Dear people:

Today I stumbled upon the very awesome blog Letters of Note. In their own words, “Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos.” From the letter of a child detailing his rocket ship designs “to a top scientist,” to a letter from Einstein proclaiming that “the word God is nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness,” this blog could entertain you for hours. But what struck me was a letter from Kurt Vonnegut Jr to his family after he escaped Dresden at the end of World War II. The experiences outlined in Vonnegut’s letter are both horrifying and incredibly worthy of respect. And on an even more visceral level, it makes me feel like writers today are all academic pansies. How many modern writers do you know “were put to work carrying corpses from Air-Raid shelters” or lived through a massive bombing raid that “killed 250,000 people in twenty-four hours and destroyed all of Dresden?” Horrible as it may be, it’s also pretty badass.

This experience of Vonnegut’s and the events outlined in this letter are what inspired his novel Slaughterhouse-Five, which was what his underground slaughterhouse-cum-prison was known as to his German captors. Vonnegut’s letter is not only an enlightening piece of literary history, it is a fantastic document of world history as well. It demonstrates to us how awful war is, how children writing to their parents had to begin letters with statements like “I’m told that you were probably never informed that I was anything other than ‘missing in action.’”

I’ve posted the scans of the letter below, which were originally available here at archive.org. If you check out Vonnegut’s letter at Letters of Note, you can read it transcribed as well and may soon find yourself sifting through all the other letters in their collection.

This past weekend, B and I attended the 39th Annual Book Fair in Oak Park, put on by the Friends of the Oak Park Library. This book fair is huge; it is hosted in the Oak Park River Forest High School cafeteria and brags over 100,000 books (I’d believe it). We decided to go on opening night, which is integral I think if you want to get the best books. Not that you wouldn’t be able to find some gems on the second night, but the first night is so busy and packed with book hounds, as well as retailers with their little computerized book guns searching for what they need by ISBN, that I feel by night two your chances of finding your own personal buried treasure will have drastically decreased.

The prices for books at the book fair are outrageously low, and since I stick mostly to paperbacks I was able to acquire a considerable haul for only $16. But there are people who go there with dozens of bags, people who bring little wagons (I’m surprised I saw no wheelbarrows), and people who fill wine boxes until the books are spilling over. And the aforementioned retailers, well, they and their overflowing collections, stuffed duffels and canvas sacks, are everywhere. The cheap prices and the vast number of titles call to the bibliophiles, and if you attend this book fair you’ll be face-to-face with the ravenous humanity of all those who think books are worthwhile.

The book fair is an excellent place to people-watch; consider a hot and stuffy high school cafeteria on a summer night, over 100,000 books, and hundreds of people, many so absorbed in their search that they have no qualms with backing their rear-side into you, knocking you over with a bag of books without uttering any apologies, or forgetting that because they are attending a large event, with hundreds of people, in a stifled cafeteria, they might want to shower beforehand. There are books that everybody seems to want — before we arrived, B’s mother (hi Bonnie!) asked us to keep an eye out for Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife; throughout my time at the book fair, I encountered a handful of people wanting the same book. At one point, two different women asked one of the book fair volunteers, almost simultaneously, if she had seen that very title. And then there were books that nobody seemed to want. I have never seen so many copies of Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections in my life. There were so many copies, both hardcover and paperback, I almost considered buying one myself (almost).

My own personal haul is eclectic, I think, as even though I told myself I could spend whatever I wanted, however much it took, I held back and only got what I thought I would really need and really read. Responsible, no? But I have to admit to you that I purchased three different copies of Moby Dick; I couldn’t help myself. One copy, in my defense, is going to be tore up and have its pages lacquered to the top of our coffee table. The other two, though, will reside on my shelf next to my other vintage copy of Moby Dick, donated to me by my own high school English department some ten years ago when they were clearing out their storeroom.

Keeping with the Melville theme, I also picked up The Portable Melville; this book contains pretty much everything Melville wrote besides Moby Dick, including Typee and Billy Budd, as well as stories and poems and personal letters and more. From another of my favorite authors, I bought All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy; those who know me know I love McCarthy and it may come as a surprise that I haven’t read this, one of his most famous books. I admit, I avoided Pretty Horses for a while as my writing mentor, Stephen Wright, once referred to the novel as “Cormac McCarthy lite.” Despite this prejudice, I think it’s also good to hold off on reading every book by your favorite authors and maybe save some for later; I haven’t read any of the Border Trilogy (of which Pretty Horses is included) nor have I read No Country for Old Men. That leaves me a couple books for the years to come, giving me a chance to continue to explore, for the first time, McCarthy’s oeuvre.

I picked up a few more modern books with Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres, a novel that retells King Lear but on an Iowa farm and has been recommended to me a number of times, as well as Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America. I remember once sitting in the Barnes & Noble in Union Square, killing time before class, reading from Birds of America. Keeping with the ladies, I also bought an excellent vintage copy of Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, a book all of those interested in post-modernism should read, and Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. I haven’t read much Morrison, only Beloved, but I’ve heard such great things about The Bluest Eye I couldn’t leave it.

Speaking of the bluest eye, I purchased Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter; I met Ford once when he came to speak to my writing class in undergrad (he attended my alma mater) and dude has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen; he was a dreamboat. I was excited to get Grendel by John Gardner; I’ve heard so many good things about this book and I love Gardner’s how-to book On Becoming a Novelist, it was a perfect acquisition. I can’t give any reason why I haven’t read this book before. Another good buy was Jerzy Kosinski’s The Painted Bird; Being There was given to me a few years back by my friend Rachel and I flew through that novel in a few hours. Here’s hoping Kosinski’s seminal World War II novel is as powerful, painted with his own brand of dark humor, as Being There is.

As a Faulkner lover, I can’t pass up a good vintage copy of one of his books and at this particular outing I was able to get a fabulous condition As I Lay Dying; I love this novel and it’s actually quite strange to me that I didn’t already have it. If you haven’t read Faulkner, or you read The Sound and the Fury and struggled, give As I Lay Dying a shot. Then you’ll see why Faulkner is one of the best authors the US has ever had. From the same period, I got Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood. Barnes is an author whom I’ve never read, and I say that with my tail between my legs. This book has been on my list for a few years now and I think it pairs well with As I Lay Dying and To The Lighthouse, and certainly I anticipate seeing shades of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Gotta love the expats.

Finally, we have Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way. Yes, another author who I am sorry to admit I’ve never read. I could not let this copy of Swann’s Way lie; it is a beautiful vintage hardcover, Modern Library edition. The dust jacket is still in great condition for its age and the pages have yet to brown. I’ve been meaning to read this for years and I can’t wait to tear into this copy.

Overall, a great collection of books for a very small pittance. I love book fairs, despite all the people, and if you’re in the Chicago area and are only now being introduced to this annual book fair, make sure to put it on your calendar. The book fair is always the first weekend in August. Maybe I’ll see you there next year.