Whee! A book landing on the list...

CURRENT's 100 Books of the 21st Century

Read the intro and run your peepers down to no. 29!

Winnowing the libraries

Nineteenth century artistic rendering of the Library of Alexandria
by the German artist O. Von Corven
Public domain, Wikipedia

Time is and always has been the great judge of the merit of books. Lost or long-forgotten books like the works of Edward Taylor and Emily Dickinson (left in manuscript) or John Donne (out of fashion for centuries) or Moby Dick (by heroic Melville, bravely writing on despite being wholly forgotten before his death) may be tossed into sight again. Whole fields of books are winnowed by the scythe of time and fall out of memory. Some books become unreadable or simply of no interest. Is this a perfect process? Probably not. Many minor but lovely works are read by fewer and fewer as time passes.

In our day, a librarian proposes that she is the one to judge, to do the winnowing: that she knows better than time, and that something more drastic than the library-sale practice of the culling of unread, inessential books is needed. Many applaud. But time winnows all things, and some day it will winnow us, including the librarian and the applauders and the current writers of books. Including me and including you. To usurp the work of time. It sounds fearsome, doesn't it? In fact, it is the work of hubris, a thing many classical works have warned us to avoid. But in striving to make libraries more open to a good cause--more writers of color, say--it appears that welcoming, open library borders swiftly turn into the desire to banish others.

Who needs to read these old white men, long dead? Who in the West needs the heritage passed down for centuries--who needs Ovid or Homer or the KJB or Chaucer or Shakespeare or Milton? All those outdated foundational ideals (not always met, but yet our ideals), like the idea that every single human wandering the face of the earth was made in the likeness of God and so is valuable, no matter the sex or color and however much he or she mars that image... Why, we can send our children to be English majors at fine, much-heralded institutions where they can duck hearing those voices, these days. So who needs them?

I do. Young writers do. And that means young writers of any sex, any color. Do not deprive young writers of the legacy of the past because whether they like or dislike writers like Dickinson and Melville and Shakespeare, they need to climb up on their shoulders. They need to read with freedom, with no holds barred. And that reading should include not just people of color and people from fascinating and far-off countries but also those pesky dead white Western males like Donne and Herbert.

What results from the ability to put words together with high power and beauty is the rightful inheritance of us all, writers and readers alike. Despite the unchosen elements of race and sex that come with birth, writers are joined as one in the love of putting words together in the most stellar order, in striving to make something meaningful and marvelous where nothing was before. That is the work of the creator, to bring truth and beauty out of the welter that surrounds us.

The rage against tips!

An interior illumination
by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
for my long-poem and epic adventure,
Thaliad (Phoenicia Publishing)
Amazon reviews: paperback
Hardcover only here

Why on earth do I sometimes fiddle around an answer a question on Quora when I could and probably should do a blog post? Who knows? Here's a Quora question I answered a moment ago, perhaps partly because I'm in a good mood and just wrote a poem when I should have been doing something else entirely, and perhaps partly because I still didn't want to do what I should have been doing.

(And here you can find more Quora-fritterings by me.)

"What are some tips on staying motivated enough to finish writing a book?"

Marly Youmans, novelist and poet
Answered 2m ago

I’m feeling a bit allergic to the word tips: no tip can make you finish writing a book. Only whatever it takes for you can make you finish. And only you can answer the question of what it is that might be whatever it takes for you. That is, you will (or will not, as it turns out) make use of your own inner drive, passion for playing with words, impetus, dogged refusal to stop, anger, joy, or whatever it is that lives and burns in you and will take you to the close.

But I will say that I have known some wonderfully gifted people who began many books and stories and never could finish anything. This was a sadness to me, but they lived other lives, and perhaps it was not a sadness to them. They gave writing books a try and then moved on.

The grand thing about finishing is not having a completed manuscript; it is that you are somehow larger on the inside than you were at the start, and also that only bringing a thing to completion teaches you what you need to know in order to write that book. That sounds circular, and it is. In the realm of making books, much is mysterious.

Books for young boys who read at a high level

Updated January 24 I made this list for the son of friends--he is 8 and already reading young adult books, long past Lewis's Narnia and Rowling's Potter. A request for titles included asking for some suggestions of books from earlier eras, so there are quite a few older books. Update: A somewhat larger list is now available at Bookshop.org. (Most of the books here are there, unless not currently available at Bookshop. But others have been added.)

Please add your own thoughts about books you loved as a boy or girl in the comments. You might think also do something similar and consider books that seem just right for some particular child you know. And please think about the age--after ferreting about, I have concluded that there is not a good list online for boys--or girls--who are desiring more challenging reading but are still quite young. That is the focus here. I'm particularly interested in the idea of the young child who does not wish for books powered by gore, violence, and sex but who wants books that are adventurous and well-written.

The list has a rough, rather higgledy-piggledy organization with realistic and "low fantasy" books toward the top, mythic and fairy tale material midway, fantastical work toward the bottom, and many of the additional comments from others at the bottom (sometimes elsewhere, if more suited to the sort of books elsewhere.) Maybe some day I'll go alphabetical, after comments quit appearing. Or maybe I'll just leave it as a joyful hodgepodge.

Help build the list!

* * *

Joan Aiken, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. There's a whole series of the Wolves books about two girl cousins and a goose-boy who must outwit the scheming Miss Slighcarp.

Robert Louis Stevenson, Kidnapped. I still love Stevenson and reread Kidnapped not long ago. The flight in the heather is wonderful. Treasure Island. 

Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle Book. An interesting coming-of-age stories.

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi. Wonderful! The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Diary of a Campaign That Failed. Huckleberry Finn. 

Farley Mowat, Lost in the Barrens. Two teenage boys, survival story.

Johann David Wyss, Swiss Family Robinson. Four shipwrecked boys and their ingenious parents. I have often found myself putting characters into trees, and I think it's partly the fault of this book.

Eric Sevareid, Canoeing with the Cree. Wish I had known about this one for my boys. Have not read it--Eric Sevareid and a friend graduate high school and go on a 2,250-mile canoe trip. Sounds marvelous, so I couldn't resist adding it.

I have not read these but was looking for books that would please a fantasy reader whose parents wished he would attempt something else occasionally. I read a lot of the author's fantasy as a child and later. with my own children Check out Lloyd Alexander's Holly Vesper adventures? A Victorian girl, age 16, ranges the world with her guardian Brinnie, or Professor Brinton Garrett. "She’s Indiana Jones, Sherlock Holmes (minus the violin playing, the bees, and the cocaine), and Nancy Drew and Richie Rich." --Mari Ness

Jack London, The Call of the Wild, White Fang.

Marjorie Cowley, Dar and the Spear-Thrower. Go back in time 15,000 years and be an orphan boy in France! Coming-of-age tale. This one appealed to a son of mine who was not a devoted reader. 

If you want a child to experience something that conveys the excitement of learning to read and how important it is to possess written language, the early part of Frederick Douglass's autobiography that tells how he learned to read as a slave child is thrilling.

