← Selected Shorts
Selected Shorts
Reading Between the Lines
00:59:06
Meg Wolitzer presents two stories about the things she loves most: books and words and why they matter. In Ben Loory’s “The Book,” a contrarian volume becomes a literary sensation, and alters one woman’s life. The reader is Jane Kaczmarek. In “Things I Know to be True” by Kendra Fortmeyer, originally published in One Story, a damaged veteran uses words to hold his life together. The reader is Calvin Leon Smith. And in a special feature, Wolitzer visits a favorite indie bookstore, Three Lives & Company: http://threelives.com/who.html The Greenwich Village icon, which was founded in the 1980s, is a haven for readers, writers, and book lovers of all kinds. Michael Cunningham calls it “One of the greatest bookstores on the face of the Earth. Every single person who works there is incredibly knowledgeable and well read and full of soul.” And you’ll meet some of them—and the books they treasure--on this show.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:32]
Multicare Representative
Our state has changed a lot in the last 140 years. We know because Multicare has been here guided by a single making our communities healthier. That comes from making courageous decisions, partnering with local communities to grow programs and services, and expanding healthcare access to those who need it most. Together, we're building a healthier future. Learn more@mycare.org.
- [01:10]
Meg Wolitzer
On this Selected Shorts A few of My Favorite Things, Books, words, and a trip to a beloved indie.
- [01:17]
Bookseller
Bookstore do you have a particular way that you hand sell a book?
- [01:20]
The most sure way, I think is you have just read a book, you have loved it, and someone has asked you what to read and you're like, oh my God, you have got to read this. You literally put the book in their hand.
- [01:35]
Meg Wolitzer
I'm Meg Wolitzer. Stay with me. You're listening to Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time. News flash here at Selected Shorts we love books. And I especially love books and most importantly, the words they contain. You know how during a zoom you might try and look at the books on the shelf behind the person's head? Or is it just me who does that? Books are exciting. Low tech, I guess. I mean, no tech objects. If you see your favorite book on someone else's shelf, you immediately connect with that book and that person. It's as if we're always in conversation with these inanimate objects and the people who read them. And great stories often ask us to read between the lines. So on this show, a booknanza, two stories about the importance of books and words and what they reveal, both on the surface and under it. In one, a contrarian book becomes a literary sensation. In the other, words help a troubled man control his world. And we'll have a reader's adventure at Three Lives and Company.
- [02:51]
Bookseller
Small spaces. Especially bookstores. Especially our bookstore, which has sort of covered floor to ceiling in books, wooden shelves. They're cozy, they're inviting, they're welcoming, especially with the right lighting, the right ceiling, wooden floors. You feel enveloped. You feel taken care of.
- [03:08]
Meg Wolitzer
Three Lives is one of my old haunts. No, I did not say it's a haunted bookstore, but that's a great premise for a short story if ever I heard one. Stay tuned for more on this special space for words and word lovers at the end of the show. Our first work is by writer Ben Lurie. We like his playful but deep fantasies in collections such as Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day. Dandelions talk, people turn into clouds, and fables refuse to toe the line. So it's not surprising to find that this tale, the book, begins with a contrarian premise. As you'll hear in a minute. The book is performed by Shorts regular Jane Kaczmarek, whose credits include her Emmy winning work on Malcolm in the Middle, Long Day's Journey Into Night and the series the Changeling.
- [04:07]
Narrator
The woman returns from the store with an armload of books. She reads them quickly, one by one, over the course of the next few weeks. But when she opens the last one, the woman frowns in surprise. All of the pages in the book are blank. Every single one. The woman takes the book back to the store, but the manager won't let her return it. Right there on the COVID manager says this book has no words and it is not returnable. The woman is angry. She wouldn't have bought the book if she'd known there were no words inside. But the manager simply will not relent. The woman leaves in a huff. She throws the book in the trash. A few days later, the woman sees a man reading the book on the subway. She gets mad. She screams across the crowded floor. There are no words inside. You can't read it, she says. But the man becomes defensive. You can pretend, he says. There's no law against pretending. I think there might be words if you look at under a special light, says a woman sitting nearby. This woman is holding her own copy of the book. That is so stupid. The woman yells. Don't you see how stupid that is? Don't you understand that's crazy? At the next station, a policeman is called and has to break up the fight. A television crew arrives at the scene. The woman is interviewed. She appears on the news. She complains loudly about the book for some time. The next day, the book appears on the bestseller lists under both fiction and nonfiction. The woman is furious, enraged, appalled. She calls into a radio show and starts to rant. She calls the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. She Appears again on television, this time in a debate with the author. Your book is a joke. The author just sits there and smiles. The woman becomes famous for opposing the book. She even writes a book of her own. Her book cries out for the destruction of the first book. In answer, the first book's sails jump. The woman is frantic. She does not know what to do. She feels like she is going insane. And then one day, a man on the street comes up to her and. And spits in the woman's face. The woman stands there, shocked, paralyzed. She hadn't realized that everyone hated her. She turns and runs, sobbing all the way home. She locks the door and collapses on the floor. She crawls into the bedroom on her hands and knees and hides beneath the blankets. She huddles in the darkness all night long, her hands over her eyes, crying. The following morning, the woman unplugs her phone. She doesn't want to be invited on TV anymore. She sits on the edge of her bed for a while, and then, slowly, she rises. The woman turns over a whole new leaf. She turns her attention to other things. She takes up hobbies. She goes scuba diving. She even makes some friends. Without the controversy the woman's anger stirred up. The book starts to slip from the best seller list. It slips and slips for weeks and weeks, until one day it finally disappears. The woman's own book disappears as well. The woman doesn't even notice. The years go by. The woman meets a man. She falls in love. She gets married. She has children. And she raises them and lets them go and watches them start families of their own. She and her husband go through some hard times, but in the end, they stay together. And then one day, late in life, the woman's husband dies. For months, the woman is unable to sleep. She wanders through the house, feeling lost. She turns on lights and turns them off. She sits down. She gets up. She sits. One evening in the attic, going through her husband's things. The woman finds a copy of the book. She hasn't thought of this book in years. She's afraid to open it up. Instead, she takes the book back downstairs and puts it on the shelf. It sits there untouched, for weeks and weeks, until one day her grandchildren come over. What's this? One of them says, and lifts it up. And as she does, something falls out. The woman reaches down and picks it up. It's a single old photograph. It's a picture taken of her and her husband on the very first day they met. They're standing together on the beach. In the distance is a sunset. Oh, says the woman. Look at that. And a smile spreads across her face. And then the book seems to open itself and there's her life on the page.
