MetaBooks – Required Reading

Unmask Alice

September 13, 2022 Shay Shortt

by Rick Emerson

ISBN 9781637740439

“It was a marketer’s wet dream. Alice was vile and vital. Immoral and important. Alice was grubby, and sleazy, and might save your life.”

In 1971, a surprise best seller took the youth literary scene by storm. Marketed by publisher Prentice-Hall as the real diary of an anonymous fifteen-year-old girl who becomes addicted to drugs before her early death, Go Ask Alice sold out print runs and was recognized as one of the best new books for young readers by the American Library Association. In reality, the book had been “edited” by an aspiring writer who had spent years looking for her big break, trying her hand at scriptwriting, newspapers, and more before hitting on the idea that would make her (in)famous. But the story about where and how she got the diary was constantly shifting, and her publisher and agent agreed it would better to publish the book anonymously. In 1978 she would try to recreate that success with Jay’s Journal, a cautionary tale of drug use and the occult that tied neatly into satanic panic. In Unmask Alice, radio host Rick Emerson investigates the origins of these best-selling books, and the deceptions of the woman who “discovered” them.

I found Alice on the shelf of the library at my Catholic K-7 elementary school circa 1998. A dark paperback with stark white lettering on a minimalist cover, I believe that it was, by that time, shelved in the fiction section, not far from the Judy Blume books I had already voraciously consumed. I remember being surprised to discover it; after reading only a small part of the contents, I wondered if the librarian and the school knew it was there. It was catalogued, so of course they knew on some level, but did they know what it contained? It was significantly more graphic than the Judy Blume books I knew some of my classmates had been forbidden by their parents to read. On the one hand, I wasn’t wrong to be surprised; Go Ask Alice was still appearing on the American Library Association’s most banned books list in the 1990s, more than two decades after its publication. On the other, it was a scared straight story, precisely the sort of book that has its moralizing agenda well-served by some lurid details. If my library possessed any of the other pseudo-diaries produced by the same author/editor, I never came across them.

In a compulsively readable narrative non-fiction style, Rick Emerson introduces us to the woman behind the books. After a hard-knock childhood, she had long aspired to be a famous writer, but had enjoyed little success. Yet she persisted for decades, while also raising a family and remaining active in her church. After the smash success of Alice, she would go on to produce a laundry list of diaries, case studies, and interviews that touched on other hot button youth issues, from hippie runaways, to satanic panic, to HIV/AIDs and teen pregnancy. As her back catalogue grew, so too did her supposed credentials and experiences, until eventually she was appending PhD after her name on the covers of all her books. She seemed to grow increasingly determined that her name never be erased again the way it was removed from Alice. The BYU library, which holds her papers, cites these supposed credentials in her biography, but the Emerson was unable to verify any of them, or find any evidence that she ever had an adolescent psychology practice. For all that her name is easily discoverable, I’m reluctant to give her the fame of her stolen glory, much of which came at the expense of a real family that had lost a child to suicide.

In some ways, Emerson mimics the style of the very books he is investigating, presenting each short section with a date header, not unlike the manner of a diary. Mid-book, Emerson switches to the story of Alden Barrett, a young man living in a small community near Provo, Utah in the 1970s. If you aren’t familiar with Jay’s Journal, this is a rather abrupt switch without an evident connection to Alice. It is a sad story that ends in suicide, but not a terribly sensational one. When Alden’s mother learned that the editor of the famous Go Ask Alice was a near neighbour and fellow member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she approached her with her son’s diary. But the book eventually published as Jay’s Journal took enough real details from Alden’s life for him to be publically recognizable to his community, while also adding a gory occult subplot that turned him into gruesome urban legend that persists to this day.

As Emerson impresses upon the reader early on, publishers do not typically take responsibility for fact checking books; their contracts typically indemnify them. Indeed, Emerson shares that portion from his very own contract. So it is quite the surprise to find Emerson arguing that because most of the facts in Unmask Alice are a matter of public record that can be checked by anyone, citations are unnecessary. Be that as it may, citations make it significantly easier to perform such verification, rather than trying to reverse engineer the author’s research process. The lack of explicit sourcing adds a note of caution to what was otherwise and intriguing and readable account of a very long con. Instead, Emerson asks the reader to trust where he is going. And it turns out that the destination is a short section towards the very end of the book that reveals he may have discovered a real girl who might have been part of the inspiration for Alice. Not a real diary this time, but another real adolescent like Alden Barrett nevertheless. This speculation about a tiny seed of possible truth at the heart of Alice adds little to the overall narrative and brings the book to a weak conclusion.

