Summer Library Series: A Kind of Beacon by Jack Kaulfus

Welcome to this week's installment of the Summer Library Series in which professional authors reflect on their childhood experience with their local library.  Today's author is Jack Kaulfus, who hails from Texas and had a library card at the Seguin-Guadalupe County Library.

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A KIND OF BEACON

by Jack Kaulfus

Guadalupe County Library in the early ‘90s 

was not a hot destination for young folks, 

but it smelled good inside, and the air 

conditioning was icy.

I fell in love with The Library Man over the summer between my sophomore and junior year in high school. He was tall and lean and sensitive, and he had some longish hair and a choker under his button- down shirt. He was a new librarian, probably in his early 20s, and he was married. He wasn’t from my small town. 

Seguin-Guadalupe County Public Library

I was always doing this in high school – becoming infatuated with older, disinterested feminine men who might want to talk to me about books or music. It was good practice for later, when I’d become more appropriately obsessed with older, disinterested butch women who might want to talk to me about books or music.

I had only the vaguest idea about what I wanted from the The Library Man. My friends believed I was in love with him, and I didn’t discourage them. It was much safer to cop to an impossible crush than to come out as queer. It didn’t seem a simple case of puppy love to me, however. I knew he was married. I knew I didn’t want to sleep with him. But I also knew I wanted to be in the library with him every Monday, Thursday, and Friday afternoon when he was working.

The year before had been particularly frustrating, and in the spring I’d decided to quit basketball (after many long years of promising athletic training and early promotion to the varsity team) to join the school paper instead. I had also clawed my way into some honors and AP classes for the next year, but it took work to convince the counselor that I could handle being in classes with kids who didn’t throw chairs. I wasn’t sure if I was going to succeed, as I’d been consistently dumb-tracked since third grade when I got myself kicked off the gifted and talented program’s shortbus, but I knew I needed to try.

Guadalupe County Library in the early ‘90s was not a hot destination for young folks, but it smelled good inside, and the air conditioning was icy. I’d bike there in the heat of the afternoon to sit at a table and gaze at The Library Man over stacks of books I wanted to understand but couldn’t.

"Find Love at the Library"    Marya Figueroa,

Used with photographer's permission

Our relationship was all business. We rarely exchanged more than a few sentences over the counter as I checked out books. He might ask: “Writing a paper?” Or say: “Gotta love Hegel.” To which I’d respond in a weak affirmative. The truth was, I had no idea what I was doing, but I didn’t know how to tell him that. I’d burned through the books in the children’s and young adult section at least twice, and I felt ready for the next big thing. In one stack, I might have Hume, Plato, Feynman, and Hawking. Three days later, I might want to take Browning, Carlyle, Euclid, and Kafka home. At night I’d struggle through a few pages of each dusty tome and then give up.

I know now that I wanted him to help me shed my years of depressing small-town athletic obsession and usher me into a world governed by reason and elegant sentence structure rather than point-spread. At the time, however, I’d watch his lovely dark hair and slender hands as he labeled shelf-talkers and joked with his cohorts behind the check-out counter. I’d puzzle over whether I wanted to kiss him or buy him a coffee somewhere the cups didn’t have a HOT BEVERAGE warning label.

I drifted in a sea of possibility all summer, hoping I’d come to light on a shelf with something that made sense. The books themselves could be deceitful. The only book on homosexuality in the place was a parenting book for unfortunate dads in the fifties who happened to have effeminate sons. There were cartoons depicting ways to shame your fairy boy into hating himself and lists of “tough love” redirection techniques. There were two books on modern art, and neither of them offered color plates. A book on Apartheid was consistently mishelved in “African American History.”

I don’t know if The Library Man was really all that. He had, after all, taken a job in a town long dead from sheer lack of curiosity. If I’d been able to formulate the question I needed him to answer, he might have laughed at me or led me to a shelf of Encyclopedias or something. He was a kind of beacon, though, that reassured me of the possibility of connections I could only dream of understanding. Just his presence was a comfort. I wish I could thank him now, but I don’t even remember his name.

