2015 Summer Library Series: Scofflaw by Simone Zelitch

Welcome to the inaugural post of this summer's library series!  I'm pleased to showcase a third season of excellent writers and their reflections on growing up in the library.  The series originated in Summer 2012, when I was awarded an Artist Trust Fellowship that gave me the time to work on my fiction and other creative projects.

I grew up in a small town in Illinois, and looked forward to the annual public library summer reading program: the appearance of new colorful bookmarks on the circulation desk, the hanging of a banner of that summer's theme, and best of all, all the shiny new books that began to arrive and were set out in cardboard displays on the children's shelves but remained cloaked in sheets until the opening day.  It was a wonderful anticipation to experience. 

But because those programs are for children, and I've left that phase in most ways, I wanted to create something that provided that same excitement for grown-ups and returned us all to the library.  May you find the same excitement each Thursday when a new library reflection is released here at What She Might Think, from now through August.  And may you find yourself returning to the library nearest you and supporting this important aspect of our lives. 

Please enjoy this reflection by novelist Simone Zelitch, whose many early books came from the circulation desk at a branch library in Philadelphia.

Picture of Bustleton Branch Library

Scofflaw 
by Simone Zelitch 

The Bustleton branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia looks like a highway rest step: a single-story structure with long, narrow windows and a corrugated green roof.  It’s located next to Washington High school, which was an easy walk from our house in Northeast Philadelphia.  My mother claims that she took out fifteen books a week for me.  I never came along which made the process more efficient, but could be the reason why I have no early memories of libraries, no sentimental images of choosing my own read-out-loud book and watching a librarian stamp it with the due-date.  It also may explain why I couldn’t grasp that these library books were shared property.   I’d dog-ear pages, crack spines, and stain whatever I was reading with whatever I was eating at the time.   You might say that I left my mark. 

Simone hugging her "hippie sister"
who now works as a digital archivist.
Used with permission of author.

Things got worse when I began to check out books on my own. I didn’t return them. Cheap paperbacks like Paul Zindel’s The Pigman migrated from the library’s wire racks to my bookshelf and stayed there, along with dozens of case studies about teenagers who drifted through a hostile world until they finally found the person who understood them. I was that person. No one could love those books like me. Returning them to the library felt just plain wrong, as though I was condemning Lisa Bright and Dark or Dibs in Search of Self  to a life of abandonment and alienation. Besides, my older sister—a hippie and a role model— had so many library fines accrued that she was actually forbidden from ever taking out a book again,  and I had to do everything she did. In short—though I wouldn’t have used those words when I was twelve—returning library books felt like giving in to a conformist culture. 

What was the turning point?   In 1977, when I was fourteen, I actually wanted a book that was in demand, Alex Hailey’s Roots. Did the library have a record of all those unreturned paperbacks?  Maybe not, because they put me on a waiting list, and when my turn came, I took home a thick hardback with the same bold cover that had appeared at the end of the opening credits of the miniseries, and I propped it on my nightstand so it would be the first thing I’d see when I got up in the morning. Actually, the book wasn’t nearly as good as I thought it would be, but I did return it on time. After all, someone had done the same for me.  

Maybe that’s when I realized that libraries demanded a kind of social contract. Who read my nerdy paperbacks before I came along? I looked at the call slips and saw the long strip of stamped months and dates.  Eight readers had checked out I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. They were decent enough to return it so I could get my chance to read about a schizophrenic teenager and her German therapist. It’s romantic to imagine you’re the only one who loves something. It’s astounding to realize that you’re not alone. Who were the readers represented by the back-and-front eternity of stamps on Prince Caspian or Player Piano? Who took out Le Guin’s The Dispossessed or Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid or just about anything by Orwell or the autobiography of Emma Goldman?  In the days before social media, it wasn’t easy to find these people, my people, my tribe, but the stamped cards were proof positive: That tribe existed.    

It took me a long time to understand that honoring the social contract of a library isn’t conformist. It’s countercultural. In a consumer society, libraries aren’t about what we own; they’re about what we share. Given this understanding, when I look through my own crammed bookshelves, what should I do when I come across a copy of Then Again, Maybe I Won’t that was due on March 12, 1973?  Should I return it?  Probably.  

