About halfway through the book Dewey by the librarian Vicki Myron, I wondered how much Marge Piercy, that depression born daughter of the tough realities of the American midwest, she had read. It seemed to me she probably had some, probably more than I have. If not, she’s got something to look forward to, and maybe one or two more books to write.
The reason I thought of Marge Piercy was what struck me as the major sub theme of the book, the working lives of women. Mainly of course there’s her life, as the librarian of a small town in Iowa. But there’s also the life of her fellow workers in the library (where is it written that most workers in most libraries should be female? But it seems to be so), and the life of her mother.
Mostly though, I was grateful about the way she found to tell the story of her cat. Anyone can tell cute stories about a favorite pet, and enough people do. I’ve read or two of most cat related mysteries and enjoyed the experience the way last month and two years ago I enjoyed eating at McDonald’s for dinner. Dewey is not that kind of meal.
The author of Dewey "had" me when she began talking about attending Al-Anon meetings to recover from an alcoholic marriage long before Dewey showed up at her library (although this portion is told as a flashback). This assured me that she had a story that that had something to do with life as I've known it.
It helps that I’m married to a woman who once ran a small library, and that in every town I’ve ever lived in (most of them towns of less than 20,000), the local library has been a focal point of my sanity, and the local librarians have been that curious mixture of provincialism and cosmopolitanism that librarians and English teachers are. If there is a mold here, Vicki Myron fits it.
She’s an activist librarian. The librarians I’ve known have all had a sense of mission. None of have thought that they were going to save their community through their library, but several have definitely made it a point to provide the resources to community members that would make a difference in their life, and that’s the type of librarian Myron is.
The cat, Dewey, gives her is a thread to tell her story to make a rambling 25 year career more or less coherent. More importantly, her relationship with Deewy provides a metonymic figure of how human lives and animal companion lives are intertwined. To be sure, she saved Dewey’s life. He did no save hers, and it would be overstating it to say he made it meaningful; but he did give her a story, which in turn allows her to tell the story of her career–always a welcome challenge–and of her brothers’ and mother’s deaths.
3/4 of the way through the book, she assures the reader that Dewey is not a substitute son. Nonetheless, she frequently refers to herself as his mother–so is she saying he thought of me as a mom, but I thought of him as a pet?
Vocabulary breaks down. What he is her male offspring/companion.
Early in the novel, she tells of Dewey being found in a frozen library drop box, one so cold his paws are frozen to the bottom. She rescues him and washes him off; do I detect some birth imagery here? Later we find that she herself was the victim (there’s no other word) of an unauthorized radical hysterectomy. Is it entirely wrong to see this icey box as an image of her own womb?
This does not belittle her in the least. Rather, I’m trying to make a point about the cyborgian nature of human/animal relation. Anyone who has washed, fed, slept with, and disciplined an animal knows that animal companions both are and are not similar to children, just as they are similar to a spouse, a girl/boyfriend, and a nurse. They are not any of these things, but "pets" and these relations are embarassingly similar, and disarmingly intimate. We belittle them (and ourselves) if we only talk of them of them in an "aw, cute!" way (which by the way is why is why I thought of Marge Piercy, and not Anne Tyler; Tyler, though a better writer than either of the other two, is also more fundamentally comic, if not necessarily sweeter). People who live with dogs and cats know that these companions will help you survive some of the worst experiences of your life, and so it is when Myron talks of fights with her daughter, of her own illnesses, and the deaths of close family. We also know that these animals–not all of whom are as well mannered as Dewey–will bring us some real pain and heartache
Follow Up (Jan 4)
The day after I posted this, The Times and Democrat ran an article about the Vicki Myron adopting another kitten: The original article was published here.
Also, I heard of a book, Animals Make Us Human, which is about some of the things issues about inter species relations. Let me quote from the Publishers Weekly review:
Grandin, . . . the autistic author assesses dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs, poultry, wildlife and zoo animals based on a core emotion system she believes animals and humans share, including a need to seek; a sense of rage, fear, and panic; feelings of lust; an urge to nurture; and an ability to play. Among observations at odds with conventional wisdom: dogs need human parents, not alpha pack leaders, and cats respond to training.