- [10:40]
Meg Wolitzer
That was Jane Kacmarek's reading of the book by Ben Lurie. I love the direction this piece takes emotionally. It starts out with a provocative, paradoxical gimmick, moves into an almost satirical dig at obsession and celebrity culture, and then leaves us with a graceful epiphany that the words we need will find us when we need them. And I found myself incredibly moved by the thumbnail summary of the woman's life. The years going by, the marriage, the children, the children growing up and leaving home and starting families, the sense of time passing. Books do time passing really well. One paragraph can somehow contain a person's whole life. It leaves me breathless when it's done right. When we return, words are there when all else fails. I'm Meg Wolitzer. You're listening to Selected Shorts recorded live in performance at Symphony Space in New York City and at other venues nationwide. Welcome back. This is Selected Shorts, where our greatest actors transport us through the magic of fiction, one short story at a time. I megwallet sir, this show is about our love of books and words and how they make their way into our lives. If you'd like more of them to make their way into your life, Visit our website, SelectedShorts.org, check out recent shows, our podcast, and our own special bit of required reading, our anthology Small Odysseys. And as a bonus, you can hear the full conversation from my visit to a local New York City bookshop in our podcast.
- [12:31]
Matthew Love
Did you hear that? It's an audience preparing to see live theater at Symphony Space in New York. One of my favorite sounds. Why? It means anticipation. It means no turning back. It means that for the next two hours, I get to live alongside that audience in a world of literature brought to life right in front of me. I'm Matthew Love, a writer and producer at Selected Shorts. While my job includes reading stories and creating scripts for our hosts, the reason I love my job involves standing in the wings to hear a pin drop while someone like Ellen Burstyn is reading a Margaret Atwood piece. Stories, performance, and community are the lifeblood of Selected Shorts. If you feel the same, please consider going to selectedshorts.org and donating to the show.
- [13:23]
Meg Wolitzer
Our second story, Things I Know to Be True, is by Kendra Fortmire. She's also the author of the young adult novel Hole in the Middle. This story won her a PushCart Prize in 2017. You will hear why in a minute. The narrator of Things I Know to Be True declares, I trust words. They make things clear. This story so redefines how we relate to books and language that we quite literally want it to speak for itself. The reader is Calvin Leon Smith, whose theater credits include the Broadway show Fat Ham, as well as work with many regional theater companies and who was recently seen in Amazon Prime's the Underground Railroad. Here he is with Kendra Fortmire's Things I Know to Be True.
