by Annie Spence
When it’s tempting to roll my eyes or put the LIBRARIAN HAS STEPPED AWAY sign out and pretend to be making copies, but really just finish my chapter, instead I put on my best Disney princess smile and forge ahead because that’s what Belle did. She suffered through Gaston putting his filthy boots on the book she was reading, and she hugged Beast even though he probably smelled like wet dog. In the end she was rewarded with you—and, yeah, true love and living in a castle and whatever.
That’s the dream. I’ll keep wishing on a star that someday my fantasy library will come.
Until Then,
MEMOIR—Smith, Patti
—Vicariously, Living
Dear Just Kids,
A quick note. I’m so smitten with you, I can’t help but pick you up when I’m waiting for tea to boil or brushing my teeth. And especially in bed. Actually, in bed is where the trouble begins.
My husband is jealous of you. I can’t blame him—I am too. You’re a delicate portrayal of two artists, equally hungry for food and fame, coursing through the veins of 1970s NYC. Sometimes, your hero and heroine are on top of the world. Sometimes, they live in a dump. Always, they have style. Always, they love each other. I want to be there with them! But Michael wants me here. I’ve been reading you in all of my spare moments. I haven’t heard a word he’s said to me for two days.
Now the hubs and I have got a pizza-and-movie-in-bed date planned (that’s bohemian, right?), and I need to put you down.
Patti’s love for Robert is palpably tender, and her love for art as wide as the sky. Your description of their youth leaves me with a lingering daydreamer’s feeling—probably not going to last long ’cause we’re watching Smokey and the Bandit. Sigh. What we do for love, right, Kids?
Now isn’t the time for us. We’ll have to take our affair elsewhere. I’ll meet you in the break room at work. I’ll be the one in the corner holding, well, you.
Faithfully,
BUILDING—Plans and Specifications
—Lifelong Dream
—Snacks
Dear Future Book Collection,
I don’t know when you’ll materialize, but it will happen in one of two ways: either I will one day be able to repay my student loans and build you, just in time to die of old age, or some foolish and powerful character will succeed in stamping out literacy once and for all. In the latter case, I’ll be able to Dumpster-dive for shelving and discarded “paper symbol doo-hickeys” to curate you. Then for centuries after I’m gone, people will visit you, but only as a corn-maze-type attraction.
For now, you’ll have to exist in my mind alone. But I’ve got you figured out: a room big enough for all of you to fit but small enough to feel cozy and hidden from the rest of the world. Leather couches that are also comfortable, piled with ratty homemade blankets, and a table scattered with empty tea and coffee cups (because, honestly, even in my fantasies, I’m pretty gross). The soundproof walls of the room will be papered in old American Libraries “Read” posters—most prominently, the one with Paul Newman lying on a pool table.
A locked door will lead into the room. This will be essential. There will be a doorbell; however, entry is denied unless visitor-candidates answer a series of questions posed by an exasperated robot voice: “Did you just put something in your mouth?” “Did you check in the pants you wore last night?” “Can I just get a minute here for Christ’s sake?” Basically, my top three phrases.
Once the riffraff is sorted through, serious visitors will be allowed inside if they agree to speak only about books or to remain silent and bring a cheesy snack. And, what the hell, here too is a My So-Called Life–era Jared Leto! But he doesn’t feel like talking; he just wants to stare into space and let me play with his hair while I read. Every so often, when I’m taken aback by something brilliant I’ve read, like my favorite Annie Dillard quote from For the Time Being—“There are 1,198,500,000 people alive now in China. To get a feel for what that means, simply take yourself—in all your singularity, importance, complexity, and love—and multiply by 1,198,500,000. See? Nothing to it”—I’ll pore over the dreamy pools of distant blue in Leto’s eyes while I mull it over.
I’ll also have a Reading Room Wardrobe, full of clothing Anjelica Huston would wear, which is to say something dramatic and stylish that says “I’m not fucking around.” Drapey shit. Lots of otherwise beautiful pieces marred with cigarette burns. Sinister hats. That kind of thing.
