Recent Reading: Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life

Sometimes the process of which book to read next is a circuitous one for me. This process was especially true for Amy Krouse Rosenthal's Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life -- which I just finished yesterday. The steps went something like this for me:

1. I was reading a recent essay that Emily Temple wrote on LitHub on 50 great classic short novels which brought me to an earlier article she wrote.
2. That essay on classic short novels led me to an earlier essay Temple wrote on 50 great contemporary short novels.
   
3. Temple's essay encouraged me to check two out ebooks from the public library: Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin and The Orange Eats Creeps by Grace Krilanovich.
4. Flipping through these two experimental novels by Schweblin and Krilanovich got me thinking about what experimental novels I own that I have not yet read. At this point I vaguely remembered that I had bought the ebook version of Rosenthal's book. At first, I confused it with Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad -- another recent experimental novel that, among other techniques, is partly told in power point slides. (I do find that I am drawn to experimental literature.) I own Egan's book in ebook format but have yet to read it.
   
5. Back to Rosenthal's book Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. After following this thought process, I looked at my kindle and quickly found that I had, in fact, bought Rosenthal's book back in 2010.

Let me say a word about book collecting and moving. I got a kindle as a Christmas present in 2009. I see from looking at my amazon account that I bought Rosenthal's book on January 16, 2010; it was the 19th ebook I bought. But I now have 755 books on my kindle, partly because my family has five kindles between them and we share the same account. Not all of the books on my kindle were purchased. Some were public domain books; and some books came from the public library overdrive program. So there are quite a few ebooks on my device.

Kindle books take up almost no physical space in my life. And amazon backs up my electronic books on their server. So, it is easy for me to keep electronic books. By contrast, I have given away and sold a lot of books in my lifetime. This shedding of books is partly because I have lived in four states (Michigan, New York, Indiana, North Dakota, and, now, New Jersey) and four different countries (the United States, Poland, Bulgaria, and Lebanon) in my adult life. Books are probably the most cumbersome things to move overseas, partly because I never moved furniture or cars internationally. Books are bulky and heavy; shipping companies charge by space and weight.

So that is how I came to Rosenthal's book. Let me now say a bit about the book itself, Encyclopedia of en Ordinary Life.

Rosenthal's book is a memoir in the form of a one-volume encyclopedia. Most of the entries are short and tend to be filled with strong opinions. There are also several longer entries that are usually filled with autobiographical nuggets. This structure reminds me of Vladmimir Nabokov's truly extraordinary experimental novel Pale Fire. (Nabokov wrote many of his novels on index cards which he later gave to his wife Vera to type. This method was partly because he had nowhere else but the bathroom to write in his small apartments. The Paris Review has a 1967 interview with Nabakov that gives some insight into his writing process.)

I found Rosenthal's book to be a real page turner, even with its unusual structure. I also felt like I had found a person with ideas and emotions I really connected to by the end of the book.

Here are a couple of sections that I liked which give some idea of the flavor of the book:

COFFEHOUSE

My coffeehouse died. The one I went to every single Thursday for three years, minus a couple sore throats, vacations, and childbirths. The one where I wrote or tried to write or thought about trying to write. The one where I ate ham-and-cheese sanwiches, tofu asiago melts, and bagels with basil cream cheese. The one where I would sit for hours and sip and sip (never enough water). It was called Urbus Orbis, and I loved it.

... I want to say that I miss Urbus. I miss the slow service, and the way they never remembered the tomato that I ordered with my bagel. I miss the chalkboard menu that tended to be inaccurate. I miss the bathroom sink that only ran scalding-hot water. I miss the matchbooks under the table legs. I miss Tom's house special: the fancy illusion of mattering.

And I want to say, excuse me, but I thought I ordered a bottomless cup.

One small note. I learned from this section that Rosenthal was good friends with Charise Mericle Harper. When my daughter Marta was in kindergarden and first grade (she is now in 11th grade) we read Harper's book Pink Me Up together many times. Alas, this is a book that did not survive the moving process so I no longer have a copy in my house. But Pink Me Up is one of the great American picture books for girls.

Consider also this entry:

TA-DA!

Children get to say ta-da!, and I guess magicians, but other than that, it's an underutilized expression. I'm trying to think -- an adult might say it as she waltzes in with the turkey, or a homemade cake. But a self-congratulatory ta-da! would certainly be warranted for any number of daily accomplishments. I cleaned out the trunk of my car. Ta-da! I finished filling out the insurance application. Ta-da! I made the bed. Ta-da!

After I finished the book I decided to find out some more about the author online. I found her website. And as I looked further I saw that she died in 2015. (This fact is not obvious when looking at her website -- even the bio section uses present tense and does not mention her death.) After that I found a New York Times obituary -- which curiously has a 2017 publication date. That obituary led me to another Times article that Rosenthanl wrote in the modern love section titled "You May Want To Marry My Husband." Rosenthal's modern love essay was about how much she loved her husband and how, now that she was dying, she was advertising his many good qualities. She ends her essay

I want more time with Jason. I want more time with my children. I want more time sipping martinis at the Green Mill Jazz Club on Thursday nights. But that is not going to happen. I probably have only a few days left being a person on this planet. So why I am doing this?

I am wrapping this up on Valentine’s Day, and the most genuine, non-vase-oriented gift I can hope for is that the right person reads this, finds Jason, and another love story begins.

A year later, the Times published Jason's response to the letter.