- [14:21]
Calvin Leon Smith
Wow. Thank you. I'm leaving the library when Ms. Fowler stops me, peering through her glasses like they are windows in a house where she lives lives alone. She says, charlie, a patron saw you ripping up books. I didn't, I say. You know, these words sound true, but Ms. Fowler holds up the collected works of Edgar Allan Poe. Bits of paper flutter from its edges like snow. I know a man in that book. He was trapped underground. He rustles in the pocket of my windbreaker. Now, from elsewhere, Ms. Fowler says, give me the pages. I'm going to take him outside, I announce. I declare, declare, which is like clarion call, which is like the sound of trumpets. I'm going to take him into the light. Look, Ms. Fowler says. Her lips blow bubbles of words into the air, crisp faceted ones like replacement, and thin filmed ones like expensive. She speaks to me like I am a child, like operations can smooth these cracked, dark hands, like damages can topple the 27 precarious years stacked in my name. I try to listen, but my eyes jump to the rack of newspapers behind her, the small truths of their headlines swimming up like snakes. Carter Wins Democratic Nomination in New York Montreal prepares for 1976 Olympic Games. North South Vietnam prepare for reunification. Ms. Fowler says, Last chance, her eyes blinking behind her glasses like she is drawing the curtains. She says, give me the material or we're revoking your borrowing privileges. It is the we that frightens me, because I can see Ms. Fowler, but I cannot see the rest of we. They could be anywhere, plural. Slowly I draw the crumpled pages from my pocket, the clamshell edges glinting gold. Ms. Fowler waits until I put them in her hand, nose curling. Thank you, Charlie, she says. This is my day. I wake up. I make oatmeal. I eat my oatmeal and I go to the library. I go to the library because it is full of words and I trust words. They make things real. Words like this is my apartment, like I have lived here alone for eight months, like it is small and dark and the air conditioner is broken and no one is on the other end to fix it when I call. All true. My sister Linda pays the rent, but we both agree that this is my apartment. The same way everyone agrees that I can't live with Mother, even though Mother says it's because I'm too grown up to live at home and Linda says it's because Mother's a selfish drunk and then apologizes and looks exhausted. Is it any wonder that I prefer words? There is a list above my bedroom door. I do not remember making it, but it is in my handwriting. This is what it says. 1 these are the things that I know to be true. The past and future exist through stories. Stories are made of words. Words make the future and past existence. This means if I went to the VA clinic yesterday, I can say I went to the clinic yesterday. Then there it is in your head like a real thing. I could also say I went to the zoo yesterday and then that would be real in your head instead. You would not know the difference. I might not know the difference. I could believe the words I went to the zoo or I could believe the words I went to the clinic. Maybe both are true. It is some several tens of thousands of words later or a dark night, a long winter, a little girl losing her mother, a retired detective taking on one last case. There is a body in a dumpster when I feel a touch on my shoulder. I thought we talked about this. It is Ms. Fowler. Her words are the same, but her voice is the word truncheon. Oh my God, I say. There is a hand lying on top of a McDonald's wrapper. Its fingernails are blue. Charlie, Ms. Fowler says again. Then I look up and scream because the hand is on my shoulder, on my shoulder, and suddenly Ms. Fowler's face is far away, shouting, charlie, Charlie. And all the other faces are turning to see us like too many small dark moons. The hand is gone from my shoulder and it is waving through the air and it is attacking, attached to Ms. Fowler, and I am screaming but the fingernails are pink and there is no dumpster and I am in the library and slowly I am breathing, breathing, calming. There is a man standing in the doorway of the reading room. He is in uniform. My muscles flinch to attention and then down again. It is not the place or time. Linda is always saying those words, ever since I came back home. Charlie, this is not the place or time. Ms. Fowler holds a book with a woman on the COVID her face curling at the edges. I told you, Charlie, Ms. Fowler says. We can't have you damaging any more books? I look at the man in the uniform. I know the uniform is all I'm supposed to see, but I can see his eyes too, and they are full of pulling away. It was the fire, I say to the uniformed man. Ms. Fowler asks, what fire? There are teeth in her voice. Her lover was burning alive. She couldn't stop it. Ms. Fowler looks pained. So you tried to put it out? I did put it out. I turn back to my book, to the dumpster, but Ms. Fowler closes the book. Her mouth makes a line like a broken down L. It is not a word whose shape I understand. No, you didn't, Charlie. What you did was run a book under the bathroom faucet because you read the word fire. She opens the book, points to a page. Look, Charlie. Fire. F I R E. She rubs her finger on the page and I wince. The word smoke floats past my eyelids and the back of my throat begins to burn. See, it's no fire, just four letters that won't go away no matter how much water you pour. Pour on them. Her fingers are beginning to smoke. I can see her pink nails turning black, and still she stares at me from behind the windows of her eyeglasses. She does not flinch. I'm sorry, Charlie. Her hand is beginning to sear and crackle around the edges. There is a smell like bacon. I gag, eyes watering. Ms. Fowler says, I know it's hard for you to understand, but what's in here? It's fiction. The flames are eating her sleeve. Now one of her fingernails peels off and lands on the floor where it writhes like an insect. Ms. Fowler, I say. And what's out here, she says, reaching toward me with a hand that is charred and boned, is the real world. Stop it. I shriek. Stop. Stop. I lunge through the fire that is eating her alive. There are flames dancing on the lenses of Mist Fowler's horned glasses, and behind them something dawns in her eyes. Then my hand is on the book and I can feel it singeing the pads of my fingertips as it sails across the room, arcing across the stacks like a firefly in the dark. My panic follows the book for a moment it will burn the library down. But Ms. Fowler is standing there next to me, and her skin is blackening and shriveling like a fungus. I know somewhere deep down that it won't do any good. Her burns are too bad. It's too late. But I tackle her to the ground, beating her with my coat, trying to put out the fire that's everywhere Everywhere people are shouting. The uniformed man has left the doorway. He is beside me now and is holding my arms behind my back. Alright, buddy, that's enough out of you, the uniformed man says and hauls me toward the door. I don't want to go, but pain shoots through my shoulder and I stumble forward. Ms. Fowler, I cry. I hear