Discovery

“Is shedding all these books synonymous with retirement?” I asked Alex Hammond. I was talking about the rows he had heaped in the Avery Hall Bundy Reading Room kitchen one day last spring. I walked by and saw the hundreds of paperback books stacked on the cafeteria-like tables. Everything from Philip Roth novels to Norton Anthologies to dated collections of feminist criticism. Attached to the door was a sign saying, simply, “FREE BOOKS.” Anyone walking by was welcome, even encouraged, to take them.

These were Alex Hammond’s books, mingled with those from the office of Dick Law, another retiring colleague. Alex was in the midst of cleaning out his office upon his retirement from 34 years in the WSU English Department where he has been a teacher and scholar of American Literature, editor (along with Jana Argersinger) of the scholarly journal Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism, Undergraduate Studies Director, Vice Chair and Scheduler, Interim Chair, frequent commentator in the Faculty Senate, and a role model for how to be one of those people whom no one wants to see retire.

One day last spring, I sat down with Alex and asked him about his books. As usual, Alex answered my question by taking me on a journey.

One of the things the US Government hated about Northwest tribal groups was the potlatch, he told me, a ceremony in which members would give up all their worldly possessions. When the US was trying to get post-Civil War control of the country, one thing they tried to do is outlaw the potlatch, which they saw as very anti-capitalist. Alex likened his book purging to the potlatch. “But I’m not giving away anything that’s worth much on the used book market. It feels great, if people will take them,” he said.

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As Julie and Julia debuts in theaters around the country this weekend, there’s a role in the film viewers may not immediately notice but without which the movie might be completely different. It’s Noel Riley Fitch’s biography of Julia Child titled Appetite for Life. Riley Fitch’s book, while never outright mentioned in the film, was a resource for writer Julie Powell for her blog about cooking her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her book Julie and Julia 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen. Powell drew on several sources including Appetite for Life as she was imagining the scenes between Julia and her husband Paul for her book. Powell’s blog and book became the basis for Nora Ephron’s movie, which stars Amy Adams as Julie and Meryl Streep as Julia Child.

Riley Fitch, who had earned her PhD in American Studies from WSU in 1969 was already an accomplished biographer when she met Child at an American Institute of Food and Wine conference in 1990. Child, a voracious reader who loved material about Americans in Paris, had already read a few of Riley Fitch’s books.

How did you convince Julia Child to let you be her biographer?

She had said, “I say no to everybody who asks me that. I’m a very busy woman and I don’t have time to tell you about my life.” I said “Well, I’ve never written about a person who is still living, so I don’t really need all your time. I know how to research a person’s life without having met them or talked to them.”

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“It’s one of the largest book fairs of its kind in the world,” says Peter Chilson, Associate Professor of English. He’s talking about the AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) Conference, held every year in February. This year, the AWP – with some 8,500 attendees – took up residence at the Hilton on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. Chilson was to read from his recent book, Disturbance Loving Species published by Houghton Mifflin [WSM review]. I went along to check out the Book Fair, particularly the 100s of literary journals displayed.

With 799 exhibitors, the Book Fair took up the entire lower floor of the hotel, and many of these spaces were rented by literary journals. Some of the big names in literary journals such as American Poetry Review, the Georgia Review, and New Letters can be found on the shelves of Barnes and Noble and Borders across the U.S.  but the largest proportion of literary magazines are more obscure such as the Straddler, Smokelong Quarterly, Forklift Ohio, Slack Buddha, and Duckabush Review. Slotted in between the independently run journals were those housed in institutions—Ninth Letter from the University of Illinois, Subtropics from The University of Florida, and Ecotone from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. What I found exciting was the thought behind some of these, the personality. For example, a woman named Jennifer S. Flescher explains the idea behind her journal Tuesday; An Art Project like this:

I wanted to make a thing we could hold.

I am a photographer, a bookmaker, a poet.

It was a reaction to all of the (necessary and often fabulous) on-line work that is out there.

It had to do with unrest.

