Silly questions

Have Google and Siri put reference librarians out of work? Apparently not, for public libraries still seem to have them on their staff, but I suspect their responsibilities may have changed. They may spend more time leading book discussions and planning library promotions than answering questions like, "Is the Easter bunny male or female?"

Snoopy's siblings

Sorting through some old papers recently I came upon a list of actual questions posed to reference librarians in Mansfield, Ohio, a number of years ago. The Easter bunny query is just one of them. Here are some others.

How do you draw an earthquake?

Is Hawaii a country?

How much does the state of Alabama weigh?

What are the names of Snoopy's seven brothers and sisters?

When is National Have a Bad Day?

I need information on how to embalm at home.

Does O come before R?

I need the amendments to the 10 commandments.

I'm trying to locate the book I had out before. It's fiction and has a peach-colored cover.

How would you answer such questions? Better yet, how would Siri answer them? Let's find out.

Siri quickly provided a list of Snoopy's siblings. Hawaii, it turns out, is in the United States of America. An explanation of the embalming process was provided, but Siri did not caution against trying this at home. Siri told me what an earthquake is but did not provide any drawings or photographs to show what one looks like. As for what Alabama weighs, all I got was web sites about Alabama's weigh stations and its division of weights and measures.

And as for the gender of the Easter bunny, there were differing answers, although most suggested it is female because it lays eggs. Hey Siri, do bunnies lay eggs?

I think actual reference librarians might do a better job, or at least understand the questions better, but one thing you can say for Siri is that it doesn't giggle after you hang up (as far as we know) and your stupid questions will never wind up in the newspaper.

 

Twisting with Laura Lippman

Twists are something we expect in a mystery novel. If there isn't at least one major twist, readers will be disappointed. Yet Laura Lippman has a way of making an entire novel something of a twist. It just isn't constructed in the way typical mysteries are constructed. Certainly that is the case in After I'm Gone (2014).

Felix Brewer loves both his beautiful wife and his beautiful mistress, not to mention his three beautiful daughters. Yet he leaves them all when he feels the law closing in because of his shady business dealings. He is not heard from again.

Years later the body of Julie, the mistress, is found murdered. Years after that, Roberto "Sandy" Sanchez, a retired Baltimore cop who still works cold cases, decides to look into Julie's murder.

Lippmann skips back and forth through time, tracking the lives of Bambi, the wife, and the three daughters, not to mention Felix's best friends, his lawyer and his bail bondsman. For much of the way the novel seems not to be a murder mystery but rather the story of a lonely woman, slowly aging, who still misses her wayward husband and struggles to survive and provide for her family, sometimes with assistance from that lawyer friend. Meanwhile Sandy tries to uncover any evidence that will shed light on what really happened to Julie.

This is a fine, twisty novel that will satisfy Lippman's many fans and create new ones. Those fans may especially enjoy the walk-on part played by Tess Moynaghan, the private investigator in a series of Lippman mysteries.

People need bestsellers

The social quality of literature is still visible in the popularity of bestsellers. Publishers get away with making boring, baloney-mill novels into bestsellers via mere PR, because people need bestsellers. It is not a literary need. It is a social need. We want books everybody is reading (and nobody finishes) so we can talk about them.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Words Are My Matter

Ursula K. Le Guin

Bestsellers are inevitable. As long as books are being sold, some books are going to sell more copies than other books. Ursula K. Le Guin's complaint, expressed in an essay called "Staying Awake" first published in Harper's, seems to be about the phoniness of the bestseller process.

Publishers try to decide ahead of time which books should be bestsellers, and these are the books they invest money in for big ad campaigns. Some promotions describe books as bestsellers even before they are available in stores. Some books become instant bestsellers because previous books by the same author were bestsellers. Titles, cover illustrations, cover blurbs and prominent bookstore displays can also help create bestsellers out of what Le Guin calls "boring, baloney-mill novels."

Our own idea of what is boring may differ from hers, yet the point remains that the best-selling books are not necessarily the best books.

The term "bestseller" is quite imprecise. To readers, it probably suggests a book in the top ten on the New York Times bestseller list, yet books are routinely described as bestsellers when they are much farther down the list. Books can become bestsellers with the sale of surprisingly few copies.

Ideally becoming a bestseller should reflect quality as well as quantity. That it does not is part of Le Guin's complaint. Her own books — including Words Are My Matter, her last one — probably did not sell as many copies as she thought they deserved.

