Confessions Michael Cart A BOOKLIST PUBLICATION Editions An imprint of the AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION Chicago • 2018 alastore.ala.org Michael Cart is a columnist and reviewer for Booklist magazine and the author or editor of twenty-four books. He is a past president of both the Young Adult Library Services Association and ALAN (Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the National Council of Teachers of English). Cart has taught young adult literature at UCLA and lectures nationally on the subject. He is the recipient of the Grolier Award and the YALSA/ Greenwood Publishing Group Services to Young Adults’ Achievement Award. He earned a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and a master’s degree from Columbia University. © 2018 by the American Library Association Extensive effort has gone into ensuring the reliability of the information in this book; however, the publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. ISBNs 978-0-8389-1645-2 (paper) 978-0-8389-1674-2 (PDF) 978-0-8389-1673-5 (ePub) 978-0-8389-1675-9 (Kindle) Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number: 2017050589 Cover design by Kimberly Thornton; imagery © Adobe Stock. Text design and composition by Karen Sheets de Gracia in the Meta Serif and Corki typefaces. This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (Permanence of Paper). Printed in the United States of America 22 21 20 19 18 5 4 3 2 1 alastore.ala.org CONTENTS Introduction ix Foreword xiii Preface In the Beginning: The Column That Started It All xv The Great Cavern of Old Time • June 1 and 15, 1994 xvii 1 On Reading and Writing: Passions and Pleasures 1 The Paradigms, They Are A-Shiftin’ • January 1 and 15, 1996 3 Is Reading Selfish? • March 15, 2004 6 My Romance . with Reading • September 15, 2004 9 A Difficult and Complex Art • March 15, 2014 12 Read and Discuss • December 15, 2015 15 2 Books, Books, Books: On Collections and Collecting 19 The Accidental Book Collector • December 15, 2005 21 Hercules Had It Easy • April 15, 1995 24 Heap o’ Books • May 15, 1998 27 Where I Get Those Ideas • September 15, 2003 30 Boxes Everywhere • September 15, 2006 33 My Environment • February 15, 2013 36 3 That Was Then, This Is . Young Adult Literature, Past, Present, and Future 39 Happy Anniversary • January 1 and 15, 2017 41 The First Golden Age • February 15, 2017 44 Romance Redux • March 15, 2017 47 alastore.ala.orgv vi | CONTENTS A Near-Death Experience • April 15, 2017 50 A New Golden Age • May 15, 2017 53 The Present and the Prospective • June 1 and 15, 2017 56 The Dream Becomes a Reality • March 15, 2000 59 A Modern Master • December 15, 2000 62 4 With a Genre Here and a Genre There: Historical Fiction and Romance 65 Back Home Again • May 15, 2002 67 Nightmare • April 15, 2011 70 Only a Great Man • April 15, 2015 73 The Object(s) of Their Affection • September 15, 2008 76 My Cicada Love Song • September 15, 2011 79 5 Other Worlds: Fantasy and Science Fiction 83 Cutting My Teeth on Fantasy • April 15, 2002 85 What Rowling Has Wrought • April 15, 2004 88 The Camelot Connection • May 15, 2006 91 The Future Is Now • May 15, 2008 94 The Possibility of the Impossible • May 15, 2007 97 The Possibilities of the Impossible • May 15, 2011 100 6 What’s So Funny? Wit, Humor, and the Comics 103 Dissecting the Frog • February 15, 2016 105 Crazy about Comics • March 15, 2016 108 Just Ducky, Thanks • February 15, 2012 111 Magic Man • June 1 and 15, 2010 114 7 The Lives That Late They Led: Biography 117 A Disease of English Literature • June 1 and 15, 2015 119 So Many Lives, So Little Space • June 1 and 15, 2012 122 Get a Life! • June 1 and 15, 2011 125 alastore.ala.org CONTENTS | vii Limning Lives • June 1 and 15, 2008 128 A Writer’s Life • June 1 and 15, 2007 131 8 Tributes: Memories and Memorials 135 My Churches • November 15, 2013 137 A Clean, Well Lighted Sanctuary • April 15, 2000 140 Among the Digitally Divided • October 15, 2005 143 A Love Letter to Weetzie • May 15, 1999 146 Descent into Limbo • May 15, 2003 149 Love, Passion, and Lectures • November 15, 1998 152 Remembering Myra and Mike • November 15, 1996 155 Remembering Bill • November 15, 2003 158 His First Novel • November 15, 2004 161 Hog Heaven • March 15, 1998 164 America’s New Laureate • August 2006 167 Conclusion: Some Stray Thoughts on Columns 171 Index 177 alastore.ala.org INTRODUCTION ONE DAY IN the spring of 1994 my telephone rang. To my surprise it