Finally, this may be obvious, but in the end, the true answer to the question I am asking here is that the fate of the novel is tied to our own: that is, it all depends on what happens to us, and we have no idea what is going to happen to us. If this pandemic lasts a few months and then dissolves, or if we quickly find a way to treat almost everyone who is infected, or if we are able to produce a vaccine, and (importantly) if we are able to learn from this and protect ourselves as much as possible from future pandemics, society, and therefore, literature may be able to smooth over the rough patch.
Many writers will just ignore those few months in 2020 when we were all trapped in our houses and thousands of people died. After all, people still hesitate to insert cell phones into their fiction—in large part, I’ve always believed, because the classics they grew up reading and venerating as the pinnacle of Literature don’t have them. They don’t have this, either. If, on the other hand, we wind up facing years of sickness, fear, and economic destabilization, I think we’ll all have to grapple with it one way or another. Maybe we will anyway. Only time will tell.
Perhaps the most haunting passage in it comes with those words. This demented little creature, desperate to press his unappetising brunch on the grouchy protagonist, is in a car, on a train, and that train is now hurtling through a distinctly cloacal tunnel. The egg-and-ham refuser teeters backwards on the bonnet of the car, retreating from the proffered plate. And those words: the cadence of them, the sinister whisper: here in the dark. It could be the strapline for a serial-killer movie starring Morgan Freeman, and here it is in the middle of a zany children’s book.
Learning the history of this institution has made me realize that libraries actually want to change all the time. People who work for libraries are not interested in insisting on a system that isn’t reaching anyone; they think of libraries as living documents. Libraries change as the public demonstrates what is not working for them and expresses desires for access to new literacies. This is the ultimate goal of the library: to keep evaluating and redirecting in pursuit of knowledge.
In the century between becoming a public library and a fine-free institution, the Free Library of Philadelphia has continuously examined and developed its programs and offerings. In the last five years alone, the Free Library has begun offering its cardholders musical instruments and gym equipment to check out. They have built a teaching kitchen and offer daily classes that span from celebrations of Congolese cuisine to sandwich making for teenagers to nutrition classes for high-risk adults to breakdowns of food access points around the city. The Free Library has also figured out how to combine literacies such as teaching language classes alongside cooking classes to jump-start practical applications of a second language. The library desperately wants to know what you need, want, are curious about and they are better at delivering those things when you use their resources and tell them what else you’d like access to.
Focusing almost exclusively on female characters and spaces, “Breasts and Eggs” often made me think of Tsushima’s “Territory of Light.” Although tonally distinct, both novels describe single working-class motherhood and small urban apartments in unflinching detail. Writing 30 years apart, both authors reveal the ways in which those circumstances in turn shape the inner lives of their characters.
“Breasts and Eggs” underlines this connection by placing the female form at its center. Kawakami writes with unsettling precision about the body — its discomforts, its appetites, its smells and secretions. And she is especially good at capturing its longings, those in this novel being at once obsessive and inchoate, and in one way or another about transformation.
Anne Tyler's latest novel is heartwarming balm for jangled nerves. Once again, she burrows so convincingly into the quotidian details of her main character's life, home, and head that you have to wonder if she's some sort of Alexa-gone-rogue.
You walk by holding a bunch of flowers
never knowing that you’ve just performed a miracle.
Are those flowers for your girl?