—

You might also like American Kingpin by Nick Bilton

MetaBooks, Non-Fiction

The Heroine’s Journey

November 5, 2020October 26, 2020 Shay Shortt

by Gail Carriger

ISBN 9781944751500

“I like it when things end happily, and most of the time that means, to me, together. I enjoy it when characters end up in solidarity, friends or family, lovers or platonic. That’s what I hunt for…connection.”

The Heroine’s Journey is a story structure book mapped to three goddess myths, including Demeter, Isis, and Ishtar. Gail Carriger delineates three main stages, including The Descent, The Search, and The Ascent, and highlights key beats such as the breaking of the familial network in act one, the appeal to, or creation of, found family in act two, and the negotiation for reunification in act three. Each of these beats emphasizes the importance of relationships, casts asking for help as a strength, and points out that the heroine is weakest when she tries to go it alone. While the Heroine’s Journey can be turned tragic, the heroine is more likely to get a happy ending surrounded by friends and family. Carriger provides examples from a number of well-known pop culture works, relying particularly on Harry Potter and Twilight due to their common currency, and also talking about how she has employed the ideas in her own novels.

Carriger is the author of a variety of steampunk and urban fantasy fiction titles, including the young adult Finishing School series, and the Parasol Protectorate books. The Heroine’s Journey is her first non-fiction title, but her voice is still distinctly recognizable. She employs humour and short chapters with a chatty tone, but her insights are sharp if not always perfectly organized in her first foray into non-fiction. Her fiction books feature casts of cooperating characters building relationships and finding their place in the world, so it is no surprise that The Heroine’s Journey deals in precisely the types of stories Carriger likes to read and write. These are stories of connection, romantic, platonic, familial, and everything in between. Carriger was an anthropologist in a previous career, and describes The Heroine’s Journey as a social, anthropological approach to story with a grounding in the classics, and decidedly not a Jungian or psychoanalytic approach derivative of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey.

Although she emphasizes that the Heroine’s Journey is not derivative of the Hero’s Journey, Carriger does frequently cast the two in contrast to one another, using our familiarity with the Hero’s Journey to illuminate the key differences between these structures. She summarizes the Hero’s Journey in one pithy sentence as: “Increasingly isolated protagonist stomps around prodding evil with pointy bits, eventually fatally prods baddie, gains glory and honor.” By contrast, the Heroine’s Journey rendered in one pithy sentence is: “Increasingly networked protagonist strides around with good friends, prodding them and others to victory together.” The sections in which she examines what happens when a hero enters a Heroine’s Journey, or a heroine enters a Hero’s Journey are particularly interesting as a result of these conflicts and differences.

Carriger weaves an important caveat throughout the book, stating it explicitly up front, but then reiterating it throughout the text. Although it is called the Heroine’s Journey, it can be undertaken by a person of any gender, just as the Hero’s Journey can. She underscores this point by using the 2017 Wonder Woman movie as a prime example of the Hero’s Journey structure, and then arguing that Harry Potter is in fact a Heroine’s Journey, clearly hitting the beats of broken familial network, found family, and the importance of belong, love, and working together. This is key to her point that “biological sex characteristics are irrelevant to whether a main character is a hero or a heroine. In other words, women, female-identified, and non-binary characters can be heroes. Men, male-identified, and non-binary characters can be heroines.”

With National Novel Writing Novel upon us, I’d recommend this book for anyone writing a story that doesn’t map easily to something like the Hero’s Journey or other common plotting structures due to its emphasis on interpersonal relationships or emotional rather than action outcomes. Fans of mythology and those who enjoy looking for patterns and structures in their stories may also find The Heroine’s Journey to be an interesting exploration of story types and structures that are wildly popular with many readers but don’t fit well into other models.

Memoir, MetaBooks, Non-Fiction

Austen Years

October 6, 2020September 22, 2020 Shay Shortt

by Rachel Cohen

ISBN 9780374720827

“She is always, and still, reading Persuasion. She loves Persuasion. It is not the most brilliant or elegant or formally demanding, but it seems to know her, and all of them, so well. It has the depth of dreams, and like dreams it is incomplete, and she cannot really understand it.”

