Free Public Library Therapy
How the books on your library card can tell you what matters to you now
Here are some of my recent library books. For the past couple of months I’ve looked through The New York Review of Books as if it were a catalog, noting new books in articles, in publishers’ ads, and even on the Contributors page. Then I placed them on hold at my local public library. They come from library branches all over the state like Watauga, Buncombe, or Person County, NC.
From my books above you can see that women artists are at the heart of my search. I ask myself, why only women? And why do they matter to me right now? I’ve been puzzling over this for a while.
The illustrations in Katy Hessel’s The Story of Art Without Men got my attention first. Her title comes from the standard textbook, The Story of Art by E. H. Gombrich, who cited no women artists at all in his original 1950 edition.
In Hessel’s book, I was most eager to read the chapter called “The Great Era of Experimentalism, c. 1950-1970”, because that was my time!
A confession. Personally, I missed the boat on experimenting with art. My two big mistakes: first, instead of “experimenting”, I played at art for fun.
Second mistake: I once met an artist in this book, Lynda Benglis, but at the time I didn’t think to ask her for a message from the feminist front. Oh, lost!
Another of my library books is The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris. It comes uncomfortably close to the political tensions of today’s world, which I’m trying to escape as I sit here reading just before dawn, coffee at hand.
The author Marc Petitjean’s father Michel had a three-week affair with Frida while she was in Paris for an exhibition of her artwork. This happened twelve years before Marc was born. Now, decades later, he has pieced together the details in his book.
In 1939 the world was simmering with passionately arguing factions. But, he says, the Spanish Civil War also brought people together, including Michel and Frida. Marc writes,
The need to act bonded them, and this mattered more to them than ideological considerations.
I look up from reading The Heart to see the sun beginning to rise over my country. I’ve checked the news this morning and, in spite of our own passionately arguing factions, I see that American democracy is still safe.
Still thinking about Frida Kahlo, I turn to the 21st century in A Room of Her Own: Inside the Homes and Lives of Creative Women. But I see her here, too!
In A Room of Her Own, Robyn Lea, writes,
The stories of the goddesses [like Frida!] don’t need to be taken literally. They are reminders of universal patterns that females engage with.
Women are natural-born creators. New life can blossom in our hands. You absolutely must create a fertile environment for yourself for the creativity to flow.
Now I’m ready to return these books to the library. I think I just wanted to check in with women artists, past and present, from all over the world. You can see in The Story of Art Without Men that they’ve been digging deep into the life issues that matter to many of us.
Or, you can just find in their works the beauty, or the beauty of spirit, and take that out into your world.
P. S. As I write this on Thursday afternoon, the U. S. Supreme Court has just ended oral arguments about a President’s immunity from prosecution, suggesting a delayed decision that could forestall Trump’s federal trial until after the November election.
This news seems to have an ominous weight that makes my post for this week seem obliviously light-hearted, and I’ve thought of canceling it.
Reconsidering, though, I believe the post ends with hope. I see the girl in Crosby’s panting, Dwell, as being aware of serious obstacles in the real world, but is not giving up or giving in. Neither should we.
Dear Deda,
I am so glad you did not cancel your "Free Public Library" postcard. We do need to pay attention to our democracy but I think we also need to pay attention to all the things (public libraries and art) that nourish us and, to some extent, move us to value our democracy. We need some light to continue to see the hope.
I loved that you point out that our books, from the library or from our personal collections, reveal what is valuable to us. Mine do: lots of fiction, lots of science--especially ecology and biology, lots of horse books, cook books, biography, poetry, art, children's books....
Also really loved the idea board pictured. I have some favorite clippings on my fridge (an American cultural phenomenon?) but I am now thinking an idea board would be lovely.
Your postcard today was a delightful respite, Deda. Yesterday's shameful display of partisan behavior in the Supreme Court was still weighing on my mind early this morning. Your thoughts about women and books on art reminded me of a book I have by Edith Wharton on American architecture. I then started thinking about more pleasant things.