of libraries, books and marginalia

i've been thinking about libraries on and off today. libraries i've loved. and ones i've loathed. my school library growing up was in a new building, furnished with very modern (ok, it was the 80s) furniture and contained a bunch of encyclopedias and back issues of time and newsweek. it wasn't a very inspiring place. the little town i grew up in had a small public library that was full of old ladies and even older books. also not inspiring. and while loathe is a strong word, i certainly didn't learn to love libraries in these places.

i first found a library i could feel at home in when i attended a community college in southern california in the late 80s. thereafter, my university library at iowa became a place where many happy hours were spent. until that weird masturbating guy ruined it. it was never the same up on the 4th floor after that. i had to move to the law library after that. it was another of those modern structures, but at least a friend had a study carrel i could borrow on occasion.

i spent hours and hours in the library at arizona state, but never fell in love with it. it wasn't 'til "the reg" at the university of chicago that i truly came to appreciate a library in all of its library-ish glory. for the smell of the books, for the darkness of the stacks. for the intellectual hum in the air. but what i came to appreciate most of all was the marginalia. there were debates going on in the margins of the books at the university of chicago. and they were pretty much the best thing about the books in the reg. sometimes, even if i owned a particular book, i would go get it from the stacks anyway, just to see what others had underlined and noted in the margins.

even before that, i was someone who writes in books, but after discovering the discourse going on there, the insight into another's head that an underlined passage provides, i felt positively licensed to do so. the provocation of it. fantastic. i did always use pencil when it was a library book, just in case someone would want to erase. but i use pen in my own books. sometimes a whole color-coded system.

these days, i visit the library far too little and the mailman brings amazon orders to my door regularly. but, i am grateful for amazon, even if it isn't the same as wandering around, perusing books on the shelves. i think it's a pretty amazing website and they have achieved something close to browsing with their tracking of my purchases and what i look at...the recommendations they make are pretty spot on. but of course, that's after years of building up a good database of my purchases on which to base the recommendations. although i should likely feel a bit uncomfortable about the whole "big brother" nature of it, i don't really. but perhaps that's because i live in a country where english isn't the native language. books in english are available, but they are expensive, so on the whole, amazon is my best bet.

to supplement it, i do rather frequently get to english-speaking places where i can properly explore a bookstore...kinokuniya in singapore, foyle's in london, power books in manila. and there's always that weird fact that suri hustvedt's books are released first in norway, so you never know...

#3 - the grandest inquisitor

this week i'm writing each day about a person, place or thing that has had a big effect on my life. i'm going to be leaving aside parents, sister, husband and daughter because those are a given for having had a big effect and writing about that effect would be way more typing than i should do with the angry nerve in my left hand. 

i have had a lot of fun thinking about this assignment that i've given myself this week and yesterday was quite surprised where the thinking and the writing took me.  let's see what happens today. this is installment 3.

today, i know exactly who i want to write about, but not really where to begin.

time: late 80s-early 90s

place: large university in the midwest

after following the advice of my new age russian teacher in southern california to pursue my russian studies, i went back home to the midwest and enrolled in a russian program at a large state university. having had russian 101-2 as a night course, it wasn't long before i found myself in over my head in russian 201, so thanks to the kindness of two professors, after a few weeks, i was allowed to switch to russian 102. what a relief that was! not least because of the wonderful professor teaching the course, harry weber. his kindness and patience got me through and although i'm not sure i ever fully recovered my confidence where russian as a language was concerned--it was never easy for me, i just loved it passionately--he enabled me to think it was possible to keep doggedly pursuing it.

as is often the case in language departments, the professors teach both literature and the language itself, so where prof. weber came to mean so much to me was in a 19th century russian literature course. under his guidance, we did close readings of pushkin, turgenev, gogol, dostoevsky, tolstoy--all the biggies! and i felt a whole world opening up for me. i had actually read war & peace as a kid, mostly because i wanted to tackle such an enormous book. but harry opened up the whole historical, philosophical expanse of that baggy monster and i learned to appreciate it so much more. 

