Hello, Smarty, Time for Book Recs!
Dear Wags,
After five years at a magazine, four years at a digital platform, four years in public broadcasting, and too many years interviewing great authors, I’ve amassed a pile of autographed books. Well, many piles.
This summer, it was (past) time to clean out the garage. I confronted a Great Library of Alexandria full of tomes to purge. Quite a few of them were inscribed.
There’s nothing more depressing then finding a book with a personal inscription in it on some donation pile. The other day, the Wag-in-Chief told me he’d fished a copy of I Capture the Castle out of a Little Free Library. On the title page was this: Dear Sarah, this was Gagi’s favorite book…I hope you love it too. Love, Mom. Our mutual thought was: Sarah, you ingrate! How could just throw that away? Gagi is furious. Also: Call your mother.
I wasn’t about to commit Sarah’s crime. So, before my books were hauled off to be enjoyed by somebody else, I razored out the inscribed pages. I’m going to frame a few of my favorites and save the entire archive digitally and in scrapbooks.
Going through these notes has been moving. Here’s a sample:
To Bethanne, It is always a delight to see you again, Chris Bohjalian wrote in 2010. Thank you so much for all you do on behalf of what stories can mean to the soul.
That was our second interview, but hardly our last. In April, I profiled Chris for the Wag and the LA Times. In so many cases, these little messages seeded real friendships.
In another note, Washington Post columnist Michael Dirda declared me a woman of letters. High praise from a legend! It went to my head, even if I’m not sure it’s true.
A genuine woman of letters, crime novelist Karin Slaughter, became a pal. How could you not fall in love with someone who writes: To Bethanne: Thanks for the fresh humiliation? Her wit is as marvelous as a very dry martini.
The great writer and editor Peter Ginna called me one of the bright lights of book Twitter, which sounded awesome. It also proves that a woman of letters can quickly become a has-been. Nobody knows me on Twitter anymore. All the book nerds have migrated to TikTok.
Finally, there’s one inscription I particularly treasure. When Richard Bausch’s novel Before, During, After was published in 2014, I was the Books Editor at Washingtonian magazine. I did an interview with Richard and his brother Robert, another great novelist. Bobby Bausch died in 2018. He is profoundly missed by his family, the literary world, and me.
There’s something sacred in such dedications—especially now. They are little acts of resistance against the prevailing notion that words are cheap. Stories belong to the world, but a message from an author to a singular reader is something else again. They are for you, and you alone. Treasure them.
BKP
1974: A Personal History by Francine Prose
Prose’s stunning new memoir is about tumultuous chapter in history and her personal life. In 1974, Prose was trapped in a marriage and in her house in Cambridge Mass. — she was becoming agoraphobe. She left her husband to pursue Anthony “Tony” Russo, an activist who leaked the Pentagon Papers with Daniel Ellsberg. The relationship was difficult. But Russo promised a new kind freedom, and she followed him as he drove his Buick around San Francisco. As the country went through its own soul searching, Prose discovered herself as a writer. What a trip.
Parade by Rachel Cusk
I try not to read other reviews before I consider a book. In the case of Cusk, whose novels (Outline, Transit) have entranced many readers, I made an exception, to see where her latest effort fits in a distinguished catalog. Don’t do the same. Take this experiment for what it is: An attempt to turn the conventions of the novel upside down, like paintings of George Baselitz (on whom one character is based). Cusk is a visionary stretching the bounds of narrative. It may not entirely come off. You aren’t going to glide through this book, but the upending of tradition is bold. The result will be debated long after this season’s beach reads are dust.