In 2012, Rachel Cohen was pregnant with her first child, and her father was dying of cancer. As these two major changes fundamentally upended her life, she found herself reading almost nothing but Jane Austen, an author she had first gone through as a senior in high school, but then never returned to. Slowly, she also found herself warming to memoir, a genre she had previously avoided despite being a teacher of creative non-fiction. As a dying wish, her father had charged her with publishing a letter he had written to a colleague, which had begun to shape what might have been the next phase of his career as an organizational psychologist. While her children grow, and her memories of her father inevitably begin to fade, Cohen struggles to find a way to fulfill her promise, while also grappling with the ways in which she has used Austen to order and interpret this season of her life.

Austen Years is a book about grief and change, and many of the most touching and emotional parts of the book relate to Cohen’s memories of her father, the sadness of slowly losing him even while he was still alive, and her responsibility for his legacy and memory after he has passed. I kept wondering when we would get to read the letter which is often referenced, but it is not included in the main body of the text, but rather attached as an appendix. I’d recommend flipping to the back and reading it the first time it is mentioned, and then continuing from there, as Cohen repeatedly picks up on many of its themes, including the references to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and works with them throughout the book.

You can only read a book for the first time once, though the impression it leaves may be hazy or crystal clear; Cohen has some of both in her memories of Austen. But reading a book about a book, or books, that you have read, is sometimes perhaps the closest thing to reading a book again for the first time. Seeing a familiar story through someone else’s eyes, through someone else’s life, defamiliarizes it just enough to render it fresh again. At the same time you hold it alongside your own impressions and memories, comparing and contrasting the two. It is also fascinating to see how different people can be as readers and rereaders. Like Cohen, I first read Austen in high school, and I revisit the novels often—most recently Emma—and often find comfort in them at times when I can focus on reading little else. But unlike the author, I always reread them in whole, beginning to end. Cohen in dips into parts, rereading only the final third of Sense and Sensibility for months at time, or lingering over the scene in which Darcy and Elizabeth walk together at the end of Pride and Prejudice and finally come to an understanding.

Cohen moves through five of Austen’s major works, beginning with Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice, graduating to Mansfield Park and Emma, and always circling back again and again to her favourite, Persuasion. She omits Northanger Abbey entirely, and briefly addresses the fragment known as Sanditon. She writes of Persuasion’s heroine as if she were a real acquaintance, beginning “when I first knew Anne Elliot,” and continuing from there. Having married late to a friend she had known for twenty years, Cohen relates deeply to Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth’s second chance romance, as well as the echoes of the loss of her mother that reverberate through Anne’s story. I admit I’ve also been secretly fond of steadfast Anne, Austen’s oldest heroine, who is no longer pretty, but gets her second chance at love anyway.

At turns touching and introspective, Austen Years is fragmentary, struggling after but never quite achieving cohesion. Cohen is trying to string almost too much together, and it shows even in her sentences, which are flighty and rife with commas trying and failing to do the work of more robust punctuation. The author is grasping after some kind of sense in the wake of loss, but seems unable to get the disparate parts to coalesce. Life and death are not always neat and orderly in that way, and so we roam from memoir to biography to literary criticism, and back again, as Cohen ranges over her marriage, her father’s life and career, Austen’s life and career, family, mortality, legacy, community, theatre, history, literary biography and more in a quest to understand why these works consumed her for so many years.

—

You might also like My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

Biography, History, MetaBooks, Non-Fiction

Jane Austen, the Secret Radical

August 11, 2020July 13, 2020 Shay Shortt

by Helena Kelly

ISBN 9781524732110

“Jane’s novels, in truth, are as revolutionary as anything thing that Wollstonecraft or Tom Paine wrote. By and large, they’re so cleverly crafted that unless readers are looking in the right places—reading them in the right way—they simply won’t understand.”

When Jane Austen died in July 1817, she had lived only forty-one years, a quiet life amongst her family and friends that does not make for a remarkable biography. She was unmarried, and lived with her widowed mother and spinster sister, in a cottage on the grounds of the estate of one of her many brothers. Between the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, England had been at war for most of her life, and she never had the chance to travel outside the country. In accordance with decorum, she did not publish under her own name during her lifetime. With such a scanty biography, and a family that was heavily invested in controlling her image after her death, Oxford professor Helena Kelly argues that to truly understand Austen’s life, we must look to her published works, because “it is impossible for anyone to write thousands upon thousands of words and reveal nothing of how she thinks or what she believes.” It is to Austen’s six novels that Kelly turns to understand the author’s true thoughts and opinions, bolstered by her letters and Kelly’s knowledge of English history. But while many people find Austen’s novels to be light romances, Kelly argues that we must read more deeply to unearth the true thoughts and less orthodox opinions of a woman who mocked the monarchy, criticized the clergy, and thumbed her nose at the titled aristocracy.