aside:  actually, i never really came to love tolstoy, he's so preachy and righteous that other than sebastopol sketches, i never really became a tolstoy person. and it might be that i got that from harry as well, because last year he admitted in an email that he never really liked tolstoy much either. i had asked him to help my sister, who was disturbed by reading anna karenina, see the redeeming qualities in that book and he said that he didn't really think there were any. which, in its own way was a comfort because it validated my sister's feelings about the book.

the 19th century lit course led to a course with prof. weber on tolstoy & dostoevsky. the highlight of that course was an intense couple of weeks on the brothers karamazov. i just looked at my dog-eared copy of it as i sat down to write this and just looking at the marginalia and highlighting and underlining i did at that time takes me back. i positively devoured brothers k--even reading 120 pages of it while driving (along a straight, sparsely trafficked interstate) because i simply couldn't put it down. in wanted to BE each brother in turn, tho' ivan was my favorite with his rationality and his intellect. i could relate to the desire to careen around manically following my emotions and obsessions like mitya and some part of me wished i could be good and pious like alyosha. the discussions we had on the course were intense and masterfully led and provoked by prof. weber. which is why i called this posting the grandest inquisitor...he asked questions and pushed us to explore answers and it opened up a whole world for us. or at least it did for me.

i loved reading before that, but in his courses and under his tutelage, i learned to love books and to appreciate them so much more deeply than i had previously. it's something that remains with me to this day and could only have been emparted by a wonderful teacher. i also learned that it was ok not to like some of the books. before that i had been intimidated into thinking that you MUST love all of the classics. harry taught me that that wasn't necessary.

there are two more books which harry opened my eyes to:  mikael bulgakov's master & margarita (where there is another encounter with the inquisitor, hmm, i might have to explore the implications of that another time) and andrei bitov's pushkin house. that was later in a graduate literature course. 

i'd already read master & margarita in 20th century russian lit, so the graduate course reading was a repeat. each student on the course had to present a book in turn and i was sure i'd get stuck with something i didn't want. i sat there, crossing my fingers that i'd get m&m and couldn't believe my luck when it was still available when it came to me.

i spent weeks preparing my presentation--fear of humiliation before my fellow graduate students overruling my normal inclination towards procrastination. i researched everything i could get my hands on that had been written about it and in the end settled on a bakhtinian reading of it as menippian satire. it was my first intense research project and i learned so much from it. i went in several times for guiding discussions and always came away feeling i'd been pushed by harry to find my own answers and thoughts. socratic method used subtly on me to help me grow as a scholar. only a fantastic teacher is truly able to do that.

bitov's pushkin house was the final book of the semester and it somehow spoke to me. it fit with the postmodern theory i was reading in another graduate course that semester, so i could read it through the lens of kristeva (arguably not postmodern, i realize, but a transition figure between structuralism and postmodernism, as i read her) and derrida. but perhaps it was simply a main character who felt fragmented and unreal in the face of the world around him was just something i could relate to as a 20-something graduate student who was struggling to come into her own. i wrote an essay on the book for the final exam and received an A+ from harry. it was one of those times when the pen was simply a conduit directly to my thoughts and my brain was in the zone. the question must have been a perfect one for me (i no long remember exactly what it was), again, the perfect question posed by the grandest of inquisitors.

harry is retired now, but i always go and visit him and his wife nellie when i'm back in the US. they are the kind of people, living the kind of life that husband and i aspire to when we reach their age. they are engaged with the world, well-traveled, thoughtful, wonderful conversationalists. we play cards with them when we're there. we laugh and laugh and tell stories and laugh some more. they are a joy to be around. i feel privileged to have had harry as my teacher and mentor and most importantly as my friend. 

what future for libraries?

i've spent some of my happiest, most productive hours in libraries over the years. the reg at the u of c, my friend's study carrel in the law library at the university of iowa. harper library at the u of c (an oasis between classes). the hayden library at arizona state. libraries are where i've read and written some of the best things i've read and written.

