L’Engle Library Auction Begins

Dear Ones,

2020, apart from the collective traumas of covid-19 and the election, also marked the 13th anniversary of Madeleine’s death and the 102nd anniversary of her birth. She loved celebrating her birthday, November 29, and often bemoaned its coming too close to Thanksgiving. I have intense, impressionistic memories of Thanksgiving as a child: crowded tables, the clanging of silver and china, adult laughter and conversation, being allowed to light and snuff the candles, and staying up late. Sometimes we gathered as a family and assorted friends in New York at my grandparents’ apartment near the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; sometimes at their home in Northwestern Connecticut, Crosswicks. This year our gathering was tiny compared to years’ past, only the five of us that make up our current quarantine pod, but it was at Crosswicks, and we are grateful.

We’ve been at Crosswicks since March and have watched the seasons change and our expectations shift. I have gotten some good work done, but have also been amazed by what remains unfinished. One thing I am very happy to announce is that Madeleine’s library of approximately 10,000 books has been collected, sorted, and arranged by New England Book Auctions and will be on sale in various stages over the next several months, proceeds going The Madeleine L’Engle Travel Research Fellowships Fund at Smith College, PEN America’s Prison and Justice Writing Program, and The L’Engle Initiative at Image Journal.

The 258 boxes of books came from Crosswicks and her home in New York, and have been in storage since her death, nearly thirteen years ago. It was a great deal of work to go through them and make decisions, and we were finally able to tackle it this summer. It was not easy finding an auction house that would take this on: because the boxes had been in storage so long, their condition and value was unknown and I did not have the capacity to do an inventory. New England Book Auctions was able to make 3 trips to pick up the boxes (thank you, Connor, who made those trips and navigated the ancient and low cellar!) and has started to go through the books and arrange them in lots for sale, the first several of which are live on their website now, and bidding ends on December 3.

Madeleine in the Tower, ca. 1958

The first lots are “shelf sale” books, and have about 100 books in each, designed to be of interest to book dealers and not necessarily individual buyers (though you’re welcome to browse and bid!). Some are signed by her, some are by her, and all come from her personal library which was acquired over her lifetime. Some of the volumes originally belonged to her mother and father and other relatives but were on her book shelves. The books currently on sale represent about ten percent of the total, so there is much more to come, including a catalog sale of higher-value volumes. Do take a look if you’re curious. I love seeing her copies of The Lonely Crowd, The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud, What Is Science?, and Ship of Fools.

Dear ones, this is painful. Letting go of books always is, and these are very special, so it feels I’m letting go of her, too. Along with the pain of letting go also comes a sense of relief and freedom. It’s intense though, and I’m taking deep breaths. I hope you are, too, in the midst of all the changes all around us these days.

Charlotte

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The Madeleine L’Engle Conference a year later

Reposted from Sarah Arthur‘s facebook page, with permission.

Dear ones,

One year ago today I was wrapping up a glorious weekend co-directing 2019 Walking on Water: The Madeleine L’Engle Conference held at All Angels’ Church in NYC. A truly fantastic team of authors, musicians, visual artists, filmmakers, theatre educators, writing teachers, editors, booksellers, creatives, and nearly the entire church staff…everyone made it an unforgettable weekend–which is all the more poignant in retrospect, knowing now what we didn’t know then.

Madeleine L’Engle’s granddaughter, Charlotte Jones Voiklis, you are still pure magic (also sending virtual hugs to YOU, Léna Roy!), while M’s dear friend Barbara Braver has become one of those wise women I didn’t know I needed in my life. Katherine Paterson’s keynote “The Water is Wide” still rings in my ears, as does Audrey Assad’s music (“The Irrational Season,” anyone?). Madeleine’s new short story collection, “The Moment of Tenderness,” lovingly compiled by Charlotte and released in April, comforted us in those early dark days of the pandemic, while the new edition of M’s collected poems, “The Ordering of Love,” (with a foreword by yours truly) graced us too. If anything, these voices have grown more resonant.

There have been difficult changes along the way. NYC is a vastly different city now. Our nation is reeling from ongoing political destabilization–a situation that Madeleine understood all too well during the McCarthy era. Some of us are unemployed or underemployed or simply too overwhelmed to create much of anything right now (*raises hand*). Others have taken care of–or lost–loved ones during this dreadful pandemic, and/or fought the disease themselves. To our NYC friends, especially, and others who’ve had to move or change jobs: we send all our love and prayers.

