Books: 785

“Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend”
Rebecca Romney
Simon & Schuster
$30

Where did Jane Austen get her ideas? No one arrives sui generis; banal or brilliant, we draw from others: parents, siblings, books. Romney investigated, unearthed Jane’s predecessors, discovered Austen mentioned many favorite women authors directly; characters in “Northanger Abbey” praised Ann Radcliffe, and the very phrase “pride and prejudice” came from Frances Burney’s “Cecilia.” Romney’s chapters highlight these earlier women’s works, explaining how they were “erased” from the general canon, and what they meant to Austen: with Burney and Radcliffe are Charlotte Lennox, Charlotte Smith, Hannah More, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi and Maria Edgeworth. Far from a mere listing, these biographies enthrall and entice; Romney hunted rare editions, but you can collect them online for a song. An illuminating read. (All of them.)

“CRUMB: A Cartoonist’s Life”
Dan Nadel
Scribner
$35

Robert Crumb parlayed “dysfunctional nerd” into underground comix stardom and eventual retreat to life in Sauve, France. Whether you only noticed “Keep on truckin” mud-flaps on passing 18-wheelers, or weathered the ‘60s following the entire panoply through “Zap,” “Weirdo” and “Big Ass Comics,” (remember Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural?), your panel-life has likely been touched by Crumb. Standing on the shoulders of the likes of Harvey Kurtzman and Carl Barks, Crumb survived a holocaust childhood to bring his tremendous artistic talents into play. Not all of them suited everyone; his sexual fantasies remained a prominent subject. Author Dan Nadel worked with Crumb’s permission to bring this biography to life, and Crumb, it seems, retained every scrap of information. The book is richly illustrated, in B&W and color.

“The Power of Adrienne Rich: A Biography”
Hilary Holladay
Princeton
$24.95

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) was an intelligent, driven child. Her father, Arnold, a pathologist at Johns Hopkins, controlled her education rigidly, publishing her first 37 poems when she was 6; (she’d been dictating stories and playing Mozart at 4.) She remained an achiever for life; at Radcliffe (’51) her first collection of poems, “A Change of World,” was published in the Yale Younger Poets series, and she published in The New Yorker. She led an intense life, married in 1953, had three sons, then underwent a political then feminist awakening. She and her husband, economist Alfred Conrad, had an open marriage, where she had affairs — e.g., poet Robert Lowell — later meeting Jamaican-born Michelle Cliff, with whom she spent the rest of her life. She never reconciled with her father.

“The Village Beyond the Mist”
Sachiko Kashiwaba tr. Avery Fischer Udagawa
Ill. Miho Satake
Restless Books
$18

Young Lina Useugi’s father has sent her for summer vacation to Misty Valley, but at the transfer station, no one meets her, nor has anyone even heard of the place. She sets off on an old farmer’s tractor with an umbrella gifted by her father and a red bag. Dropped off later, her umbrella sails away. Lina pursues it to the entrance of a hidden village, just five shops and a larger, multi-chimneyed dwelling. She’s expected, and told, “He who does not work shall not eat.” Dismayed at her hostess’s rudeness, Lina recalls her father promising “someplace different.” She remains, has wondrous adventures and learns magical lessons. Written in 1975, the book was the inspiration for Hayao Miyazaki’s film “Spirited Away,” finally translated into English.