Simone writing in her room, 1978
Used with permission of author

*



Cover of Zelitch's novel,
Waveland.

Simone Zelitch has published four novels, most recently Waveland. Earlier work includes The Confession of Jack Straw, Moses in Sinai, and Louisa which was the recipient of the Goldberg Prize in Emerging Jewish Fiction. Her work has also appeared in The Lost Tribe Anthology and has been featured in the NPR broadcast and the published anthology Hanukah Lights.  Recent honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in Fiction, and residences at the Edward Albee Barn and Yaddo.  She established a Creative Writing program at Community College of Philadelphia and currently coordinates their new Degree in English.  A new novel, Judenstaat, is forthcoming from Tor books in Summer 2016.  Visit her website here: simonezelitch.com.

 

 

 

Books by authors in the Summer Library Series will link directly to author-friendly sites, such as the press itself or to the international library search engine, Worldcat.org. Please support small publishers, independent bookstores, and our libraries.

Coming Soon: Summer Library Series 2015

Yes, it's that time of year.

Time to read.

Time to go to the library.

Time to pay the fine for the library books that you kept meaning to return.

 

Sarasota, FL 1958. Flickr, no known copyright restrictions.

 

And it's almost time for the Summer Library Series here at What She Might Think, where writers from around the world reflect on their childhood experiences in the library--from the non-experience to the befuddled experience to the awful experience.

 

I'm lining up the writers we'll begin hearing from in July.  But until then, like any good fan, please enjoy the summers' past writers as you prepare for the writers who are in the wings, typing.

 

Summer 2014

Summer 2012

Chapbook Now Available!

My story "How The Sun Burns Among Hills of Rock and Pebble" is now available as a chapbook from The Head and The Hand Press, a fantastic craft publisher in Philadelphia.

To get a copy:
A) If you're in Philadelphia, you can pick up a copy from a vending machine in Elixir Coffee.
B) Order directly through the press: http://www.theheadandthehand.com/store/breadbox-vending-machine-chapbook-collection 
C) If you'd like a signed copy, I have some available in the stash that follows me to readings/signings.

For Option B, send me a message and we'll go from there.

Photo Credit: The Head & The Hand Press

About the Story

A sister vanishes. The sister who is left is trying to find her, even once she knows she's dead.

It was published originally in The Minnesota Review, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and was a finalist in the Kore Press Short Fiction Award. The judge of that award, Karen Brennan, said this about the story:

"What I most admire about this fine story is the author’s ability to render hyper-dramatic—almost gothic-- material with a beautifully orchestrated lyricism that never over-reaches itself.  Indeed, the story of the young girl grieving for her murdered sister is made even more poignant for its distant, almost oracular point of view, a point of view that allows the reader to glimpse not only the protagonist’s confusion and sorrow, but also the indifferent, soulless landscape in which she wanders.  A little Cormac McCarthy, a little Carson McCullers, “How the Sun Burns” is full of dense atmosphere, apocalyptic overtones and heart."

Good news! The Sun Burns in a Chapbook

My story "How The Sun Burns Among Hills of Rock and Pebble*" will be released as a chapbook by The Head and The Hand Press next week, March 12.  

If you're in Philadelphia, you should swing by the release party.  If you're in the Pacific Northwest, then listen to the skies for a party, and follow the sound. :)

The chapbooks will be sold out of a vending machine at Elixir Coffee Shop. Stay tuned for more purchasing details.

Here's the official announcement from The Head and The Hand Press: http://www.theheadandthehand.com/meet-new-chapbooks/

Update: You can purchase the chapbook directly through their website http://www.theheadandthehand.com/store/breadbox-vending-machine-chapbook-collection
Cost? $3.00, includes S&H

*The story was originally published in The Minnesota Review and named a finalist in the Kore Short Fiction Award.

Underground Voices Press Presents "The Lightning Tree" as Part of E-Series

Good news! Underground Voices Press is running an e-series of standalone stories, and my story "The Lightning Tree" kicks everything off today.  You can purchase it for the super great price of $1.50.  

"The Lightning Tree" will be in my next collection How The Sun Burns.  An earlier version of the story was originally published in Aeon Press's anthology, Box of Delights.