It was startling to come across the following in a Washington Post Book World review of Scrapbooks: An American History, by Jessica Helfand:
“Helfand explains that she chose scrapbooks that, above all, “tell a story worth telling.” Take, for example, the one kept by a 19-year-old girl who eloped from her Boston home. On one page is a faded color photograph of the achingly young couple lounging on beach chairs with the caption “us,” along with the taped-in key to their Virginia Beach hotel room. Two pages later comes a telegram from her forgiving parents: “Two such sweet young people should make a fine combination.” The young bride pastes in laundry lists, gin rummy tallies, her husband’s apology note after their first fight. She also starts to write poetry: romantic rhyming couplets and letters, ripped from a magazine, that spell “Bleat, Bleat.” The sunny scrapbook belonged to Anne Sexton, years before she found fame as a poet, her marriage imploded in abuse and infidelity, and she committed suicide.”
The review was written by Caroline Preston and can be found here.
Here’s a link to "Lament," an Anne Sexton poem that I love; I used several lines from it as an epigraph to my novel A Year and a Day:
The supper dishes are over and the sun
unaccustomed to anything else
goes all the way down.
***
And speaking of Book World—which, regrettably, the Washington Post is about to shutter—Women’s National Book Association (WNBA), Washington Chapter President, NC Weil urges readers and writers to protest the decision:
"Less than a week after Ron Charles received the Nona Balakian Citationfrom the National Book Critics Circle for excellence in reviewing, the Washington Post announced the end of Book World as a stand-alone Sunday supplement. Book reviews will be incorporated into a re-formatted Style and Outlook section starting Feb. 22nd.
Protest this decision!
Katharine Graham, long-time publisher of the Washington Post, said, "sales be damned, because the mark of a good newspaper was its book section." Amen to that!
The Washington Post needs to hear from readers, right away, if they are to reconsider. Send your comments to letters@washpost.com and put "Save Book World" in the subject line."
NC Weil (www.ncweil.com) is the President of the Washington, DC Chapter of the Women's National Book Association (www.wnba-books.org/wash, a network of women and men devoted to books and literacy for over 90 years.