Shelf Discovery

by Lizzie Skurnick

  “We hold these truths to be self-evident!” she shouted, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

  As she cried out the words she felt a mind moving in on her own, felt IT seizing, squeezing her brain.

  Then she realized that Charles Wallace was speaking, or being spoken through by IT.

  “But that’s exactly what we have on Camazotz. Complete equality. Everybody exactly alike.”

  For a moment her brain reeled with confusion. Then came a moment of blazing truth. “No!” she cried triumphantly. “Like and equal are not the same thing at all!”

  How does Meg defeat evil? She, like the great thinkers before her, has an insight. That’s not her only tool against the big, throbbling blob of jelly, though. Among her peers, Meg also has one matchless strength:

  “My faults!” Meg cried.

  “Your faults.”

  “But I’m always trying to get rid of my faults!”

  What were her greatest faults? Anger, impatience, stubbornness. Yes, it was to her faults that she turned to save herself now.

  L’Engle has an interesting twist on the nature of knowledge, which is the weapon of choice in A Wrinkle in Time. Charles Wallace thinks his brain power alone can stand against IT, but he’s prideful—and easily overpowered. Calvin, who’s previously teased Meg for her spotty grasp of basics, is also put out of commission by the mighty IT early. Ensnaring Dr. Murry, who, I might remind you, advises the president, is like shooting fish in a barrel. Only Meg, who has been castigated by her math teachers for doing problems her way, not theirs; who has no idea where Peru is or who wrote Boswell’s Life of Johnson, who clings stubbornly to her own vast, spotty store of knowledge, can stand up to IT. Originality, it seems, is its own form of stubbornness—and it’s not enough to know. One must think—for oneself.

  And because Meg is able to think, she realizes what she can do that IT can’t do—and how she can free Charles Wallace, Calvin, and her father:

  Her own Charles Wallace, the child for whom she had come back to Camazotz, to IT, the baby who was so much more than she was, and who was yet so utterly vulnerable.

  She could love Charles Wallace.

  Charles. Charles, I love you. My baby brother who always takes care of me. Come back to me, Charles Wallace, come away from IT, come back, come home. I love you, Charles. Oh, Charles Wallace, I love you.

  Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she was unaware of them.

  Now she was even able to look at him, at this animated thing that was not her own Charles Wallace at all. She was able to look and love.

  I love you. Charles Wallace, you are my darling and my dear and the light of my life and the treasure of my heart. I love you. I love you, I love you.

  …Then suddenly he was running, pelting, he was in her arms. He was shrieking with sobs. “Meg! Meg! Meg!”

  Jeez, now I’M crying. But make no mistake, it’s not Meg’s love that saves Charles Wallace—it’s Meg’s bullheadedness, her insistence on doing things her own way, her belief that she is probably right. Meg isn’t simply a cute narrative depiction of a spunky girl. She’s indubitably, prepubescently bullheaded. This fault, because it allows Meg to stand behind her leaps of insight and her outsized love, in A Wrinkle in Time, amounts to no less than a kind of courage. Why, Meg, who laments in everyone else’s secure self-knowledge, turns out to actually have faith in herself—and it’s the kind of faith that can vanquish evil. Reading this book for the 18th time in my pajamas on a Sunday morning, I knew it was unlikely I’d be called upon to save the universe anytime soon. But—despite my glasses, temper, flyaway hair, and constant sense of outrage at our benighted world—it was nice to know I’d still have a shot.

  BOOK REPORT

  From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

  By E. L. Konigsburg 1967

  Artful Dodgers

  Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away. That is, running away in the heat of anger with a knapsack on her back.

  I miss New York. Not the New York currently hugging the edge of the Atlantic. But the New York of my youth, where a trip to the Museum of Natural History to stand agape at a white whale truly was a magical day (one before The Squid & The Whale associated it forever with that era’s less magical divorce rate); a New York before nannies got groped; a New York before private-school girls intertwined lustily on beds in some benighted plan to rule the school. It was a quieter, less overpopulated, pre-Reagan New York, one that had room for a notepad-toting minor to spy unaccompanied on people through dumbwaiters; a boy to wander Chinatown having adventures with a cricket; teenagers to contend with a genie in a mystery at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. It’s a New York that keeps adults perpetually at shoulder level, briefcases and purses jostling, while the children, front and center in the frame, get up to whatever children get up to.