her voice say, thank you, Robert, you're alive, I shout to her. The man in the uniform is dragging me toward the door and my shoulder is crying in unwritten language. But I cannot stop staring, marveling at Ms. Fowler's wholeness. I saved you. You're alive. The man in uniform pushes me through the door. Wait, I say. My feet turn to syrup on the floor, just dragging. I do not want to leave this house of words. Ms. Fowler watches me go. Her mouth looks like the word sorry. The uniformed man has no pity. He pushes me out into the dazzling sunlight. Then we get into his car and go to the police station. I spend one afternoon and part of a night in jail. They make me take off my belt and give them my wallet. There is nothing inside but a library card and a feather I found on a park bench. There are two men in the cell with me, one in a corner saying quiet, angry things and another who just sleeps. I sink down by the toilet, biting the fleshy part of my hand. I try to tell myself this is jail instead of prison, but it's unfurling in my brain like a fire ant sting. The past and future are made of stories, of words, so I tell myself, don't give words to this. Don't give words to this. Don't give it any words. My sister Linda comes down from Richmond. She signs her name for my freedom at the maroon desk. The policeman gives me my wallet and jacket back. Linda has my keys. She makes a face when she sees my windbreaker. You're still wearing that ratty thing? Mom would have a conniption. What happened to that sweater she sent? I shrug, zip the coat up to my chin. Cloaked in a windbreaker, I cannot be broken. It smells like safety and me. They let Linda take me home. Her husband, Louis, is not with her, which makes me happy because I do not like Louis. One year on Thanksgiving, he brought me some pamphlets that that made Linda mad. They said, Institutional Living Facility. Linda threw him in the garbage. She said. Dr. Schaefer said he's making progress. She said, for God's sake, can't you give him some time to recover? My mother said nothing and only poured herself another drink. Lewis said, it's Been six years and we're paying too much for that damn apartment. And he's not okay. He's crazy. Those words have kept knocking around in my skull. When I try to imagine myself striding into the future, I trip over them like stones. Linda and I walk through the front door of my apartment. There are library books everywhere. Books on the floor, on the sofa, lining the walls like yellow bordered guards. Linda wrinkles her nose. Can I get you something to eat? I ask, because I remember that's what you're supposed to do when people come to your house. Oh, I ate on the road. Stopped at McDonald's. Linda sits on my armchair and digs her finger into the stuffing. Her finger looks like a pink worm that cannot escape from her hand. Why did you attack that librarian? She says at last. I didn't, I say, feeling uncomfortable. I don't remember attacking anybody, but there are the words you attack. Did I? I ask, just trying to sound casual. She stares at me. The librarian at Cameron Village. Mrs. Fuller? Ms. Fowler, I say automatically. And then she was on fire. Saying this makes me feel better. I think this will make Linda proud of me. But she looks at the sofa instead, at the little worm of her finger. It writhes in the Styrofoam innards of my couch. Charlie, linda says. Her voice sounds tired. I can't drive down here every time you get into trouble. You got off easy. Not even a fine. They just banned you from the library. All the county libraries, actually. I blink. I'm just banned. Banned officially or legally prohibited. Just guided by truth, reason, fairness. My mind races. Well, for how long? I say in a voice that is tight and high and not mine. Linda shakes her head. It's not a for how long type of deal, hon. That's it. You're out. My lips work, but there are no words. The worm disappears from my sofa as Linda rises. She takes me in her arms. Her eyes are hurting for me and blue. I'm sorry, sweetie. You're just gonna have to handle it the best you can, okay? She rocks me in her arms. Oh, she smells like French fry oil and Virginia Slims. You're gonna be okay. You'll find a new hobby. All right? It is strange how everything in the room looks exactly the same while my world slides slowly sideways. I try not to watch as Linda packs up all of my library books, the worlds I know so inside and out that no card catalog in the world can make them not mine. I eat my SpaghettiOs and focus hard on all the new words I can make there's flavor mouth and red sauce. I try to make new words, new small truths, because if I do, I can make this moment into one where I'm not 27 years old and trying not to cry. Linda promises to drop my books off at the library on her way back to Richmond. She asks if I want to come and live with her in Lewis, but I shake my head. I wish my sister would stay with me here and we could move back again with Mother and things would be just like they were before my hands grew cracks, and when Mother could still look at me without flinching away and talking too loud. Linda presses some money into my hand, but I make my hand limp, and so she leaves the bills on an empty bookshelf before kissing me a kiss that is goodbye. I wonder if Linda would still come see me if she weren't called Sister. I wonder if the light would still fade if there weren't a word. Night it is a long, cold couple of weeks. This is my day. I wake up. I make my oatmeal and I eat my oatmeal. My feet still want to take me to the library at first, and I have to fight them. We are going somewhere new today. Feet, I say, and a little girl stares at me. I pull my blue windbreaker tight and drag my body north. I walk a new direction every day until I do not recognize anyone or anything. This outside world makes me ill. Nothing makes sense. I come back to my apartment at the end of the day and I feel I cannot trust anything. I have no books left. None. Not any. Not at all. Not one. I read what is left. Cereal boxes, warning labels, my life delineated into fat or iron, blindness or death. I try to read the shapes carved into the popcorn ceiling by the street lights outside, and everything swims. My eyes feel like they are starving. Dr. Schaeffer says I should write news stories. Dr. Schaeffer says I can choose what is in them. You get to invent yourself now, Charlie. Pick the person you want to be. That's what happens in America. You get to start over. I try to explain to him the go to the clinic or go to the zoo. He smiles enormously, with an exclamation point. That's it precisely. Do you want to be Charlie who is sick and sorry for himself, or Charlie who has fun? Tell me, Charlie, where would you rather go? I say. The library. Dr. Schaeffer nods yes, but his forehead is scrunched. No, he says. You don't need the library, Charlie. The library was an escape. This is an opportunity You've got a talent with words. You could go back to school. Journalism, maybe advertising. Have you thought about that? No, I say. Dr. Schaeffer reaches for my chart. The old you is gone. He takes a green spiral bound notebook from his desk and puts it