Chaptering the past

Most bookstores organized history that way, as though history was a collection of discrete episodes rather than a fluid series of events that evolved over time. It reflected the misguided way we often taught history, the erroneous chaptering of the past.

Amy Meyerson, The Bookshop of Yesterdays

Amy Meyerson

I thought of this passage from The Bookshop of Yesterdays last Saturday while browsing through the history section of a large bookstore in Columbus. Although I wasn't looking for any particular book, I know from experience how difficult it can be when trying to find either a certain history book, a book about a certain period of history or a history book by a particular author. Sometimes you can't even ask at the help desk because you can't remember either the title of the book or the name of the author, but you know you would recognize the book if you saw it.

History just doesn't lend itself to easy organization, whether one is trying to teach it, write about it or sell books others have written about it. Sure history moves along the arrow of time, but while some books may cover a relatively short period of time or be limited to a particular country, such as the American Civil War, others can cover long periods of time in many countries, such as a history of medicine or a history of important trade routes. Where does one place such books on a shelf where they can be easily found by anyone looking for them or anyone who is just browsing, as I was the other day?

A typical way in which bookstores organize history books is first by country (or by continent as in the case of Africa or South America), then by time period, then by author. War histories are often placed in a separate section, subdivided by the particular war. Again difficulties arise with certain books, such as one covering submarine warfare from the Civil War to the present.

Placing books in alphabetical order according to the names of authors can sometimes help, but it can also hinder if books by the same author are spread out to various spots in the history section of a large store. Wouldn't you like to have all the books by David McCullough or Nathaniel Philbrick, to cite just two examples, together on the same shelf? Sometimes we are more interested in certain authors we like rather  certain historical subjects. Any book by McCullough is likely to be good.

Miranda, the narrator of Amy Meyerson's novel, seems to think that history books should be shelved in chronological order because that is the way history happens, but later in the book when she tries reorganizing the history books in her bookstore she discovers that system presents its own difficulties. It would, in fact, be impossible to shelve history books in that way, let alone find them.

Except for biographies, which can generally be easily organized in alphabetical order according to their subjects, nonfiction books can be difficult to organize on shelves in a way that will satisfy everyone. (Even biographies can at times pose difficulties. Should a book about Winston Churchill's leadership during World War II be shelved with biography or war history?)

Nonfiction books that become bestsellers are usually easy to find in bookstores because of their prominent display. Other books, if stores carry them at all, may require a bit of work to find. That's why I so often use Internet booksellers when shopping for nonfiction. That's how I found books like The Girl at the Baggage Claim by Gish Jen, Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve by Ben Blatt and The Rhine by Ben Coates.

Following a trail of books

Amy Meyerson's 2018 novel The Bookshop of Yesterdays pays tribute to independent bookstores, literature and those who write it, the importance of history and the power of family. It also presents a series of literary riddles that challenge readers as well as Miranda Brooks, Meyerson's protagonist.

Miranda, a young history teacher in Philadelphia, finds herself the owner of Prospero Books, a bookshop in Los Angeles, her hometown. It's the beginning of her summer break, so she thinks she has time to sort everything out. But that turns out to be not so easy.

The bookshop was owned by her Uncle Billy, who disappeared from her life on her 12th birthday. Now he has died and left her the store, as well as a trail of literary clues, one leading to another. So while trying to save the bookshop, because she lacks the income to subsidize its losses as her uncle did, she must follow that trail to try to discover what Bill is trying to tell her about himself, and ultimately about herself. The history teacher finds herself researching her own family history

This does seem a bit contrived, but it's still fun. Can you identify the literary references before Miranda does? Even Prospero Books and Miranda are literary references, both names referring to characters from Shakespeare's The Tempest.

This isn't great literature, but those who admire great literature should enjoy it.

Needed: another Adam

Apocalyptic novels involving nuclear disaster are commonplace today, but in 1946 they were a new idea, and one of the pioneers of this new subgenre was Pat Frank, a newspaperman turned novelist. His most significant novel was Alas. Babylon, about the impact of a nuclear war on one Florida town. But in 1946, just a year after Hiroshima and Nagasaki,  Frank wrote Mr. Adam about what happens after an accidental nuclear explosion in Mississippi.