  The children in question are one Claudia and Jamie Kincaid, Greenwich-residing, grammar-school-aged siblings. In From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, as befits such an august title, these children’s getting-up-to entails one very long, unauthorized stay in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where they come upon a statue of an angel that may or may not have been carved by Michelangelo—which, as they say, changes everything.

  Claudia Kincaid, architect of the above scheme, is a child of her own mind in all the best ways, quite unlike the Mini-Me adults passing for precocious nowadays. (When, when will we be free of the preternaturally wise, sophisticated child who wryly keeps adults in line? Gilmore Girls notwithstanding, I hate that child.) Forgoing hot-fudge sundaes for weeks to finance the venture, Claudia’s choice of hideout is the very reflection of how very particular she is:

  She didn’t like discomfort; even picnics were untidy and inconvenient: all those insects and the sun melting the icing on the cupcakes. Therefore, she decided that her leaving home would not be just running from somewhere but would be running to somewhere. To a large place, a comfortable place, an indoor place, and preferably a beautiful place. And that’s why she decided upon the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

  Her choice of her brother Jamie, a third-grader, is equally practical: he is a total tightwad and in possession of a transistor radio. Claudia’s practicality, which also includes poking into the family garbage for such useful bits as a train pass with one free ride and scouring the AAA tour guide, extends so far she almost forgets why she is running away in the first place:

  …But not entirely. Claudia knew that it had a lot to do with injustice. She was the oldest child and the only girl and was subject to a lot of injustice. Perhaps it was because she had to both empty the dishwasher and set the table on the same night while her brothers got out of everything. And, perhaps, there was another reason more clear to me than to Claudia. A reason that had to do with the sameness of each and every week. She was bored with simply being straight-A’s Claudia Kincaid. She was tired of arguing about whose turn it was to choose the Sunday night seven-thirty television show, of injustice, and of the monotony of everything.

  Our narrative tour guide is, in fact, Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler—as the novel in its entirety takes shape in the form of a letter to her lawyer, Saxonberg, also, as it happens, Claudia and Jamie’s grandfather. In the grand epistolary-meets-omniscient tradition, Frankweiler is in possession of more knowledge than Claudia, both about the Angel she’s sold to the museum, and about Claudia herself.

  But more about that later! First, the Met.

  It will be generally admitted that the scenes depicting Claudia and Jamie’s initial stay at the Met are the most sublime realizations to have ever penetrated the shelves of man. After filling their violin and trumpet cases with clothes, hiding out on the back of their school bus, then sneaking off to (“How can you sneak off to?” Claudia asks her brother impatiently) catch the 10:42 to Grand C
entral, they spend the day at the museum choosing the antique bed upon which to sleep; then they hide in the bathrooms until all the staff have left:

  …She lay there in the great quiet of the museum next to the warm quiet of her brother and allowed the soft stillness to settle around them: a comforter of quiet. The silence seeped from their heads to their soles and into their souls. They stretched out and relaxed. Instead of oxygen and stress, Claudia thought now of hushed and quiet words: glide, fur, banana, peace. Even the footsteps of the night watchman added only an accented quarter-note to the silence that had become a hum, a lullaby.

  And! The! Automat! And! Bathing! In! The! Fountain! And! Brushing! Your Teeth! In! The! Quiet! And! Washing! Your! Clothes! Until! They’re! Gray! Chock! Full! O! Nuts! Gah!!!!! I could go on for 1,200 words just about the meaning of Claudia’s eventually choosing macaroni, baked beans, and coffee over “breakfast food” for breakfast at the Automat, paying with coins picked up off the bottom of the now-gone fountain—thereby combining two fantasies for which I would still happily give up a weekend at Canyon Ranch.

