I checked out this book, with that cover (other versions of the cover just look wrong), so many times from the library. Like a lot of kids, I was fascinated by ancient Egypt — or rather, by the version of ancient Egypt that you tend to get in elementary school, focused mainly on mummies, pyramids, hieroglyphics, and stylized vogueing-type poses. So I loved the idea of other kids who loved ancient Egypt. But more than that, I loved the characters, and especially the relationship between self-dramatizing, false eyelashes-wearing April Hall and practical, cautious Melanie Ross. April is one of the first viewpoint characters I can remember encountering who was sometimes thoughtless and mean, and I appreciated that, too. I also adored Melanie’s serious little brother Marshall, who carries a stuffed octopus named Security. When they’re all dressing up for Halloween, Marshall wonders where his sign is, since his previous experience of costumes is that you wear them for protest marches.

Here’s a lovely paragraph about games from the autobiography on Ms. Snyder’s website:

And then there were games. Some were secret, some less so, and most of them grew out of a compulsion to endow everything animal, vegetable and mineral with human characteristics. I suspect that all very young children are naturally given to anthropomorphism, but with me it must have been almost a full-time occupation. Not only animals, but also trees, plants, toys, and many other inanimate objects had personalities, and sometimes complicated life histories. Often these creatures seemed to have been in need of a helping hand. I built leafy shelters for homeless insects, doctored demons, most of whom haunted closets and the dark corners of rooms. Although they really frightened me, I don’t think I would have wanted to be talked out of them. They were my demons and we had a working relationship.

A few things I learned about from Archy:

• vers libre
• Prohibition and its discontents
• the use of monkey glands to promote longevity
• the Pythagorean theory of the transmigration of souls
• the word corybantic
• the effects of erosion

Archy, along with Pogo, demonstrated how serious funny animals (and insects) could be.

But not as many people ever seemed to know about the Emily books, and that automatically made them more appealing to me. That, and the fact that Emily, from nearly the very beginning of Emily of New Moon, was established as a writer.

I always looked for books with writer characters. Writers are often warned not to write about writers or writing, and of course it can be coy and cloying, not to mention putting unnecessary, distancing layers between writer and reader. But when I was a girl who wanted be a writer, a girl who wanted to be a writer was exactly who I wanted to read about. Here’s Emily writing about the Murray relatives she’s just met:

For a moment she thought she would throw herself on her bed and cry. She COULDN’T bear all the pain and shame that was burning in her heart. Then her eyes fell on the old yellow account-book on her little table. A minute later Emily was curled up on her bed, Turk-fashion, writing eagerly in the old book with her little stubby lead-pencil. As her fingers flew over the faded lines her cheeks flushed and her eyes shone. She forgot the Murrays although she was writing about them–she forgot her humiliation–although she was describing what had happened; for an hour she wrote steadily by the wretched light of her smoky little lamp, never pausing, save now and then, to gaze out of the window into the dim beauty of the misty night, while she hunted through her consciousness for a certain word she wanted; when she found it she gave a happy sigh and fell to again.

I also wanted to read about the aspect of Emily’s character that made her seem like a heroine from one of the other kind of books I loved, fantasies. Emily has a curious, never-explained ability to experience what she calls “the flash”:

Emily called it that, although she felt that the name didn’t exactly describe it. It couldn’t be described–not even to Father, who always seemed a little puzzled by it. Emily never spoke of it to any one else.

It had always seemed to Emily, ever since she could remember, that she was very, very near to a world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain; she could never draw the curtain aside–but sometimes, just for a moment, a wind fluttered it and then it was as if she caught a glimpse of the enchanting realm beyond–only a glimpse–and heard a note of unearthly music.

This moment came rarely–went swiftly, leaving her breathless with the inexpressible delight of it. She could never recall it–never summon it–never pretend it; but the wonder of it stayed with her for days.

Can I possibly explain how much I wanted to have “the flash”? At least as much as I wanted to be able to kythe.

When I reread the books now, their sweeping sentimentality and loving extended landscape descriptions can feel overblown. There are wince-inducing dated attitudes to be found as well. But the humor — often springing from the contrast between Emily’s dreamy, passionate nature and the flat bluntness of other characters — holds up. So does Montgomery’s gift for vivid and specific details of setting, as in this description of the kitchen at New Moon Farm:

Emily had never seen a kitchen like this before. It had dark wooden walls and a low ceiling, with black rafters crossing it, from which hung hams and sides of bacon and bunches of herbs and new socks and mittens, and many other things, the names and uses of which Emily could not imagine. The sanded floor was spotlessly white, but the boards had been scrubbed away through the years until the knots in them stuck up all over in funny little bosses, and in front of the stove they had sagged, making a queer, shallow little hollow.

And the characters themselves, not just Emily, but all of them, are still absolutely alive.

Postscript: In looking for links for this post, I discovered that there’s an Emily of New Moon anime series. I’m frightened but intrigued. Anyone seen it? Should I?

I wish I could remember exactly when Dad decided I was ready for Pogo. It wasn’t the sophistication of the humor or the complexity of the language that concerned him, but rather the fact that the collection is all fragile paperbacks. I don’t think Dad ever wanted to sell the Pogo collection, but humor was one of his specialties when he was selling rare books, and my precocious affection for certain Algonquin Round Table members cost him. (In other words: at an early age, I read first editions of Robert Benchley and S.J. Perelman. In the bathtub.)