was Bill Ott, editor and publisher of Booklist magazine, calling. I had met Bill but didn’t know him well, so I presumed he wasn’t calling just to chat or talk about those Cubs. My presumption was correct: to my amazement he was calling to invite me—out of the blue—to do a monthly column for Book- list. I considered his invitation for approximately five seconds before I said “Yes.” I might have added “Try and stop me,” because to do a column was a lifelong dream of mine. It began when I was a boy, a boy who—I’m fond of saying—would read anything that didn’t get up and walk away. My reading ranged from cereal boxes to the daily newspaper, from classics to comics. Somewhere in the middle was my mother’s monthly copy of the magazine Better Homes and Gardens. Mind you, I wasn’t that interested in homes and gardens, either better or worse; no, what interested me was a feature that appeared on the final page of each issue: a column called “The Man Next Door” written by Burton Hillis (years later I discovered this was a pseud- onym for William E. Vaughan, who also wrote for The Reader’s Digest). The column was a cheerfully anecdotal report of his family’s small adventures in suburbia, accompanied by some homespun aphorisms; for example, “Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them”; “A real patriot is the fellow who gets a parking ticket and rejoices that the system works.” And—well, you get the idea. I enjoyed it so much that I found myself thinking how great it would be to write a column of my own someday. Flash forward forty or so years and I found that my dream had just come true! Twenty-three years have passed since Bill’s phone call and its genesis of the column that has come to be called Carte Blanche. During that time I’ve written more than 250 columns about a great gallimaufry of topics (it’s not for nothing that the column is called Carte Blanche), though all have, in their respective ways, dealt thematically with sundry aspects of books, reading, writing, and publishing, a fact that lends some unity and coher- ence to what would otherwise be a ragtag assemblage. Inevitably, some things about the column have changed over the years. In the early days I was, at most, a shadowy presence in them; I always took alastore.ala.orgix x | INTRODUCTION a back seat to whatever topic I was addressing, yet somehow I gradually started to move out of the shadows and onto the page, especially when I was discussing books, and that gave rise to a series of columns in which I wrote about my own collections and more often than not—since I’m a peripatetic person—about the act of moving when you own upwards of 15,000 books. You’ll find a gathering of such columns in the chapter I’m calling—what else?—“Books, Books, Books.” Aside from an infusion of me, me, me, what else has changed in the columns? Well, one thing has been my growing passion for young adult literature. In the early years it wasn’t uncommon for me to devote a column or three to some aspect of children’s literature, which was—after all—my first passion as a reader. But gradually young adult literature has moved center stage, in part because of my love for it but also, more pragmatically, because that field has become so, yes, vast that it’s almost impossible to keep abreast of its every aspect, let alone that of children’s literature. You won’t find evidence of it in this book—except in its title—but in addition to being a columnist, I’m also a reviewer for Book- list, specializing in young adult literature and, increasingly, in adult books as well, though this last is a topic for another time. The bottom line is that I’m consumed with young adult literature and my columns reflect that. One thing hasn’t changed, however, and that’s my seeming obsession with my age! I was a mere stripling of 53 when I began the column; over the years people have watched me age until, now, I have reached a spirited 76. No matter my age, however, I’d like to think that over the years I have revealed a sense of humor and I hope, accordingly, that I’ve been able to invest most of my columns with some salutary wit (this is where some wise guy says, “Well, at least he’s half right, har har har”). As for style, thanks to a degree in journalism (I graduated from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism), I’ve tried to affect an accessible, easygoing expository style, sprinkled with some polysyllables when they have seemed irresistibly ap- posite (see what I mean?).