into my hands. He says, now is the time to write the new story of you. That night I try to write the story of myself. I use the green notebook. All the words jumble in my head with no order to them. I keep my mouth pursed up in a small O so that only one sound can come out at a time. I write with a ruler so everything stays straight, but nothing helps. Too many letters, too many lines. Here and there a sentence pokes out and it's like a small miracle. This is my day. I tear out the pages. Being mine doesn't make a story worth telling. At night I dream of paper leaves and trees made of fire. I do not know what day it is or what time when I get a phone call from Mother. She says, charlie, dear, how have you been? She asks. Fine, I say. This means small and slippery and falling through the cracks. We talk about her bridge club and her church. We talk about if Linda will ever have children. Then Mother says, linda called last week. She told me you're not allowed to go to the library anymore. I fiddle with my fingers. I was banned. Banned brand. A stigma stamped in my skin. Mother sniffs, they sent you over there and now they want you to be invisible. I think it's sick denying a man the right to read. I do not know the answer to the questions she isn't asking, but I barely care. My mind is whirling. A man the right to read. Oh, Mother, I love you. Thank you, Charlie. She sounds surprised. We hang up and I lay on the couch seeing nothing. Mind singing. A man the right. A man the right. A man invisible. The right to read. And me humming with it because I figured it out. If I go to a new library, nobody will know me, and if they do not know who I am, they cannot make me leave the library. I stay up late at night thinking about this until my head hurts. I walk the next day to the Cat bus station and I purchase a 30 day pass. It uses up nearly all the money, but I cannot make myself care. I climb on the bus. I'm afraid of being caught and turned away, but the bus driver doesn't even look at me. I am so grateful that I smile at every person on the bus. It is my thank you to them for being alive on the day that I Get my world back. The new library is in a shopping center. At first I think I am making a mistake, but the driver says no, this is the North Hills branch. By the time I get inside through the glass doors and into the air conditioning, sweat has stuck my windbreaker to my back. A librarian looks up when I step into the library, and every nerve in my body shrieks. I duck my head, turn blindly left. I end up in the children's area. A new librarian looks up at me. She frowns. Before she can speak, I plunge left and left again. I feel dizzy, and the walls lean out at odd angles. We know you, Charlie. You're not supposed to be here. Charlie. You'll hurt us, drown us, burn us. Charlie. Charlie. Charlie. Then suddenly, the space opens up around me. I'm in a place I recognize, the reading room. The air is quiet. Other patrons float by like fish, weaving in and out of the stacks in earthy colors. I go to a table. I put down my back and breathe a second soft sigh. Then I go to the stacks, like that is exactly where I'm supposed to be, and I begin to pull down books. I know better than to try my library card. If they find out who I am, they will make me leave, and then I will be empty again, my shelves empty, no words left to me and mine. But now I know how to keep the words at my table. I take Dr. Shaffer's green notebook from my bag and begin to copy the first book word by word. The library begins to darken and empty, and when the first closing announcements burst through the intercom, I drop my book and scuttle out the door. I am afraid of being recognized on the bus. I smile the whole way home because my world has come back, and this is so true that one lady even smiles back at me. I get home with my notebook. I put my notebook on the table and think about all of the things I could do that are not reading my notebook. Eat soup. Go to the bathroom. Go. But the words get blurred in my head in a kind of hunger, and before I can help myself, I have the notebook in my hand. I open it to the first page and the paper crinkles a little. My eyes swim for a moment in the glory of words, all the lines and shapes and letters that say a million different things and all belong to me. It's my own book. I almost do not understand what to do with it. But then I begin to read, and that is when my heart breaks, because I know all of these words already, because I read them already. When I was copying them down. There is a dark feeling building and building in my chest so hard and sharp edged that it pushes the notebook into out of my hands. I bite down on my forearm like they taught us to. Don't make a fucking sound when you see something you don't want to see, like someone's head blown away or their guts hanging out over their knees. I bite into my own flesh and bone and in the biting my mouth is full and there are no words and there are too many. I wake up. I eat my oatmeal and on my blue windbreaker I go back to the North Hills branch and do not turn left. I pick a new book and begin again. When I realize that I am reading the book too much, I begin to hum in my head to keep my mind completely blank so that my hand can copy now and my mind can read later. I work for a long time at my table and nobody bothers me. I go to the bathroom and come back to my table and embrace my newfound identity of nobody. On the bus home, two people smile. Back at home I take out my notebook and I begin to read. And there in my stilted handwriting, a beautiful first sentence. For a long time I went to bed early. I read until the light drains from the room. I finish one book and start another. Chapter by chapter. I rewrite myself and Agatha Christie and Marcel Proust and Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Bach. The covers are luscious titles, cool and ripe on my tongue. I glut myself in ink stained to the knuckles. Time passes in pages and in dried up pens. It is late and what they call a Tuesday. I have been working on Cannery Row for the last several weeks and am nearly complete. I place the period at the end of the second to last chapter, close my notebook. My hands are cracked but strong. I zip up my blue jacket and stand ready to leave when a voice says, excuse me, are you Charles Harrison? And I jump. She has the right soft voice of librarian. Also the glasses, also the cardigan sweater. I have never seen her before. She should not know my name. Please, I say softly. I am caught and I want to hide, to go to earth. But I have no earth. Just this word. Please. I thought it might be you, she says. I have something for you. Hold on, I'll go get it. All right. Just wait right here. I stand a second minute, unsure. She caught me. She didn't seem angry. How does she know it was me? She's pretending. She's gonna call the police. She's gonna call the police. My Feet drag on the tile. The second hand drags across the clock face. I will wait. She smiled. It is safe. I will wait. I wait 20 seconds exactly. Then I bolt out the door. I lie in bed a long time the next day, trying to find meaning in the bumps