But, I mean, obviously, it’ll be all about you—the books. You’ll all be wrapped in thick pastel marbleized paper, with your titles and authors embossed in gold lettering on the spine. Some of you will also be covered in Mylar plastic because I find wrapping books in Mylar very soothing. You’ll be placed on shelves and in artfully haphazard piles around the room. And because part of the majesty of a library is not knowing where anything is and being guided by a radiantly clever but aloof custodian in a caftan (that’s me) while Edith Piaf blares in all directions (I’ll play exclusively Edith Piaf and the Shangri-Las), there will be no Dewey Decimal System. Instead, you will be organized by my dream categorization: Emotion.
For an example of how this system works, let’s start randomly at The Mean Reds: books to cure the sneaky, all-consuming fear aptly coined in Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s. On these shelves, I will place the books that soothe me: RFK: Selected Speeches, by Robert F. Kennedy; Girl Talk: Unsolicited Advice for Modern Ladies, by Christie Young; Buddhist stuff; and anything Nora Ephron wrote.
Next to these books is the section called Make That Change, providing me with the strength to go forth and conquer. This area also comes with a little mat: when you step on it, the choir from Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” sings “Make that chaaaaange.” Books like The Giver by Lois Lowry, The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, and The Gigantic Beard That Was Evil by Stephen Collins will sit side by side.
Conversely, if I don’t feel like making that change, there will be a Fuck It, I’m Just Going to Read Instead of Do What I Need to Do Today section: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, and The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy. And a Fuck It (General) section: the Ripley series by Patricia Highsmith, some Douglas Coupland, all of David Sedaris. This section butts up to (Worthwhile) Films Based on Books, so if I’m feeling particularly listless, I can just go limp on the couch and watch on repeat the scene from Field of Dreams where sassy Annie tells off the lady that wants to censor books. Somewhere in this section, I’ll have to find a place for Watched Game of Thrones Before Bed Again and Can’t Sleep (exclusively Maeve Binchy, to assuage the nerves).
There will be more positive sections, of course. I’m a sucker for Reminiscing About First Loves (Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell) and Books That Make Me Feel Like I’m Hanging with a Good Girlfriend (The Folded Clock by Heidi Julavits and No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July). Hanging with girlfriends will remind me of my sisters and the Comforts of Home section (Mr. Shaw’s Shipshape Shoeshop by Eve Titus, Erma Bombeck, and encyclopedias). That will make me feel Midwesterny (Tom Drury and Marilynne Robinson).
There are the harder-to-pin-down areas as well. I know it’s not an emotion, but my book kryptonite is the genre Crazy Surreal Shit in an Otherwise Mundane Setting: Atmospheric Disturbances by Rivka Galchen, The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta, Spilling Clarence by Anne Ursu, The Fever by Megan Abbott. I love the plot of “one thing weird happens in a normal place” like some people love Scandinavian mysteries and books about what your face shape means (me, again). There’s also Beautiful Freaks (lyrical and terrifying reads) like Duplex by Kathryn Davis, and my collection of novels about “Charismatic but Unstable Preacher Characters.” There will be the Am I Crying Through Laughter or Laughing Through Tears? area: Kiss Me Like a Stranger by Gene Wilder, Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal, most of John Irving. And that Happy-Sad Feeling you get when your characters don’t end up where you want them to be but you’re glad for the journey: Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller or, God, Lov
e in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez.
And that’s not all. Those of you I’ve already read will have thin paper scrolls that roll out of you and remind me what you’re about with sample book-discussion questions. I’ll have traveled back in time and asked Grace Paley to sign all of my copies of her work and, while we’re at it, maybe include some personal notes encouraging my writing and maybe even an unpublished poem dedicated to me. The drool stains on my Jeffrey Eugenides volumes will have magically disappeared. I’ll have the same Virginia Woolf books I already own, but, by some unknown means, I will understand them (sorry).
