So, for the past couple months I’ve been locked in furious correspondence with the library about the new Emily Dickinson biography, which may just be the spinsteriest spinster sentence ever typed. (Nearest rival: “Oh, my cardigan is covered in cat hair, what a nuisance!”) It’s a long saga that started in summer, when I began monitoring the library’s online catalog to see if they’d ordered a copy of White Heat, Brenda Wineapple’s new book which focuses on Dickinson’s friendship with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, which I’ve been aching to read. A month went by, the book showed up as being in “Technical Services,” which meant it was getting a plastic cover and a stamp, etc., and I ordered it up to be delivered to my local branch, very pleased to be first in line. Another month went by — and, well, this all gets a little tedious in the retelling. Basically, something in the system kept going awry and the book kept getting checked out from the library’s Black Mountain branch (the book’s eventual destination) despite my having a hold on it. And each time this happened I would email the library to see why, providing with each email a fulsome accounting of times and dates and possible (helpful!) explanations of what might be the cause of the glitch, while Lowell would stand by saying, “Let’s just go buy the book, okay?” And then, three weeks later, the book would be returned to the library, I’d put another hold on it and before you could say, “spinstery spinster,” it’d be checked out all over again.
Finally, on the third (fourth?) round of this I gave up and went and bought the book. I’m not so far in yet but I’ve already learned one great little factoid, although one not related to Dickinson. Did you know that Emerson once described Whitman’s poetry as “disgusting priapism”? Looking it up, I think he was using the word in its secondary meaning (“prurient behavior or display”) but if he meant the word’s first meaning, it’s a marvelous insult and really one that should get back in common usage. Like “bloviating,” but better.

5 x 5 Books … is a recommendation of five books that appears regularly in this space. Last Halloween, author Kelly Link and husband Gavin Grant, publishers of Small Beer Press, were kind enough to share spooky and not-so-spooky tales for Halloween reading. (If you missed it, here’s Kelly’s list and here’s Gavin’s.) If you’ve ever been to one of Kelly’s readings, or met her, you’ll know she’s a generous booster of other people’s work — and that her book recommendations are always the best. So it’s great to have her return with another 5 x 5 of Halloween reading for About Last Night. Kelly’s the author of three short-story collections, the most recent of which is the YA collection Pretty Monsters, itself an excellent choice to bring home this Halloween weekend.
1. Painted Devils by Robert Aickman. This collection is worth picking up for the short story “Ringing the Changes” alone, but I’ve never read an Aickman story that didn’t leave me unnerved and afraid of the dark.
2. Be My Guest by Rachel Ingalls. Like Aickman, Ingalls’ short stories will simultaneously unsettle and satisfy. For this list, I’ve picked her pair of novellas published as Be My Guest, but the collections The Pearl Killers and I See a Long Journey would also be great starting places.
3. Yoshitoshi’s Thirty-Six Ghosts by John Stevenson. This book collects a series of Taiso Yoshitoshi’s ukiyo-e (woodblock prints). There are monsters, creatures from Japanese folklore, and some really terrifying ghosts. The text accompanying each print gives provides background on the folklore that Yoshitoshi drew on.
4. Resume With Monsters by William Browning Spenser. This isn’t just one of the best Lovecraft pastiches I’ve ever read, it’s also one of my favorite comic novels. Spencer’s protagonist is a would-be novelist working in Lovecraftian territory. He also has a temp job at the Pelidyne Corporation, where devolved office workers living in crawl spaces and ducts pass alarming office memos about cannibalism back and forth, and true believers use Xerox machines to send their consciousnesses into outer darkness where the elder gods lurk, waiting to rise again.
5. Strange Toys by Patricia Geary. Geary’s novel encompasses childhood games, toy poodles, black magic, and sibling rivalry. Like Lynda Barry’s Cruddy, I read it every few years in order to remind myself of the strange and dangerous territory childhood can represent.
I’ll finish by recommending three short stories you can find online. At LitGothic, you’ll find some M. R. James as well as Edith Wharton’s “Afterward,” one of the one of the best ghost stories I’ve ever read. Google Books has the text of Michael Shea’s powerful and graphic story about a mining disaster and a small-town doctor, “The Autopsy.” Lastly, there’s Lucy Lane Clifford’s extraordinary fairytale “The New Mother“.

• There was no more sleep for me that night, and I was thankful when daylight came. Another story to print and read in a sunlit place, Edith Wharton’s “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell.”
(Previous Halloween installments: Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover” and Kelly Link’s “The Specialist’s Hat.”)
• This catalog of haunted libraries in the Northeast makes a good companion to the Wharton. The case of the ghost who habituates the U.S. Capital Building Rotunda (former near neighbor to the Library of Congress) is particularly poignant. He’s said to be the ghost of a librarian who is looking for “$6,000 he stashed in the pages of some obscure volumes.” The library of course has long since been moved, the money found and (one assumes) dispersed … and still the poor guy wanders. One wonders, Can no one tell him? Can’t a collection be taken up? And what exactly were the titles of those obscure volumes? I picture the librarian alive and stalking through the stacks all, “Population Fluctuations on the Lapsang Peninsula (1812-1843)? Ain’t no one looking in there.” (Via Maud.)

Yesterday I pointed to Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover.” Today continue the ghostly march toward Halloween with Kelly Link’s “The Specialist’s Hat,” which can be found in her first collection, Stranger Things Happen, as well as her latest, Pretty Monsters. As before: print & read in a crowded place.

Some ghoulish entertainment in preparation for Halloween:
• Elizabeth Bowen’s “The Demon Lover.” Set during the Blitz, the story is one of the spooky stories recommended by James Hynes which I pointed to yesterday and can be found in the excellent Norton Book of Ghost Stories , edited by Brad Leithauser. Very compressed, gorgeous & hair-raising — print it out and read in a crowded place.
• The old Scottish ballad the story is based on.

• James Hynes recommends ten spooky stories for midnight reading. (Via Maudie.)
• John Updike talks to Emily Nussbaum about The Widows of Eastwick, his follow-up to 1984’s Witches of Eastwick. (Via Sarah.)
• Vampire bats, leeches, chiggers and bed bugs are among the bloodsuckers featured in Dark Banquet, a new book by biologist Bill Schutt which, as it happens, I trotted to the bookstore last night to purchase. (Via Jenny.)

Last week I pointed to a New Republic review of a new collection of the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop. The book, Words In Air, won’t be out till the end of the month, but until then you can find a nice sampling of the letters in the October issue of Poetry (unfortunately not available online).
I’ve read much of Bishop’s side of the correspondence in One Art but it’s even more enjoyable to read her letters alongside Lowell’s own volleys and sallies. The letters are little gems, and I’m tempted to type them all in here, but in lieu of copyright larceny I’ll give you this sauntering paragraph from one of Lowell’s:

Since my last letter it has become autumnal (nice but muggy) and I’ve read Black Arrow, Weir of Hermiston, The Master of Ballantrae, and Graves’ abridgement of David Copperfield. Saw Black Arrow as a movie too — it’s a cumbersome pot-boiler at best, but redone with the plot of a western thriller it is, is — words fail me. Had a drunken discussion with two Englishmen in which I tried to use the Socratic method, but only discovered that none of us could define “right” or “good.” And finished off 23 more poets; God, how I dislike them!

• Should Margaret Drabble’s next novel feature a boy wizard with magical friends I guess we’ll all understand why. (Via Literary Saloon.)
• Not literary but five days later this skit still makes me laugh.