"Do boys still read G. A. Henty? suppose not, and they are the poorer for it. Men who were boys when [I] was a boy will thrill even today to the very names—With Wolfe in Canada, and With Kitchener in the Sudan, and With Hornblower at Riga. Yes, most of all With Hornblower at Riga. No other book ever written (save perhaps its un justly neglected sequel With Hornblower in Nicaragua) so evokes the smell of tar and salt." --Thaddeus Holt, NYT, 13 June 1971. Holt pans C. S. Forester's Hornblower series as missing the great mark of Hornblower, but Hemingway and Churchill both praised the Forester Hornblower books.

Carey Wallace, Stories of the Saints: Bold and Inspiring Tales of Adventure, Grace, and Courage

E. B. White, The Trumpet of the Swan. Etc.!

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farmer Boy. Set in Malone, where my husband Michael grew up. The house is now restored and can be toured.

Jean Craighead George, My Side of the Mountain. I don't think that I read this one but had a son who liked it. (And William Parsons, who worked on our dining room chimney and is now going to be working on Edith Wharton's Berkshire house, recommended it. That's good enough for me!)

Leon Garfield, Smith. A boy pickpocket sees dangerous things he should not and eventually rises in through muddling accident, merit, and heart. Victorian gritty. Gorgeous story of finding a home in a dangerous world. The rare book that feels truly Dickensian, though the term is bandied about quite often. I like some other Garfield books, but Smith brings tears. Rare! It is the last book I read to all three of my children at once, and I have to say they were transfixed. A while back, FSG's Robbie Mayes edited some beautiful reprints of four of Garfield's children's novels that can probably be picked up used, and there's a newer edition from NYRB.

Alexandre Dumas, père, The Three Musketeers.

Esther Forbes, Johnny Tremain. The silversmith's apprentice dramatic story--a boy's coming-of-age tale set in eighteenth-century Boston. Newbery medal, 1944.

Writer and photographer John O' Grady had a suggestion: "The only book I'd add is Lad: A Dog by Albert Payson Terhune. (I'd probably also throw in his Wolf and Gray Dawn.)"

My blog-friend George left some titles in the comments that I am passing on here with a bit more information--I think these are interesting choices, though I think the first may be more appropriate as a read-aloud with a parent for a younger child who may have questions. My target age of around 8 is awfully young! Commander Edward L. Beach, Jr., Run Silent, Run Deep. That one's definitely heroic, as submarine Commander Edward J. Richardson tells the events that led to his receiving the Medal of Honor. Includes a figure whose character is wayward (bit wild and risky in his actions, unfaithful to his wife) but changes in the course of the book. Jean Lee Latham, Carry On, Mr. Bowditch. Biography of sailor-mathematician Nathaniel Bowditch. Newbury medal winner. The true story of a boy's rise from chandler's apprentice to captain and Harvard grad. An American dream saga. Great choice. Mark Twain, Roughing It. I thought about this one but was not sure--but why not give it a try? And here's another one I thought about but wasn't sure, recommended by George: Richard Henry Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast. I don't think I read that until my early twenties, but if sea books take, it might work!

Mabel M. Dodge, Hans Brinker, or the Silver Skates. I remember this story of the Netherlands from childhood--the story of a boy's mature sense of sacrifice and honor. Hans repeatedly sacrifices what he loves and wants, either for a better future for his family or for a friend in need. It was a bestseller in 1865, exceeded only by Dickens's Our Mutual Friend.

Alan Garner, The Stone Book Quartet. Cheshire setting near Alderney Edge. Each book features a child of a different era, drawn from Garner's family history in Cheshire.

Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Little Men

Louise Bogan and William Jay Smith, The Golden Journey: Poems for Young People

Kerstin Green, who runs Oak Hill Nursery School near Cooperstown, says: The Shakespeare Stealer  [by Gary Blackwood] and Shakespeare's Scribe [the sequel.] Also anything by Avi. [I also mentioned Avi. Crispin: The Cross of Lead was especially liked by one of my children.] She also recommended the William Ritter Jackaby series as one her son liked and compared Ritter's books to Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories. Moving into fantasy, her children liked Cornelia Funke's Inkheart trilogy, Thief Lord, and Dragon Rider.

A smattering of the legendary and mythic: I liked Howard Pyle's Robin Hood and Arthur stories, but they may seem a little more dated now. Kevin Crossley-Holland (UK) has an Arthurian trilogy that has won awards, and I think he has a Norse myths book as well. I've only read one of his books and that was long ago, but I think it would be a safe choice. Neil Gaiman also has a new Norse legends book which I've read and would add. Leon Garfield's The God Beneath the Sea won Carnegie and Greenaway medals but I've not read it--according to what I have read, it is more adult than his other work, and he was concerned about that, which seems sweet of him, given that anything goes now in y. a. I read Nathaniel Hawthorne's retellings of myths early on.

Folk and fairy: Alan Garner has folk tale collections from his native Cheshire. I was a re-reader of the Grimms' tales in childhood. In addition, I'd recommend the Lore Segal and Randall Jarrell translations in a two-volume set wonderfully illustrated by Maurice Sendak. The Golden Book of Fairy Tales (with illustrations by Adrienne Segur and some translations by Marie Ponsot) Also: The Fairy Tale Book (with illustrations by Adrienne Segur.) I pored over my copy of TFTB many, many times. Has a version of E. T. A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker story, "The Snow Queen," lots more. I know so many women writers who were entranced by one or both books when they were girls, but there's plenty to like for boys as well. Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book, etc. Oh, and Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tale collections, of course.

And for gentler fantasy, try E. Nesbit and Edward Eager. Lots of books by each.

Wilmington Star reviewer Ben Steelman says, "Robert Heinlein's juveniles may be getting a tad dated, but they're still fun. A sentimental favorite for me is 'Citizen of the Galaxy.'"

Writer, poet, and secret singer Roderick Robinson added some specific E. Nesbit recommendations--"the adventures of the Bastable family (The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, The New Treasure Seekers"--and you can see his remarks in the comments.

Claire Youmans, my no-doubt very distant cousin of some sort, all Youmanses in this country being descended from four brothers who came over before the Revolution, reminded me of her The Toki Girl and the Sparrow Boy series which "keeps growing up as the children do. It's historical fantasy-adventure, fun and sophisticated, suitable for 8 year olds, and with a following among college students and adults."

Lucy M. Boston, Green Knowe. Tolly goes to stay with Mrs. Oldknowe and meets the people who once lived in the house in earlier centuries. Six books in the series, I think. Boston makes the world feel enchanted. The Sea Egg. This lovely little book was recommended to me by Robbie Mayes, back when he was an FSG editor. Two English schoolboys discover an egg with a triton inside.

T. H. White, The Once and Future King. Arthur! Robin Hood! Being a bird! The first section--"The Sword in the Stone"--about Wart and Merlin is enthralling for a boy.

John Ruskin, The King of the Golden River.

Nancy Willard, The Firebrat.

Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach. It's hard to decide which one to pick with Dahl.

Lloyd Alexander, The Chronicles of Prydain, Time Cat, the Westmark books, etc. If you want a great overview of Lloyd Alexander's books, go to Jeff Sypeck's Quid Plura? site, where you'll find 31 posts devoted to the writer.

Terry Pratchett, The Wee Free Men and A Hatful of Sky. A strong-minded young witch. Somebody in the house loved The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. If a boy gets addicted to Pratchett, he'll stay busy a long time.