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Jack Kaulfus lives, writes, and teaches in Austin, Texas. Their story "Troglodytes" was selected as one of the top 100 stories published in 2006 (StorySouth). Their most recent story, "The End of Objects," was honored by A Cappella Zoo with the Apo Specimen award. They are currently shopping around a book of stories entitled, The Answer Is Please. 

             Please return next Friday for Dan Powell's reflections on 

the mobile library in Colwich in Staffordshire, England.

Summer Library Series: Buildings and the Love of Books by Matthew C. Brennan

All summer at What She Might Think, poets and fiction writers are sharing their childhood experiences at the library.  Today's reflection is the second in the series, and comes from poet Matthew Brennan who first checked out books at the Rock Hill public library.

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BUILDINGS AND THE LOVE OF BOOKS

by Matthew C. Brennan

. . .it was the literary equivalent 

of a fast-food drive-up—

you’d find your books 

quickly, then bolt.  

I was five when my family moved to Rock Hill, Missouri, a municipality that shared the zip code of the larger, more plush St. Louis suburb, Webster Groves.  Rock Hill, a fifth or sixth the size of Webster, had no pool, no parks, no ball fields other than those that doubled as schoolyards, so we had to cross the border to go swimming or have a picnic.  But Rock Hill did have its own library, and my mother took us there regularly.  

Matthew Brennan and
his Mother, Suzanne, 1955

My memory fogs in trying to call up the original building, but I still clearly see the newer construction put up when I was about eight.  Like most new public buildings in the Sixties, it lacked style and warmth.  In fact, it shared its quarters with the police, I think, the stacks occupying the second floor, Rock Hill’s finest the ground floor.  The façade was functional, an orange-ish, speckled cement and Tang-colored brick.  Inside, little light fell from the few narrow windows.  

It wasn’t a place that made you want to loiter; it was the literary equivalent of a fast-food drive-up—you’d find your books quickly, then bolt.  At this time I fell in love with baseball and baseball led to the children’s sports books by Matthew Christopher.  Slide, Danny, Slide and other classics fed my promiscuous lust for baseball in any form.  What I didn’t realize then is that these books also made me love reading itself. 

              

Later, we spent more time at the Webster Groves library, which like its parks and pools, were accessible to Rock Hillians.  It may have been a Carnegie library, for its exterior boasted a set of columns on its front portico and colonial red brick that would now make me think of Jefferson; the interior, with high ceilings and ornate windows, instilled in readers a lofty imagination.

 Copenhagen Harbor by Suzanne Brennan

But today when I think of books and childhood it’s the small Rock Hill library that springs to mind, though what most endears it to me now is that, in those summers of rushing in and out of the cramped lobby, it displayed on its scarce wall space some of my mother’s oil paintings, paintings now lost to history, like the library itself, which some time ago gave way to a single square room in a strip mall—but not before it humbly and almost forgettably fostered my love of reading books and the libraries that house them.

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Matthew C. Brennan lives, teaches, and writes in Terre Haute, Indiana. He is the author of three scholarly books regarding the Romantic tradition and its literature, and he is the author of four books of poetry, The Music of Exile (Cloverdale Books, 1994),  The Sea-Crossing of Saint Brendan (Birch Brook Press, 2008), The House with the Mansard Roof (Backwaters Press, 2009), and The Light of Common Day (Finishing Line Press, 2011). His newest work is Dana Gioia: A Critical Introduction (Story Line Press, 2012).

To find out if your local library has books by Matthew C. Brennan, click here or visit Worldcat.org.

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Please join What She Might Think next Friday for fiction writer, Jack Kaulfus. Also check out the first installment of the library series, by humorist, Owen Egerton.

