John Freeman

I recently moved from an office in the Village to a space just below my apartment, which seemed as good a time as any to do a domestic book merge. As fussy as I can be about my books, I like to think they play with others. I'll never forget interviewing a musician and discovering that the two facing walls of CDs were actually his collection and her collection—I haven't had the heart to check and see if they ever made it together.

So until just a few days ago, the living-room floor of our place was home to twenty-six alphabetical clusters, from Abani to Zola. Outlying Delauny-esque cityscapes of nonfiction and poetry scaled the kitchen area and crept into the backroom, where one evening I stayed up until 4am sorting history from gender studies from literary criticism on a jag of book fiendishness which left me feeling a little earnest, until I discovered I had soulmates out in the Brooklyn library scene. Suddenly it became very important to decide whether or not Shakespeare belonged in theater or had his own category all together.

Looking at our library spread out there for two weeks, it was fascinating to see the way certain letters dominated the room. "M" (from MacArthur to Myerson) was thick on the ground, as was, oddly, "K"; "X"—home to Can Xue and Gao Xingjian—had a mere few books, and were it not for Irving and Ishiguro, "I" could have fit on just one shelf. Hopefully Moses Isegawa and Uzodinma Iweala will change that.

"What's in a name?" Shakespeare famously asked. Less and less perhaps, but seeing the books on the floor it was amazing to realize how much a name of an author can hold and evoke—such small but perfect vessels names are—and yet how much chance has to play in their work coming before our eyes at all (like Wyatt Mason discovering Leonard Michaels' "Sylvia" on his roommate's bookshelves). I stumbled on Julian Barnes in my college bookstore because I had been looking for Bellow and saw this thick row of BARNES spines in Vintage paperback. Would Barnes be BARNES if he were Julian Bolton?

I find it hard to totally pretend that the name of an author doesn't have its own alliterative allure, like Laila Lalami, look good on the page, like Gautam Malkani or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, or have the appeal of wonkish particulars, like the double "N" on William T. Vollmann. We live in such a branded society that it's probably somewhat the case that these spine-out-fonted squiggles have become something not far off a trademark. But I think it's more than that. "I have given you my soul," says John Proctor in "The Crucible," "leave me my name!" The novelists worth keeping on the shelf give you their soul, I suppose, and in so doing make their name much more than an "I."

(2007-07-17)

Also by John Freeman

FICTION REVIEW
Universities are littered with secrets, clubby tribunals and petty jealousies—which is why they figure so often in murder mysteries. In "New England White," his well-plotted second novel, Stephen L. Carter takes the form of the campus potboiler and does it one better
(2007-07-10)

NONFICTION REVIEW
Siblings may emerge into the world with equal talent, but it is their natures—among many other factors—that determine whether they'll have a kind or cruel ride. Such was the case of Steve and Veronica Geng, siblings with literary gifts born into the same family but who took radically divergent paths
(2007-06-26)

FICTION REVIEW
In his early career, McEwan was well known for a macabre interest in murder and violence. "On Chesil Beach" reveals how much he has funneled the froth of those dark and dangerous impulses into a perhaps more subversive arena: domestic marriage
(2007-06-12)

Silent Eyes
Sara Paretsky has been worrying a lot lately. To a certain degree, this is nothing new. "I’m a pessimist by nature," the 59-year-old creator of the V. I. Warshawski detective series says, sitting in a chair of her hotel in Manhattan
(2007-06-05)

FICTION REVIEW
(2007-05-22)

Lucky Girl
(2007-04-24)

NONFICTION REVIEW
(2007-04-17)

Young Americans
(2007-04-03)

Words on Pictures
(2007-02-20)

Nonfiction Review
(2007-01-23)

Mumbai on the Make
(2007-01-02)

Strange Feelings
(2006-12-22)

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