and shadows of the scene. I am trying not to think about Cannery Row or about the way I feel when I am reading it, like everything was wrong and now I am in a room full of music and laughter. I cannot go back to the library, it is not safe anymore, but I climb on the bus and tell myself I am just going for a ride. My pass expires tomorrow. I may as well enjoy it, see the sights. So I smile at everyone and it is so such a good day that four people smile back and one person says hello. I feel like a true American citizen. I get off at the library. I duck my head and go straight for the reading room. I find Cannery Row behind the plant where I left it, and I keep my head down. I scrawl and I scrawl and I scrawl, waiting at any moment to feel the hand on my shoulder. Where were you? You ran away. You're a criminal. You've been banned. You can't be here. Security I Two pages left. 1. I write the final words and behind the glass the rattlesnakes lay still and stared into space with their dusty frowning eyes. I fling my notebook into my bag and dash for the door. I vanish into the white afternoon light. You believed me, didn't you? You saw me in your brain, vanishing, which means that for one minute it was true and now it exists and will be true forever. But what also happened is Doc is washing glasses carefully because there is beautiful music and he is afraid of spoiling it when somebody sits down across from me and put something on the table. The somebody is the red haired librarian. The something is a crumpled yellow envelope. You ran away yesterday, she says. I'm sorry, I say. I forgot. She knows I am lying and I think she likes me a little less now, but she gives me the envelope anyway. There is a book inside so stained and ugly and battered that the title is rubbed off its broken spine. But I know this book. I would know it anywhere. I want to push my chair back from the table, but I can't move. I see faces smiling, frowning, shouting, and I see jungle so thick I'm afraid my eyelashes have grown up over my eyes. This book, I say, through the Jungle, is gone. The librarian does not understand. She gives a tentative smile. I found this copy of Catch 22 mixed in with a large bundle of returns, she says. I thought someone had taken notes in the margins. And then I read what you had written and I thought, well, I thought you might like to have it back. She reaches across the table and opens the COVID and there is my name in red crayon written in my own handwriting. The pages flutter like crazed butterflies. I look down and see through the high whine in my ears that my hands are cracked, and through the cracks I see names. Jimmy Metcalf, Lucas Johnson. I see the way the light reflects on the water where they found that girl bathing. I see the song Joe Crispin played on his guitar and Cross Quang Tree and how it got stuck in everyone's head for days and we changed the words so many times that no one remembered the original. I see C rations and finger necklaces curled like shrimp. I see all of us tired and hot, 21 and younger and breathing Jimmy Metcalf's farts all morning on patrol through jungle leaves thick as eyelashes, and I see the way the air gleamed pink after Jimmy stepped over onto the mine, the tiny click and then the sky blown apart and the whole world sets singeing, flashing white in the sun, pieces of flesh against the green like cherry blossoms in the first light of spring, so pink and bright that your heart rips in half at the beauty. One half says the trees are on fire, the other half says the trees are not are fire. Maybe both are true. I see this book inside Jimmy's pack and then me taking it and writing down these words, a story hidden inside another story. I see the pages fill while the doctors patched up my leg and the skin scabbed over on my arm. I see the hospital bed with the ringing fading from my ears and my leg itching and burning and stinking in its cast. I I see the medical review when no one in the room would look at me straight, and I see the book on a plane carried all the way home until I landed on American soil and that chapter ended and I closed it. But then here it is on the table in the library and here I am. This book is gone, I say again. No, the librarian says slowly. It was just misplaced, I think. This is not the place or time. How did you know it was me? I ask. We had a regional staff meeting at the beginning of the month. Your name came up. There was a photo. Simple as that. She does not say you are a criminal, does not say you attacked Ms. Fowler, just you came up like a flower. I push away from the table. I'm going to go home now. It's okay, she says. You can stay. I'm going to go home, I say again and leave. I do not smile at anybody on the bus. At the corner, I throw my cannery row notebook into the trash can. No matter how hard I read and how hard I write, it seems like I can only have one story after all. I try to do everything right. I wait until the sun goes down. I sit across the room from the book that won't let me go and wonder how long it is before the words harden back into truth. In her last card to me, Linda wrote, have you thought about keeping a journal like Dr. Schaeffer said? I look at the card alone on the empty bookshelf. On the front is a rabbit wishing me an egg salent Easter. I can't. Write me down again, I say to the rabbit. I pretend the rabbit can answer. It says, but you can write any. You can make the words. The rabbit sounds like Linda. I want to make her happy, but I know that I can't. All I want is to be gone, like the book was supposed to be gone. Then I see the list above my door, the things I know to be true. I detach it from the wall and try not to look at my hands. I write, charlie didn't go to war and he didn't kill anybody, and his mother let him come home again and his sister lived there too, and they went to the movies together. It was Superman, and Charlie had a good car and a library card and he was never hungry again. I sit and wait for those words to become truth. My stomach rumbles. I underline never hungry, but it rumbles again and my world blurs. I shred the list into pieces so small that they slip through my fingers like water spilling onto the bare floor and down over my dry and rootless feet. This is where the story ends. But the sun comes up again the next day. The sun always comes up again. It doesn't know when to quit, maybe because it doesn't speak any language that can tell it no. So I get up, I make my oatmeal, I eat my oatmeal, and I go to the bus stop. The bus driver looks at my 30 day pass and shakes his head at me. I'm sorry, he says to the zipper of my windbreaker. This expired yesterday. You've got to get a new ticket. So, sir, he says, sir, But I am not listening. I am looking past him at all the people on the bus, their feet secure in boots, their faces as closed as books on a shelf, the whole bus of unwritten words humming, waiting sentences strung out in infinite lines across the city. Carefully I shred my ticket. I shred the expiration date into pieces. Then I find a seat and wait to be carried like everyone else, into some bright and not yet written future. Thank you.
