Reading in bed this morning. Looked up and over at the blank wall opposite, to the Babel of books piled on the bench. Saw this.
The sun was angling through the imprecisely hung slats of the vertical blinds, the windows were slightly open, a light breeze stirring them left and right, back and forth. I was transfixed. I watched the sun scrawl its long slow message, a luminescent graffiti. I made the video above to try to capture, with no success, how peculiar and arresting it was. If you listen carefully, you’ll hear, barely, a rhythmic ticking in the background. It was much more present in the room than the recording suggests. Sounds like it might be a clock. No. It’s this.
She sits atop the cabinet that contains the Murphy bed. A geisha in a cube with a solar cell. As soon as the sun enters the room, she begins to nod her head. It’s the business of a geisha to say yes, I guess. From dawn to dusk, even on cloudy days, she performs her one party piece. Is it a racist artifact? I’m not sure it qualifies as such, perhaps it does. I see it as harmless kitsch. I’ll acknowledge, though, that I felt a twinge of — what? — embarrassment, maybe, when I sat down to write, I wasn’t sure what, about Mavis Gallant (MG) — by that time the unexpected light show was over, the wall was back to its uniform blandness — and noted the date, August 6.
The cultural juxtaposition of something so inconsequential, so silly as a nodding plastic geisha with something so monumental, something so century defining as Hiroshima made me repent not just this triviality, but all the others upon which I’ve built my crooked little house. I also remembered having quoted here, a few weeks back, a piece MG published in The New York Review of Books about Marguerite Yourencar in which she, MG, described how Yourcenar, offended by Marguerite Duras’ mega-bestseller, had sneered, "Hiroshima mon amour, et pourquoi pas Auschwitz mon chou?"
I thought about MG, about her German stories; thought about how she was both disappointed and offended when The New Yorker declined to publish her novella The Pegnitz Junction; she named it as her favourite child, the writing that was her most daring and experimental. Had it appeared in those pages, it would have been one of those very rare book-length pieces that occupy pretty much the whole of the magazine. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie appeared in this way; so, in 1946, did John Hersey’s Hiroshima.
I wondered if MG and John Hersey had ever appeared in The New Yorker at the same time, shared space between the covers of the same issue. They did, but only once, as near as I can tell.
Hersey was represented by the third long instalment of his reporting from China. MG’s contribution, much slighter and lighter, was “Treading Water,” a very funny sendup of the Cosima Wagner diaries that had just been published, and were much discussed. “Treading Water” was eventually collected in Going Ashore.
My curiosity about the Hersey / Gallant juxtaposition — born in a minute, and not really an itch in desperate need of scratching — had been satisfied, but I had the feeling there was something else I needed to see. An instinct. An unexpected light passing across the field of vision. Immediately preceding MG’s bright, light satire was this entry in “Talk of the Town.”
“Crane Man” describes, in about 600 words, the extraordinary efforts made by George Archibald to conserve crane populations, all species. Canadian, from Nova Scotia, New Glasgow, he was — still is, he’s alive, very much so — the founder of the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin.
The article was unsigned — that was the “Talk of the Town” tradition until quite recently — but it didn’t take much to find out that the author was Faith McNulty (1918 - 2005.) A New Yorker staff writer for many years, she often wrote about nature. Her book The Burning Bed is often cited in the same breath as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (another long form piece from The New Yorker) as foundational to the genre of “creative nonfiction,” whatever the hell that is.
Faith McNulty, as I’ve only recently learned, was also the author of a book I am not ashamed to name as the one that gave perhaps the most shape to my early years as a reader: The Funny Mixed Up Story. It’s Wonder Book, a series distinguished mostly by washable covers.
A boy named Albert goes for a walk in the woods. He meets some bears. Hijinks ensue. Albert gets home safe, with a tale to tell. It’s that straightforward. Faith McNulty had the bright idea — this was years before “Choose Your Own Adventure” — to introduce the element of chance; in the good-humoured but quite ordinary text describing Albert’s adventure, she leaves blanks.
Tipped into the binding of the book is a list of nouns you’re intended to cut out, with adult supervision and blunt-nosed scissors. You put the slips into a hat or jar or envelope and then draw them out, randomly, when required, i.e. when the blanks occurs.
I’m not making a persuasive case for The Funny Mixed-Up Story, but believe me, it truly was killing. It was never the same, and it never failed; it was absurd, a child’s introduction to Dada. It made me happy, reliably, and finding a good clean copy, with the “cut these out” sheet still intact brightened, I can tell you, an otherwise dreary March.
It pleases me that MG, as a child, loved cartoons and comics; Marta Dvorak made that point when we spoke, all those weeks ago. They are nourishing, in their own way: surprising but true. When it comes to children and books, and to the right book at the right time, my own guess is that it comes down to luck more than to prescription. There exists now — this has always been so — a vogue for publishing children’s books that are pill-like in their didacticism. Take this to learn about being an empath. A dose of this will help you control your anger. Just one small spoonful and you’ll be racially tolerant. I think those are all good lessons, I’m not saying they shouldn’t be taught, I’m just not sure that the laden trowel of obvious moral lessons is the best way to apply them. (Then again, what do I know? Where are my children, my grandchildren, the living proof that my methodology has merit? You might well ask.)