Summer Library Series: In a Town With No Bookstores by Owen Egerton

Children reading, New York Public Library

It's that time of year, where, at most local libraries in the United States, librarians are climbing up ladders as rickety as the federal budgets that keep the air-conditioning going and the doors open. And above the circulation desk, they hang the motto of this summer's reading program: I Want You to Read As Hard As You Can. Then, they fold up the ladders, straighten their shoulders and the free bookmarks, and wait for the onslaught of children.  

This summer, What She Might Think will be running a special reading series of original short essays about libraries and childhood, written by authors from the United States and abroad.

And so, kicking off the Summer Library Series, is humorist Owen Egerton, who grew up exploring the library in Friendswood, Texas.  Enjoy!

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In a Town With No Bookstores

by Owen Egerton

. . . I'd sneak a copy of some 

bloody horror or erotic thriller 

into a nook of the children's area 

and wish to God I could read!

Friendswood Public Library

Friendswood had one library. Of course, this excludes the pillow-padded, lunch-hour harbor school library which locked its door for the hottest months. In the summer you had one choice: the small, early-70's-style, green-carpeted, pale-walled, nearly air-conditioned public library. My sister and I would tag along with my mother once or twice a month. In a town with no bookstores, in a time with no internet, it was her one outlet for new writings. I found the place mysterious and overwhelming. So many books! And unlike our child-proof school libraries, the public library had adult books with dark, forbidding--and by forbidding, inviting--covers. Flowers in the Attic, Coma, Carrie. These dark books my mother or the elderly librarian (I'm sure she was nearly forty!) would snatch from my palms as if they were hot tubes of black-tar heroin.

But sometimes I'd sneak a copy of some bloody horror or erotic thriller into a nook of the children's area and wish to God I could read! I'd imagine the stories, whisper plot lines to match the covers and wonder at the weight of the pages.


As years went by, I recall other hours spent with my bicycle parked outside browsing science books and old copies of National Geographic. In those days you could check out newspapers from around the country, too. Like the post office, this place seemed to be in conversation with parts of the world I only knew from maps. This one, clumsy building was the town's nerve link to Africa, Australia, Europe. But no one seemed to care. One thing I clearly remember. The library was never crowded.

For a middle-school project, I used the library like an eager post-grad degree candidate, passionately researching how to build a kite, making weak copies from the buzzing Xerox machine and feeling incredibly scholarly. That one project was a heady experience. I had walked in not knowing something and walked out with enough new knowledge to teach my 6th grade science class a hands-on-lesson on kites.

I don't recall any guides in the library, can't picture a helpful face recommending the perfect book or new subject. I'm sure they were there, but I mainly recall the massive amount of options--shelf after shelf after shelf of hardback, mysterious texts.

I went to library less as a teenage. Looking back, I'm surprised I didn't spend more hours there. At the time, I believed books were serious, quiet things. I believed the customary hush was not so others could read undisturbed, but so the books might sit undisturbed--like ancient, dead gods. I still believe books are serious--but they are also lusty little demons willing to yank, cut, kiss and steal. As a young man, I had yet to balance my reverence with irreverence, yet to learn that the contents of book can sing and scream.

We now live a block from a public library in Austin, Texas. Just a month ago, newly seven-years old, my daughter applied and received her first library card. I let her check out whatever books she wanted for the family. We left with a children's book on space travel, another on dinosaurs and also a collection of Thoreau's letters and Bukowski's poems. Brilliant.

*

Owen Egerton

Owen Egerton lives and writes in Austin, TX and Los Angeles, CA.  He is a performer, screenwriter, and the author of three books of fiction, Marshall Hollenzer is Driving (Writer's Club Press, 2001), How Best to Avoid Dying (Dalton, 2007) and The Book of Harold, the Illegitimate Son of God (Soft Skull Press, 2012).

Egerton is currently on his book-tour for The Book of Harold. Check out his schedule on owenegerton.com.  


To find out if your local library has books by Owen Egerton, visit Worldcat.org. 

