The Librarianist

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May 8, 1945 is the day when German troops throughout Europe surrendered to the Allies, and is known as V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day). Millions of people rejoiced at the news that the war—which had lasted six years and cost millions of lives, including those of the six million Jews who had been murdered in the Holocaust—was over.

Behind Bob Comet’s straight-man façade is the story of an unhappy child’s runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian’s vocation, and of the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. Bob’s experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsized players to welcome onto the stage of his life. Bob Comet is our 71-year-old protagonist. Since retiring from the public library where he has spent his entire professional career, he’s enjoyed a life of almost uninterrupted solitude in the house his mother left to him decades earlier. He is devoted to his books. The story begins in the narrative present between 2005 and 2006. In contrast to them all is Bob, a “steady, hand-on-the-tiller type”, a man possessed of a “natural enjoyment of modest accomplishment”, a man firmly set at a midpoint between extremes. The Librarianist, among other things, is an exploration of how a man might end up so determinedly mild and middling: “Bob had not been ­particularly good or bad in his life. Like many, like most, he rode the center line, going out of his way to perform damage against the un­deserving but never arcing toward helping the deserving, either.” DeWitt’s great gift lies in his ability to depict the Everyman in extremis – heroism hidden in plain sight. I did enjoy my time with this book - there’s a warmth to the writing and it has an offbeat humor- and it does make me want to seek out the rest of deWitt’s work.When Bob is first introduced to the senior center, that section is too long, and there are too many characters. A book begging to be read on the beach, with the sun warming the sand and salt in the air: pure escapism.

Overall, ‘The Librarianist’ presents us with a rather interesting character in Bob Comet. He embodies an unspoken sadness that infuses the majority of the novel. And the following, spoken by the proprietor of the rundown hotel, would seem to be the life advice that young Bob most took to heart: Okay, but if she starts freaking out, can you try to get her through the doors?” The cashier made a corralling gesture, arms out. “Once she’s in the parking lot she’s out of my domain.” Behind Bob Comet's straight man facade is the story of an unhappy child's runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian's vocation, and the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. Comet's experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsized players to welcome onto the stage of his life. When and how Bob meets Connie (and her freaky Priest-hating father) and Ethan - really the only two people with who he ever forms a close bond – and how the dynamics of that off-the-wall set of relationships develop;The next day Bob returned to the beach to practice his press rolls. The first performance was scheduled to take place thirty-six hours hence; with this in mind, Bob endeavored to arrive at a place where he could achieve the percussive effect without thinking of it. An hour and a half passed, and he paused, looking out to sea and having looking-out-to-sea thoughts. He imagined he heard his name on the wind and turned to find Ida leaning out the window of the tilted tower; her face was green as spinach puree, and she was waving at him that he should come up. Bob held the drum above his head, and she nodded that he should bring it with him. Weird and hilariously deadpan in just the way you’d expect from the author of The Sisters Brothers and French Exit, this was the pop of fun my summer needed. Connie, who had been Bob’s wife, had sometimes asked him why he read quite so much as he did. She believed Bob was reading beyond the accepted level of personal pleasure and wondered if it wasn’t symptomatic of a spiritual or emotional deformity. Bob thought her true question was, Why do you read rather than live?