- [49:47]
Meg Wolitzer
Calvin. Leon Smith performed Kendra Fortmire's Things I Know to Be True. I'm Meg Walitzer. This story manages both to show and tell us the power of words, and in doing so, it does something incredible. I hate to add another image that wasn't in the story, but hey, writing begets writing, so I'll just say it. The story puts us inside what I think of as its own little snow globe in which the snow is made of pages whirling around us. On this show about books, words and reading between the lines, these two stories felt like important ones to highlight. They demonstrate the power of intentional language by defaulting, defying our expectations about what it means to be a book and what it means to be a reader. But wait, there's more, as those late night ads for weird kitchen gadgets you'll use once and then put in the back of your cabinet for eternity used to say. I graduated from college in 1981 and moved to New York City. In 1983, I moved to Charles street in Greenwich Village and almost immediately discovered the bookstore Three Lives and Co. Right around the corner on 10th Street. It had been founded in 1978 by three women, Jill Dunbar, Jenny Feder and Helene Webb. They were very kind to me, a newly published author, and over the years it became one of my mainstays. This program seemed the perfect occasion to pay a visit, and one recent evening, Three Lives manager Troy Chatterton and book buyer Miriam Chotiner Gardner let me in after hours. I felt privileged all over again and got to ask what makes the store, now owned by Toby Cox, so magical?
- [51:30]
Bookseller
To be in a bookstore at night and have it to yourself is like a dream. It's like a dreamy, beautiful jewel box of a place. I love being here. So what do you think it is about small bookshops that makes you just want to go inside small spaces? What do you think, either of you?
- [51:45]
I mean, I think small spaces, especially bookstores, especially our bookstore, which is covered floor to ceiling in books, wooden shelves, they're cozy, they're inviting, they're welcoming. Especially with the right lighting, the right ceiling, wooden floors, you feel enveloped, you feel taken care of.
- [52:02]
I remember the first time I came in here, but I don't remember what I bought. Coming in here was, you know, like coming home. I was a newly minted novelist. My book was there on the shelf. I ignored it, you know, just sort of stayed away from it and, you know, went to the others. But it was such a thrilling feeling to be on the shelf as well as in person in this beautiful and important place.
- [52:24]
There's the concept of the third place, which is home, work, and then third place traditionally was church. But people are now looking for a different kind of third place, and bookstores are filling that role in communities, I think. So we certainly try to be the third place in people's lives.
- [52:39]
Yeah, we definitely are. How about you?
- [52:40]
I think it's true. I think that because it's a smaller space and there's a small staff, and you get less lost if you do it over and over, before you know it, not only are you more familiar with space, but you're also more familiar with the people inside the shop, the booksellers. And so you get to know them.
- [52:57]
There's a sense that I have being in here that it's sort of the opposite of the huge great maw of the Internet here. It's curated. It's not everything and anything, but it's some things. And the things that are here have been chosen by people like you, and there's a reason that they've been chosen. So there's this bespoke quality to the books here and to being here.
- [53:16]
And you both get to see the things that you've been looking for. The books people are talking about, the books that are being reviewed, but also the books that you would have never stumbled on if you hadn't walked through our doors.
- [53:25]
You know, the listener can't see this, obviously, but in their minds, very vividly, they could perhaps imagine it. I'm standing by a section about New York City, and there's bright, beautiful covers are staring out at me. And then next to it, there's a whole cookbook section. And cookbooks that I've never heard of are here, and a children's book section right beside it. And I have a grandchild, and I'm like, wow, what are these books?
- [53:46]
Narrator
What?
- [53:47]
Bookseller
I'm overstimulated. How have you made these choices, the ones that you're featuring so beautifully?
- [53:52]
The books are chosen through a sort of alchemy. Some of it is based on instinct. When we're reviewing publisher catalogs and see books that we think would be a good fit, it comes down to what books are we interested in, and what books do we think our readers will be interested in? People say, I have not seen this in another bookstore that I've walked into. And to us, that is the highest compliment you can give us.