the hush. the hum of enormous heating (or air conditioning) systems. soft voices of librarians helping library patrons. the smell of books. wandering through the dark, slight mustiness of the stacks, looking for one thing and finding something else and something else and something else. sneaking in a cup of coffee. chuckling over arguments in the marginalia. i just love libraries, also my own collection of books, which is still mostly boxed up here in our home, awaiting remodeling (these photos are from the old house). but you know all that about me if you've been reading mpc for any length of time.

there's a lot of talk about the role of the library in denmark these days. our own little town is going to get a new combination library/culture house - where all kinds of activities will take place. increasingly, libraries are moving more digital - with islands of devices and digital lending of books, music and movies onto your own device. stacks of musty books will, probably within my lifetime, become a thing of the past.

i spend a lot of time at my local library (which is alive and well, even as we await decisions about location and arrangement of the new one). going there helps me concentrate and focus on my often solitary work. just as it always has. just being there, with my laptop, working, i have occasion to see the enormous variety of people who use the library. elderly people who come in everyday to read a selection of newspapers. young people asking help from the librarian for their research project (and here i thought people just googled everything these days - it's refreshing to know they don't). people looking for a bit of inspiration for something to crochet or cook. folks who come in to use the computers. and something called "citizen service" - which is a screen connection to municipal services (i don't know if they use skype or something else - but it's video conferencing with a real person (during certain hours) who answers questions) from a special screen at the library. but the librarians get a lot of questions of well - things i wouldn't have imagined were within their realm to have to know - tax questions, questions related to welfare benefits, etc. i guess what i'm trying to say is that the library is much more than just books these days. and that's only going to continue.

i'm going to teach a blogging course (i think two of them actually) at the library, starting in january - when i went in to ask yesterday about the possibility of doing that, they said yes immediately. they said that was precisely the kind of thing they wanted to support. there will also be more exhibitions and events in the new year. a whole fierce tribe of local, awesome, creative women are going to make art that tells each of our (because obviously i'm one of them) stories and it's going to be on display - so we will both create together and exhibit our creations together - all facilitated by the library. there are music events for and featuring children. an antiques expert comes one saturday per month and values people's treasures. there's a knitting club. and i've held some photo events for both children and adults. the library is so much more than books. it's a place for the community to come together - to share interests and to expand horizons. it's probably the place most responsible, at least where i live, for creating a sense of community.

but i can't help but think that i will still always love the hush. and the smell. and the feel of a physical book in my hands. even as libraries are changing, i hope there will always be at least a corner of actual books. i'm not really ready to let that go quite yet.

do you use your local library? what do you love about it?

* * *

the s boards on pinterest: sawing logs b&b. shoe fetish. sinking. soup's on. soviet. sparkle. stashable. stitching (by far my most populated board, now if i'd just stitch something already). stones rock. styling. surreal.

balkan ghosts

somehow, as summer comes on in earnest, i get a strange longing for the balkans. perhaps because my first trip there was a summer thing. or maybe because of finding husband there oh so many summers ago. but whatever it is, i get a kind of balkan yearning this time of year. so when i can't just pick up and head south, i turn to my bookshelves. this time, to rebecca west's epic black lamb and grey falcon, about the journey she took through yugoslavia in the inter-war period.

tho' there is much to take issue with as far as the orientalism of the book is concerned, largely dame west is open to the experiences she has. she's not that fond of the parts of yugoslavia that were part of the austro-hungarian empire and has more of a soft spot for those parts that were under ottoman domination and this i can relate to, since i feel exactly the same. i've read the book before, a couple of times, but i find that this time around, i'm reading it with new eyes - more european ones. i think i understand a lot more of the subtleties of the references to the growing influence of hitler in germany and what that meant in europe at that time.

but one of the things i'm most struck by on this reading is simply how well-read and intellectual she was. and it makes me once again long to have lived in that era. in 1913, she started a long love affair with h.g. wells and even had a child with with him. by the time of the balkan journey in 1938, she was a well-established novelist in her own right and had settled down and married banker henry maxwell andrews, who accompanied her on the journey. ahh, but she lived such an intellectual existence. i long to live that way (maybe minus the tumultuous affairs, tho' on the other hand, maybe not) - a life of high level discussions and thinking and writing about the events of the day. i tell you, 1913 was my ideal year.

