Library Therapy
A bookbag full of inspired choices can shine a (reading) light on what really matters to you now -- and a mystery book
The other day I had some free time, as opposed to time you pay for by doing errands, spending money — or worrying about the latest Congressional crisis. Last week Heather Cox Richardson said about Republicans’ debt-ceiling resistance,
I think there are some who actually want to destroy the economy. They want to crash the US government and put in its place their version of Christian nationalism.
I don’t know of a therapist who treats existential anxiety, so I’ve developed my own strategy. This is why I spent my free time the other day at the library.
Have you noticed that our public library no longer displays daily newspapers on long wooden sticks in the reading room?
No more stopping by the library to read today’s news, only to find we’re still in the grip of seditious hucksters (see more at Dewey Decimal Classification 973.333 WOO). No call to civic duty on your way to the fiction shelves. No therapy bills.
For some time I’ve missed having a good book “to be in the middle of”, but have had no idea what to read. As with any therapy, you try to discover your hidden motivations, so I went into the library that day with an open mind. My subconscious would take me to the right books.
I assure you, I looked very normal! But I was on a secret adventure. Unusually for me, I went straight to Adult Fiction. I stayed there following my inclinations for about a half an hour, until the spell wore off.
Here are some words about eight of the books I checked out.
The Finishing School by Muriel Spark, 2004, FIC SPA.
It’s a nice short book with a clean cover design, but at 4¾ inches wide, it turned out to be too narrow to hold open comfortably, though I read it. This quote sums up our own time, and is also uncomfortable:
In the times of Mary Queen of Scots, legal truth quite obviously took on a political, not a moral significance. It was the truth of propaganda.
She Came to Stay by Simone de Beauvoir, 1943.
The vintage cover photo on this soft paperback, and the author’s reputation, invited me to open it — and to find a bookmark between pages 46 and 47, not a good sign in a 404-page book.
De Beauvoir’s character Francoise is with two friends who are wrapped up in their own conversation. The author writes,
She did not belong there; but where did she belong? Surely, nowhere else. At this moment she felt erased from the world.
I’m in a blue-pencil mood, one of my favorites. Here is my edit:
She did not belong there. She felt erased from the world.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, 1985.
I’ve checked out this book many times and always returned it after the first few pages, as if I had found a spider in it. But maybe this time. The cover art makes me wonder why there’s a white dot in the woman’s line of vision. A quote:
Night has fallen, then. I feel it pressing down upon me like a stone.
I decide again, “This is not the memory of earth I want to have,” and put the book on the shelf by the front door.
Washington Square by Henry James, 1880.
A quote:
She was afraid of [her father]; and in saying that she had no sense of weakness, she meant that she was not afraid of herself.
True Jamesian density. But I’ve read James’ The Portrait of a Lady three times with fascination.
The Black Prince by Iris Murdoch, 1973.
I know Murdoch is a respected British author. But I opened this novel to find a line too much like Atwood’s in The Handmaid’s Tale, so I put it on the shelf by the door, too.
I’m learning that I’m not in the mood for gloom. On page 160, Murdoch’s first-person narrator says,
I put the telephone down. I felt the hand of destiny heavy upon me.
The Conscience of the Rich by C. P. Snow, 1958.
I like the library binding, very nostalgic. In college in the early 1960’s Snow was popular. I remember enjoying his civilized British dialogue about important subjects, and especially the mystery of the characters’ relationships, which was very much on my mind in those days.
Being older today and surely more sophisticated about politics, I’ll share with you the following line of dialog. I picture Sir Philip on a stage — in a play by Oscar Wilde? Snow has him say,
I’ve always thought it was not only essential to be honest: it was also essential to seem honest.
The Small Room by May Sarton, 1961.
Sarton’s journals about pure solitude with a pet or two in spare country rooms comforted so many of us women in the ‘90’s who were running, running, running.
Sarton regretted that her fame came from these non-fiction journals rather than from her poetry, which we ignored. A novel like The Small Room seems to me to be a compromise between non-fiction and poetry.
Actually, it turns out that her journals were also fiction to some extent. Never mind. They soothed.
That day in the library I wanted to see if, for me, Sarton still had her appeal. This novel takes place in the academic world. Here’s a quote.
She caught herself wondering whether crisis may be one of the climates where education flourishes — a climate that forces honesty out, breaks down the walls of what ought to be, and reveals what is, instead.
Here I am again, focused on what is honest, as was C. P. Snow.
What is Remembered by Alice B. Toklas, a biography, B TOKLAS, 1963. (I see I’m done with fiction!)
This book has everything comfortable. The library tape is worn out and the jacket slips off, so you don’t have a glare from your reading light on its plastic edges. The cloth cover is is imprinted with purple and gold designs.
The sturdy pages are a warm white with generous margins and deckle edges; the signatures are sewn into the spine. There are chapter decorations to match the cover design, an index, and two sections of black and white photos. (Confess! Do you look through the photos first, before you read a word?) It’s a First Edition — with tape on it!
The vintage library pocket inside the back cover still holds its checkout card with 18 signatures. I recognize several of them. Mary Fortune, who checked out this book on May 3, 1990, loved wild mushrooms.
Best of all, this memoir is a conversational, name-dropping, opinionated report from the days of Paris cafés, wine and art, by Gertrude Stein’s partner Alice.
At least I think it’s by Alice, because you remember that Stein herself is known to have written The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. But when What is Remembered came out, Stein had died 17 years before, in 1946. This is charming, is it not.
On page 27, while visiting Gertrude’s and her brother Leo’s house, Alice says,
Picasso was explaining, ‘You know how as a Spaniard I would want to be on time, how I always am.’ … [Fernande] was an oriental odalisque. The attention she was attracting pleased her and she sat down satisfied.
In the photo above, my carved wooden bookends of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are from 1960’s France. The books on the left go back to the library, including, I realize now, one book that I did not review here — an alarming psychological oversight; I plead that its title is unbearable, Recollections of My Nonexistence. But why did I check it out and unconsciously include it in the photo? I’ll never know, because my 45 minutes of therapy are up.
Anyway, I’ll keep the books on the right, above, for 3 more weeks. The large book in the center is mine, a gift from Sam, filled with spirit-lifting stories of optimism, kindness and active, realistic determination.
It’s interesting that three of my eight (reviewed) books take place in a sheltered, university setting. In all the books, social and personal situations can be similar, and some from other times are still with us, waiting to be worked out.
A few characters are sunk in despair at the world’s ways, with good reason.
The one book from my half hour in the library that now sits on my bedside table is What is Remembered. So from this stack of books I chose the ones about good company and creativity, although the world roils around me.
Tomorrow it’s back into the fray with fresh commitment, good company, and lots of creativity.
It’s like talking to a book friend. Thank you. I love Doon Quixote and Sancho too
Thanks for this post, and the interesting book selections. I was a bookstore manager in college (which was located in the library) and I never got sick of just standing there among the calm stacks! :)