- [54:12]
Sometimes we read the same things, but often we're all reading something different. We rely on paying attention to what our colleagues are reading and what regulars are reading and what they're talking about in the shops.
- [54:22]
Of course, we try to read as much as we can, but a lot of the art of bookselling is through osmosis, through what you pick up from people who have read the book, through reviews, through looking at the book. You can speak intelligently to the books we're putting in people's hands.
- [54:35]
Do you have a particular way that you hand sell a book?
- [54:38]
The most sure way, I think, is you have just read a book, you have loved it, and someone has asked you what to read, and you're like, oh, my God, you have got to read this. And you literally put the book in their hand.
- [54:52]
If I came in and said, I want something blisteringly funny by a woman that I wouldn't know done.
- [54:59]
So there's this book called Today A Woman Went Mad.
- [55:03]
Very good. That is by my mother, which I adore.
- [55:07]
This is not a staged recommendation and hand sell every day.
- [55:12]
Have you got something funny and like.
- [55:15]
Something nor ephron y funny is kind of the one that stumps us the most.
- [55:20]
We're all sort of sad, dark readers here for the most part.
- [55:23]
Well, I don't know if I mean light. You said light.
- [55:24]
I didn't say no, but. No, but light funny is what we usually get asked for. Someone I find blisteringly funny is Iris Murdoch.
- [55:31]
Oh, that's fabulous. Yeah, let's.
- [55:32]
Yeah, let's go to the part of the film fiction section, especially her first novel called under the Net. It was the first thing I read.
- [55:40]
By her comic novel about work and love, wealth and fame sold just like, you know, here we are in my old stomping grounds from when I was just coming up as a writer. But it's also thinking about when I was just coming up as a reader. You know, people come back to this bookstore probably to find books that they once loved as well as new ones. So I think that's a big part of it because you have such beautiful editions of books that we might not have thought about for a really long time.
- [56:04]
It's why we keep those books on the shelf.
- [56:07]
When you're a writer and you go into a bookstore. Yes. In the back of your Mind is, where are my books? And they're often down at people's feet, of course, because my last name begins with a W. And I sort of so envy that Stephen King right in the middle. But sometimes you see somebody in a bookstore pick up your book and there's this horrible moment where you hold your breath. People have their own tastes and their own desires. But I do tend to stay away from my books in a bookstore, I have to say.
- [56:29]
But you're in such good company. You've got Virginia Woolf. Virginia Woolf, yes.
- [56:33]
Yes. I'm in a sandwich of Virginia Woolf and my mother, I think, probably right. That's really. No, actually, that doesn't make sense. It goes Wolf, Hilma, and then me. I'm thinking that our listeners who are all over the country probably have their own version of three lives. I hope they do, or at least perhaps did at some point. So many stores have closed, but you've thrived. And it's so wonderful to see that.
- [56:57]
I think there will always be a place for an independent bookstore in a community. Maybe I'm an optimist and don't have a toehold in the actual economics of it, but we have certainly thrived throughout the course of 45 years and continue to thrive. And especially if you situate yourself in a neighborhood that needs you and loves you and that you have a sort of reciprocal relationship with, people will keep coming. People will support you. They want interesting local businesses in their neighborhoods.
- [57:23]
When this bookshop is at its busiest and you look out into the room, you do not see one kind of person. People, young and old, want a book in their hand.
- [57:35]
And to buy those physical books from a bookstore, that is like three lives. It's the object and the place.
- [57:41]
Exactly. They want the book, but they also are very specific that they want to buy it here or at a bookshop they love or care about.
- [57:51]
Yes, I feel that way, too.
- [57:52]
Meg Wolitzer
When you buy a book here and.
- [57:53]
Bookseller
You put it in that paper bag and you leave with this crisp paper bag, and it doesn't have a pastry inside, it has something even better. I hope maybe this will make people think about and visit their favorite bookstores.
- [58:05]
There's special places like this in this article from 1981. They wanted it to feel like a living room.
- [58:12]
The experience of being in the store, the intimacy of being in the store is sort of the intimacy that you feel reading a book. It is the privacy. It is the beauty of being immersed in a world that is not your own. And that's what I feel, being in the store. It is like reading.
- [58:26]
Meg Wolitzer
I think we could have talked books all night. Our friends at Three Lives made me realize that bookstores are themselves a kind of text, with we browsers and buyers reading between the shelves. A fitting ending to a show with two stories that made us rethink what it means to read and what it means to live. I'm Meg Wolitzer. Thanks for joining me for Selected Shorts. Selected Shorts is produced by Jennifer Brennan and Sarah Montague. Our team includes Matthew Love, Drew Richardson, Mary Shimkin, Vivianne Woodward, and Magdalene Robleski. The readings are recorded by Myles B. Smith. Our programs, presented at the Getty center in Los Angeles are recorded by Phil Richards. Our theme music is David Peterson's that's the Deal, performed by the Dierdorf Petersen Group. Selected Shorts is supported by the Dungannon Foundation. This program is also made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. Selected Shorts is produced and distributed by Symphony Space.
- [59:45]
Bookseller
Sam.