There’s also much to celebrate! Sophfronia Scott is now the director of the first-ever Alma College MFA in Creative Writing (congratulations!), while the phenomenal team from We Need Diverse Books continues to add to our stack of nightstand reading (Sayantani DasGupta, you’re a total rockstar!). So many of these creatives have released new titles/films/stage-plays/music/events in the past year (Karina Yan Glaser’s new Vanderbeekers book and Peter Royston’s stage adaptation of M’s “A Wind in the Door” are both delightful); and several have marked major milestones (Joyce Yu-Jean Lee got married, y’all!). Without these things our world would be a darker place.

Dear Ones, though it’s been a year–and such a year–our hearts remain full. We’re in this together, and I can’t wait for the day when we’ll reconvene once again, to press forward in creativity and hope. In the meantime, as Madeleine said, “Like it or not, we either add to the darkness of indifference and out-and-out evil which surround us, or we light a candle to see by.” Light all those candles and together we’ll blaze out into the universe!

/by

Why read fantasy and science fiction?

by Jessica Kantrowitz

Dear Ones,

I’ve all but given up reading non-fiction lately. I’m too saturated with reality, too overwhelmed with a never-ending news cycle that keeps my mind in fight-or-flight mode constantly. There are so many good writers right now grappling with questions of faith, trauma and healing, parenting, social justice, and racial justice, and I keep buying their books, but when I open them to read my mind is a fog.

The problem is, I’ve reread all the books I keep by my bedside too recently for another reread, including Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quintet – A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in The Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, Many Waters, and An Acceptable Time. You know how you can tell in your gut if it’s time yet or not? So a couple of months ago, when the libraries in Boston finally opened again for socially distanced pick-up, I sat down at my computer and Googled, “best young adult fiction of all time.” I needed new-to-me books that drew me in as well as my old standbys: The Arm of the Starfish, Watership Down, A Wizard of Earthsea, The Princess and the Goblin.

I felt like a kid again when I began to receive notifications about the books I’d requested. If I could have, I’d have hopped on my bike instead of in my car to zip over to the library, lingering in the nearby woods when I kept arriving before they were open. Then — what treasure! The heartwarming The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser wrapped me up in the charm of New York City. Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones blurred the lines between fantasy and fiction. Everything Sad is Untrue by Daniel Nayeri, though technically nonfiction/memoir, enthralled me with stories both ethereal and earthy. Yet in all of these books, as in Madeleine’s, the escape into fantasy was also a way to process the seemingly impossible challenges of reality.

“A child who has been denied imaginative literature is likely to have far more difficulty in understanding cellular biology or post-Newtonian physics than the child whose imagination has already been stretched by reading fantasy and science fiction.”

Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

I’m not the only one who has been leaning into fantasy lately. On October 15th, TIME Magazine published a list of the 100 best fantasy books of all time. When I saw it, I immediately opened another tab with my library’s request form. TIME asked fantasy authors Tomi Adeyemi, Cassandra Clare, Diana Gabaldon, Neil Gaiman, Marlon James, N.K. Jemisin, George R.R. Martin and Sabaa Tahir to nominate books, then rate the 250 nominees on a scale. TIME’s editors then considered elements such as “originality, ambition, artistry, critical and popular reception, and influence on the fantasy genre and literature more broadly” to come up with the final list.

“A story where myth, fantasy, fairy tale, or science fiction explore and ask questions moves beyond fragmatic dailiness to wonder. Rather than taking the child away from the real world, such stories are preparation for living in the real world with courage and expectancy.”

Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

A Wrinkle in Time is on it, of course, along with A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and a host of my other favorites. (If you haven’t read The Princess Bride, may I say that the book is even better than the movie.) The first two, The Arabian Nights and Le Morte D’Arthur, made me feel a little guilty for never finishing them. Maybe someday. But perhaps most exciting were the newer books I was less familiar with. Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older went on my “requested” list right away, as did The Wrath and The Dawn by Renée Ahdieh and Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. I can’t wait to zip over to my little library by the woods to pick them up.

And do you know what? I just got that feeling in my gut about an old favorite. It’s time to reread The Arm of the Starfish again. I’m adding it to my list.

What’s on your list?

Tesser well,
Jessica Kantrowitz

Blog debut of Jessica Kantrowitz for madeleinelengle.com. Jessica Kantrowitz writes about faith, culture, social justice, and chronic illness, including her own struggles with depression and migraines. She has worked as a storyteller for Together Rising, and her writing has been featured in places like Sojourners, Think Christian, The Good Men Project, and Our Bible App. Despite having earned a Master of Divinity, she still feels very much like an apprentice. Her first book, The Long Night: Readings and Stories to Help You through Depression is available wherever books are sold, including your local, independent bookstore.

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