Yet quality is not a major factor for most consumers. Or perhaps more accurately, just as each of us has a different idea of what's boring, so we each have a different idea of what is good. Or what is good enough. More people drive Fords than Lincolns. More eat at McDonalds than sit-down restaurants with tablecloths. Bad books usually cost just as much as good books, but even so most readers favor books they can easily read and easily understand without having to think too much about them.

And, as Le Guin points out, people like books they can talk about. Literature, as she says, has a social function. People like reading books that "everybody else" is reading. Some of us may try to impress by having a Camus or a Faulkner under our arm, but more of us would rather be seen, at least by our friends, carrying The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave. Actually finishing any of these books hardly matters, as long as we make the desired impression. That can be worth the price of a new book.

Extraordinary things

Men did such things as this in dreams: approached a dark house filled with treasure, sank into a sea of true love, traveled with wolves and wonders on a warm night.

Alice Hoffman, The Museum of Extraordinary Things

The magic in her use of language has always been practical for Alice Hoffman, as demonstrated by the above line from The Museum of Extraordinary Things (2014). It makes so many of her books irresistible.

Coralie has grown up in The Museum of Extraordinary Things on Coney Island early in the 20th century. Born with webbed fingers and with an ability to hold her breath for long periods of time, she becomes one of the "freaks" put on display by her father, Professor Sardie.

Sadie searches during the off-season for new freaks and oddities. Sometimes he manufactures his own, as when he finds the body of a girl that he hopes to turn into a mermaid, after using Coralie to create mermaid sightings in the river.

As she gets older the girl begins to discover her father's secrets, and they are not pretty. Eventually she develops secrets of her own, as when on one of her river swims she spies a young man on the shore and falls instantly in love.

Eddie, too, has a troubled relationship with his father. He works partly as a photographer and partly as a finder of missing persons. His estranged father surprises him by recommending him to a man searching for his daughter, missing since a tragic factory fire. Was she lost in the fire or not? If she's dead, where is her body?

His search, of course, leads him to the museum and to Coralie, while Hoffman's novel turns briefly from a love story into a murder mystery. At the dramatic end to the story, there's another tragic fire that destroys many of the Coney Island amusements. Both fires really happened, even though the rest of the novel is fiction.

My only complaint about this fine book is that nearly half of it is printed in italics, not comfortable to read in large portions. Still it is not all that hard to read and does not seriously hamper the overall appeal of this novel of extraordinary things.

Original relationships

Richard Russo

In an essay in The Destiny Thief with the same title as this one, "Original Relationships," novelist Richard Russo recalls hearing that phrase mentioned by one of his grad school professors, who was speaking of the importance of forming one's own opinion about something before listening to what the experts say about it.

That means reading a book or a story or a poem before your professor lectures on it. Or before you read a review or go to your book club. Watch a movie before reading what the critics say about it. See a work of art in a museum before listening to other opinions about it.

Why? Russo tells us what his professor told him: "When you're told what to look for ... you'll likely find it, and having found it, you'll be less likely to notice what you otherwise might have."

There's wisdom there, it seems to me. This gives value to your own opinions, your own taste, your own convictions, your own first impressions. It can be unsettling, of course, when experts express strong opinions counter to your own. To read harsh criticism of a book you treasure or praise for a book you despise reflects not just on that book but on you yourself. It suggests you are just not smart enough or tasteful enough to see how bad it is or how good it is.

Yet experts routinely disagree among themselves. If one critic dislikes a book, there is likely to be another who loves it. One of them probably agrees with you. Your opinion matters, too. It can later be informed by other views. It may even be changed. Yet your original opinion, or your original relationship, matters. Why did you think that way? Were you necessarily wrong? What did you notice that others, even if they are experts, didn't?

It is always a mistake, I believe, to allow our opinions to be shaped entirely by others. That can mean not reading only best sellers, not listening only to "popular" music or not adopting the same political views as others in your circle. Your opinions also matter. Remember your original opinions and convictions. Were they really so wrong?

For some reason this has made me think of my father. Toward the end of their long lives, my mother criticized him constantly to his face and to anyone else around. He could do nothing right. One could tell this hurt him, but Dad never said anything about it. Instead he started telling more stories about their dating days and the early years of their marriage. He told these stories with a smile on his face and with tears in his eyes. He was remembering their original relationship.