Mr. Adam is actually a comic novel, and not a particularly good one. Yet it sold a lot of copies and caused concern among many of its readers, including Eleanor Roosevelt, who wrote a review.

It seems that after that Mississippi disaster, every man in the world becomes sterile. Every man, that is, except Homer Adam, an aw shucks kind of guy who happens to be at the bottom of a lead mine when the explosion occurs. When his wife has a baby, it becomes international news. Among women,  Homer Adam suddenly becomes the most desirable man in the world. Can an Adam once again populate the world?

This may sound like every man's erotic fantasy, but there is virtually no sex in Mr. Adam. In Frank's hands it becomes a comedy about government bureaucracy. The White House, Congress, the military, various government agencies, even the United Nations -- everyone, it seems, gets involved in how to spread Adam's seed to the women of the world through artificial insemination. But Mr. Adam has other ideas, deciding he's a man, not a government resource. The story is narrated by a newspaper reporter who becomes Adam's friend and whose wife, Marge, wants a baby.

The plot may have comic potential, but it remains largely unrealized. Give Frank credit, however, for realizing the potential of nuclear apocalyptic novels.

The value of the unseen

The brain is locked in total darkness, of course, children, says the voice. It floats in a clear liquid inside the skull, never in the light. And yet the world it constructs in the mind is full of light. It brims with color and movement. So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?

Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

At the center of the lives of each of the main characters in Anthony Doerr's great World War II novel All the Light We Cannot See (2014) are things or people they cannot see. This makes them no less real, no less important.

Marie-Laure, the French girl whose father has taken her from Paris to Saint-Malo along with the world's most valuable diamond, is totally blind. One by one, as the years of war slowly pass, her father, uncle and others in the huge house disappear, leaving her alone. Meanwhile a German officer, attempting to claim Europe's most precious gems for the Nazis, tracks the Sea of Flames, as the jewel is called, to that very house, where Marie-Laure hides behind a wardrobe.

Werner is an unusually shy, unusually bright German boy who, because of his special scientific skills, is conscripted into the army despite his youth and put to work tracking down radio transmitters operating in occupied territory. He finds them, his huge sergeant kills the radio operators.

But then Werner discovers that a radio in Saint-Malo is being operated by a French girl who reminds him of his little sister, Jutta, whose warnings he had failed to heed. As it happens, Marie-Laue's uncle had once used that very radio to broadcast science programs for children throughout Europe (see above), which Werner and Jutta used to listen to.

Doerr sets up the basic situation fairly early, then lets the tension slowly build through the course of the long novel. All the Light We Cannot See deserves all the readers and honors it has received since its publication.

De Quincey can become a habit

After having read Thomas De Quincey's famous Confessions of an English Opium Eater (1821) a couple of months back, I am amazed that David Morrell was able to use it as a springboard for an excellent historical mystery, let alone a whole series of them. Yet Ruler of the Night (2016) makes fine reading, while solving, even if in fiction, some mysteries left hanging by De Quincey's memoir.

De Quincey himself is the hero of Morrell's series (which began with Murder as a Fine Art), and like the real De Quincey, he tends to spend most of his money on two things, opium to feed his habit and books to feed his mind. There is little money left to pay his rent, and so eventually he must move on, usually leaving a flat full of books behind. Now a former landlord has threatened to sell his books to cover back rent, and De Quincey, along with his lovely daughter, Emily, takes a train to try to rescue those books. On the train, however, a bloody murder occurs, and De Quincey, with his talent for solving mysteries, becomes involved.

At the heart of the mystery he finds a wealthy woman, Carolyn, whom De Quincey knew as an impoverished street girl years before. He has always wondered what happened to her, and in this novel he finds out.

Other real people play roles in this story, including Queen Victoria and Lord Palmerston, the prime minister. Morrell, in fact, works hard to make his historical novel historically consistent, such as by making the hydropathy craze of that period central to the plot. Yet this is still fiction, and most of the key characters are entirely fictional. These include two Scotland Yard detectives, Ryan and Becker, whom De Quincey assists in getting to the bottom of the murder mystery, although exactly who is assisting whom is another question. Both detectives are in love with De Quincey's daughter, adding to the tension, or at least to the addictive pleasure of this story and the series as a whole.

