Peter Sieruta, RIP

Today I am truly a blue-hearted bookworm.

Peter D. Sieruta, who authored the very excellent blog Collecting Children's Books, passed away suddenly on Friday.  I woke up to the bad news on Facebook this morning.  Since Peter loved children's literature with all his being, I don't feel shallow or trite in comparing it to that sucker-punch feeling I got while reading Bridge To Terebithia.  This is worse, though.  That character was fictional.  Peter was real.  Was! I despise this use of the past tense.

Several months ago, during Book Blogger Appreciation Week, I gave a shout-out to my favorite male bloggers.  Peter was high on that list:

 Peter from Collecting Children's Books.  After finding Peter's blog about a year and a half ago, I spent an entire weekend in my pajamas and in front of the computer and ignoring my phone calls so I could go back and read every single one of  his postings about Children's Literature.  And boy howdy, does he post!  This guy just knows and knows AND knows about that field and can make the most dazzling connections to other genres.  He's the trapeze artist of  bloggers.  I'm going be one of the first in line to buy his book when it's published.

Collecting Children's Books rekindled my interest in children's literature, so when an opportunity at work to teach that class presented itself, I was chomping at the bit.  I felt a little nervous at the prospect, but would have been so much more so if I hadn't been secure in the knowledge that if I got in over my head, that I only had to ask for help, and Peter would offer up his encyclopedic knowledge with all the sweetness and generosity of a kid letting another kid have a bite off the ears of his or her chocolate Easter bunny.

Because of Peter, I began going back and reading the Newbery medal winners I'd missed.  The last Readathon I did included three Newbery books and Shane, one of those books that, over time, takes on the mantle of an honorary children's book, although that was not the original intended audience.  As I read, I posted hourly, having a wonderful time.  Peter would pop in with thoughtful comments, delectable tidbits of information and always-welcome recommendations.  My delight seemed to be his delight.

We also shared a strong interest in Pulitzer fiction, and when the Pulitzer committee didn't confer an award last month for the first time in 35 years, Peter was the first person to commiserate with my perplexed splutterings.

I never met Peter Sieruta, but he was more real to me than some of my colleagues or students. Talk about books, authors, literature and everything concerning that world means a great deal to me.  Sometimes, I think it is my heart.  For a while, Peter and his blog spoke with great eloquence to that heart.

My condolences to his family, his friends, and the children's literature community. Some of you were lucky enough to be in more than one category.

 Here are tributes from Peter's co-authors Jules Danielson and Betsy Bird.

Happy Mother's Day To Me

Couldn't resist.  I ordered a copy of Alison Bechdel's latest graphic novel, Are You My Mother?  I'm a huge fan of Fun Home, and Bechdel's work in general.  "Fan" seems like the wrong word -- my feeling is more of a hushed admiration and awe.

The mother theme and Mother's Day approaching seemed to dovetail nicely, and I've always been about patting myself on the back for giving birth, even though it was nearly 3 decades ago.  Also, Are You My Mother? promises to be a richly layered treatment of a complex relationship.  Even better. Motherhood comes in all flavors and textures, and I'm not in a Marmee mood this year.

All the books I order from overseas fly to me, but I hope this one really flies.

Just In Time For Swimsuit Season

In the early part of 1951, while John Steinbeck was writing East of Eden, he warmed up for the day (and got rid of his "monkey mind" as Natalie Goldberg puts it) by writing letters to his editor, Pascal "Pat" Covici.*  Most of these letters are about the progress of the novel, but he also shared whatever was on his mind:   Douglas MacArthur ("that hunk of sacrosanct shit"); writing tool preference (perfectly round pencils with no hexagonal ridges and with perfectly sharp points which were discarded and given to his children when they were worn down to halfway); his "strong" sexual appetite (I have to admit that I blushed all the way up the top of my ears when I read that, because I've always thought Steinbeck was pretty hot--were he still alive, I would gladly overlook our fifty-nine years' age difference); going to see The King and I opening night on Broadway ("a very beautiful show about nearly nothing."); problems with his 6-year-old son acting up in school (there's also a lot of ellipses when he talks about his boys, which indicate that he's giving his former wife hell.  I read somewhere else that she was the model for Cathy Ames); what to call the novel (Salinas Valley and Cain's Mark were among his first choices.  I was so happy when he -- via Sam Hamilton, Lee and Adam Trask -- dug out the Bible and happened onto East of Eden); and his preferred smoking implement while novel-writing (a Meerschaum pipe).

I loved absolutely everything about Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters.  Anyone reading them that didn't know Steinbeck's background would be astounded to learn that he had been writing novels for 25 years or more and that he'd won a Pulitzer Prize.  His nervous attacks and fidgets about the way the story was progressing sound more like someone still in an MFA program.  I don't know if there's been a better, or even another book written on the process of birthing a novel.