Kelly begins with Northanger Abbey, likely the first of Austen’s novels to be sold, and the last to be published, for the publisher that initially bought the rights never actually printed it. She later reacquired the rights, but it was not published until her after death, leaving open the question of whether she wanted this youthful manuscript to be read. Each chapter begins with a biographical sketch from the life of Jane Austen, showing where she was and what was happening in her life at the time she was working on each of her books, though this is an inexact business, as her early books in particular were likely worked on over many years. But the main part of each chapter is given over to close reading of Austen’s work, looking for evidence of her engagement with the radical ideology of the time in which she lived. Interestingly, Kelly never applies the word “radical” to Austen directly; she reserves this for political thinkers such as Thomas Paine, Edmund Burke, William Godwin, and Mary Wollestonecraft, and once applies it to Austen’s most famous heroine, Elizabeth Bennett.

When the characters from all of Austen’s books are taken together, as Kelly does here, it is clear that Austen did not think much of the nobility or clergy. Most of Austen’s characters are untitled gentry, but characters such as Sir William Lucas and Lady Catherine de Burgh are figures of fun, and the Reverend Mr. Collins still more so. The Reverend Mr. Elton of Emma is hardly better in his pretensions and flirtations, and Edmund Bertram, the hero of Mansfield Park, openly admits the he is going into the Church out of convenience rather than any sense of vocation; he knows that nepotism will provide him with a living. Altogether, Kelly makes a strong case that for the daughter of a clergyman, Austen did not have a great deal of respect for England’s traditional institutions and authorities.

It is also clear that Kelly’s view of Austen’s novels is not particularly romantic. In her reading of Sense and Sensibility, Kelly suggests that the math does not add up in the story Colonel Brandon tells Elinor about whether he is the father of his ward. He never outright denies the relationship, but seems to disavow it through his timeline. Kelly points out that the fortune that saved the estate Colonel Brandon inherited from his brother rightly belongs to his ward, since it was essentially stolen from her mother when Brandon’s father abused his guardianship and forced her to marry his older brother. In her close reading of Emma, she makes the case that Mr. Knightley is engaged in an enclosure of the commons, something that was happening at an extremely rapid pace during Austen’s lifetime, with serious consequences for the poor who relied on those resources. Kelly further suggests that by marrying Emma and Isabella, the Knightley brothers will eventually be able to complete an enclosure plan for Highbury and Donwell that the conservative and change-averse Mr. Woodhouse would be unlikely to agree to. Once married, their property belongs to their husbands when they eventually inherit Hartfield. Austen’s other heroes do not fare much better under Kelly’s scrutiny.

Helena Kelly knows her English history, and uses it to illuminate the context of Austen’s novels beyond the drawing rooms in which they take place. If her theories are sometimes far-fetched, they are always thought-provoking, and are looking to tie back to that history. “Read Jane’s novels,” Kelly implores, “they’re there to speak for her: love stories, yes, though not always happy ones, but also the productions of an extraordinary mind, in an extraordinary age. Read them again.” No doubt I will be thinking of her ideas the next time I revisit the texts, even as I doubt I will be taking some of her theories to heart.

—

You might also like The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn

MetaBooks, Non-Fiction

Shakespeare’s Library

April 2, 2019April 1, 2019 Shay Shortt

by Stuart Kells

ISBN 9781640091832

Disclaimer: I received a free review copy of this title from the publisher.

“In all this time, the search came to nought. Not a trace of his library was found. No books, no manuscripts, no letters, no diaries. The desire to get close to Shakespeare was unrequited, the vacuum palpable.”

For a playwright so prolific and widely beloved—at least today—William Shakespeare left surprisingly little behind on his death in 1616 at Stratford-upon-Avon. His will makes no mention of papers or books, though he famously left his wife his second-best bed. In literary scholarship, the books, letters, and papers of famous authors become, after death, invaluable treasure troves for those who study their work. But in the case of the English language’s most famous wordsmith, no such legacy remains. Stuart Kells follows the many efforts that have been made in the four centuries since the Bard’s death to locate his papers, and the various searches and expeditions that have tried to track down Shakespeare’s library. But the itinerant playwright seems to have left little trace, and much has been made of that vacuum. This title was originally released in Australia by Text Publishing in 2018, and is being published by Counterpoint in the United States.

