach, I finally got to see the James Franco- helmed film Howl, which came out in 2010. It does quite an innovative job of reconstructing Allen Ginsberg’s youthful discretions, writing process, and the obscenity trial of his poem. Lots of neat visuals. Great acting, of course, especially Franco’s recitation of “Howl”.

I loved Milton Glaser’s advice for creative types in this essay (via Longreads)

And here’s the 2007 Rolling Stone article on Amy Winehouse. Read it and be haunted.

On Thursday, I went to the Newberry Library Book Fair (Chicago)! There were so many awesome books. So many! More than my tiny muscles could carry, in fact, and I ended up leaving a few good soldiers behind.

Anyway, here’s what I did get:

March by Geraldine Brooks (I’m reading her latest, Caleb’s Crossing right now. More on that later. If you’re into historical fiction, as I am, you should pick up People of the Book. )

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers (Last summer I read The Member of the Wedding, one of my favorites.)

In the Time of the Butterflies, Julie Alvarez

Zen in the Art of Writing, Ray Bradbury (Remember when I reread F41? Good times. As I was leaving the fair, some poor soul wistfully asked me if there were any other copies of ZAW. Alas, there was not.)

The Diary of Anais Nin 1931-1934, Anais Nin (I know almost nothing about her, except that her diary is one of those great works of literature. It’s rare that a diary gets that kind of status. I mean, besides Anne Frank.)

Special Collections

You know, some very cool historical things exist out there in the world. They specifically seem to coagulate in library collections. Perhaps because nerdy librarian-types are the only kind of people who would think to preserve a lock of Mary Shelley’s hair, presumably sent to Thomas Jefferson Hogg (is it me, or am I detecting an unusual number of split ends? Not Shelley’s fault, I’m sure).

The MS lock is at the New York Public Library. They also have Malcolm X’s Koran, Charlotte Bronte’s writing desk, and Charles Dickens’ letter opener, made from his deceased cat’s paw.

Harvard College just opened an exhibit called Tangible Things, indeed full of tangible things. Strange, tangible things. Like a rock-like mineral that formed in the body of a wounded Civil War veteran. They also possess Mark Twain’s telescope, with which he was researching a never-finished novel about microbes. The protagonist was to be a cholera germ. Seriously.

As a Chicago native, I’m particularly fond of the Newberry Library, where I spent a semester as an Undergrad learning about island culture and colonialism: the Philippines, Hawaii, Haiti, and more. (Did you know that previous to the Revolutionary, there was an epidemic of a disease called “the jaw-sickness” among the slave population in Haiti? Despairing slave women would secretly perform an operation on newborns that would effectively force the child’s jaws to remain shut; thus, the baby would starve rather than grow up in slavery. True story, according to C.L.R James.)

Anyway, the Newberry has a vast collection of books, manuscripts, and maps. They have the Latin Vulgate Bible, c.a 1250. One of the previous owners was Calvin Ellis Stowe, husband of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Happy Birthday Mrs. Stowe!). Also, they’ve got an original Lewis and Clark map. Impressive.

I think people, myself among them, like historical artifacts because, unlike the information you look up on Wikipedia, such objects have a physical, tangible presence. Something more substantial than a fact to be memorized. I can imagine Charlotte Bronte’s work space all day, but if I go to the New York Public Library I can prove to myself that such a space existed in reality, too. Sometimes we need that kind of reassurance.