Dogs and cats don't thing of us as dogs and cats, anymore --or, I suspect, less--than we think of them in people terms.
The reason I thought of Marge Piercy was what struck me as the major sub theme of the book, the working lives of women. Mainly of course there’s her life, as the librarian of a small town in Iowa. But there’s also the life of her fellow workers in the library (where is it written that most workers in most libraries should be female? But it seems to be so), and the life of her mother.
Mostly though, I was grateful about the way she found to tell the story of her cat. Anyone can tell cute stories about a favorite pet, and enough people do. I’ve read or two of most cat related mysteries and enjoyed the experience the way last month and two years ago I enjoyed eating at McDonald’s for dinner. Dewey is not that kind of meal.
The author of Dewey "had" me when she began talking about attending Al-Anon meetings to recover from an alcoholic marriage long before Dewey showed up at her library (although this portion is told as a flashback). This assured me that she had a story that that had something to do with life as I've known it.
It helps that I’m married to a woman who once ran a small library, and that in every town I’ve ever lived in (most of them towns of less than 20,000), the local library has been a focal point of my sanity, and the local librarians have been that curious mixture of provincialism and cosmopolitanism that librarians and English teachers are. If there is a mold here, Vicki Myron fits it.
She’s an activist librarian. The librarians I’ve known have all had a sense of mission. None of have thought that they were going to save their community through their library, but several have definitely made it a point to provide the resources to community members that would make a difference in their life, and that’s the type of librarian Myron is.
The cat, Dewey, gives her is a thread to tell her story to make a rambling 25 year career more or less coherent. More importantly, her relationship with Deewy provides a metonymic figure of how human lives and animal companion lives are intertwined. To be sure, she saved Dewey’s life. He did no save hers, and it would be overstating it to say he made it meaningful; but he did give her a story, which in turn allows her to tell the story of her career–always a welcome challenge–and of her brothers’ and mother’s deaths.
3/4 of the way through the book, she assures the reader that Dewey is not a substitute son. Nonetheless, she frequently refers to herself as his mother–so is she saying he thought of me as a mom, but I thought of him as a pet?
Vocabulary breaks down. What he is her male offspring/companion.
Early in the novel, she tells of Dewey being found in a frozen library drop box, one so cold his paws are frozen to the bottom. She rescues him and washes him off; do I detect some birth imagery here? Later we find that she herself was the victim (there’s no other word) of an unauthorized radical hysterectomy. Is it entirely wrong to see this icey box as an image of her own womb?
This does not belittle her in the least. Rather, I’m trying to make a point about the cyborgian nature of human/animal relation. Anyone who has washed, fed, slept with, and disciplined an animal knows that animal companions both are and are not similar to children, just as they are similar to a spouse, a girl/boyfriend, and a nurse. They are not any of these things, but "pets" and these relations are embarassingly similar, and disarmingly intimate. We belittle them (and ourselves) if we only talk of them of them in an "aw, cute!" way (which by the way is why is why I thought of Marge Piercy, and not Anne Tyler; Tyler, though a better writer than either of the other two, is also more fundamentally comic, if not necessarily sweeter). People who live with dogs and cats know that these companions will help you survive some of the worst experiences of your life, and so it is when Myron talks of fights with her daughter, of her own illnesses, and the deaths of close family. We also know that these animals–not all of whom are as well mannered as Dewey–will bring us some real pain and heartache
Follow Up (Jan 4)
The day after I posted this, The Times and Democrat ran an article about the Vicki Myron adopting another kitten: The original article was published here.
Also, I heard of a book, Animals Make Us Human, which is about some of the things issues about inter species relations. Let me quote from the Publishers Weekly review:
Grandin, . . . the autistic author assesses dogs, cats, horses, cows, pigs, poultry, wildlife and zoo animals based on a core emotion system she believes animals and humans share, including a need to seek; a sense of rage, fear, and panic; feelings of lust; an urge to nurture; and an ability to play. Among observations at odds with conventional wisdom: dogs need human parents, not alpha pack leaders, and cats respond to training.
Dogs and cats don't thing of us as dogs and cats, anymore --or, I suspect, less--than we think of them in people terms.
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