I think the way it happened was that Dad got me a “reading copy” of Ten Ever-Lovin Blue-Eyed Years With Pogo. When I managed not to destroy it, he let me at the old paperbacks. What I got from Pogo includes, but is not limited to:

• A much better grasp of relatively recent American history than I got from textbooks
• A huge appreciation for colorful language and surreal connections
• Any number of useful phrases such as “I carry the hose”
• An understanding that sometimes being funny is the best way to be serious

With that last in mind, I’ll transcribe “Word to the Fore” from Positively Pogo, published in 1957:

The antics which have been drawn together in this book are huddled together for mutual protection like sheep. If they had half a wit apiece each would bound off in many directions, to unsimplify the target.These continue to be wondrous times when every man tries to find a formula for keeping the stranger’s fingers from his throat. The simple expedient of holding hands will someday occur to a couple of people who will forever after be forgotten. We need to read and to think and to study the faces of our friends…a peaceful pursuit. But, in the light of our trial bombs bursting in air and the flash of the practice red rockets’ glittering glare, the study of peace is a blinky business. This collection of strips reflects the skulking state of mind of one startled student.

So I read The Inferno in junior high. I remember exactly where I got it: Ann’s Gifts and Antiques, a now-defunct bookstore in Hebron, Ohio where we’d always go to stock up at the beginning of vacations in Ohio. I remember handing the paperback to Dad to add to the stack of Mom’s mysteries. What was Dad buying? I think Mockingbird by Walter Tevis.

The Inferno was perfect for junior high. There were so many people I wanted to condemn, and here was a handy guide to let me know in exactly which circle they belonged.

I liked, too, that the translation was by John Ciardi. I felt like I knew him from Cricket.

I remember where I read it: lying in the top bunk at the cottage on Buckeye Lake that we time-shared with a lot of relatives. I decided the introduction was important, so I plunged in before I let myself start reading the poetry. I learned that it was written in “the humble vernacular.” I tried to make sense out of Guelphs and Ghibellines, Beatrice and exile. Why? Well, I had a scheme that I wanted to read everything I thought would be required in college before I was even in high school, so I’d be, somehow, ahead.

It worked and it didn’t. You can get a lot out of The Inferno without intimate knowledge of Italian and ecclesiastical history, but mostly what you get is stuff like OH YEAH THE HYPOCRITES HAVE ROBES THAT LOOK GOLD ON THE OUTSIDE BUT ARE ACTUALLY MADE OF LEAD BECAUSE OF, YOU KNOW, HYPOCRISY! ALSO SATAN TOTALLY ENCASED IN ICE AND EATING THAT ONE DUDE.

I read it over and over. I never called myself a horror fan, but Dante gave me gore and justice.

“Like what?” she asked.

“Well,” I said, “like, you know…books.”

For some reason this made her laugh uncontrollably.

But it’s true. I’ve worried, ludicrously, that if I post in a substantive fashion about books, that I will:

• Make my friends who are also authors think I hate their books if I don’t happen to write about them
• Appear utterly biased if I write glowing praise of my friends’ books
• Offend someone, somewhere
• Otherwise Get It Wrong

Upon reflection, I realize that this is more or less insane. So one of my early New Year’s resolutions is to post more about books. I’m going to start by writing about some of the books that I imprinted upon, the ones that still hold up on rereading, the ones that really shaped aspects of how I see the world. Stealing a phrase from Francis Spufford, I’m calling this “series” Books That Built Me.

First up: Finn Family Moomintroll and other Moomin books by Tove Jansson.

I have owned this book for most of my life, as you can see:

The link above will give you an idea of what the Moomin books are about; I’m going to tell you a few things I took from them, with supporting quotes.

An expansive definition of family and an approach to hospitality:

Moomintroll’s mother and father always welcomed all their friends in the same quiet way, just adding another bed and putting another leaf in the dining-room table. And so Moominhouse was rather full — a place where everyone did what they liked and seldom worried about to-morrow. Very often unexpected and disturbing things used to happen, but nobody ever had time to be bored, and that is always a good thing.

The first restless wanderer I encountered in fiction:

“You talked of plans,” Moomintroll went on. “Have you got any yourself?”

“Yes,” said Snufkin. “I have a plan. But it’s a lonely one, you know.”

Moomintroll looked at him for a long time, and then he said: “You’re thinking of going away.”

Snufkin nodded, and they sat for a while swinging their legs over the water, without speaking, while the river flowed on and on beneath them to all the strange places that Snufkin longed for and would go to quite alone.

And the first obsessive collector:

At last the Hemulen burst out: “How hopeless it all is!” And after another pause he added: “What’s the use? You can have my stamp collection for the next paper-chase.”

“But Hemulen!” said the Snork Maiden, horrified, “that would be awful! Your stamp collection is the finest in the world!”

“That’s just it,” said the Hemulen in despair. “It’s finished. There isn’t a stamp, or an error that I haven’t collected. Not one. What shall I do now?”

And the first sufferer of panic attacks and nameless dread:

fillyjonkexcerpt.mp3

A short excerpt of me reading from one of my favorite short stories, “The Fillyjonk Who Believed in Disasters.” Click and you’ll see why I wanted to read it out loud.

At this point I should remind everyone that yes, these are children’s books.

“Every children’s book should have a path in it where the writer stops and the child goes on,” Jansson said. “A threat or a delight that can never be explained. A face never completely revealed.”

What I love about these books, and what stays with me: the combination of coziness and bleakness, the characters that apparently were sometimes based on family and friends, the warm house full of comfort and conversation, the wide world full of adventure and danger just outside.