  However, I have to get around to the Angel, the statue of dubious provenance that becomes, in its mysterious beauty, the after-the-fact reason Claudia cites for her escape in the first place. Frankweiler explains why in one of many asides (this one railing) to Saxonberg:

  Are photo albums of your grandchildren the only pictures you look at? Are you altogether unconscious of the magic of the name of Michelangelo? I truly believe that his name has magic even now; the best kind of magic, because it comes from true greatness. Claudia sensed it again as she stood in line. The mystery only intrigued her: the magic trapped her.

  Because, as Claudia begins to realize, she has come to the museum not only because she is sick of being the old Claudia, but because she wants—needs!—to return to Greenwich a different Claudia, a Claudia who has bigger concerns than keeping her whites and colors separated, brushing her teeth, and correcting her brother’s grammar: “An answer to running away, and to going home again, lay in Angel,” she thinks, then attempts to convince Jamie of their need to stay:

  …“The statue just gave me a chance…almost gave me a chance. We need to make more of a discovery.”

  “So do the people of the museum. What more of a discovery do you think that you, Claudia Kincaid, girl runaway, can make? A tape recording of Michelangelo saying, ‘I did it?’ Well, I’ll clue you in. They didn’t have tape recorders 470 years ago.”

  “I know that. But if we make a real discovery, I’ll know how to go back to Greenwich.”

  “You take the New Haven, silly. Same way we go here.” Jamie was losing patience.

  “That’s not what I mean. I want to know how to go back to Greenwich different.”

  Jamie shook his head. “If you want to go different, you can take the subway to 125th Street and then take the train.”

  “I didn’t say differently, I said different. I want to go back different.”

  …“Claudia, I’ll tell you one thing you can do different…”

  “Differently,” Claudia interrupted.

  “Oh, boloney, Claude. That’s exactly it. You can stop ending every single discussion with an argument about grammar.”

  “I’ll try,” Claudia said quietly.

  Readers, did you catch that “boloney”? (Yes, that’s the way it was spelled!) Thankfully, “Bologna” is spelled correctly in the filing system of Frankweiler, where she’s hidden the proof that the statue is indeed Michelangelo’s—proof that she gives to Claudia, contingent upon her always keeping the secret of the Angel.

  It’s mildly absurd to place the idea of baptism into a book for children, but I’ll use it as a bold excuse for pointing out that, upon her arrival in Mrs. Frankweiler’s home, Claudia proceeds to take a bath in her ornate black marble tub, revealing yet again her penchant for the luxurious and surprising:

  …Claudia’s excitement flowed not bubbled. I could see that she was a little surprised. She had known that Angel would have the answer, but she had expected it to be a loud bang, not a quiet soaking in. Of course secrets make a difference. That’s why planning the runaway had been such fun; it was a secret. And hiding in the museum had been a secret. But they weren’t permanent; they had to come to an end. Angel wouldn’t. She could carry the secret of Angel inside her for twenty years just as I had. Now she wouldn’t have to be a heroine when she returned home…except to herself. And now she knew something about secrets that she hadn’t known before.

  I’m sorry—I’m going to have to add that unauthorized bath in an ornate claw-foot tub to the experiences I’d choose over a hot-stone rub. Because one of the many great things about Claudia’s character is how she takes a perceived girly negative—being picky—and turns it into what we see in our adulthood is a virtue: an appreciation for the sublime, for the very best in everything, and a respect for the mystery inherent in all things beautiful. While, doubtless, a grownup Claudia would have conceived of a longing for Christian Louboutins, she’s a wonderful reminder, in our post-irony era, about how at its very heart, a love for the very best isn’t necessarily pretentious, consumerist, or craven.