Richard Adams, Watership Down. My high school English teacher (the woman to whom I dedicated Catherwood) gave me the rabbit-saga when it came out, and I wish that I still had the copy with her inscription.

Lewis Carroll's Alice books. I can't say how much those meant to me. Alice for all, girls and boys!

Otfried Preussler, Krabat and the Sorceror's Mill. Brilliant little book. Scary. Maybe shouldn't be on this list, but it is so good! A parent ought to check this one out first, as children vary in what they find frightening. Eh, save it till he's older! A beggar boy is captured by a great sorcerer and made to work and learn his mysterious arts. A girl and an Easter hymn promise him more. This one is from The New York Review of Books children's collection, and I highly, highly recommend browsing through it to find some interesting books.

George MacDonald: the short stories were published a while back by Eerdmans in two volumes as The Gifts of the Christ Child. A lot of them like "The Golden Key" are beautiful and aspiring. Little violence. Ruth Sanderson just did a gorgeous scratchboard-illustrated version of that story, also from Eerdmans. Some of his other stories have been Sendak-illustrated books like The Light Princess. Try The Princess and the Goblin and The Princess and Curdie. I loved At the Back of the North Wind as a child, but I expect that one may feel pretty dated now.

Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time.

Norman Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth.

Another fantasy writer I liked when young was Alan Garner, whose children's fantasies were set around Alderney Edge. He was in the reread category for me--particularly The Weirdstone of Brisingamen. 

Franny Billingsley, The Folk Keeper. Corinna in disguise as the boy Corin, who must keep down the Folk in their labyrinthine home. 

Gary D. Schmidt, What Came From the Stars. We judges for the 2012 NBA-YPL swapped books, and I swapped one of my mine for this one--and liked it. This tale of Tommy Pepper and the dangerous Valorians is well-written, boy-friendly, and adventurous. (What book did we pick for the Young People's Literature Award? William Alexander's Goblin Secrets. A lovely, surreal creation.)

My eldest son adored the Brian Jacques books. If a boy likes one, there are a zillion more. 

My daughter Rebecca's favorite fantasy writer was Diana Wynne Jones (an author who had three sons, so she knew boys!) Try the Chrestomanci books--magic and lots of boys. Some of her fantasy is rather cerebral in structure, but there are a number of books for younger readers. Rebecca loved Howl's Moving Castle, which was transformed in its migration to a Miyazaki Studio Ghibli film. I recall thinking that Aunt Maria gave J. K. Rowling the structural basis for her third Potter book. She has a long bibliography and more books that would work for a young reader who wants something challenging.

Isaac Bashevis Singer, Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, LOTR. LOTR is terrifically sad for an adult, but I think it tends to be less so for younger readers.

I think Jules Verne could work well as a read-aloud, as would Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist) or Blackmore's Lorna Doone. (I love the narrator of the last one in the same way that I love the first narrator of The Moonstone.) I did not read King Solomon's Mines as a child, but I knew boys liked it.

Louis Untermeyer's The Golden Treasury of Poetry. Via eBay or abe.com or library, I guess. Wore mine to pieces. Boy-friendly, definitely! 

James Weldon Johnson, God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse. This was one of the few single-author poetry books I owned as a child. Great swing, inspired by what Johnson saw as the "folk sermons" of his childhood.

Lemony Snicket, A Series of Unfortunate Events.

Randall Jarrell, The Bat-poet. 

For non-fiction, there are lots of interesting choices, but one that appealed greatly to me was the Foxfire series that came out of the Rabun Gap - Nacoochee school (edited by Eliot Wigginton), not far from me when I was in high school in Cullowhee, North Carolina. I pored over those books and have continued to occasionally look at them. Whenever I passed the school on trips to Georgia, I longed to be a student there.

Philip Pullman is a bit of a puzzle. I only had one child who fell into his books--as I recall, read some of the Sally Lockhart series, loved The Golden Compass, liked The Subtle Knife, and bogged down early on in The Amber Spyglass. 

I've left out Avi, Nancy Farmer, and so many others who wrote books that my children loved. But maybe it's time to let other people tell me what they like...

Note: Be sure and come back later, as I will keep adding in suggestions from twitter, facebook, and messaging!

Via writer Susan Henderson aka @LitPark on twitter: "When my boys were that age, they loved The Mysterious Benedict Society." And another: "Oh, and Terry Pratchett's Maurice and His Educated Rodents. Not long after, they got into Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series." [I read one of the Benedict books in the year that I read 316 children's books for the NBA-YPL. And I liked it. Author: Trenton Lee Stewart.] Henderson is also in the comments below.

Writer Kim Beall put in a vote for Tolkien's LOTR in the comments, and I think what she says reflects what I said above: it's a different narrative for a child than for an adult. One of Ellen Kushner's Sound and Spirit episodes muses on that thought as well. LOTR pops up here and there in her series. And there is a show on music inspired by LOTR (episode 5048.)

Peter in Wales: "Some violence in [Hergé's] Tintin, of an adventurous kind, but certainly NO sex. YA wasn't definite genre in my day, but other read-them-all favourites at 8+ were Arthur Ransome, Hugh Lofting, Asterix, Tove Jannson. And I know Clive would add Alan Garner. Too young for Pullman?" [I would suppose so, at least for the third volume of the trilogy.] "The trilogy's the thing with Pullman. [Note: One of my children read the trilogy and liked the first two books but not the third. The complaint was that the third should have been two books and that it had too much anti-Christian axe-grinding.] Lofting wrote Dr Dolittle, a very different person than either of the film versions. A rarer favourite were 2 children's books by Eric Linklater - Pirates in the Deep Green Sea and Wind on the Moon. None yet re-read with modern sensitivities."

Writer and book reviewer Nancy G. Pate: Great list with many of my favorites. My [Untermeyer's] Golden Poetry, like yours, is falling apart. Smiled at that pic. I’d add Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series. Still reread it.

I thought about Susan Cooper and dithered about whether The Dark is Rising books were the right age. (She was on our 2012 NBA-YPL judging board, and I liked her very much and reread the whole TDIR series after we met.) Maybe that's because I was older when I read them. I guess that's one where I would think about my child, and whether they might enjoy them more at a slightly older age.

Writer and professor Jessica Hooten Wilson: "I was glad to see Roald Dahl—I’ve been reading his books aloud to my 3 and 4 yr olds."

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Light and language

Candlemas

Candlemas Eve: no doubt this year we are all looking for more candles in the dark. For me, more light goes with clearer language and less jargon and less political correctness (a kind of jargon of thinking  and language together that obscures sight.)

I have been rereading colonial materials that I haven't read since graduate school, and marveling again how literate and bright the godly (as they sometimes called themselves) were. The level of literacy among Puritans was astonishing, and since the great migration of 40,000 souls to the Massachusetts Bay Colony (and more elsewhere) tended to leave out the very poor and the very rich, they possessed a greater harmony and order and agreement than one might have expected of so large a gathering in and spreading out through a wilderness. Like us, they held some convictions that have lasted but also some that were mistaken and put a kind of darkness in their eyes and brought many to grief. And this led to their own decline in power and to change. It's a lesson.