but mostly, the book transports me. many of the political issues she describes are still relevant today and the discussions still thought-provoking. i love seeing the marginalia from my previous readings and adding more from this time around. and i long to live that way and travel that way--on trains winding slowly through the balkan countryside and most of all, to have time to think like that. to really think about things and how they're connected and what they mean and how they impact the world. how have we gotten so far from living intellectual lives?

i need the rhythm of a train journey and the erudition of a literary salon. i wonder if i can find that without being in the balkans. it seems somehow impossibly far away.

what a difference a day makes

oh my, what a difference a day makes. my day started with an email from an old friend. and then an invitation from a more local friend for a spontaneous road trip. so i spent the day in århus today. the sun shined a little bit on the way there (but not long enough for me to get to photograph it). but it turns out that a simple change of scenery, an encounter with art (we picked up my artist friend's paintings from an exhibition), a trip to the most fabulous leather store and an even better art supply store (swoon) plus lunch with the best waiter i've ever encountered in denmark will really make you feel better and get you back in the zone. and get your clogged-up idea channel flowing again. and by you i mean me. 

so get out there. change your scenery. you won't regret it. i promise.

~~~

ahh notes, that lovely intervention between what we read and what what we write (and if you're me, what we think). i'd love to have attended a conference on notes. and marginalia.

keeping my vibe down

"i am someone easy to leave"

"even easier to forget"

a voice, if inaccurate.

did you ever have one of those days? well, it was otherwise a good day what with the retail therapy and all, but it's definitely been one of THOSE evenings.  

"i'm the one they all run from"

diatribes of clouded sun

someone help me find the pause button

you are all painfully aware of my kitchenless state. however, i was able to begin using my new kitchen sink today, which was a step in the right direction. tho' several times i still found myself taking dishes out to the bathroom. amazing how quickly one learns new habits and has to unlearn them.

all these tapes in my head swirl around

keeping my vibe down

so, inspired by having an actual sink, i bought salmon to cook on the grill. and i bought a mandolin to make a lovely salad of the fennel, zucchini, baby carrots and fresh new garlic that came in my dogme box from årsiderne today. i even went and got salty macadamias from Irma, although i don't even want to think about the food miles on those. i put the salmon in a pan in a bed of lemon, doused it in gorgeous, yellow, local, organic rapeseed oil and an inspire chardonnay blend from spiers (one of my favorite south african wineries--moyo, their restaurant is AWESOME, but i digress) and covered it in the fresh dill that came in the box so it could poach in the pan on the grill. in short, i actually felt inspired.

all these thoughts in my head aren't my own

wreaking havoc

silly me.

"i'm too exhausting to be loved"

"a volatile chemical"

"best to quarantine and cut off"

the kids set the table in the circle.  the sun was shining. the rest of the spiers bottle was chilled and sweating beads of moisture onto the bright linen tablecloth.  the fennel salad and a bowl of tzaziki were on the table awaiting the delicately poached salmon.  

all these tapes in my head swirl around

keeping my vibe down

all these thoughts in my head aren't my own

wreaking havoc

i called everyone to the table. the pan was hot and i had no gloves, relying on my inner chef's asbestos hands, so i set it on a chair that was next to the table.  and before i could do anything, it fell on the ground.  upside down. spilling my lovely salmon into snail trails, leaves and dirt, spoiling the whole thing.

"i'm but a thorn in your sweet side"

"you'd be better off without me"

"it'd be best to leave at once"

initially i swore up a storm, even inventing a few new swear words in the process. to salvage things and feed my family i went down to the grill where you can get quite delicious rotisserie chickens, which we could at least eat with the fennel salad and tzaziki i made.

all these tapes in my head swirl around

keeping my vibe down

all these thoughts in my head aren't my own

wreaking havoc

looking back, i think where it began to go wrong was when we opened the mail and received this invitation to a symposium in honor of my father-in-law that will be held this fall:

he died just after the first of the year two years ago. he was such a special person and we have so many of his books in our home. the invitation has a watermark of his signature in it. and it got me all on the wrong foot. he was very dear to me and made it clear that he loved me and accepted me wholeheartedly into the family. i worked closely with him on his technolution project, translating and editing for him to ensure the english was correct, my translations even being part of his exhibition at the library in alexandria, egypt a number of years ago.

