One wonders why it took so long – for you, for me, and the rest of the world – to rediscover Bette Howland’s Blue in Chicago (1978), a stunning collection of stories and essays. Howland published only three books, and did not care to talk of her work in terms of genre: when asked if they were stories or essays, she vaguely said it was all about finding the right form. Some of the “stories” are definitely essays, particularly “Twenty-Sixth and California,” a description of the culture of a criminal courtroom in a poverty-stricken Chicago neighborhood. Blue in Chicago was rescued from oblivion in 2019 by A Public Space and reissued as Calm Sea and a Prosperous Journey. Picador in the UK reissued it in 2020 with the original title.
.Neighborhoods, borders, boundaries, and perimeters are important to Bette Howland. In the title story, the unnamed narrator, a graduate student, reluctantly prepares to attend her cousin’s wedding. Her Jewish family bands together for all festivities, holidays, and celebrations, but they do not visit her in Hyde Park, a poor neighborhood on the South side, near the University of Chicago, where the crime rate is high. Her parents live on the north side in a working-class white neighborhood; her grandmother lives in the poorest place of all, Uptown, a slum with cheap apartments inhabited by old people who eke out their final days chatting in lobbies or in front of their buildings.
Howland is also keenly aware of the divisions of race, religion, rich and poor, crime and safety. At the beginning of “Blue in Chicago,” the narrator hears on the radio that a university student has been killed in a hold-up in Hyde Park. “I listened for details – the time of night, a number, a street. You always want to know how close. You always want to know how close these things have come to you.”
But Howland also has a sense of humor. The narrator dutifully takes a long mass transit journey to her parents’ house, and then they go to the wedding. There is much slapstick humor as Uncle Rudy, the driver, refuses to follow the directions on the mimeographed sheet. He insists on taking the Edens Expressway, and gets thoroughly lost, despite the objections of all the women in the car. When they finally arrive, the wedding is in full swing, but there is much muttering on both sides of the aisle about the interfaith marriage: cousin Gregg was born Jewish but no one knows what he is now, while the bride is Catholic. “’Jewish?’ the ladies on the other side were saying. ‘You really think he’s a Jew?’”
One of the most delightful stories is “Public Facilities.” The narrator works as a part-time intern at a branch of the Chicago Public Library, where old men gather every day to read the financial pages of The Wall Street Journal and Barrons’ and stay till closing time. They may be penniless, they may have nowhere to go, but they remember when they were young and either dreamed of money or at least had enough.
The description of the relationships between the librarians and patrons is gently humorous. Miss Rose is friendly and chatty, a modern librarian, who keeps the newspapers in her desk for the regulars, and is sometimes shushed by the patrons. On the other hand, the head librarian is a “Shhh” librarian, who demands that patrons show ID before they are allowed to return books. She also keeps all the new books in her office for months, because she doesn’t trust the cataloguing of the librarians at the main library. In fact, she would prefer not to allow the patrons to get their hands on nice, clean, new books at all. Miss Rose is the arbiter of reason and diplomacy: she does her best to soothe everyone. But even libraries are not safe: one day a young man who has stalked one of the women employees comes in and attacks, screaming that they are all “lousy Jews.” The old men stand up and gallantly try to defend the women, ihough their blows are ineffectual. Still, the young man goes away. But they don’t have security guards at the branch library and uneasily worry that he might come back.
Howland’s brilliant novella, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, jumps back and forth in time from June 1 to June 6. The narrator is a former lover and the mother of an acolyte of Victor Lazarus, a philosopher who is dying of cancer. She is weary and frazzled, thoroughly fed up with all of Victor’s friends, his second ex-wife, referred to as X, who is persona non grata with Victor, and his academic “friends,” who betrayed him after a secretary checked his resume data and squealed to one of the profs that Victor never finished his Ph.D – or rather, two Ph.D s. Although Victor had taught at the university for decades, ans was a celebrity philosopher, who lectured all over the world, and published innumerable books, they fired him. This is the kind of world Howland’s narrator bears witness to during Victor’s sad, painful death, as she struggles to care for him, and he struggles to breathe and swallow, with a trachea that never healed.
BOOKER PRIZE GOSSIP
In the NB column in the TLS (August 8, 2024), the columnist, M.C., analyzes the history and politics of the Booker Prize. She writes, “Another year, another longlist for the Booker prize. Another chance as well, then, to marvel at the media’s various attempts to generate excitement about this weariest of marketing devices.”
In the column she wonders what excitement there can be about the number of Americans on the list (the yearly average, she says, is four, ), and what the deal is with “the first Dutch writer on the longlist.” After reading the Dutch novel, I certainly wondered! Yes, the Booker announcements are the same every year.
One year I participated with other bloggers in reading the longlist. I gave up after the fifth book, a but the late Kevin of Canada took it seriously and was, by the way, no PR maven – he was tough on books and read every last one.
As an American, I liked to use the Booker list to learn about interesting English books and books of the Commonwealth! Gosh, now it is ruined. What a year for Americans, ay? And we have our own awards. Yes, we’re not in the dark ages here.
Enlightenment, by Sarah Perry
I am halfway through the Booker Prize longlisted novel, Enlightenment, by Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent, which was also adapted as a TV series. I am very enthusiastic about this novel, though it’s too soon for me to say, “Buy it!” Perry’s prose is gorgeous, and the characters are fascinating. Thomas Hart, a newspaper columnist (his graceful, whimsical columns are included in the novel), becomes obsessed with astronomy and the Hale-Bop comet. He is also curious about the abandoned Lowlands House, reputed to be haunted, where a woman disappeared in the 19th century. A museum director contacts Thomas and gives him the woman’s papers and diary, found under the floorboards of the house. They seem to be connected through Thomas’s new interests: Thomas learns that she was an astronomer and discovered a comet.
His alter ego is young Grace Macaulay, whom he has known since she was a baby. Grace’s parents and Thomas attend the same Baptist chapel, and he and Grace have always been great friends, with a kind of uncle-niece bond. But she runs away to London, and that’s as far as I’ve got. Gorgeous writing, innovative form, plenty of entertaining columns and diary entries to break up the page. a really entertaining book and I expect the second half will be every bit as brilliant.