I'm still considering what I want to accomplish in words this year. I want to finish the novel that I'm working on, despite lots of travels away from family that will break up my time. And I will write "13 Way of Looking at Form," which I have promised for the Buechner workshops. I have some poetry manuscripts that will be looking for home, and I ought to finish up or tidy up some prose manuscripts that have been lying about, waiting for me. I have taken the path less traveled in recent years, weary of a literary world ruled by marketing, and in some ways that has been good for me and in some ways bad for the visibility of my books. I need to bend my mind to what I can do there. And I must eventually get to the matter of right reversions for prior books and reprints; I hold rights to a number of books and have been asked about reprinting them. But I want to do this myself, so that I can do exactly what I like with them. So far, I have not found the time, and I know that a mother of three young adults may frequently not have time. But I'm hoping to do something about the reprints before the next winter begins.

And there I am. Still wishing for more time and more light....

Precipitous slippage

Once upon a time I was a new-made Associate Professor with tenure; my answer to that lovely promotion was to quit academia entirely because I wanted to be a poet and novelist, not an academic poet and novelist. I felt that I would be a stronger, better writer outside the land of ivory towers. What I did not grasp at the time was how completely the academy would take over the world of writing, particularly the realm of poetry, and make it into a near-monolithic enterprise. (Simultaneously, both poetry and literary fiction began to move toward being minor arts--well, poetry was already on the way.) This change has meant that academic writers support one another and give one another various helpful privileges.

Those of us outside the academy are somewhat in the cold, particularly if--as I do--the writer believes that the diminishing returns of Modernism are upon us, and that the way forward is back through tradition and form. Free verse and an obsession with originality (I don't see how that works, given that we're more than a century past modernism's birth--Modernism hasn't been modern for a long time) have become a kind of ideology in our university system. A large number of journals are associated with colleges or are founded by MFA graduates. Most of these are primarily interested in free verse. Meanwhile, I am not primarily interested in free verse, although I do have a recently-finished collection containing poems that derive from a foreign chant tradition that looks free but contains many rhetorical flourishes allied to that tradition.

Do I regret my decision about leaving the academy? No, I don't. I am a better writer because of that choice, and I also had the luxury of having three children, which I probably could not have managed if I had stayed in college settings as a writer and teacher. I find that it is hard to do three major things well, but two--well, you can give up a lot of things that are enjoyable but not essential and so make two big callings work.

I still have a few writer friends who are in the academy and make their living there; I think it's fine that they made the choice to stay in. Most people who gain a perch there do, after all. I just think that I made the right choice for me. What else can we do but try to make right choices? I admire people like poet-professor-mother Luisa Igloria who grasp after mastery in three realms. The late Doris Betts (professor, dean, writer, mother) comes to mind among novelists.

We live in a time when very few poetry books sell in reasonable numbers. I've talked to various editors about sales and found that some poetry books don't break the 50-mark. That's pretty sad, isn't it? I hear that Copper Canyon books sometimes make it to 600; those are the sorts of little numbers a poetry press depends on. (The funny thing about a poetry book is that it can become the sort of book that you return to again and again. So in that way it's a better bargain than most books.)

My picture of how my own poetry books are doing is a bit fuzzy. I know that Thaliad continues to trickle (or seep, maybe!) along in sales for Beth Adams's Phoenicia Publishing and is heading toward the 400-mark in combined paperback/hardcover. [Update: I was pleasantly wrong! 425 copies so far, as of January 19th.] The Foliate Head has sold out its first and second hardcover printings at UK's Stanza Press, though there are still a few copies available on line. I'm don't know the paperback or hardcover numbers at Mercer for The Throne of Psyche. Those are my three books that can be called "in print," though The Foliate Head is technically out of print.

Interior illustration by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
for The Foliate Head

If you care about poetry, please consider buying books. While I would like you to support mine, I tend to be pleased when I see anybody buy a good poetry book. And I always remember the quote taped up on the poetry shelves at the Bull's Head Bookshop (UNC-Chapel Hill shop, now defunct) run by novelist Erica Eisdorfer: People who say they love poetry and never buy any are cheap sons of bitches. --Kenneth Rexroth. It's not polite, but it gets at something. I just looked it up online and found a different version that says, I’ve had it with these cheap sons of bitches who claim they love poetry but never buy a book. Maybe both are right, as Rexroth didn't hold back and may have been muttering variations on the theme for years!

Yes, poetry is rapidly losing its status. Yes, what was once an important art is now a minor one and in danger of going the way of lacemaking. Times change. Television and internet make inroads; well, that's just how it is, we say. What we add to culture changes culture.

But if you care about poetry, do more. In fact, all of us need to support what we love in a time when what is seen and praised and supported is heavily-marketed, commercially-validated books, film, visual arts, etc. And we need to remind ourselves over and over again that we can choose. We can choose roads less taken. It will make all the difference.

Ditherings (in lieu of New Year's resolutions)

Detail from one of Kim Vanderheiden's pieces
for a poem in The Book of the Red King. It's interesting to have
an as-yet-unpublished book that already has art made
for some of its contents by several artists.
I don't think that has ever happened to me before.

I seem to be full of ditherings rather than resolutions, so I thought that I would make a list of my dithers.

Dither no. 1: I have broken with all novel-writing tradition (all of mine, that is) and stopped writing a novel on p. 145. For months! Usually I am a raging maniac until I finish. (Quietly a maniac, though. I keep it to myself. Also the related dithering. I'm still a good wife and mother and All That.) But. What is going on? Am I caught in a dither-quagmire? Do I even remember what the book was about?

Dither no. 2: That zany y. a. book I wrote years ago for my youngest, the one that needed about a two-week polish. Why don't I get back to it and spend two weeks? Or should I?

Dither no. 2: What on earth should I talk about at the Buechner Workshops at Fuller? I have come up with a remarkable number of topics, all highly ditherable and even dirigible in a few cases.

Dither no. 3: What is going on with The Book of the Red King? Is it accepted or not? (This is not my dithering, but there is dithering--or at least methodical tortoiseosity--involved.)

Dithers no. 4-5: Where should I send Rave, the collection of unleashed praise poems? Where should I send the new manuscript of formal poems? Dither, dither, dither... To my surprise, I have sent each to a contest (how resolute and surprising and anti-dither), but that's just spitting in the dark along with a thousand other poets, so what's the point?

Dither no. 6: Should I do something with my tiny stories? Should I not bother?

Dithers no. 7-8: What about the short stories? And the ones for teens? Yes? No? DITHER!

Dither no. 9: Should I bother to go back to having an agent? Yes, probably! No, I simply hate doing things like looking for an agent, and my first two (one deceased, one parted-from-amicably) just fell into my lap (in the usual manner of hackneyed speaking--nothing literal there) so really I don't hate looking for an agent because I have never done it. But I have heard rumors. Dark rumors. Nasty rumors. Rumors of woe and discouragement and despair. And so forth. Also on the no side: I am too agreeable. Too easily persuaded. Too n-i-c-e.

Dither no. 10: I've turned down some reprint offers and want to do my own reprints for a few books for which I hold rights reversions. However, this involves a good deal of research and work, and as a result, a mountain of dithering about many little decisions. Nevertheless, dithering surely will not last forever, right? Lemme dither about that a minute.