English oddities

If you've read any of the Blandings novels by P.G. Wodehouse, you recognize dotty nobility, in the person of Lord Emsworth, as a source of endless comedic possibilities. No matter how out of touch with reality he may be or how eccentric his behavior, his will must always be done because, after all, he is the lord of the manor. Other writers have taken advantage of the same kind of comic character.

Yet David Long's book English Eccentrics & Their Bizarre Behavior demonstrates that such fictional characters as Lord Emsworth are based on fact. Many of the lords and ladies, dukes and earls of British history have been a bit wacko. Common folk can engage in bizarre behavior too, and Long discusses plenty of them as well, but those of noble birth may simply get more attention when they act weirdly and their odd actions may be remembered longer, for they seem to dominate Long's book.

Take for instance William John Cavendish, Duke of Portland, who, among other oddities, had tunnels dug extending several miles so that he could go places without being seen, had an underground ballroom and three underground libraries each painted pink, always wore at least two overcoats and a two-foot tall top hat and gave each of his workers an umbrella and a donkey on the condition they never looked at him or spoke to him.

In the 18th century, Lord Monboddo insisted that orangutans were really men and men were really monkeys. He believed midwives conspired to cut the tails off newborns before their mothers could see them.

King George VI liked to watch movies backwards.

The 8th Earl of Bridgewater preferred eating with dogs rather than people, but he insisted they wear linen napkins and practice proper table manners.

The Countess of Lancaster kept an open coffin and climbed into it periodically to make sure it was still a good fit and would be comfortable enough for her.

And so on. Britain clearly has had more than its share of fruitcakes. Yet Long sometimes goes too far. Some of the eccentrics he mentions actually made valuable contributions to science with their extensive collections of butterflies, animals, etc. Behavior can be unorthodox without being bizarre.

Other uses for Google

Most of us, I assume, use Google to look up stuff. Who costarred with Bill Murray in Groundhog Day? What is the capital of North Dakota? When was The Grapes of Wrath published? Stuff like that. Autocomplete, a new book by Justin Hook, reveals that some people, perhaps many people, use Google for other purposes.

As users of Google know, when you begin a search, Google will, in the interest of saving time and effort, suggest possible destinations you may be going with your search, based upon what others have searched for. You can click on one of these autocompletes rather than continuing to complete the search on your own. So what Hook has done is to start provocative searches and then list how other Google users have completed similar searches. Thus he begins "can you sell your" and autocomplete suggests such possibilities as eggs, blood, poop, soul, hair and ovaries.

That is a search for information, sort of what we might assume Google was designed for. But Hook reveals the search engine is also being used as ...

A confessional

"my husband thinks I'm a" leads to completions like liar, nag, maid, bad mother, narcissist and gold digger.

"I cheated on my boyfriend with" gives us his best friend, a girl, my boss, his sister, his dad, etc.

A guru or spiritual advisor

"what's the secret of" brings us to life, happiness, a happy relationship, success and living a long life, among others.

"am I a bad person if I" offers eat meat, get an abortion, cheat, smoke weed, etc.

A genie

"I wish I were a" takes us to bar of soap, bird, fish, little bit taller, butterfly, girl and so on.

Dear Abby

"my son wants to be" suggests a youtuber, homeless, marine, a girl, a rapper, etc.

"why is my daughter so" takes us to mean, pale, beautiful, crazy, lazy and so on.

A ouija board

"does my boss" leads to like me, hate me, have a crush on me, want me to quit and others.

"should I quit" autocompletes to my job, Facebook, smoking weed and college, among others.

All this is mostly amusing, but sometimes obvious. And sometimes Hook just goofs. When he types in "I mistook my" he gets "wife for a hat" That sounds funny unless you know that The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" is the title of a book by Oliver Sacks. For "personally I don't like," the only autocomplete Hooks lists is cheesecake. But when I type in the same words, I also get Mondays, spiders and snakes, to sleep alone, your little games and others.

This entertaining book may make you marvel at Google, but mostly it will make you marvel at how people choose to use it.