Next week's library author: 

poet, Matthew Brennan

NOW AVAILABLE: The Midwife in Glint Literary Journal, 2012

"Get Back Better On",
Photograph by Eleanor Leonne Bennett,
Cover art for Glint Literary Journal 2012

"Along the block of mostly abandoned storefronts, the barber turns the sign to Sorry we're CLOSED Please come back tomorrow, and moves the red plastic arrow to 7 AM. No customers came in today, yesterday, or the day before. But no matter, you keep the same hours every day, said her father when, after her mother's hysterectomy, he began officially training her for her inheritance."

"The Midwife", by Erin Pringle-Toungate, just came out in the newest issue of Glint Literary Journal.  It will be in her book Midwest in Memoriam.  The story follows Susan, a woman who has inherited the family barber shop as well as the "delivery" end of the business.

The managing editor of Glint, professor and writer Brenda Mann Hammack, wrote a very welcoming and in-depth introduction to the work in this issue.  Regarding "The Midwife", she writes, 

At least three works of short fiction (Noah Milligan’s “Amid the Flood of Mortal Ills,” Alexandra Pajak’s “Election Day,” and Erin Toungate’s “The Midwife”) concern themselves with feasible futures that challenge faith. 

[. . .] Language has undergone a similar sea change in Toungate’s narrative as a young girl is inducted into the family business of “midwifery.” In each of these speculative texts, the authors imagine that the world as we know it has vanished, though not entirely.

Other artists in this issue are Eleanor Leonne Bennett, Ivan de Monbrison, Christine Dano Johnson, B.D. Fischer, Noah Milligan, Alexandra Pajak, Abdel Shakur, and David Vardeman.  

Glint Literary Journal comes out of Fayetteville State University in North Carolina.  

• 
  

Moonrise Kingdom: Made of Summer

Moonrise Kingdom, a film by Wes Anderson, opened at Cannes and then sneaked around select theatres for several weeks before it moved into a mainstream release.  It arrived in Spokane last night, and we caught the 4:45 showing.

The film follows the romance between a girl and boy that culminates in the summer of 1965 when they run away--he from the scout camp on the other end of the island from where she lives: in Summer's End, and she from her three brothers and parents who live in a house of separate rooms and lives.  The camp leader, played by Edward Norton, and the boy's fellow scouts are in hot pursuit, as well as the girl's parents (played by Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton), and the local police officer (Bruce Willis).

The film is beautiful and perfect, from the cinematography (as though a series of painted photographs circa 1960s) to the acting to the script.  Throughout the film, Anderson creates small details that, altogether, maintain and create the verisimilitude of childhood: for example, in the flashback that explains how the boy and girl met, the boy leaves the church-play about Noah's Ark midway through to go wandering about the church, and along his way walking past the children who are lined up outside, two-by-two, and waiting for their turn to enter the stage. As the boy passes he idly tweaks the nose of one of the elephants and a few moments later he's walking through a basement and as he passes a water fountain, he turns it on--not for a drink but just because.  Then, in parting a rack of costumes, he comes face to face with the girl who is sitting at the make-up counter, with other girls dressed as birds.  What kind of bird are you? he asks.

It is perhaps the culmination of all of these small, purposeful details within moments that make Moonrise Kingdom excellent, for there is no single moment that makes the movie, perhaps because there are so many to choose from--such as the girl bringing a suitcase of books that she later reads aloud from (reminiscent of Wendy from Peter Pan), and a kitten in a fishing basket for her runaway gear, to the boy taking the time and care to make a log of all the objects she brought, to the woman from social services (the boy is an orphan) referring to herself as Social Services.

Real thought has gone into this movie, and it is clear that Wes Anderson and his co-writer, Roman Coppola, believe that children are real human beings whose lives, tragedies, and loves are to be taken seriously.  That is, the film sees little difference between the seriousness children regard life with and the seriousness adults regard life with.  The adults are, as in most subversive children's literature, rather bumbling and behave with less reason than the children.  The movie is playful throughout, and the experience of watching it is often like being given a delightful thing carefully wrought by grinning children.  It's a pleasure.