There is a postcard in every issue, I hope you’ll mail it. I wanted it to come with a stamp on it, but that would have been another thousand dollars…

Chilson had told me that going to the Book Fair is a one-of-a-kind experience because it’s one place “you get to talk with editors who are so willing to talk with writers. The other thing is a lot of these editors are themselves writers.” (more…)

Will Hamlin spent 22 days this fall visiting 21 libraries looking at the same book over and over. Not just any book, mind you, but Montaigne’s Essais. And he wasn’t reading the actual text over and over. He’d already done that. He was reading the books’ owners’ comments written in the margins.

Hamlin is on leave from Washington State University this year, supported by a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship. At WSU, he teaches Shakespeare and 17th century English literature. One of his scholarly interests has been the influence of philosophical skepticism on theater of the time, which resulted in his second book, Tragedy and Skepticism in Shakespeare’s England.

Much of his time has been spent in libraries around the country and world in an attempt to measure the culture of the late 16th and early 17th centuries through the reactions of Montaigne’s readers to his Essais.

I met Hamlin (full disclosure–he is a long-time friend) downtown for a glass of wine shortly before his latest venture, to Paris, where he planned to examine copies at the Biblioteque Nationale. He confessed to a little nervousness. Before being allowed to examine the books, he would be interviewed, in French, regarding the seriousness of his quest.

Although he is particularly interested in the first English translation of Essais, by John Florio in 1603, Hamlin is also examining the notations in French versions.

Montaigne is widely regarded as originator of the modern essay, emphasis on “modern.” For Montaigne, says Hamlin, had clearly read older “essayists” such as Plutarch and Seneca.

Though he may owe the Roman writers for the general idea, Montaigne is still modern in his approach. His essays are very personal and range widely in subject: “Of sadness or sorrowe,” “Of Idlenesse,” “Of friendship,” “Of Sleeping,” “Of Smels and Odors.”

Montaigne, one might argue, was the most popular blogger of his time.

Dinosaur that I am, it’s only recently that I started thinking of Web logs, or blogs, as more than merely a quickly dashed off thought, the quickness of it a handy excuse for its sloppiness or ill-logic. In an interesting essay in a recent Atlantic Monthly, Andrew Sullivan offers an intriguing argument in favor of blogging.

Most telling, though, is his comment that in contrast to an opinion or essay in print, a blog is “a conversation rather than a production.”

Indeed, Sullivan also points to Montaigne, noting that he published three editions of his essays, each one progressively longer. “A passionate skeptic,” writes Sullivan, “Montaigne amended, added to, and amplified the essays for each edition, making them three-dimensional through time. In the best modern translations, each essay is annotated, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, by small letters (A, B, and C) for each major edition, helping the reader see how each rewrite added to or subverted, emphasized or ironized, the version before.”

But even more essential to the conversation is the commentary over time from Montaigne’s readers.

“Essai,” you might know, means, among other thing, a trial, an attempt

Because of the nature of Montaigne’s attempts, the response of readers was huge. Whereas 20 percent of books in general from that period were annotated by their readers, 50 percent of Montaigne’s Essais were annotated. Those annotations tell much of what people were thinking at the time and how Montaigne fit, or did not fit, within that thinking. Hamlin says that the amount of commentary shows clear readers’ favorites of Montaigne’s essays, perennial topics, on marriage and sex, religion, education. But amongst the voluminous commentary, Hamlin’s favorite comment is, from an anonymous reader: “Montaigne hath the Art above all Men to keep his Reader from Sleeping.”

Discovery will not be quite as personal or wide-ranging, perhaps, as either Montaigne or modern bloggers. It will be limited to the process of discovery at Washington State University. Which, I’ll say, is pretty wide-ranging. There will be, however, no personal politics. Regardless, I hope, in true timeless blogging fashion, Discovery stimulates conversation, ventures ideas, and, at least, keeps the Reader from Sleeping.

External Links

http://libarts.wsu.edu/english/Will%20Hamlin.html

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/montaigne.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montaigne

http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/montaigne/