Shakespeare’s Library is divided into three parts, including The First Searchers, The Heretical Searchers, and Visions of Shakespeare’s Library. Kells begins with the earliest efforts to locate the Bard’s papers. It is a complex history, fraught with false leads, and red herrings. Bemused Stratford-upon-Avon locals have been known to play tricks on the treasure seekers, such as pretending that they recently burned a stack of old papers that might have belonged to their most famous son. Other searchers turned out to be frauds and con men, happily supplying the lack of Shakespeare memorabilia with documents of their own creation. This hair raising history will be enough to make you question any such future discoveries that have not been carefully vetted.

While Shakespeare is regarded as high literature today, this is far from having always been the case. Drama was considered a low art, while poetry was the pinnacle of literature. If you sift through the Elizabethan English, the Bard’s plays are filled with ribald jokes and innuendos. Indeed, the very term “bowdlerize” arises from the work of the Bowdler siblings, who created The Family Shakespeare in the 19^th Century, expunging blasphemy and immorality from the plays, expurgating some ten percent of the original text to create a “cleaner” version suitable for family consumption. Indeed, Shakespeare was something of a vulgarizer of existing stories, punching them up for the stage. His shows played to popular acclaim, but little critical regard. While some book collectors did include play manuscripts in their libraries, they often did not bother to individually list them when cataloguing their collections.

The lack of survival of original play texts is even less surprising when you consider that the fad for first editions post-dates Shakespeare. Indeed, “in the seventeenth century, collectors replaced old editions with new ones, and regarded this as an improvement.” Still other collectors, more concerned with clean copies than original ones, thought nothing of a taking apart several editions, sometimes of different printings, and then rebinding them together into “mongrel editions,” thus completely destroying the “bibliographical integrity” of the books. Beyond just a history of the search for Shakespeare’s papers, Shakespeare’s Library also embeds a fascinating history of book collecting as passion and pastime.

Of course, one cannot go looking for the Bard’s papers without engaging with the Shakespeare Authorship Question. Nature abhors a vacuum, and a rush of frauds and conspiracy theories have arisen to fill it. If Shakespeare was merely a frontman for an anonymous aristocrat who was the real author of the plays, then of course it would not be surprising if he left no papers behind. Kells is an orthodox Stratfordian, but he attended university at Monash in Australia, which he discovered to be a surprising hotbed of anti-Stratfordians and Shakespeare heretics, an experience which Kells describes as being a bit like “discovering all your friends are Scientologists or swingers.” Kells is conversant with all of the various theories, as well as their problems and implications.

The argument that grows up from Shakespeare’s Library is much simpler; Shakespeare was a voracious borrower, an inveterate repurposer, perhaps even a shameless thief of existing texts. While ideas of authorship and copyright were much looser in Elizabethan times than our current understanding, Shakespeare was so egregious than even his contemporaries occasionally complained about his behaviour. Yet copious borrowing combined with diverse editors might make for exactly the sort of breadth and variety of knowledge that lead the conspiracy theorists to conclude that Shakespeare must have been an extremely well-educated and well-travelled aristocrat rather than a mere commoner who may have lacked so much a grammar school education.

Stuart Kells confidently takes the reader through this fascinating history, tracing the high highs and low lows of a centuries old quest. If the idea of Shakespeare’s original manuscripts makes you salivate a little, if the Shakespeare Authorship question horrifies and fascinates you in equal measure, then this is the book for you.

—

You might also like How to Be a Tudor by Ruth Goodman

History, MetaBooks, Non-Fiction, True Crime

The Real Lolita

September 20, 2018September 20, 2018 Shay Shortt

by Sarah Weinman

ISBN 978-0-06-266192-0

Disclaimer: I received a free advance review copy of this title from the publisher at ALA Annual 2018.

“Lolita, when published, was infamous, then famous, always controversial, always a topic of discussion. It has sold more than sixty million copies worldwide in its sixty-plus years of life. Sally Horner, however, was largely forgotten, except by her immediate family members and close friends.”

In 1948, eleven-year-old Sally Horner was kidnapped by recently released sex offender Frank La Salle, who coerced her into going with him after he caught her shoplifting a notebook from the five and dime in Camden, New Jersey. The kidnapping, however, was anything but simple. La Salle forced Horner to lie to her mother, Ella, saying that he was the father of school friends, and that she had been invited to join the family for their seashore holiday. Ella, a harried single mother, agreed, much to her later regret. Sally would not be seen again for nearly two years, during which time she would travel around the country with her abductor, who posed as her father in public, but had much more sinister intentions in private. If this story sounds somewhat familiar, perhaps you are thinking of Vladamir Nabokov’s famous novel, Lolita, in which the pedophile Humbert Humbert travels across America with his step-daughter Dolores Haze. Indeed, the Sally Horner case is referenced in the novel, but while Lolita has remained famous, Sally Horner has largely faded from popular memory. In The Real Lolita, Sarah Weinman builds her case for identifying Sally Horner as the true inspiration behind Nabokov’s novel, digging into archives, and conducting interviews, hoping to restore Sally to her rightful place in history.