About dithering.... Do I dare to eat a peach? Yes, I do, thank you, Mr. Eliot, and I'm fine with mermaid songs. What I'm not good at is quarrying time, marketing, keeping my writing room tidy, and juggling-and-balancing all the demands of motherhood, wifehood, cleaning-the-house-hood, and all other relevant and irrelevant but needed hoods on the very tippy-tip of my nose.

And this is the end (or is it?) of the Dithers.

Advice to the casual book reviewer--

Artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins.
Hand with heart from the interior
decorations for Thaliad.

If you google "how to write a book review," you'll find wheelbarrow loads of advice on writing a book review that looks just like almost everybody else's review. Since that's the case, I'm not going to repeat the usual advice. So here, my two cents worth of not-the-usual advice:

• Go on trust. Always assume that the writer might actually know what he/she is doing. Try and figure out what he/she is doing if it doesn't fit your ideas of what a book should be. Maybe the book's not working, and that's why it doesn't fit. But maybe the book is good but differs from your expectations. 
• Don't pay any attention to the label or genre that the publisher chooses. Remember that labels are for marketing. A label can be misleading, as it may well be incorrect or reductive. Many books are complex things, not happy with a label. Instead of relying on genre conventions for an idea of what a book should be, figure out what the book is on your own. Describe what it is--not the plot, but what it is, what it cares about, what terrain is important to the book and its characters, what purposes and vision drive its events and structure. 
• Think about shape. All made things have a shape.
• Each novel is its own world, with its own laws. It may resemble our world closely. Or not. You should be able to detect whether it fulfills its own promises, obeys its own laws.
• Think about what propels the story forward. Is it causality, or something else?
• Ignore the age label on the book, if there is one. It, too, may be incorrect, or the book may be what is often labeled as a crossover, and appeal to various ages.
• Does the book have energy? Is it alive? Are the characters alive?
• Does the book feel like a clone, or is it a unique individual? How so?
• Does the writer appear to take pleasure in words and sound? 
• Read some of the book aloud--mandatory! Get a feel for how the author writes; hear it in your own voice. You'll know more about sound and style and the writer's ear (tin or golden) by reading one page aloud than by reading a whole book to yourself. (This one is, of course, essential for collections of poetry.) 
• Rereading is the most telling reading. Even a little rereading is helpful.

Never shave a cat until May and other morning thoughts

The problem for a woman in contemplating how she feels so very out of sorts with her own time is knowing that in order to succeed in any other time, she would have had to be a man of a certain class, and also to possess a certain amount of luck in escaping bacteria and viruses. Maybe she doesn't want to be a man, despite the helpfulness of the right body parts in most eras. And maybe she doesn't have a time machine, anyway.

*

I'm grateful to Dickinson for staying home and for avoiding publication and the tidying-up of her work to fit the times. How terrible it would have been to have had the sharp edges ground down. How terrible to have a Mrs. Emily Dickinson Somebody who died in childbirth and never reached the ecstatic heights of later years.

*

When I woke up this morning, I read John Simon's post on rhyme, which I recommend to anyone interested in the subject. He left out the crazy freedom of rhyme, though, and I find that people generally do leave out rhyme as way to freedom. Following rhyme is like swinging out on a trapeze bar with the choice of innumerable other flying trapezes to grab--at its best, the chosen one will sail the poet away into new thoughts and new places never dreamed in free or blank verse philosophies.

*

The last steps before sending out a manuscript are the easiest and the hardest. The writer already feels done with the book after grinding through it many times, and so it's hard to push through one more time to check for errors introduced in revision and small, overlooked problems. No book has ever matched the fire in the head (though I suppose a downright narcissist might believe in that burning achievement), so a final read is inevitably a mixture of pleasure and pain.

*

I shaved the blue persian for spring but now it is winter again, and the poor Puffcat is chilled. Meanwhile, Theodora, the long-haired calico with prodigious whiskers, knows a shaved cat is wrong and bites her. Now the Puffcat spends all day on my bed, curled in the down coverlet, or else pressed close to a little radiator. Theodora hisses and spits, still indignant, and bounces out of the bedroom. The Puffcat is now a quarter of her former size. She seldom moves from her nest in the coverlet, and I wonder if she is, in fact, dying. She does, after all, have a heart murmur. Or is she just cold? She has always been a cat of little brain (though her heart is full of love) with a liking for sleep. I feel a bit guilty. Never shave a cat until May.

I ask, I ask, I ask--

Found on Pinterest.
Could it be Lucas Cranach the Elder?
Or is that insane? Thought of "Princess of Saxony" hands.

Enough of the You Asked series for the nonce. It's time for I Ask.

What was the last thing you read (and the last thing you read and liked), and what are you reading now (or what is in the line-up for next)? 

New acquisitions this week: the late Christopher Logue's full version of his long poem, War Music: An Account of Homer's Iliad; Annie Dillard's selected essays, The Abundance. (The only other book of essays I've read lately is Mary Kinzie's The Cure of Poetry in an Age of Prose.) I'm already reading War Music. Prior to this, I've only read the also-titled War Music, a portion of the now-whole, or as close to whole as we will ever have.

Last book I listened to was Karen Savage's reading of Jane Austen's Persuasion. It's a LibriVox recording also on youtube as a single listen. I always thought that I liked Persuasion less than the others, but I was wrong. Maybe I'm finally old enough for it.

I'm also reading Robert Walser's The Walk (the translation of the revised version) and assiduously looking for the copy of Scott G. F. Bailey's The Astrologer that the naughty person who was going to read it aloud to us has deposited . . . somewhere. It's as if there's a terrible jinx on that book. But it'll be next, whenever found. My misbehaving eyes are better, and I shall read it for myself!

I'm also reading some Louise Bogan and Edwin Muir poems. And memorized another Yeats poem. I do want to memorize more.

Your turn. Tell.

Rips in the fabric of culture--

Portrait of the artist as flourishing, flowering...
Division page image by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
for my just-out Maze of Blood (Mercer.)
With this story, inspired by the life
of Texas pulp writer Robert E. Howard,
I got to revel in the life of someone
who died before I was born, who
was unlike me in almost all ways,
save for his love of words.

My third child is now in college, and I've thought a lot about how English departments have changed since the year when I gave back my just-won tenure and promotion and became a full-time writer and then also a mother. Clearly it's now possible in many places to obtain an "English" degree without having much acquaintance with Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Milton, and it's quite possible to have little acquaintance at all with the legacy of the classical world with its great transcendentals. In fact, it is so very possible to go without reading the life-giving, important writers of the past or present that studies tell us many people never bother to read a book again once they graduate from college!

Likewise, I've seen many mentions of MFA students who do not know the tradition--I feel sure that complaint is not always justified, but it appears to be true often enough for many complaints to be made in print. Similarly, the visual arts have suffered from a lack of craft and skills in student training. But what is an artist alone? We are not spiders working and spinning alone but one body with the work of the past--those of our own culture and works in translation as well. Moreover, the tools and techniques of the past are part of how an artist thinks, and without them, he or she is lessened. Artists of all sorts are linked together through time and space, and the fallen generation just past grew out of the work of all previous artists, and the generations alive now from them in turn. To make art out of ourselves like a spider is to ignore all the power, truth, beauty, and good work that came before.

