Archives for 2004

“For me there are two salves to apply when I feel spiritually bruised–listening to a Haydn symphony or sonata (his clear common sense always penetrates) and seeking out something in Montaigne’s essays. This morning, in spite of the promise of a bright cloudless day, I woke curmudgeonly and disapproving of the world and most of its inhabitants. Montaigne pulled me up sharply.

Last week I had the pleasure of hearing the poet and Johns Hopkins English professor Allen Grossman read from his work. He is a thoroughly arresting speaker and reader, and appears at the University of Chicago this Thursday, November 18th. Highly recommended to you Chicagoans.

Here’s the poem I liked best in the reading, “Lending Library (Mpls. Xmas, 1943).”

At her Lending Library on Lake Street, Minnepaolis,

mother Beatrice rented out books to ladies.

But she read them first. That way she knew whether

there was not, or (better still) was, anything “disgraceful”

in any of the books. (There were two kinds of ladies.)

The result was mother owned the second and third volume

of many novels (e.g., Scott’s Ivanhoe), but not the first


which was gratefully taken to heart by her customers.

That’s why I know a lot about how things come out

and don’t know very much about how they begin.

But mother Beatrice (“B” for short) never read

the book called GOLDEN MEXICO (because

it was not to be loaned or sold)–until Xmas, 1943,

when a voice, out of the blue, said: “‘B,’ read that one.“


After she read it, “B” said: “How things look in the heart

of Jesus I don’t know and, frankly, don’t want to know.

But I do know that only those Jews who are stirred

by the question of their own existence can

answer the claim he makes…. Allen, my dear, who does

know? To whose sentence can we say, “Yes! That’s true“

–and add to the wonder of it belief.“


“Beatrice,” I asked her, “what do you really want to know?”

“Allen, what was the first book you ever read?”

“Beatrice, before I learned to read I could not read;

but I did know about reading, and it never happened

(thanks to you, for good or ill) that there wasn’t any book.

But I could not read in the heart of Jesus,

so the first book I read was GOLDEN MEXICO.


Now I read because light does not reveal itself

(not even on a bright wash day), but it lies hidden

in a cloud until summoned–like the heart.

It was the gold cover of the book named

GOLDEN MEXICO that drew me in at first. Then,

I added what I could add to that wonder.

No book I read was ever written until I added that.”


Outside the Lending Library, Xmas 1943, a voice–

maddening, relentless, phonographic–began to sing

“Silent Night,” and did not stop at “heavenly peace”

but started over, again, and again, and again.

It was the ladies’ triumph–a best seller,

a virgin birth, the babe who added to the

wonder of it all, belief. Three days of that


drove “B” crazy. Beatrice stood up, gathered her books,

and locked the door of her Lending Library. “Let them buy,”

she said. And her voice was heard, despite the singing,

across the gentile lake by itinerant Thoreau

where he rested on the far shore, high up the cliff

on a rock and caught the cold that killed him.

–There’s no Lending Library on Lake St., Mpls., any more.


How then ever know the way things begin,

remembering as we do nothing! None of our books

will tell, certainly not this one. But take the question

to heart, nonetheless, because I write the wonder of it all

and by the poem called LENDING LIBRARY solicit belief:

There was a road by which we came this way.

There is another by which we shall depart.

Everybody in the blogosphere seems to have something to say about this year’s National Book Award fiction nominees (Our Girl weighed in last week, and Maud links to some of the latest reactions here). I’ve said nothing, for the very good reason that I haven’t read any of the novels in question, nor am I familiar with the past work of any of the authors. Nor have I said anything about this year’s nonfiction nominees, for the equally good reason that I was one of the five judges on last year’s panel. To comment on the work of my successors would be just plain rude.

Having said all that, I confess to being puzzled by certain aspects of the ongoing hoopla. Maud also links to MobyLives’ speculative spoof about the thinking of a prominent member of the fiction panel:

I slapped him hard across the face. It was enjoyable so I did it again. “Snap out of it!” I told him. “Now start from the beginning. What the hell happened?”

“I don’t know!” he cried. “I thought we were doing what they said. I mean, they said not to pick more than one token book from a small or independent press, because that would decentralize power and be good for the book business on the whole, which they just can’t have, because everybody knows that diversity just blows…”

Once again, I have no opinion about any of this. I don’t know Rick Moody or any of the other fiction judges, nor do I have any continuing contact with the National Book Foundation. (Once you’ve served as a judge, you’re never asked to do so again.) Still, I can’t help but recall the experience of picking last year’s nonfiction winner, which I described in this space shortly after the fact:

We considered 436 books (some of them very, very briefly, but they all got talked about at some point in the past few months). We never raised our voices, never argued with one another, never got angry. Our deliberations were civilized, collegial, and great fun. When we met yesterday afternoon to make our final selection, it was the first time all five of us had been in the same room at once–we mostly deliberated via e-mail and in conference calls–and the atmosphere, far from being tense, was positively festive.

What we didn’t do was engage in horsetrading or logrolling, speculate on how our picks would be received by the literary community, or attempt to Make a Statement. I don’t mean to sound like Pollyanna in Bookland–I know such things do happen, and always will–but in our case they didn’t, period. We simply tried to choose a wide-ranging slate of worthy nominees, and to pick from them the one book we thought best.

Perhaps we missed a bet, since neither our nominees nor our final selection attracted more than a modest amount of attention from the press. All anybody seemed to want to do was talk about Stephen King and Shirley Hazzard. Nevertheless, we thought we did a good job. To be sure, Carlos Eire may not have been on the literary world’s collective lips in the wake of our deliberations, but my guess is that Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy will be read and remembered long after the current controversy over the NBA fiction nominees is filed and forgotten.

I think we did our job the way such jobs ought to be done, and I like to think that’s the way most literary judges endeavor to go about their difficult business. Don’t ask me, though: I’d never before served on such a panel, nor have I since. Maybe we were all Pollyannas.

For the first time in months, I don’t have any book reviews in the pipeline, mainly because I’m up to my ears in Broadway and off-Broadway previews (three a week between now and Christmas, yikes!), so for once I’m reading purely for my pleasure. Alas, I’ve felt too crappy in recent days to embark on anything new, but I just finished rereading nearly all of Evelyn Waugh’s books, and expect to say something about the experience later in the week.

At the moment I’m rereading Alec Guinness’ memoirs, diaries, and commonplace book, excerpts from which will soon be showing up in my almanac entries.

What next? It’s up to you, dear readers! I’m in the market for something short, intelligent, amusing, reasonably easy to find, and no more than modestly demanding (the opposite of Finnegans Wake, in other words). Interesting and/or unexpected recommendations will be posted in this space.

A reader writes:

I have read “About Last Night” and followed your articles elsewhere
for at least a year, and over that time you have introduced me to: Pell

Just in case it’s slipped your mind, I’m making two public appearances this week to promote All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine, the first in New York City and the second in Connecticut.

“Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those whom we cannot resemble.”

A friend writes: