Ernest Hemingway is pretty passe these days, but in his wonderful memoir of his time in Paris, he wrote something that returns to me every time I’m here “If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.” And so it is. Right here it’s going to rain, and the sky is far more grey-blue forbidding than I could get the camera to record, and it’s around 4 PM and we’ve been walking since 10 AM this morning. And we haven’t really done anything – not in the way tourists go into museums and enrich themselves. For us these streets, and the Seine, and the beautiful old buildings and boulevards – well, they’re the richest of all.
It’s pouring rain on the bookstores of Boulevard St. Michel on the Left Bank near the Sorbonne, but that doesn’t stop the book shoppers. Paris is a city of readers, one where great writers have been held as heroes and mourned by the city – and much of the entire nation when they died. There are many restaurants and cafes on the Left Bank, which had been home not only to Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Beach but also to Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Paul Sartre and so many others. They are crammed with people all the time – whether it’s the Deux Magots or the Brasserie Lipp or Cafe de Flore because these places have an enormous literary history and those who visit here know that these are the places to visit even if they’ve never read The Second Sex or The Sun Also Rises or even The Great Gatsby.
Or maybe they just know, like these two troubadours, that Paris, when you’re young, (or, hopefully, any other age) is still a gift. So many have already written better words about the indelible impact of this lovely place; I’m really just here to agree with them.
At the big Paris flea market, Marche aux Puces St-Ouen de Clignancourt, which takes up several city blocks, this portrait was among the items for sale. I’ve seen people reading Dreams from My Fatheron the Metro (seriously, the guy next to me, honest) and everyone wants to talk about him. What a difference!
You can see it there – the street name in English and, I think, Bengali – the street brought to life in Monica Ali’s wonderful book. Brick Lane was a sensation, well reviewed on both sides of the Atlantic and beyond, as well it should have been. Reading it, a reader not only felt the feelings, but also heard the voices and smelled the cooking smells of a crowded immigrant neighborhood in London’s East End.Well we went there today, expecting to see the veiled women, street food and crowded food markets that orient us in a neighborhood like the one we lived in as we read Brick Lane. But the book was published six years ago. And Nazneen, her sad husband, lover and daughters have surely moved on.
Gentrification has arrived – as surely as this old shop will soon be transformed into a web-connected, foam and half-caf coffee joint. As we walked the streets today, they were full of cool people in multiple earrings, tight skits, hip tee shirts and modern demeanor, and with the goods to satisfy them. Revealing, low cut short skirted dresses, funky feathered jewelry, pork pie hats and weird purses hung from stalls in side markets and on the Lane itself. Music was bluegrass and Hendrix and newer than that — nothing remotely ethnic. There are lots of curry and other ethnic restaurants but they have wine lists and chic fonts for their menus. And there are liquor stores.
I’m not sure precisely why I’m telling you this except to remind us to be grateful for gifts like this wonderful novel. Things have surely changed here on Brick Lane, but thanks to Monica Ali, her ear, her eyes and, especially, her heart and empathy and imagination, we have a lovely document of life as it was here just a decade ago. This immigrant literature, whether it’s Ali, or Lahiri or Henry Roth or Saul Bellow or Amy Tan or Betty Smith, provides historical scrapbooks as communities shift, or are displaced. So it’s nothing new; it’s just so dramatic to arrive on the Tube at a place so recently real to me and to see it, already, well past the point it lives in in my mind.
There were so many of us in 1968, joined to battle the Vietnam War by helping Eugene McCarthy run for president. We lost the Senator several years ago, and Eli Segal, one of the best, soon after. Today I learned of the loss of another of the dear ones, Eden Ross Lipson. She died this morning of pancreatic cancer. You can see from this photo that she was a woman who relished life and laughter. Her greatest joys: her husband and her kids.
Although we shared a history from the campaign, we also shared some great lunches and adventures in Manhattan, where she had dozens of friends who loved and respected her. Principled and kind, she was a joy and support to so many.
Her generosity went far beyond the love of children that made her such a great advocate for the joy they would find in their books. It was she who gave me my first review assignment and it led to an entire side career as a book reviewer that lasted for years. She was a tough and smart editor, too.
I remember my review of one of my favorites: Jane Yolen’s The Devil’s Arithmetic. A time-travel Holocaust story, it is a beautiful book. I submitted a very positive review. Soon after, Eden called. In a tone slipping between amused and professional, she reminded me that not all parents were as open as I was, and that I needed to add some kind of caution to parents who were more protective about at what age their kids were exposed to tough information. She was right, of course. I began an embarrassed apology. Her response: if people didn’t need editors she wouldn’t have a job! I fixed the piece and it ran. Later, it was Eden who connected me with the editor who published my first book. She did it, as she did all things, with no expectation of reciprocal benefit. These sorts of things are typical of the warmth and kindness she showed to everyone who knew her.