As an inhabitant of a small, often convulsive world, I find alarming the tendency to avoid reading books. Novels and stories and poems are gifts to us across barriers of space and culture and time. They are a vital way for us to experience the mind and living energies of the Other, the person who is not like us, not our sex or race or religion or culture. They are a path to understanding and empathizing with another's mind, heart, and soul. They are often the closest we can come to experiencing--to being pierced and affected by--another's dailiness and pleasures and sorrows. And stories and poems catch us up with the sheer joy of creation.

Without these wonderful little time-and-space collapsers, we are lesser beings, caught inside ourselves, less able to empathize and to love the world in all its shapes and colors, less able to love one another. As a writer, I have been able to stream outside myself and become a seventeenth-century woman in the wilderness (Catherwood), a nineteenth-century soldier (The Wolf Pit), a Texas pulp writer (Maze of Blood), a Depression-era boy in flight (A Death at the White  Camellia Orphanage), a child in a post-apocalyptic world, fastening together the pieces (Thaliad), a painter in the heart of a hill, searching for truth in a labyrinth (Glimmerglass), and much more. My readers have been those things as well, choosing to take my hand in the wondrous storyteller-and-listener dance that has been going on for hundreds, thousands of years.

What can we say in the face of ongoing news of decline, except that there is much more to being alive than what is useful and practical? Without art and culture, we are left in a dry landscape of the useful and practical, without an oasis in sight.

The joy of lists....

Books and Culture Favorite Books of 2014

Thanks to Books and Culture and its wide-ranging reader, John Wilson, editor, for another spot on Books and Culture's annual Favorite Books list. I am grateful that John Wilson ranges so very widely that he discovered and read my books some years ago, and that the magazine continues to support them. It's an interesting list, with Christopher Beha, Ayelet Waldman, Paul Celan, Michael Robbins, and Emily St. John Mandel among the poets and writers.

Weird Fiction Book List

The online Weird Fiction Review asked me for a list of three favorite books from 2014, and I have obliged. You may find the list (with one extra) here. Thanks to David Davis for asking. 2014 was not an especially great year for reading at my house; instead, it seemed to be an entirely-too-great year for being away from home and wild ferrying trips. I am looking forward to a month off from book events with only some child-ferrying trips... and so shall start next year with some extra reading and rereading. Joy!

Peculiar things people sometimes say to a writer--

Preparatory art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins 
for Glimmerglass

That is, to this writer--

"I never read anything written after 1900." (Later on the same neighborhood man read one my novels and declared that he loved it, so maybe he was exaggerating.)

"I never read novels. Can't do it." (Another guy in my neighborhood. Twice. With accompanying head shakes. I'm still wondering if he forgets to what I have devoted my life.)

"Why don't you write something like Stephen King?" (Evidently we all want to sound exactly the same, we writers!)

"Why don't you write something that makes a lot of money?" (Oddly, we don't all have the bestseller gene and the desire to write about alluring vampires or some carbon copy of the latest book-to-movie trilogy or anything that puts money ahead of truth and beauty and well-made sentences--not that the good bestseller doesn't exist, just that it's not the norm. And all that said, we don't object to being paid.)

"Would I have heard of you?" (General mortification abounds.)

"What does the world need with another poem?" (Your answer here. This one came as a tease from a colleague, and it stopped me from poems for a year, during which I began writing fiction. So maybe it was a blessing.)

"Where do you get your ideas?" (I can't say that I get them from the fount at the end of the world and time, or they'll think I'm mad. But that's a better answer than most.)

"What are your books about?" (Read them, and you'll know! My 12th and 13th books are forthcoming, and I look back and see that my books are all as different from one another as rutabagas from fox kits.)

"How can I find an agent?" (I have no idea. Both of my agents asked, one through my first publisher, the other after Louis Rubin suggested my name. But some people ask this so very immediately!)

"Do people read poetry anymore?" (You. Tell. Me.)

Some more via responses to this post on twitter and facebook--

A familiar addition from poet Julie Brooks Barbour via a twitter response: "My favorite: Could you tell me how to get my novel published?" She posted a similar one in the comments with a funny remark.

From writer Gary M Dietz: 1. Your book is on an Amazon list. You must be rich! 2. On (multiple) job interviews "So, you are an author. Why do you want to this job?" (Maybe because my net income from my book is negative!) 3. How many words per minute can you type?

Here's a favorite one, via facebook:  "I don't tell folks I'm a writer. I tell them I'm an astrologer. But it doesn't help. They still say peculiar things" (John P. O'Grady.)

See the comments for more, including some peculiar things people sometimes say to a visual artist...

I am going to have to do a roundup of similar remarks from painter friends, I guess! I think this topic falls into the "weirdly fascinating" category.

A jacket for Glimmerglass--

Art for  Glimmerglass. Here is the jacket with art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins and design by Burt and Burt. Isn't it wondrous? Clive is not a literalist with book art and decoration but a magician of atmosphere. Click on the image to see a bigger version, in which you may see beauties! Text for back and flaps to come...

Fracas! Ruckus! Brouhaha!

Vignette by Clive Hicks-Jenkins for Thaliad

Dear Slate,

What a lot of grief you are getting for publishing an article about how adults ought to be embarrassed to read children's books. ("Against YA" by Ruth Graham.) I guess maybe that was the point, as it is so often the point in these days. To get attention. To cause a commotion, a hullaballoo, a hoo-ha. To make a sort of paparazzi fuss, all lightbulbs and yelling and jeering. I'm a bit tired of the ruckus, you hear?

A long time ago C. S. Lewis told us that "A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest." Likewise, Maurice Sendak made it clear that it was whether books were good that mattered. And as to fantasy and fantasizing being for children, he said, "I believe there is no part of our lives, our adult as well as child life, when we're not fantasizing, but we prefer to relegate fantasy to children, as though it were some tomfoolery only fit for the immature minds of the young."

I agree with Lewis and Sendak. Ages and genres make no difference at all. Being packed with energy and life counts the most when it comes to a book, not some idea of audience age and kind or mode. I read the Alice books when I was five, and I am still reading them today. Stand where two roads diverge in a yellow wood, and take the way with the nooks for reading and the stones for skipping and the books without labels, without ages. Hey, it'll make all the difference.

Good cheer,
Marly

P. S. To somewhat change the subject, I don't like the idea that grownups desire to read weak, thin, smarmy books. And that's where the real criticism is hidden, I think--in the idea that some people are content with such books, whether they are written for toddlers, young adults, or grownups. And the writer assumes that children's books are, indeed, lesser, and that an adult could not have a rich experience reading them. Carroll. Sendak. L'Engle. Those are a few of many arguments against that thought.

P. S. So you don't think I'm being mean to her, here's another article by Ruth Graham--a highly sensible proposal that suggests that maybe we've dropped something we should pick up again, revised for our own day.