The Real Lolita expands upon Weinman’s eponymous 2014 essay for Hazlitt magazine. Despite being a lengthy piece, Weinman felt she still was not done with Horner’s story, and in her book she attempts to further flesh out the case of the real girl who may have inspired Nabokov’s famous character. But although Weinman is a thorough and meticulous investigator, in some ways, there is no satisfaction to be had. Very often, the answers to her most burning questions were “we don’t know” or “the records are lost” or “we can only speculate.” And speculate she does, imagining what Sally’s days living with Frank La Salle must have been like, though no diary was kept, and Sally was never known to have spoken of it to her family after the fact. Because La Salle pled guilty in court, she never had to testify against him. Tragically, Sally died in a car accident only two years after her escape, never having seized control of her own story. Where she cannot find direct answers, Weinman tries to provide context, sharing available information, and drawing parallels to other cases of the time.

Although many answers were not forthcoming despite Weinman’s investigation, one of the strengths of The Real Lolita is the way in which it firmly centers Sally’s perspective and experience. Even when writing about the fictional Dolores Haze, Weinman refers to her as Dolores, only using the epithet Lolita when discussing Humbert’s point of view. Weinman never loses sight of the fact that Sally was a real girl who was the victim of a terrible crime. She is deeply sympathetic to what Sally suffered, both before and after her ordeal. Even after her escape, Sally was the victim of a double standard that meant that despite being a child, she was still regarded as tainted at best, and a slut at worst. Speaking to the press, Ella Horner said “whatever Sally has done, I can forgive her,” as if a child needs to be forgiven for being the victim of a crime. Sally’s time with La Salle would be the subject of gossip among her classmates for the rest of her short life, subjecting her to rude remarks, and entitled advances from male peers. As Weinman puts it, “Sally Horner was forever marked.”

I have to confess here that I have never read Lolita, and further admit that I’m not sure I ever will. The very thought of the plot churns my stomach, and even the desire to dig into Weinman’s assessment of Sally Horner’s influence on the plot couldn’t quite bring me to pick it up. Weinman herself notes that Nabokov had a long history of obsession with the theme of pedophilia, which turned up in many of his short works which predate Lolita, and even Sally Horner’s birth. Nabokov’s earliest work on the novel also predates the Sally Horner case, though it would not be published until five years after her escape. Biographers and scholars have found no evidence connecting Nabokov himself to children in that way, and in fact, quite the opposite; in his biography he recounts an episode of abuse in which he was fondled by his uncle, which may perhaps constitute the genesis of his obsession.

Given the above timelines, while the Sally Horner case may have shaped the final product, the concept for Lolita was certainly not inspired by her kidnapping. The Nabokovs, for their part, rigourously denied any connection as a matter of form; they believed in the primacy of art, and “if art was to prevail—and for the Nabokov’s it always did—then explicitly revealing what lay behind the curtain of fiction in the form of a real life case could shatter the illusion of total creative control.” It is up to Weinman, then, to gather circumstantial evidence about what Nabokov knew, and when, about the Sally Horner case. When she went missing, the story was not covered in his local newspapers. No clippings or documentation exist in his archives or papers. There are certainly parallels between to two stories to suggest that Sally’s more widely covered rescue may have helped crystalize Nabokov’s floundering obsession, but no conclusive proof. Yet Sally Horner’s story is worth remembering, whether or not she is the “real” Lolita.

MetaBooks, Non-Fiction

Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy

August 30, 2018August 30, 2018 Shay Shortt

by Anne Boyd Rioux

ISBN 978-0-393-25473-0

Disclaimer: I received a free advance review copy of this title from the publisher at ALA Annual 2018.

“Alcott’s novel is not what it at first appears to be. What seems like a tale from a simpler time turns out to be the product of a difficult and sometimes troubled life. What appears to be a sweet, light story of four girls growing up is also very much about how hard it was (and is) to come of age in a culture that prizes a woman’s appearance over her substance.”