I remember a story told by the writer Katherine Paterson (b.1932) a story first told her by a bookseller. She’s perhaps best known as the author of The Bridge to Terabithia. Among her many other books is a translation of a version of a Japanese folk tale, The Crane Wife. It’s a variation on the Pandora’s box or the Bluebeard, or the Genesis story: the dangers of acquiring forbidden knowledge. A poor man marries a woman who, each night, weaves a miraculous cloth she sells at the market. This sustains them. All she asks of him is that he never watch her at work. Of course, he does. He sees she is, by night, a crane, pulling feathers from her own breast and weaving them on the loom. Disaster. All is dashed and ruined. She flies away. He is alone, and poor.
Katherine Paterson, on a bookstore visit, was told by the shop owner of how a woman came in with a child, her grandchild, who had been witness to a brutal family event, the worst thing you can imagine. She was looking for books that would provide solace and The Crane Wife was among those she chose, out of desperation, out of instinct, who knows? A few days later, she came by the store again and said that the child who’d been the witness to adult brutality, and who had never been able to speak of it, after reading The Crane Wife was able, finally, to cry. The start of healing, or something that approximates it.
It might very well be that, had a book called “So You Saw Something Unspeakable,” been available that it would have done the trick. But I doubt it, not at a visceral level. The beauty of reading, if we consider its affect, is its ineffability. That would also be its frustration if what you wanted was a quick, a reliable fix; a panacea, in book form.
How does it all come together? What cards have been turned over? Katherine Paterson’s translation of The Crane Wife, Hiroshima, which also brings to mind the origami cranes that are often made in memory of those who died there, and in Nagasaki, and Faith McNulty, her Talk of the Town piece from forty years ago about the Canadian crane conservationist George Archibald. Here’s a sad, but beautiful, and germane, posting from the Facebook page of the International Crane Foundation.
Kyoko (Matsumoto) Archibald, 71, passed away from Acute Myeloid Leukemia at St. Mary's Hospital, in Madison, Wisconsin, on March 11, 2022. She is survived by her husband, George Archibald, Co-Founder of the International Crane Foundation, her 99-year-old mother Shizue, two sisters Yuko and Setsuko in Japan, and her beloved kitties, chickens, peacocks, and honeybees.
Born in Yokohama, Japan, in 1950 to Toshio and Shizue Matsumoto, Kyoko was a child who loved to play outdoors. She attended and graduated from Tokyo University of Science in 1973 and taught high school mathematics for several years. Photography was a hobby that took her to northern Japan to photograph the magnificent, Red-crowned Cranes. Famed photographer Tsuneo Hayashida met Kyoko in 1978 and invited her to serve as his interpreter on a trip to the U.S. to photograph cranes and visit the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, WI. Fascinated by cranes and the foundation's mission to help them, Kyoko returned to Baraboo as a volunteer in 1979. Kyoko and George were married in 1981.
Kyoko, a true nurturer, spent her time on their lovely farm in the rolling hills just outside Baraboo. It was there that she tended God's bounty; gardens, beehives, chickens, and her favorite Araucanas that lay the beautiful blue eggs. She was well-known for her meticulous care of stray or wounded animals. Many who knew her will remember "Star" darling, a baby starling abandoned in the barn. Kyoko rescued her and taught her to sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. She sang for 14 years!
Kyoko was an amazing cook and often provided delicious meals to friends in need—not to mention always having the first item to disappear at any potluck. She was an exquisite knitter, undaunted by intricate patterns. She loved her Baraboo community but always returned to her native Japan each year to visit her family. More recently, during the pandemic, Kyoko was an instructor for the Bible Study Fellowship and spent many hours in Christian studies via the Internet connecting with other women around the world.
Kyoko had a special place in her heart for children. At Walnut Hill Bible Church, she was a second mother/grandmother to many children. As their teacher, she was loved by so many at After School Bible Club, 5 Day Club, and Sunday School. She entertained many of them at the farm with picnics, fun, and a large assortment of birds.
Kyoko was a gentle spirit with a bright light. She will be missed by everyone who knew her.
What a remarkable person she must have been. I am sorry for her suffering, for her family’s loss, but I’m glad to know she did her work in the world. I would not have learned of her, or of her husband, George Archibald, had I not wondered something small and inconsequential about MG. I’m grateful, too, for the avenues MG has led me down these last four months. Almost time to shut this down. I’ll miss the unexpected play of light that comes along when I least expect it. Thanks for reading, xo, B
Grief, Memory, Three O'Clock in the Morning: My Mavis Gallant Centennial Diary, August 6