Finally, in the back corner will be a small low shelf, admittedly dusty, unused but not unloved, with all my old flames. My disgusting Pictorial Anatomy of the Cat, my broke-down The Goldfinch, my disregarded Cult of the Born-Again Virgin, that book about trucks I hid from my child years ago that doesn’t seem quite as annoying as I once thought. What this shelf has lost in face time with readers, it will have gained in nostalgia. “No two persons ever read the same book—Edmund Wilson,” a note taped to the shelf will say, encouraging visitors to give these castaways a second chance.
Future Book Collection, like Diana Ross said but probably wasn’t sincere about when she left the Supremes:
Someday, We’ll Be Together,
II.
Special Subjects—Library Employees—Assistance to Readers
“Now, I threw in The Dual Voice Sings. Just for fun. It’s a book of songs composed exclusively by twins.”
—Parker Posey as Mary in Party Girl, 1995
I’d Rather Be Reading: Excuses to Tell Your Friends So You Can Stay Home with Your Books
If you’re reading this, chances are you’ve experienced bouts of antisocial behavior and “read rage” outbursts toward friends and family. Because, although you participate in society as much as necessary to convince your mom and the shrink your mom hired that you’re not a shut-in, truth is, you’d rather be reading than doing just about anything. Did you think it was just you? It’s not. You’ve just never met any of the others, because we don’t want to talk to you either.
If you want to be left alone during the big clambake next weekend, here’s a list of excuses to give and books that lend your lie a hint of truth.
“Got a hot date…”
… with a book. Reading can get you more hot and bothered than a Tinder date, without the cost of drinks and with a lower frequency of unwanted dick pics. I find Dangerous Liaisons by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos a sultry book to hole up with. Its characters’ devious acts of seduction will confirm that it’s futile to leave the house in hopes of finding a mate and has been since 1782, when Laclos penned the novel. If you think the people you told about your imaginary date will want to know dirty details, steal some from Isaac Oliver’s Intimacy Idiot, a sharp and truly funny book of essays about Oliver’s young-gay-man-about-town escapades. Or get clinical with Bonk by Mary Roach, a scientific study of sexual intimacy that Roach spent two years investigating.
“Just hacked something up. Gonna inspect it.”
If you’re going with the sick excuse, it has to sound contagious enough that your friends won’t want to come near you, but not so scary that they’re going to want to check on you. I usually go with pink eye. Thankfully, choosing a book about disease isn’t nearly as difficult as faking one. There are a bevy of mysterious-illness books. I prefer those of the sudden pandemic variety. Chances are you’ve read some of them without even meaning to: from The Plague by Albert Camus, to Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. There is some really good writing within this minigenre, probably because writers are antisocial too and can easily imagine the rest of society as a giant infectious scourge. The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller, features a main character who is one of the few survivors of a widespread flu holed up in an airport with a crazy dude and a dog until he hears a radio message that gives him hope of life beyond his outpost. Salvation City by Sigrid Nunez tells the story of another superflu survivor. This time a young man survives in the small evangelical town he was taken into when his family died but still struggles with memories of his deceased loved ones and his dream for a future different from those of his rapture-awaiting friends and neighbors.
“I’m too drunk/stoned already. Can’t leave the house.”
This is my favorite excuse and, depending on your personality and past behavior, could be the most believable. Again, there is a fine line between good excuse and appalling deception for the substance-abuse lie. Veer more toward “Shit man, today’s weed is stronger than that shwag we smoked in high school!” and away from “Oops, I swallowed a bottle of pills.” Good drug books are as plentiful as medicinal marijuana clinics with terrible names, ranging from darkly hilarious to just plain dark. Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget by Sarah Hepola is a memoir, startling in its humor and candor, about Hepola’s path to sobriety, which includes a closer look at her drinking days. Dopefiend by Donald Goines is a tragic novel of a heroin junkie in 1970s Detroit and was written by Goines, a heroin addict himself, while doing time in prison. It is an honest and honestly terrifying book.
“Sorry—family obligations.”