In 1868, Louisa May Alcott published Little Women, a work for girls that had been requested by her publisher. It was not the kind of thing Alcott usually wrote, but she had compelling financial considerations in supporting her parents and siblings that prompted her to take the leap. The result would be a best-selling novel first published in two parts, but known in America today as a single story, which has remained alive through the generations, adapted into stage plays, radio dramas, films, and television mini-series. 2018 marks the 150^th anniversary of the novel, and in Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy, University of New Orleans professor Anne Boyd Rioux examines the legacy of the novel in the American canon and popular culture, arguing that while the novel has a special place in readers’ hearts, its acknowledgement as a significant work of American literature has been circumscribed by sexism in a society that continues to devalue women writers, young female readers, and especially works that center their experiences.

Anne Boyd Rioux is an academic, known for her studies on the work of American novelist and poet Constance Fenimore Woolson. However, Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy is written for a general audience, inclusive of the many types of reader that have appreciated Little Women over the years. The scholarship is not lacking, and the book includes a significant section of notes and references. Rioux clearly comes down in favour of the historical value of the text, and argues for it to be taught more broadly, but she is also able to acknowledge the complexity and contradictions of its feminist legacy, and the many different ways that readers have interpreted Alcott’s choices. In the UK, for example, where the book is often published in two volumes, many readers remain blissfully unaware of a second part of the novel in which (spoilers!) Beth dies, Amy and Laurie marry, and Jo puts her dreams of becoming a writer on hold when she marries Professor Bhaer and opens a school. And American readers who never continued on to Little Men or Jo’s Boys may feel betrayed by Jo giving up her dream, never realizing that she picks up her pen once more in the sequels, and becomes a famous writer.

Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy might be considered a biography of both Louisa May Alcott, and the novel she wrote, though significantly more of the book is dedicated to the latter. Whereas the early part of the books draws heavily on existing biographical work about Alcott, the later chapters incorporate more of Rioux’s own exploration and analysis of the work and its legacy. There are chapters dedicated to examining the various editions the book went through, and how the different illustrators have put their mark on, and changed perceptions of, the book over time. I found this section particularly interesting given that the edition of the book I am most familiar with has a cover image, but no interior illustrations whatsoever. Rioux also analyzes the choices made in the various adaptations—including a 1933 version starring Katherine Hepburn as Jo, a 1949 version with June Allyson, and the 1994 film starring Winona Ryder that is best known to my own generation—and the role media played in keeping Little Women alive in the public imagination. This certainly rings true to how the book initially came into my own life; the box set I first read was published simultaneously with the 1994 film adaptation, with an introduction by Anna Quindlen. Rioux notes that the early film versions were heavily driven by romance, despite the significant emphasis placed on familial relationships in the book, but does not delve further into how romance tends to be feminized and devalued.

A significant part of the book is dedicated to addressing the feminist issues that have hindered the work’s path to being considered a classic or taught in schools. In the early days, the book was actually considered too radical and insufficiently Christian, since Alcott’s transcendentalist upbringing did not jive with more conservative Christian practices. The Sunday School market actively encouraged a boycott of her work for many years for this reason. Meanwhile, despite the novel’s initial popularity with boys and girls, adults and children, over the years Little Women’s target audience has been circumscribed, and it has gained a reputation as a sappy novel suitable only for young girls. According to Rioux, the devaluation of books for girls has played a significant role in preventing Little Women from taking its place in the American canon of great novels, alongside works for boys like Tom Sawyer, which has suffered no such limitations. Rioux does acknowledge that the length of the book might also be a limiting factor for teachers, and suggests teaching only the first part of the novel, as it was originally published, to overcome this hurdle.

My own relationship with Little Women has been as complex as this history acknowledges. On first encounter, I found it incredibly tedious, and if memory serves, it was actually Laurie’s romantic mooning that drove me off. On second pass, only a couple of years later, I was gripped by the story, which of course hadn’t changed a jot since my last attempt. This time I was devastated by what I perceived as Laurie’s betrayal of Jo. Yet on rereading the book this year for the first time in well over a decade, I was struck most by its lessons on morality. It is almost incomprehensible that the book was once considered insufficiently Christian given Marmee’s preachy asides and little lessons. This isn’t a book that is easily encompassed, and Rioux does her best to incorporate the complexities and contradictions inherent in Alcott’s legacy, which inexorably shape how we view the book today.

___
You might also like Not Just Jane by Shelley De Wees

History, MetaBooks, Non-Fiction

The Book Thieves

June 7, 2018June 3, 2018 Shay Shortt

by Anders Rydell

Translated by Henning Koch

ISBN 978-0-73522123-9

“The image of Nazis as anti-intellectual cultural vandals has been persistent, possibly to some degree because it is easy to comprehend, and possibly because we would like to see literature and the written word as fundamentally good. But even the Nazis realized that if there was something that gave more power than merely destroying the word, it was owning and controlling it. There was a power in books.”

