Lower East Side Librarian

Don’t you hate when young (like 21), middle-class, heterosexual white guys write smart, funny, sensitive books that you can’t help but kind of love? I know I do. Kevin Roose’s story of doing a semester “abroad” from Brown at Liberty University (founded by Jerry Falwell) is a total page-turner, and like a responsible ethnographer, he does not condescend to his native population (except perhaps by occasionally referring to his underground research with evangelical Christians as ethnography).

I did want to see what Christian college was like, with as little prejudgment as possible. I knew that wouldn’t be easy--you can’t neutralize a lifetime of bias overnight--but I wanted to try my best. So my second decision was: no cheap shots. If I went to Liberty, it would be to learn with an open mind, not to mock Liberty students or the evangelical world in toto.

I reviewed this book for the final issue of Counterpoise, Summer 2010. Vol. 14, Iss. 3/4.

Cantwell’s memoir begins after she graduates from Connecticut College 1953 and moves to New York City to be a writer. She is a Catholic from a WASPy town in Rhode Island, but passes well enough. Her mother is not impressed when she marries a Jew fairly soon after graduating. But she’d slept with him, what could she do? I don’t mean to mock. On the outside Cantwell isn’t someone I can relate to, but the quality of her writing voice really got me, both its competence and its appeal, if that makes sense. It seems like the better the writing I’m reviewing the worse my own gets.

Okay, I was super-stressed and considered removing the stressor from my life. Instead of working on the conference presentation I've been worrying about I borrowed the fourth in the Mercedes Thompson series from the library when I returned the third. A friend talked me down from my panic, but I already had the book, so I figured I may as well snarf it up. I also wrote the first part of my presentation.

The only vacationy thing I’ve done on my staycation is this pleasure read. The third in the Mercedes Thompson series has Mercy doing more brave, rash things and getting herself into and out of some bad situations, with a little help from her wolfy friends. As in Sookie Stackhouse’s world, the fae are kind of dicks.

If you’re wondering what in the world prompted me to read this book, it’s because I have a newly single friend who hasn’t dated in a really long time and who can be a little...impulsive, and I wanted to get her to read it with me. I actually don’t have a huge problem with the book or its premise. If what you want is to get married, then this book might really help. Is it the height of feminist (not to mention queer or polyamorous) enlightenment to put so much importance on getting hitched? Not necessarily, but I do understand the desire to have a partner and be in a committed relationship. I’ll freely admit that that desire is strong in me.

This is such a Rivington Street readalike that it’s hard not to compare the two. Both begin in Russia around the turn of the 20th century and move to the Lower East Side after a pogrom. Both are about young Jewish female union workers and both have lesbian characters, and both depict the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.