when i ordered the wegner chairs today, it was to complement the first 4 he gave to us. as i photographed my bookshelves yesterday, he was on my mind, as our whole evolution collection was his. i love so much enountering his marginalia as i read his books, but somehow seeing his handwriting makes me realize he's no longer here.

he was a brilliant man. he invented a field of study of which he was the first professor at lund university in sweden. he surely had so much left to think and write and discuss. and i suddenly miss him so much.

but listening to alanis morissette helps me and it's her song tapes which i wove into the beginning of this posting.  sometimes you just have to wallow in your sorrow and cry your eyes out.

i read therefore i am

spud was wittering on facebook the other day about reading. she'd been listening to a radio program where various writers talked about what reading meant to them. i wanted to immediately go and listen to the program, but i stopped myself, because i wanted to think about the question myself, without the filter of someone else's answer.

reading. i do it daily. and i don't mean all of the reading i do on a computer screen - i mean reading with an actual book in hand. i cannot fall asleep without reading at least a little bit before turning out the light. sometimes i fall asleep with a book in my hand and wake up in the middle of the night with it fallen on my chest and turn off the light. i come by this honestly, as my father does this too. i think when he wakes up to find the light on, he just reads a little bit more, where i tend to turn off the light and put down the book.

and although i can see the convenience of reading on an iPad or other device (what? there are other devices?), i still prefer the heft and solidity of an actual book in my hand. and tho' i largely read newspapers online, i do also love the sound of a turned page and the smell of a real newspaper, especially on sunday. it's strange, i have a sort of separation in my head as to what it's ok to read electronically and what has to be read as an actual book - sherlock holmes, that was just fine on the iPad, but murakami? i want to hold the actual book in my hand.

as i've admitted previously, i am unafraid to write in books. including library books, tho' i've been trying to restrain of late. it was one thing to have a dialogue in the marginalia of the books in the reg at the U of C, it's quite another to leave my musings in a book belonging to the royal library in copenhagen.

i think it's difficult to say exactly what reading gives to me - especially the reading of novels.  i suppose it's largely a way of processing the world. of coming to terms with human motivations and feelings and reactions. a means of being transported to another place and time, to witness events. to come to a deeper understanding through metaphor (think life of pi, which is one long metaphor about humans pushed to their outer limits - tho' i hate the ending of that book).  when i read jonathan franzen, i feel he has looked deep into my midwestern roots and wrung the very meaning from them, helping me to arrive at a better understanding of myself.

from the mind of a seemingly rational madman like raskolnikov to the mess of madame bovary to the prototype of brave, independent, smart girls i found in both the laura ingalls wilder books and trixie belden mysteries i read as a kid...i found the models that have shaped my understanding of the world.  i would go so far as to say that my models of the world are built of the blocks of all that i've read.

i think literature can, like theatre and art, help us to a deeper understanding of events and people and places. for example, i have a clearer picture of the tensions that still exist today between china and japan thanks to reading the novels of murakami. and my love of the russianness and the depths of the russian soul comes far more from dostoevsky, gogol and bulgakov than from putin.  perhaps my lack of much of an understanding of the world wars of the last century is because i've never really read novels that interpreted those events.

i heard on the radio the other day about a small theatre in copenhagen that's planning on staging a play based on the manifesto written by norwegian mass murderer anders breivik. even before it's been written and anyone knows what it is, there are many opinions about it. mostly outrage. but i think it's a brave thing to do. not to give voice to that cold-blooded murderer, but because art - theatre, literature, painting - is the very best means we humans have to get at an understanding of ourselves. how better to come to terms with the horror of what he did than to explore it through art?

why do you read? and what does it give you?