Reading assignment
The library where I work has a weird collection, probably owing to the fact that it's entirely made up of donated books. We have random things like a paralegal licensing guide for the state of California from 1988 and a hefty collection of bad pop fiction that the accounting assistant keeps donating because they're too heavy to take on the train. We also have quite a few advance reading copies (which I feel guilty about, but not enough to pull them).
A couple of weeks ago I grabbed one of them, a book by Jo Ann Beard called The Boys of My Youth. I was between books and nothing else caught my eye, so I took it home on train. The first few essays mainly involved memories of her 1960s childhood or stories about her disintegrating relationship with her husband. Then I got to one called "The Fourth State of Matter."
It starts with a description of her nighttime routine with her ailing collie. Then she goes to work. I dimly recall that she's mentioned Iowa City in a previous essay. She mentions scientists. Then, by name, a grad student who walks into the room. I put down the book and say to M. Defarge, "I'm not completely sure if this is fiction or nonfiction, but the narrator is in the physics department at Iowa, and Gang Lu just walked into the room."
Before Northern Illinois, before Virginia Tech, the University of Iowa had Gang Lu. I was still in high school when he entered the physics and astronomy department and shot and killed four people, and then headed across the quad and killed an administrator and paralyzed her student assistant. I don't even remember it being in the news. But I took classes in Van Allen Hall, and every morning when I lived in the dorms I'd trek across the T. Anne Cleary Walkway and past the administration building where its namesake was killed. Beard, an editor of a physics journal and a friend and coworker of one of the victims, left early that day, in part to tend to her dying dog.
Maybe it was because I had at least a tenuous personal connection with the material, but the essay stunned me. Beard's grief about her dog's illness, her separation from her husband, and then the loss of her coworker and close friend, is palpable. The writing is amazing. I can't do it justice by describing it, but I can't recommend it highly enough.
A couple of weeks ago I grabbed one of them, a book by Jo Ann Beard called The Boys of My Youth. I was between books and nothing else caught my eye, so I took it home on train. The first few essays mainly involved memories of her 1960s childhood or stories about her disintegrating relationship with her husband. Then I got to one called "The Fourth State of Matter."
It starts with a description of her nighttime routine with her ailing collie. Then she goes to work. I dimly recall that she's mentioned Iowa City in a previous essay. She mentions scientists. Then, by name, a grad student who walks into the room. I put down the book and say to M. Defarge, "I'm not completely sure if this is fiction or nonfiction, but the narrator is in the physics department at Iowa, and Gang Lu just walked into the room."
Before Northern Illinois, before Virginia Tech, the University of Iowa had Gang Lu. I was still in high school when he entered the physics and astronomy department and shot and killed four people, and then headed across the quad and killed an administrator and paralyzed her student assistant. I don't even remember it being in the news. But I took classes in Van Allen Hall, and every morning when I lived in the dorms I'd trek across the T. Anne Cleary Walkway and past the administration building where its namesake was killed. Beard, an editor of a physics journal and a friend and coworker of one of the victims, left early that day, in part to tend to her dying dog.
Maybe it was because I had at least a tenuous personal connection with the material, but the essay stunned me. Beard's grief about her dog's illness, her separation from her husband, and then the loss of her coworker and close friend, is palpable. The writing is amazing. I can't do it justice by describing it, but I can't recommend it highly enough.
posted by Madame Defarge at 4:32 PM
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