The Letters of Sylvia Beach edited by Keri Walsh

A review in lists, with thanks for the format to Amy Jones at listophelia

The other books I read while I was supposed to be reading the letters:

• What Boys Like by Amy Jones
• The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner by Stephenie Meyer (Don’t judge me.  It’s the book equivalent of junk food.  This is the Snickers bar that supplements tofu steaks, fresh mango and tomato salsa, quinoa and lightly steamed broccoli and asparagus topped with lemon garlic yogurt.)
• Coraline by Neil Gaiman (now a Must Read Everything author, thank you Buried in Print)
• The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (aloud to Griffin in four sittings, each one reluctantly ended, on hot summer days in air-conditioned refuge, in armchairs across the city.)
• A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother by Rachel Cusk (a piercingly intelligent, often dark and mordantly witty memoir I re-read for an essay I’m writing)
• Pathologies: A Life in Essays by Susan Olding (see above) 
• Small Beneath the Sky: A Prairie Memoir by Lorna Crozier
• Shit My Dad Said by Justin Halpern
• Come, Thou Tortoise by Jessica Grant
• 100 Best Books for Children: A Parent’s Guide by Anita Silvey (former editor of The Horn Book Magazine.  Did you know there is an Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art in Amherst, Massachusetts?  The best thing about this book is not the tips for the 100 books but the wonderful mini-essays she has written for each book.  Her knowledge is, truly, encyclopaedic.)

 

Things I looked for but did not find:

• A love letter from Sylvia to Adrienne.  (What was I thinking?  She didn’t have to write to Adrienne and tell her lover that they were lovers.  Sill, a bit more passion on the page would have been lovely.)
• Narrative continuity (What was I thinking?  It’s her collected letters, not a memoir or biography.)

Things I found that saddened me:

• Many letters of thanks to friends and family who had sent her gifts of money.  The midwife of modernism lived by the skin of her teeth.
• Her grief after Adrienne’s suicide: “I’ve a queer feeling about Adrienne—that not only is she gone but I’ve gone away myself somewhere—I dunno where.” 
• From a letter dated January 12, 1934: “Everyone here is in a great state of excitement over the Stavisky scandal.  Yesterday they had out all the police of Paris, besides troops, and there was quite a row in the neighbourhood of the Chamber of Deputies.  All the ‘grilles’ where the trees are planted were torn up and several trees uprooted, as we noticed last evening in going up the Boulevard Saint Germain.  I don’t know why they took it out on the poor trees.”  You should have seen the police in Toronto, Sylvia, trying to uproot the trees before the G20 protestors got to them. 

Things that pleased and charmed me:

• Her wit, so often like Helene Hanff’s
• On James Joyce’s poor health: “I think that plenty of sleep, food, work and out door exercise and perhaps to see one’s family as little as possible is the only way to be healthy.” 
• On being offered an honorary degree: “They seem to be expecting us and are providing me with a gown etc (but nothing to wear under it as we all feared.)”
• Her American spelling: sumpin, spose, tawk
• Keri Walsh’s careful editing
• The way her humor and pain dance off the page
• Her Gallicisms 
  • To H. D. in January 1954: “I hope too that you will find a pleasant place to install yourself and your books etc.” (s’installer)
  • On November 13, 1956, there is no “essence” for the cars
  • At the end of her letters to Adrienne: “I embrace you over and over again my dear very dear Adrienne.” (je t’embrace)

I don’t know, dear reader, what you might be looking for in The Letters of Sylvia Beach.  Among other things, I was looking for a good girl’s sense of a job well done, having rounded out her memoirs with her letters.  But this is a blog and not a homework assignment, and time to read is stolen from the tyranny of life, and though I am pleased to have read it, it took too long and life is short and I will not read out of obligation again for these pages.