Life is strange. Eden was someone I knew, respected and cared about. I lost touch with her, as with so many others, when we moved to Los Angeles. My life then just didn’t allow for working to stay connected; there were hard things happening and they made it difficult to think outside the immediate circumstances of my life. And so I’m doubly sad as I struggle to write about a woman with such a mind, and a spirit, and a heart.
I’m comforted to know, though, that she had friends and family around her, supportive and caring, in her last days. That’s no surprise; it’s what she offered so many others.
You’re looking at a heroine here, a tireless advocate of “freedom to read” and the First Amendment. Her name is Judith Krug, known to many as “Judy” and a brave and wonderful woman. As Director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom since it was founded in 1967, she also founded “Banned Books Week” in 1982. That’s how I met her.
I’d done stories before about First Amendment issues and someone gave her my number. She called to tell me that the last week of September, 1982, would be the first ALA Banned Books Week and wouldn’t the Today Show like to cover it? Of course we would. Look at some of the most banned books over the years – here in the US! Surprising at best, eh? They include Harry Potter, Huck Finn, Of Mice and Men, The Catcher in the Rye and Kaffir Boy. Appalled by the list, I remember starting the piece with film of the Nazi book burnings in Berlin. Judy loved it!
But banned books were far from her only concern. As the Chicago Tribute wrote:
Mrs. Krug worked directly with librarians across the country who were engaged in censorship battles. She enlisted allies from fields that are
affected by 1st Amendment attacks such as publishers and journalists,
said Robert Doyle, executive director of the Illinois Library
Association.
“She was concerned about the gamut of expression,
so that people could go to the library and encounter the full
marketplace of ideas,” Doyle said.
Beyond books was her opposition to filters on library computers and her less-noticed championing of free expression in video games. A Game Politics piece includes this:
Judith was instrumental in the fight against video game censorship. She was a forceful advocate for Media Coalition amicus
briefs in the Indianapolis, St. Louis, Illinois, Minnesota, and
California video game cases. It would have been easy for the librarians
to say, “That’s not our battle,” but thankfully that wasn’t Judith’s
temperament.
Judith was a fierce believer in the importance of
freedom of expression to our culture and our society and was zealous
defender of the First Amendment. We all have truly benefited from her
passion.
Judy died on April 11th. She leaves a family who will miss her, I’m sure. But she leaves a legacy for the rest of us too, one for which we should be grateful. Anyone who loves to read, who wants to be able to ask a librarian for a special book for a quirky kid, who wants to use the library computer to do research or read off-the-wall news stories, or who just loves to wander in the stacks or online looking for something that never occurred to them, or a special idea or book or website — we’ll miss her too.
This photo is on my friend Leticia's wonderful blog Tech Savvy Mama. Why? Today is the birthday of the wonderful Theodor Seuss Geisel , known to all of us as Dr. Seuss. For twelve years now, the week of Dr. Seuss's birthday ( he was born in 1904) has been "Read Across America" week, which uses Geisel's beloved books to encourage reading and a love of books.
Leticia has a wonderful set of resources for activities, books, games and teacher support for any who want to make the most of this very smart holiday. Everyone from the National Education Association, which initiated the effort, to Reading Rockets to You Tube boasts special features. Leticia even has a link to free digital book downloads!
So for heaven's sake, send every kid you know a Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss email or call them and sing happy birthday with them. Even better, hit Tech Savvy Mama and use some of the dozens of great ideas to share some quality time with them.
Oh, and, in case you forgot, here's a list of the amazing works of this remarkable man, from the Seussville website:
First-ever Times of London Man of the Year. This is pretty amazing if you’ve followed the disdain with which the U.S., and particularly George Bush, have been viewed here in Europe. The UK may in many ways be more angry than most, because they were sucked into the Iraq war too.
But my son, the one who works in London and has been going back and forth for five years or more,reported that the day after the election it felt better to be American in Europe than it had in a long time. Add that to what happened when Obama went to Berlin: the amazing reception arising, I believe, because he stands for the America that the rest of the world wants to know. The America of promise and compassion and justice and hope.