Notes on my recent books, no. 2

In THALIAD, Marly Youmans has written a powerful and beautiful saga of seven children who escape a fiery apocalypse----though "written" is hardly the word to use, as this extraordinary account seems rather "channeled" or dreamed or imparted in a vision, told in heroic poetry of the highest calibre. Amazing, mesmerizing, filled with pithy wisdom, THALIAD is a work of genius which also seems particularly relevant to our own time.  --Lee Smith

Dear people,

Mailbox courtesy of y0s1a and sxc.hu

Today I will be frantically packing up all my overdue packages (including promised books--and that includes the great poetry giveaway going to Guy in Israel, as I am nothing if not a true-to-my-word procrastinator) because Obama is going to be hanging out and pronouncing on issues a mere one block away tomorrow, and that, people tell me, will be a navigational problem. Particularly because of the location of the Cooperstown post office . . .

Also, it seems I must weed my front borders in honor of the president. Because despite my 17 (husband-counted) trilliums, my bleeding hearts, my uvularia, my Jacks in the pulpit, my Virginia bluebells etcetera, my garden looks a little bit overpopulated with stray grasses.

And before I go off to sing in the evening, I hope to write a tiny story and simply must finish reading Deep Exegesis (Milosz, Sophocles, Bach, Joyce, Eliot, Melville, Marvell, Austen, and most of all scripture!) today or else roast for my sins, as I have promised to read it all the way to the end for the priests-and-clergy reading group of central New York. I am visiting their next meeting in the form of token poet and novelist, and I will tell you about it, as it is sure to be . . . different.

This means that I do not have time for a blog post. Kindly purchase all four of my in-print books if you miss me. (Insert adorable emoticons here.)

More news will no doubt materialize tomorrow, when I will be huddling inside my charming though somewhat decrepit federal house and hoping not to be noticed by all the snipers who locals say will be dashing about the rooftops. Bush no. 2 was once at a party at the house behind mine, and I managed not to see either the president on the lawn or the FBI in the alley, so I expect that I will manage a major bout of huddling perfectly well. (My mother, on the other hand, wants me to walk down the street so she can see me on CNN.)

Yrs, with packing string and skittles,
Marly

Dreaming better dreams--

Minotaur study by Clive Hicks-Jenkins 
for Glimmerglass

BOOKHOOKERY

Writer bounces out of bed at 6:30 and scurried about making lunch for her third child, packing track-snack in a sack (can I toss in another rhyme?), fixing breakfast, and tossing books in the backpack (there you go.) Mid-way, the writer turns on NPR and hears that 45% of teens read no more than 1-2 books a year. Or did they say less than 1-2? At any rate, not much of note. Writer plunks down at her laptop to have a cup of tea. First thing she sees: novelist Darin Strauss on twitter, mentioning a new book that uses "Jewish man" as a slur: "Nobody cares / even notices." The Author aka "Ass Queen" is featured in Salon (a coup for a writer, right? like her treatment in Slate or on NPR) with an interview about being a porn star and drug abuser--smoking crack in a BSDM dungeon, anybody? Hey, now we know what kind of lively, appealing-to-the-curious book the almost-non-reading 45% might possibly read! Because that's a book-with-a-hook--we writers are always suppose to have a hook that we are willing to share with the world--that will sell, even to non-reading teens, I expect.

WHO KNEW

Who would have guessed that this would one day be the writer's world, back when she first gave her years to making something true and rejoicing in putting words into new shapes? A world where teens don't read and professors complain that their students don't crack open their books. A world where a clever volume reveling in unabashed porn and drug use has more of that desirable quality, hook, and will get more coverage than a first-rate novel (and infinitely more coverage than a good book of poems.)

ASPIRE

All you lovers of reading and shapeliness in words, defy this crazy world! If hopeless, still be brave. Read better books, make better books. Encourage taste, a human achievement that used to support culture. Online or in-person, recommend what's best in the arts. Make the better world, even if you fear that you are the only person who inhabits it. Dream of a better culture, a more worthy gift to hand on to our children.

The Ministry of Sanctioned Words teaches our children--

MSW proclamation! 

So I promise now that the newspaper and this website will not be reviewing any book which is explicitly aimed at just girls, or just boys. Nor will The Independent’s books section. And nor will the children’s books blog at Independent.co.uk.

The Ministry of Sanctioned Words continues on its mission to tell us what words are acceptable and what words are unacceptable. The Independent (UK) now informs the world  that it will no longer review "boy books" or "girl books" because they know what boys and girls like ought to read better than boys and girls do, and so in future they will only review--tada!--unisex books. Because The Independent knows better than you do what your sons and daughters ought to read. Got that? Good. Now go on your way, confident in the knowledge that The Ministry of Sanctioned Words cares for you and your children and knows what they should think and how they should choose books.

Categories

Plenty of boys and girls would cross reading lines of all sorts--genre, age categories, gender--if we quit categorizing absolutely everything and creating more and more new age levels. I wish children today could browse in a big, chaotic library without divisions and labels. That's the kind of library that was on offer when I was growing up, and I read plenty of varied books of all sorts, including books that The Independent would call "boy books."

The Independent against "boy and girl books"

But let's go back to The Independent and the issue of "boy and girl books." Little Johnny doesn't much like to read and has to be lured into a world he likes? Let's take away the few stories he does like--say, ones with native Americans clambering around on rocks and sometimes shooting things or communicating strangely with bears, a prehistoric boy who learns to carve after he is maimed, pioneer boys who run wild on the prairie... Those happen to be the sort of books my third child liked. My eldest son was a history book reader, but he also liked some historical "boy stories," and he adored Tolkien. Oops. Neither of my sons would be allowed to read what he liked under the rule of The Independent, which is evidently ambitious of transforming into an organ of The Ministry of Sanctioned Words. Meanwhile, my daughter didn't mind reading a boy-dominated book in the least. Nor did she mind a girl-dominated book. She just cared whether the book could be called good, and she preferred fantasy.

The Example of LOTR

Now let's go back to Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings, a book that all three of my children liked; it clearly falls outside the category of "unisex book." Tolkien's complex tale is almost completely dominated by male hobbits and wizards, male humans and elves with the occasional side female (okay, Galadriel is powerful, I grant you, and Eowyn seems like a specific person, and Shelob--well, Shelob is quite a "she"), male ents who have lost their entwives, male orcs who never get any wives at all, ticked-off male ghosts, male furrin fighters from distant parts, etc. Auden defended the book as "part of a literary tradition of reinterpreting ancient archetypes to create a modern mythology," but it was primarily a male-dominated myth, despite the presence of a few female characters (The New Yorker.)

A lot of people like The Lord of the Rings. A poll conducted by Waterstone's bookstores and BBC4 found that readers in the UK thought The Lord of the Rings the greatest book of the twentieth century. This finding displeased some and pleased others. As Auden said, some find it "a masterpiece of its genre," while others "cannot abide it") An Amazon poll put the book as the best of the millenium (Salon.) (I somehow can't imagine that degree of rabidness pleasing Tolkien, a student of early languages and literatures.) Yet under The Independent's new rules, Tolkien would not be eligible for review.