Keep it vague. But if they press you for details, borrow some from the following family sagas. Angela Flournoy’s The Turner House takes place on Detroit’s East Side, where a group of siblings gather to decide how to deal with the aging matriarch of the family and the home they were raised in, which remains unoccupied, in a neighborhood that has fallen on hard times. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri features two devoted and dissimilar brothers in India in the 1960s. When one dies during a political uprising, the other tries to fill the void he left by marrying the deceased brother’s pregnant wife. Okay, don’t borrow that detail. You’re probably not going to pull off “I can’t come to your birthday party because I have to marry my brother’s wife and help raise their as-yet-unborn baby.” But figure it out, because you’re going to want to read these excellent books.
“I’ll be at my high school reunion. Want to be my date?”
Asking if your pal wants to come along lends credibility to your fat lie and no one wants to go sit at a table with a bunch of strangers talking about their kids and their old grudges. You’ll be safe from them accepting the offer and free to stay home and enjoy Home Land by Sam Lipsyte, a novel about a guy whose high school nickname was Teabag. That’s reason enough to read it. But if you need more, Teabag begins writing in to his alumni newsletter with an unexpected honesty about what he’s really up to, which is nothing to write home about. Lipsyte is a sharp and witty writer, and this is a book to make you snort. For a nonfiction reunion narrative, try Bullies: A Friendship by Alex Abramovich, who moved to Oakland, California, in order to live in the dangerous, intoxicated world of his former bully, Trevor, and forges an unlikely friendship with his high school tormenter.
“Alas, I’ve nothing to wear.”
Say it just like that too. Then hang up or, if you’re fibbing in person, spin around dramatically and walk away. You can experience the thrill of awesome fashion in your sweatpants by picking up Vintage Black Glamour, Nichelle Gainer’s goddamn gorgeous book of photographs of black artists, both well known and overlooked, throughout the early twentieth century. Looks range from street style to disco to glamour pin-up. For a behind-the-scenes look into fashion history and a walk down ’90s memory lane, read Champagne Supernovas: Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, Alexander McQueen and the ’90s Renegades Who Remade Fashion by Maureen Callahan. It’s glitzy, it’s dramatic, it’s gossipy, it probably beats whatever plans you bailed on in order to stay home and read it.
“I have the menstrual cramps.”
Works on everyone. Women will have sympathy for you. Men will immediately halt the discussion because they suspect that the crimson tide gives us secret powers and we can read their thoughts and shit. Anyway, whether or not it’s time for the Red Wedding, curl up with a hot-water bottle and read Flow: The Cultural History of Menstruation by Elis
sa Stein and Susan Kim (not to be confused with Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, which is also an awesome book, but not about periods). If you’ve ever wondered what kind of stuff had to be stuck up there before modern tampons, look no further. It’s worth a browse for the kitschy old maxi-pad advertisements alone. You could also learn more about periods the way everyone else did: Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume.
“I have a friend who needs consoling. Gonna grab some Cheetos and wine and head over there.”
By all means, carry through with one facet of this falsehood and get some Cheetos and wine. You deserve it. And, being that you’re the type of pal who lies about having to console a nonexistent buddy, you deserve some books about true friendship as well. Quicksand by Steve Toltz is a satire about two bros—one a writer and police officer, the other a con and the writer’s muse. You’re never going to be disappointed with How to Make an American Quilt by Whitney Otto. And by that I mean I’m never going to be disappointed with it. Everyone needs a story of intergenerational women making a quilt once in a while. Rent the movie too, with Maya Angelou, Anne Bancroft, Winona Ryder, and a young ga-ga-ga-gorgeous Johnathon Schaech. Then you can read the book, watch the movie, get drunk, and pass out in your Cheetos and have a dream about doing it in an orchard with Johnathon Schaech and/or Winona Ryder. Classic Saturday night.
“I went out last weekend and now I have this rash that keeps spreading.”
Gross. But we sometimes go to great lengths to get out of being social. Also, this excuse might prompt your friend to tell you about his or her own experiences with rashes and then you know whom not to share bathing suits with anymore. Anyway, I’ve got a great rash book: Black Hole by Charles Burns. A graphic novel where all the teenagers in 1970s Seattle start getting strange, seemingly sexually transmitted, mutations. Sometimes, it’s a weird bump they can cover up. Sometimes, all their skin starts peeling off. It’s amazing.