Moonrise Kingdom is a smart, beautiful film--full of ache and summer, and a desire for freedom from a world that keeps sending hurricanes and lightning.  

James Jones Literary Society: Lincoln Trail Writing Award

James Jones was born in Robinson, Illinois and led a writer's colony in Marshall, IL for a short time. He's well known for his works such as From Here to Eternity and The Thin Red Line. 

But until I learned about this contest, I had no idea that Jones was from near where I grew up. I bring news of the short story contest that the James Jones Literary Society holds because my sister was a writer in Crawford County, and I'm a writer, and we both grew up in Clark County. So, surely there must be more up and coming writers who need a bit of funding and encouragement.  There must be some pens scribbling among the cornfields.

Therefore, I find it very important to pass the word on regarding the Lincoln Trail Writing contest which is now accepting submissions for short stories! To submit, you must live in Crawford or Clark County, Illinois, be at least 18 years or older, or be a current student or alumni of Lincoln Trail College.

James Jones.  For more information about
Jones, the society, or to look through archival
pictures and documents regarding Jones,
please visit the society's website

Award: $500

Deadline: July 30, 2012

Length: At least 1,500 words typed

Format: Double-spaced, name only on cover sheet, not on story itself (copy-and-paste the cover sheet below into your own word document)

Submit in person to the LTC Marketing Office, or mail to 

D. Hevron/Lincoln Trail Writing Award

Lincoln Trail College

Public Information and Marketing 

11220 State Highway 1

Robinson, IL 62454

Questions about the contest? See this article that recently ran in the local Illinois newspaper. All the information on this page is gleaned from the newspaper article or the James Jones Literary Society website. 

_______________________________________________________________________

James Jones Creative Writing Award

Short Story Cover Sheet

Name___________________________________________________________________________

Address_________________________________________________________________________
(City) _______________________________________________ (State)_____(Zip)_____________

email______________________________  Phone________________________________________

Status (check one):

                                                                                                            Current high school senior earning LTC credits ___________ 

           

                                                                                                            H.S. senior graduating in 2012 and attending LTC in fall ______________

    (If the above option checked, give the name of high school currently attending)______________________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________________________

                                                                                                  Current LTC student __________

                                                                                                            LTC graduate (give year___________)  

                  18 or older living in Crawford or Clark Co. _________

Title of story____________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Word length ____________  Number of pages______________

* For Official Use Only

        Date Submitted                                      

        Person Receiving Story                                                            __________________

        Code #                            

**Reminder: Due date- July 30, 2012

There Might Be Zombies Next Door

Film still from the film Fido

So, we're moving into a new house at the end of this month.  Today we went to the house to go over some paperwork, do a conditions move-in check, and so on.  While we were in the front yard, two children bicycled up.  They slowed and then came to a stop in front of the house.  Our landlord had just pulled the FOR RENT sign from the lawn and was crossing back over the sidewalk when the boy on the bicycle stopped him.
       With a concerned face, the boy said that he'd heard from the other neighbor kids that zombies lived in the house.  He needed to know if, in fact, this was true, and if it were true, if the zombies were still presently occupying the residence, and if so, how many zombies--ballpark figure--were there.

       Yes, our landlord said.  But only two zombies.  Then he pointed at us as we stood by the front door.

       We waved, smiling.

       The boy looked over his shoulder at the girl on the bicycle behind him.  Then he looked back at us and the landlord who left the boy to dwell upon the news.

       The boy's mouth remained open and he ever so slowly began bicycling away as the girl, seemingly unconcerned or not fully yet understanding the implications of living near zombies, followed behind.

This Halloween, we will have no trouble whatsoever coming up with our costumes.  And maybe some day this summer, we'll just do a little gardening and routine yard-work dressed as zombies, too.