Dear Independent, please review on merit

Independent, you are one of many papers I read when I'm on the hunt for reviews; I have read books editor Rebecca Davis. But this change is a bad idea. Why not stick to reviewing books on their merits? Toss out the categories and just divide the sheep (good books) from the goats (not-so-good to downright-terrible books.) Reviewing on merit is an old idea but still a good one--it's like a worn but still-useful proverb. Tried. True.

* * *
The Great Big Book of Snot for Boys

Update: Thanks to the daily Prufrock News, I can tell you that Ron Dreher has already posted a note about this interesting development. Moreover, his post has a much more fetching title: "Stand Up for The Great Big Book of Snot for Boys!" Interestingly, we both have a familial concern for boy books. Studies have shown that boys can be very particular about what they read, while girls tend to be wide readers who will accept what we call "boy books"--I think it was Orange Prize research that showed the same about men and women.

* * *

Coming up. Green men. Have a request?

Coming up next, maybe... A few days ago I wrote a post solving (purporting to solve) that insoluble puzzle, why green men are on churches and cathedrals. I'll upload it in a day or two. And I'm taking requests, questions, and general suggestions for future posts.

* * *

Love or loathe the Ministry? 

Click on the Ministry tag below for more recent developments

in the public sphere and inside the ivory tower--

"Sing whatever is well made"

Courtesy of sxc.hu and Lieven Volckaert of Belgium.

I found this in my blogger drafts folder--I wonder, what book was it that inspired this little rant? I must have thought it was too over the top to publish. Or perhaps I thought it would hurt somebody's feelings. I can be a downright wimp, as I am a kindly soul and also a Southerner brought up to be awash in empathy and guilt. I suppose it can't hurt anybody's feelings now that I've forgotten the book, so I can be as wimpy as I like. Well, here it is . . . Nothing like a bit of scalding rant!

* * *

Have you ever picked up a bestselling book so very dreadful in its derivative story and incoherent, tin-eared writing that it cleaves your heart to think that such things are our native culture, and what masses of people run after like the unfortunate, cute, suicidal, cliff-mad lemmings in Disney's 1950's White Wilderness? Just now I accidentally tripped and fell into such a book, and for about fifteen minutes I was in how long, O Lord, how long mode, caught up in Swift's savage indignation and unable to accept the ways of a world that shines up dross to be slick gold and ignores the well-made in favor of the "All out of shape from toe to top" (Yeats, "Under Ben Bulben").

Actually I felt more dramatic than that--more like a maddened-by-frustration Ignác Fülöp Semmelweis, who tried to teach nineteenth-century doctors that handwashing could save many women from childbed fever mortality, but who was ignored and committed to an asylum, where he died two weeks later after being professionally beaten by the guards. There's an epic comparison for you!

That's all.

Better.

Downright full of calm acceptance and irrational hope for the future of the world and its arts and letters...

The cupboard child

One of the M. S. Corley designs
for the Potter books--see more here.

In which a mid-list writer and mother of three explains to the bestselling J. K. Rowling why she is wrong to go around disturbing the laws of books and re-marrying her hapless characters in retrospect . . . and why she was right in the first place.

Dear J. K. Rowling,

I happen to be rather weak on popular culture except where it intersects with one of my three children. The Potter books intersected with all three. I have listened to Harry Potter on CD and tape with three children in the car. I have watched the movies. And I have read the entire series aloud 1.5 times to my youngest because he wanted me to read until he fell asleep but then the next night would beg me to backbackback up to the point where he could clearly remember. This backing-up business was sometimes a bit of a trial, but I did it out of maternal love and possibly a smidge of desperation. Sleep is good.

So I have a piece of helpful news for you, fellow writer, now that you've violated the integrity of the books and declared that you really should have married Hermione to Harry. You are in luck because I happen to know that you are wrong.

Oh, I see exactly what you mean. Sure, Ron and Hermione might not appear like a workable choice at first glance. They were, as John Granger says, a fit pair for "the quarreling couple" of alchemy. In real life, if they jumped over the broomstick together, they might break up in a few years. They might never have made it to marriage because once they got over the intensity of mutual attraction, there might not have been enough beyond shared experience to hold them together. Most teens do, in fact, break up in our world and even in that weird reflection-world of wizardry.

Yes, marrying Hermione to Ron looks at first like a bit of a mistake. I expect some people would say that Hermione would be better off with a clever Ravenclaw boy who wouldn't stop her from becoming headmistress of Hogwarts, say. What's in favor of them as a couple? Well, be sure to remember that Ron is brighter, more funny, and quicker to help in the books than in the movies, and that major shared experience and mutual understanding are no small things. But that's not why they end up together.

No doubt Harry + Hermione is a fetching idea--world's most famous wizard and the brightest witch of the age! That wedding sounds just about right for a romantic daydream. No doubt it might have crossed their quick, imaginative minds . . . and no doubt there would be that odd bond between them that comes from could-have-been combined with the sharing of major experiences.

But a Harry and Hermione marriage is not what happened.

What happens in a book happens in a closed world and doesn't change. You married off Ron and Hermione. You linked up Harry and Ginny. That's done.

Why did you do it? I'll tell you.

Remember how Lupin says Harry's instincts are good and nearly always right? Why are you mistrusting him at this late juncture? In fact, Harry gains infinitely more by choosing Ginevra Weasley over Hermione Granger.

Ginny brings with her the bright, abundant dowry of the things he always wanted in life and never had. He gains a wide wizarding family, full of people he already admires and loves--and even the requisite family priss-pot, somebody about whom everybody else can complain. What does Hermione offer in the way of family? A pair of nice . . . dentists. A future that means a tiny nuclear group. In the expansive Weasley clan, Harry will be an uncle many times over as well as a father. There, he has a second pair of parents who already care about him. He has big brothers. He possesses a resonant history with them all, and he is attached to the memory of their dead. We can even say that Harry becomes a kind of fraternal twin to make up for the dead Weasley twin, Fred, for he and Ron are the same age and share boyish passion for broomsticks and quidditch. His best friend becomes his brother.

Now then, what about Hermione, his other best friend? (Let's note here that the books press onward toward the restoration of Harry's broken world, and that Hermione and others help in that restoration. If you accept that idea, you accept that the thrust of story is not about Hermione--it's not even about romance or who ends up with whom.) In the context of a Harry-Ginny union, having Hermione marry Ron becomes an added bonus for Harry--she too becomes his family when she marries Ron and becomes his sister. In this way, Harry becomes related to all the living people he loves most. And this is the only way they can all be related, the only way that nobody is left out of the circle of Harry's deepest loves.

You see? Harry wins. He takes home all the toys. The cupboard child who was last is now first.

Still feeling a bit disappointed at the way you restored Harry's world, broken when he was still a baby? Listen, who's going to be the most thrilling choice for Harry? He's not all that bookish, you know. There's not much library paste holding him down. Who's going to fly off with Harry on a wild broomstick ride at midnight and frolic in the treetops? It's not going to be Hermione, who doesn't even like brooms. It'll be tomboy Ginevra, the little red-haired girl who snitched her brothers' broomsticks out of the shed at the Burrow and taught herself to fly. It'll be Ginny Weasley, quidditch star.

So let's quit talking about what might have been--a book is a shaped thing, a microcosm. What happens in it is what happens, and nothing more!

Mischief managed--
Marly