Now the Times of London, one of the great London newspapers, has, in its first Timers Person of the Year – worldwide – chosen President-Elect Barack Obama. In their editorial, they say:
What, then, made Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency so remarkable, such a landmark event, is not the fact of his improbability or of his extraordinary background. What made it landmark is the nature of those things. For unlike his predecessors, Mr Obama’s improbability, Mr Obama's extraordinary background, is not just important to him and to the story of his personal triumph. It caps a period of incredible change in America and makes possible incredible change in the world. And it is this – and the way he won the presidency – that made him the obvious choice as The Times Person of 2008.
Of course the next four years are pretty scary, and it's probably impossible for him to live up to all we hope for him, but at least, for now, we are once again members in good, or at least better, standing, in the world community.
There's more evidence. These are the best-sellers in Waterston's bookstore in Chiswick. Number one and number four. This will be a president the world wants to know. So while it's scary, it's also exciting: to have selected a leader who makes us proud, through a process that made us proud, to have elected an African American president for our country, which, with all its troubles, once again makes us proud too. The Bush years broke more hearts than our own, and the world reaction to Obama, from the Berlin speech to the London Times to front pages and African murals and Sunday commentary from one end of the world to the other proves it.
We don't know what will come next; we don't know how we will respond to that which is asked of us – and much will be. But we do know, I think, that we have chosen, as our leader, someone whose place in the world enhances that of our country, and of us, and begins to build the faith, and determination, that will take us where we need to go.
I was in high school when I read Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin's heartbreaking story of pain and loss. It was the first time I'd understood anything of the harsh realities of life for gay men, and it changed me, opened my soul and my mind the way great writers are supposed to. Toni Morrison, his close friend who has often said that she misses him still, told NPR's Michele Martin how much she would have loved to see his reaction to the election of Barack Obama. Me too.
I kept thinking of Baldwin as I sat in a screening of Milk ,the story of a gay man, years later, who fought discrimination with determination – and humor – and lost his life to an assassin in the process. Harvey Milk, played by Sean Penn, moved to San
Francisco from a dead-end job in Manhattan and ended up launching a political gay rights movement that took over first the Castro, then San Francisco, then the nation. Battling anti-gay referenda in cities, towns and states, he made it possible, in ways probably not dreamed of when Baldwin fled US racism and homophobia by moving to Paris in the 1940's, for gays to live openly.
Here's what's hard though. Baldwin wrote Giovanni's Room in 1956, when gay men suffered, for the most part, in secret. Harvey Milk led his battles in the 1970's, as, at least in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, they emerged from the closet into the light, fighting for their rights every day as efforts were made to push them back into silence. In California, one of Milk's greatest successes was the defeat of a bill that would force the termination of all gay teachers.
Look at us now. On the same landmark day that we elected Barack Obama president, California, in a statewide referendum, repealed the right for gays to marry. Similar efforts have become a cottage industry, and have succeeded all over the country.
Where kids are concerned, Florida, where Anita Bryant originated her cruel anti-gay campaign in the 70's, is still fighting to maintain a recently-overturned ban on gay adoption. Arkansas and Utah ban any unmarried couples, straight or gay, from adopting or fostering children; Mississippi bans gay couples, but not single gays. Arkansas voters last month approved a measure that, like Utah's bans any unmarried straight or gay couples from adopting or fostering children, a clever way to be "nondiscriminatory." Gay couples who want the non-biological parent to adopt their baby have to choose carefully in which county they file their papers. Get the wrong judge and you're toast. Perfectly fine candidates can lose elections because of their stands supporting gay rights.
To read the policy side of these issues in more detail, visit Leslie Bradshaw. She's one of the most passionate writers about the past election and the current state of gay rights and discusses the issue far more completely than I can.
But to a pop culture vulture like me, it's sad to sit through a docudrama, which is basically what MILK is, 52 years after Giovanni and 30+ after Harvey Milk, and feel that, in too many ways, it could be today's news.
ADD: I just discovered this post from Uppercase Woman. A great survey/meditation on gay marriage.
Twilight, Stephanie Meyer' series of novels about the love between Edward, a noble vampire, and his high school sweetheart, Bella, is everywhere. Translated into 20 languages and now a film, with even a Twilight Moms site for, well, moms who love the books, it's what is usually called a "cultural phenomenon." It's been: a New York Times Editor's Choice, an American Library Association "Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults" and "Top Ten Books for Reluctant Readers", a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, an Amazon.com "Best Book of the Decade…So Far", a Teen People "Hot List" pick, and a New York Times Best Seller. All before I even got to read it. There would have been a time… ah well. At least it's fun now.