Miscellany: While You Were Reading

"Sick in Bed" by Pete, 

used under CC license

While celebrating National Short Story Month here at What She Might Think, a few major events occurred in between the stories. In case you missed them:

• She was awarded with a literary arts fellowship from Artist Trust.

• Her story "How the Sun Burns Among Hills of Rock and Pebble" was named a finalist in the Kore Press Short Fiction Contest.

• She wrote an elegy for Maurice Sendak.

• Her story "The Nortang Bears" was published in Issue 5 of SAND journal.

• Box of Delights, a horror anthology in which her story "The Lightning Tree" appears, came out in a Kindle edition.

In other news . . . 

Mother & Child
by Carole Maso
(2012)

• She realized that Carole Maso has a new novel; it's named Mother and Child; it will be released June 26, 2012 by Counterpoint Press.  She was lucky enough to introduce Carole Maso at a 2007 reading at the Katherine Anne Porter house in Kyle, Texas.  Please see the Texas State University online literary journal, Front Porch, to watch the Maso reading online. 

fault tree by
kathryn l. pringle (2012)

• Also, her literary cousin-by-name, poet kathryn l. pringle recently won the 2011 Omnidawn 1st/2nd Book Prize for her manuscript fault tree. The book is forthcoming from Omnidawn this September. 

NOW AVAILABLE! The Nortang Bears in SAND Journal, Issue 5

 You can now read her story "The Nortang Bears" in Issue 5 of SAND Journal: Berlin's English Literary Journal, which just hit the stands.  You can find issues of SAND in shops around Berlin or order it via email/Paypal, and they'll send you a copy by post. 

If the story were long, she'd share a bit more, but it's a very short story, and one of her favorites at the moment.

Up in the high mountains live the Nortang Bears . . . 

In Closing: National Short Story Month 2012

We've spent the month of May here at What She Might Think showcasing a story a day in celebration of National Short Story Month.  Rather than having a story-for-today, here is the list of every selected story, along with a link to its original post (and from there, a link to the story's text).

Day 1-4: "Diagnostic Drift" by Michael Martone

Day 5: "The Brewsters" by Laura Ellen Scott

Centennial Statue by Alan Cotrill, at
Coshocton, Ohio Public Library

Day 6: "The Juniper Tree" (folkstory, no author)

Day 7: "All the Anne Franks" by Erik Hoel

Day 8: "Roots" by Chadwick Redden

Day 9: "Concerning Ghosts" by Michael Stewart

Day 10: "Mirrors" by Carol Shields

Day 11: "The Red Bow" by George Saunders

Day 12: "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Day 13: "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" 

             by Joyce Carol Oates

Day 14: "Hands" by Sherwood Anderson

Day 15: "For Sale" attributed to Ernest Hemingway

Day 16: "Of Missing Persons" by Jack Finney

Day 17: "Old Lady Lloyd" by L.M. Montgomery

Day 18: "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe

Day 19: "The Baby-Sitter" by Robert Coover

Day 20: "Bartleby the Scrivener" by Herman Melville

Day 21: "The Red House" by Ian T. MacMillan

Day 22: "The Things They Left Behind" by Stephen King

Day 23: "The Still Point of the Turning World" by Patricia Highsmith

Day 24: "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson

Day 25: "Show-and-Tell" by George Singleton

Day 26: "The Daredevil's Wife" by Tom Noyes

Day 27: "Story About the Body" by Robert Hass

Day 28: "Speaking of Courage" by Tim O'Brien

Day 29: "Inland Sea" by Stuart Dybek

Day 30: "The River" by Flannery O'Connor

This is not an ever-fixed list.  Certainly, some of the greats have been left out, such as Virginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Kate Chopin, Raymond Carver and many others.  Should they be on here?  Absolutely.  Next year, then.  Next year.  But this is a fine list, she thinks, of short stories and their writers--both living and not, whose work shows why the genre has continued, will continue, and should be celebrated this month and every day until it returns with flowers. 

If you chose a story for today, what would it be?