The image of Nazis burning books is a striking and pervasive one, because of course it is based in the truth of the pyres that were made in public squares across Germany as the Third Reich rose to power. But in The Book Thieves, Anders Rydell tackles and attempts to recontextualize that image by uncovering the extent to which the Nazis were collectors of stolen literature—not just of valuable manuscripts as you might already be familiar with from Monuments Men—but of books of all types, from all across Europe. Rydell, a Swedish journalist, follows the trail of the pillagers from Berlin to Amsterdam and Paris, and beyond to Vilnius and Thessaloniki, demonstrating the far reach of the Nazi looters. Entire libraries disappeared, sometimes untraceably, into the mists of the war. Rydell chronicles the actors who seized and dispersed the libraries, as well as the modern librarians who now face the unenviable task of uncovering and facing up to the origins of their collections.

For decades, German libraries have tried to ignore or hide the provenance of many of the items in their collections acquired during or as a result of the war. Fly leaves were cut out, and ex libris labels were scraped or torn away. Some libraries went so far as to forge a different provenance for their acquisitions. But a new generation of library professionals have refused to look away any longer, and “they are fighting a retroactive battle against their former colleagues, who for decades have been rubbing out, tearing off, or falsifying the provenance of these books—all to make them blend into the collection.” Without an ex libris, or inscription, most privately owned books are untraceable. But others come from famous libraries, some of which are now lost to history, and others which still operate despite their losses.

While some books were stolen outright from synagogues, libraries, and Freemason’s Lodges, or plundered from abandoned Jewish residences, others were obtained by coercion. Some very rare and valuable items were added to the Goethe Archive by means of an extortionate deal with a Jewish book collector who knew that he would not be able to flee the country with these famous national treasures, and so was forced to sell them for a pittance. Only in 2006 were his descendants compensated for the discrepancy between the value of the collection, and what was paid for it at the time.

The darkest twist in Rydell’s narrative comes in the chapters that address the Jewish scholars and intellectuals whose forced labour made the creation of the Nazi book depositories possible. In Berlin, they were required to translate and explain Hebrew and Yiddish texts for the SS, because there were not enough “Aryan” translators who knew these languages. In Vilnius, Belarus, a group of Jews were put to work sorting the plunder that would be sent back to Germany by the occupiers. This “intellectual slave labor” forced the prisoners into a terrible choice between consigning their books to the invaders and hoping that they would survive the war to perhaps be reclaimed, or keeping them from Nazi hands and seeing them destroyed. They also knew that when the work ran out and there were no more books to sort, they too would be sent to the death camps. A resistance of book smugglers nevertheless emerged in the group.

What is perhaps most interesting about The Book Thieves is trying to understand why the Nazis stole various texts and libraries. The desire for books by national heroes, or to control the image of famous literary Germans shaped some of their work at home. To this end, they also seized control of publishing, literary awards, and even book clubs. In the Jewish libraries, they were seeking an understanding of their “enemy” and searching for evidence of the great Jewish world conspiracy that drove their hatred. The Freemasons were suspect thanks to their international connections, but certain groups within the party were nevertheless desirous of their rumoured occult knowledge, and the libraries that supported it. In the occupied territories, even books that were of no interest for the purposes of Nazi “research” were taken, and often destroyed, in an attempt to crush the unique cultural identities of the people in those countries. In short, it was never as simple as just seizing and burning the work of undesirables, or asking Germans to purge their own collections to this end. Various groups within the party were at work to further the creation of the “Thousand Year Reich,” and books played a part in many of their plans.

The Book Thieves gives greater depth to our understanding of how the Nazis treated books and literature both before and during the war. I also felt it as a sort of professional call to arms, a reminder to librarians everywhere that we can and have been complicit in atrocities for which full restitution can never be made. And the end of the war did not end the thefts; the Red Army stole in kind, not just taking back stolen books, but laying claim to the Russian books that had belonged to an expatriate library in Paris. Individual soldiers also stole books, scattering some of the lost volumes across the world when the armies dispersed. And more than a million books were sent to the Library of Congress by a delegation sent from Washington, D.C. The problem of restitution is not merely a German one, and The Book Thieves is a means to understand both oppression and complicity in an ongoing tragedy.

___
You might also like In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson