A Review: Pfitz (1995), by Andrew Crumey

   Andrew Crumey’s second novel, Pfitz, was a summertime diversion that paid off in spades. Not only did I snag this little 164-page gem for just a buck at my favorite local second-hand shop (Myopic Books); I also found my self thoroughly entertained throughout and wishing at the end that there were more of the same to be had. Having never heard of Crumey before this extravagant and purely speculative financial adventure – yes, I guess that makes me a risk taker – I was not aware of his other works, e.g. Music, in a Foreign Language and the later D’Alambert’s Principle, which comprise with Mr. Mee a now completed trilogy. And there are others.* This is a treat I will probably avail myself of next summer, if not before.
    Crumey has a PhD. in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics from Cambridge. After a post-doctoral stint at Imperial College and Leeds University, and four years as a schoolteacher he became a book reviewer and literary editor for Scotland on Sunday, until an award for his first novel, Music, in a Foreign Language, freed him to write full time. Then came Pfitz (1995) – a NYT Notable book of the year.

The Archivist, by Martha Cooley: A Review

   Martha Cooley is a native New Yorker (Brooklyn) whose first novel, The Archivist, was published by Little, Brown and Company in 1998. Good for them, for her, and for us! This is a fine novel, and a treat for those book lovers who like books about ideas and authors -- poets, especially. This one concerns a trove of letters putatively written by T. S. Eliot to a confidant and friend (and possible lover?) Emily Hale, over a twenty-year period, which covered the years of his marital disaster and his wife’s commitment (and eventual death in an asylum) and his conversion to Anglicanism. These letters have been donated to the library of a New York university at which Matthias Lane is ‘the Archivist.’ In the tradition of such novels of vocation, everyone, it turns out, is an archivist, in some manner or to some degree. Only the treasures and the secrets they maintain and protect are different. Of his chosen profession Matthias says:
            I saw myself then, and still do, as inheritor of a rich tradition, one that
         straddles the line between mind and spirit. The great librarians have all
         been religious men – monks, priests, rabbis – and the stewardship of
         books is an act of homage and faith. (Pg. 11)