  And in our post-irony age, Claudia’s experience is also a wonderful reminder of how children, though they may be precocious, certainly aren’t born knowing everything; and that when they do learn about life, it’s not always something awful they discover. (Say, the nature of divorce—one so horrible you’d have to find a metaphor for it in the Museum of Natural History.) When our class used to go for our twice-yearly trip to the Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the sense of splendor and possibility found in the quiet displays of histories and treasures was, to my young heart, almost unbearable. (It is still.) Rereading Mixed-Up Files, I couldn’t help but cheer for the fact that Claudia’s childhood isn’t some walled-off tomb, and it doesn’t end unceremoniously when it’s tragically shattered by some awful experience. Indeed, the vision of childhood in Mixed-Up Files is that of a museum at night, filled with secrets to uncover, and the freedom to find them unencumbered and alone. When Claudia finds the answer to just one of those secrets, she’s not only “different”—she’s become, like the Angel, a singular entity with her own history, her own mystery. And when she leaves the museum, she’s also leaving her childhood, like some abandoned violin case filled with gray clothes, triumphantly behind.

  BOOK REPORT

  Starring Sally J. Freedman as Herself

  By Judy Blume 1977

  Florida Orange Jews

  “Can I have another jelly sandwich?” Sally asked her grandmother, Ma Fanny.

  Okay, everyone, quick poll: raise your hand if, after V-day, you want your brother to get sick with nephritis so your dentist father can send you, your mom, and your bubeh from New Jersey down to Miami for the winter to help him get better, and you can go to school in a trailer and bike around being afraid that your neighbor, Mr. Zavodsky, is Hitler while you get your braid tugged by a boy you only later figure out you like, and your grandmother calls you mumeshana and you dream of your dead relatives, Lila and Tante Rose, killed in the Holocaust, and you drink cocoa with whiskey because you’re trying to make the creme de cacao your mom drank in Cuba, and then you get stung by a man-o’-war and complimented by said brother on being braver than he thought and catch Virus X and eat two bowls of chicken-with-rice soup, then try on some toe shoes.

  Blume’s wondrous near autobiography is the story of one Sally J. Freedman, whose father (dubbed by our heroine “Doey-bird”) moves the rest of the family from New Jersey to Miami after the end of the war for one year when Douglas, the older son, needs to recover from a bout of nephritis. Thus ensconced in the Sun Belt with her mother and Ma Fanny, Sally embarks on a series of adventures that only another girl could understand are truly thus, including getting nits, having a friend fall on a bike, getting stung by a man-o’-war, washing diamonds with a hotsie-totsie in the Ladies Room, having her neighbor get knocked up by a goy, and disc
overing her neighbor is Hitler.

  You might note from that last that Sally is also given to vast flights of fancy, which, given the times, wend to spy missions in Europe and captures of Hitler (who has, in fact, killed her cousin Lila and Tante Rose, her grandmother’s sister, both gassed in Auschwitz). A typical, triumphant narrative:

  Sally F. Meets Adolf H.

  It is during the war and Sally is caught by Hitler in a roundup of Jewish people in Union County, New Jersey…He orders the Gestapo to bring her to his private office. Tell me, you little swine, Hitler hisses at her. Tell me what you know and I’ll cut off your hair.

  …Sally shakes her head. I’ll never tell you anything…never!

  So Hitler goes to his desk and gets his knife and he slowly slashes each of her fingers. She watches as her blood drips onto his rug, covering the huge swastika in the middle.

  Look what you’ve done, you Jew bastard, Hitler cries hysterically. You’ve ruined my rug!

  Ha ha, Sally says. Ha ha ha on you, Adolf…. And then she passes out.

  When she comes to, Hitler is asleep and snoring with his head down on the desk. Sally crawls out of his office, then dashes down the hall to the secret passageway of the underground. She gives them valuable information leading to the capture of Adolf Hitler and the end of the war.

  Sally’s approximations of what is actually going on in her family and the world around her run at roughly the same level of accuracy. After espying the “Love and Other Indoor Sports” sign-off on her babysitter’s stationery, she knows it is a fine way to take leave, but not exactly what kind of letter it’s for. She knows her father has called her mother’s lavender-and-black bathroom a bordello, but not why praising someone else’s bathroom as same might not yield a joyous response. She is hazy not only on the concept of Latin Lovers but on the question of whether there is a country, in fact, called “Latin.” And while it’s possible that Mr. Zavodsky, her next-door neighbor, might in fact be Adolf Hitler, she’s not quite old enough to give up on the possibility.