Original relationships are important, no matter what happens after that.

When writers fight

One thing I've noticed about the many book fairs, reading festivals and other literary events I have attended is how well authors get along, how quick they are to compliment each other's books and how happy they seem to be in each other's company. Yet writers do quarrel, as Myrick Land tells us in The Fine Art of Literary Mayhem, and when they do their quarrels tend to be both petty and nasty.

Published in 1962 and updated in 1983, the book covers feuds involving such notables as Samuel Johnson, Charles Dickens, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis and Norman Mailer. Literary quarrels have a lot to do with jealousy, pride, insecurity and pure pettiness. Hemingway eventually turned against those writers, including Gertrude Stein and Sherwood Anderson, who helped him early in his career. Johnson just seemed argumentative, ready to fight with anyone. Sometimes, as when James and H.G. Wells went at it, it was little more than a radical difference in literary styles.

In many cases, feuding writers were once friends. In some cases the friendships rekindled later in life. D.H. Lawrence maintained an on-again/off-again relationship with Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry for many years. He had a messiah complex, according to Land, and expected his followers to follow him anywhere, even to other continents. Mansfield and Murry were willing to accept this arrangement only for so long. They would soon leave with bad feelings, but then eventually return to the Lawrence fold.

Most literary feuds might be avoided if only writers would refrain from reviewing or otherwise commenting negatively on books by other writers. As at literary events, compliments, sincere or not, keep the peace. Yet prominent authors are in demand as critics by literary periodicals, and most authors need the extra income. Critics sometimes do have to criticize if their opinions are to carry the ring of truth, but even mild criticism can create bad feelings. Writers, like everyone else, have tender egos, and it hurts especially to be wounded by a fellow writer.

Sometimes, as with Hemingway and Mailer, creating bad feelings seems to have been the objective. In his book Advertisements for Myself, Mailer made it a point to insult several of his contemporaries (and, in his mind, competitors), including Saul Bellow, J.D. Salinger, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, James Jones and William Styron. Several of them fired back.

The subtitle of Land's book reads A Lively Account of Famous Writers and Their Feuds. Some of the 13 chapters are, indeed, lively. Others are deadly dull. My advice: Read those chapters about the authors who most interest you; ignore the rest.

The return of censorship

For people who grew up in the West in the present century, censorship is almost an alien and antique concept.

Stuart Kells, The Library

The Library by Stuart Kells was published in 2017, when the above line from that book was mostly true. In just four years, however, censorship, broadly defined, has become commonplace. Comments outside the party line are now being routinely labeled as misinformation or disinformation and banned from Facebook, YouTube and other platforms. Donald Trump was banned from Twitter last year while he was still president of the United States. On Google, where in 2017 you could find just about anything, you may now be unable to find a full range of opinions (or even facts) about critical race theory, COVID vaccine, COVID treatments and other subjects.

One can argue, as I have myself, that true censorship is something done by the government, not private individuals or companies. Yet at present the tech companies are acting in step with the government in Washington, doing its bidding and enforcing its version of truth. Just this week the White House admitted it is instructing Facebook about what comments about the vaccine should be labeled as misinformation.

Banned Books Week, a left-leaning organization whose 2021 theme is "Books Unite Us, Censorship Divides Us," has historically considered as "banned" those books on school reading lists that are just objected to by parents, as if it wishes to censor the right of parents to object to books their own children are expected to read. One wonders whether conservative books that Amazon refuses to sell will be included on the 2021 list.

I have long maintained that everybody, or nearly everybody, favors censorship of some sort. It is just a matter of where one draws the line. It would be difficult to find anyone on either the right or the left who will admit to being against censoring child pornography.

Those on the right have through history been too quick to censor materials perceived as immoral or heretical. In 1972, Kells reports, a circuit court judge banned Slaughterhouse-Five from public schools for being depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar and anti-Christian. Those on the left are more likely to favor censorship of political and social ideas or even language they dislike. They are the ones who object to Huckleberry Finn for Mark Twain's use of the n-word. The recent destruction of statues across America looks like an attempt to censor history and culture.

One cannot turn back the clock or the calendar. Even so, 2017 sounds pretty good right now. If we cannot return there, perhaps we can at least return to the noble conviction that freedom of thought and freedom of expression are good ideas — for everyone.