Fun fact:  The dates and the days of the week match up to this year, which added to the immediate feeling of being right there at the birthing.

The following excerpt made me laugh out loud.  At the beginning of the project, Steinbeck had also determined that he would lose some weight.  I've read dozens of diet books and hundreds of weight-loss tips in magazines and online.  I don't think I've ever seen the process rendered so succinctly.  He makes himself sound like an action hero rather than a middle-aged guy who's decided to shed a few pounds.  He's got a job to do and it's kicking Weight's ass:

Now a new week opens.  And I am going to attack a weighty problem.  It is this way.  You establish a diet and you lose a certain amount of weight and then you stop.  You are on a plateau.  It requires violence to break through it.  And there is where I am now.  So I will smash it in about four days of very little food and then I can go down a few pounds again until I reach another plateau-- then violence again.  But I believe it is good to stay on the plateaus for a while to get the system strong for the new attack.  Now it is time to go to work again.


* Pascal Covici was also Shirley Jackson's editor.  Wouldn't it have been fun to be him and to go to work each day?

The DNF Files: The Other Side of Eden: Life With John Steinbeck - John Steinbeck IV

John Steinbeck's younger son, John IV, died in 1991 of a heart attack following surgery for a ruptured disk.  His manuscript for this memoir was unfinished, and his former wife, Nancy, completed it and it was published in 2001.  She  added her own chapters about their life together and interspersed them with John's chapters.  There's also a long foreword by someone else followed by a long introduction by Nancy, much of which gets covered again in the chapters ahead.

There were many interesting and even eyebrow-raising sections, especially about John's early life, but there were even more long sections that were repetitive, rambly and disjointed.  John Steinbeck IV could write clearly and had a sharp sense of humor and irony.  I can't help feeling that his unfinished project would have turned out so much better with a different editor.  I hate to say that I didn't like it or finish it, for it was obviously a labor of love for Nancy Steinbeck, but I only managed to get halfway through before giving up.

April: I Get My Back Into My Reading

What a great reading month!  13 books!  Almost 14, but those last few chapters of East of Eden spilled over into the wee hours of May 1.

I'd like to thank the Readathon and Korean transportation and the couch in my living room.  After a couple of months, it finally sunk in that *yes*, I had a couch again for the first time since 2004.  Since then, we've been almost inseparable and I've been able to move mountains...of books. I would be remiss in not thanking both work for its late-morning and early-afternoon starts and the beautiful weather that has allowed me time to dawdle and read at the campus coffee-and-waffle stand.

I also came up with a new name for this blog:  Blue-Hearted Bookworm.  It's a reference to my tattoo and a nod to Hemingway's story "Big Two-Hearted River" and kind of a twitchy half-nod at "The Gold-Hatted Lover" which is part of the poem at the beginning of The Great Gatsby.  It also sounds like an alt-country song title, which is not a bad thing at all.

Yeah, April was productive.  Maybe I will make it to 113 books this year.  The list is below.  I have things to say about these books.  I can't get those things out right now, but I will soon.

1. American Splendor:  Our Movie Year - Harvey Pekar.
2. 11/22/63 - Stephen King.
3. The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky.
4. Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark - Brian Kellow.
5. In This House of Brede - Rumer Godden.
6. The Higher Power of Lucky - Susan Patron.
7. Shadow of a Bull - Maia Wojciechowska.
8. It's Like This, Cat - Emily Cheney Neville.
9. Shane - Jack Schaeffer.
10. The Winter of Our Discontent - John Steinbeck.
11. The Fran Lebowitz Reader - Fran Lebowitz.
12. God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything - Christopher Hitchens.
13. Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters - John Steinbeck.

Midterm Week: Hoping For The Best

Readathon: Hours 22-24

That's it -- the whole enchilada.  Whew.

Books read: 
1. The Higher Power of Lucky - Susan Patron
2. Shadow of a Bull - Maia Wojciechowska
3. It's Like This, Cat - Emily Cheney Neville
4. Shane - Jack Schaeffer

Page count:  592

I wish I could manage the whole 24 hours.  Are those days behind me?  I like to think that I just haven't stumbled onto the answer yet.  Maybe next time.

 In October, I plan to make another -- bigger -- Newbery stack, because it really worked well for me.  The books are of excellent quality, they aren't very long and I'm plugging all the gaps in my knowledge about children's literature.

I always think, at the end, that I'll spend all my time reading the next time, but I have this compulsion to see what everyone else is reading and snacking on, so I'll probably do some cheering again.

Okay, the brain now feels like an empty house with the windows up and the door left standing open and the eyeballs feel like they were left on the grill, so I'll say goodnight.