And in a way, embarrassing. After all, a teen vampire love story isn't exactly typical reading for a well-educated, grown-up, fairly worldly woman who fancies herself reasonably intelligent. It was curiosity that got me there, and I'm glad. There's something about this steamy yet chaste story that slams me back into my 15-year-old self, wondering what sex was like, what love was like, what anything remotely interesting, none of which had happened to me yet, was like. I had forgotten about her but she was still in there just waiting for a reason to emerge. When she did, she reminded that I'd had my own Edward.
Precisely the same age, a high school junior, I fell, hard, for the school's bad boy poet, one of the "drugstore boys" who hung out outside the pharmacy or, in good weather, the Dairy Queen. He was the first conscientious objector I knew; introduced me to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Sound and the Fury and A Canticle for Leibowitz. We would sit in our basement game room and talk, and smoke, for hours. When things got too bad at his house, he often slept at ours. Having raised two teenagers myself I'm still shocked that my parents never objected. It was a beautiful time. There was no way I was going to sleep with him; parent power was still too strong then. He told me years later that even if I'd been willing, he was too scared of my mother to let it happen. As it was for Bella though, that was almost irrelevant. He'd opened my mind, and my soul, so completely that there was no turning back. There's more than one way to be free.
In Twilight, as with Buffy and Angel, sex is impossible. Edward understands that the loss of self involved in sexual consumation would remove the inhibitions that these "vegetarian" vampires have developed to meet both their values and their desire to live among the human. There's lots of lovely making out, but that's it. The less disciplined of the two is Bella, who more than once has to be restrained in her enthusiasm for her perfect, shining, somewhat chilly-to- the-touch lover.
I don't know if such limited innocence is possible today; don't know how the teenagers who read these books could be even partially as un-knowing as I was. When I was a kid, there was no MTV, no Friends episodes about who would get the last condom, no Brittany, or God forbid, her pregnant little sister, no pregnant candidate progeny either. Sex was private, and for grownups. Not necessarily in real life, but in perceived values. There's so much more to disturb their discipline; so little to support the kind of determination that protets Bella and Edward.
I think that's part of the wonder, the attraction, of Twilight. Remember the Simpsons have a long-running joke about Lisa's Sexually Non-Threatening Boys Magazine? It's funny because, at a certain age, that's where girls go. And then, as they begin to move toward true sexual ripeness, the attraction changes. The longings emerge, along with the need to control the young men who would exploit them. Who better than a conscience-stricken, loving, gorgeous, perfect vampire to guide the way? Or, to remind us later, was a thrilling, scary, remarkable journey it was?
You know this photo: Nazis burning books in Babelplatz, a large public square across from Humboldt University in the heart of Berlin. Germany was a highly cultured society, yet it wasn’t too difficult to get to the place where its students willingly burned the books they were to supposed to be studying if they had been written by Jews.
The U.S. wasn’t immune in those years either. In the 1930s there were huge battles about James Joyce’s classic Ulysses, a gorgeous and very moving book but so difficult to understand that I took an entire college course on it. Hard to believe that anyone would bother working through it for any but literary reasons. Even so, copy after copy was seized from trans-Atlantic passengers arriving on ocean liners in Manhattan. Finally, in 1932, after an edition of the book intended as a model for U.S. publication had been seized along with the others, Judge John M. Woolsey lifted the ban in a famous, highly cited opinion* that appears as a preface in many editions. There are many such stories, about many books, but most of them well before the 1960s. After that, it seemed we’d "grown out of" book banning. Wrong.
I read Catcher in the Rye in the 7th grade. Years later I had the privilege of reading it aloud with my own son at precisely the same age. Nearly 20 years apart, we both loved it. Yet efforts to ban it in both school and community libraries have gone on almost as long as the life of the book itself. BlogHer and book blogger SassyMonkey, in a detailed BlogHer post, reminded us that Banned Books Week is here (September 27 to October 4, 2008). The American Library Association created this week in 1982, and sadly, we still need it today. Sarah Palin was not the first, nor will she be the last, government official to fire a librarian after a discussion about removing books from library shelves. There’s a long history of such behavior, and other, more overt attempts, both here and around the world.
Try to imagine a time where you had to hide the books you love. Or where you couldn’t get Harry Potter from the library to re-live the Hogwarts adventure with your own children. Or you couldn’t get access to published health information from books like Our Bodies, Ourselves.
Imagine no Huck Finn, no Maya Angelou or Toni Morrison or John
Steinbeck or — and this is a biggie in the book banning world, no Judy
Blume. Right now there are community and school librarians risking
their careers to fight to protect their shelves from marauding
moralists. Right now.
