false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg 482964 11 Matthias Lane is the proud gatekeeper to countless objects of desire, the greatest among them being T.S. Eliot's letters to Emily Hale. Now in his late 60s and archivist at an unnamed East Coast university, Matthias is--as one of his colleagues tells him--"exceptionally well defended." He's intent on keeping the Hale collection equally remote, and when a young poet first seeks access, Matthias rebuffs her with little difficulty. Still, Roberta Spire does remind him of his wife, Judith, who had also written poetry but had committed suicide 20 years earlier. And he is much taken with the student's self-possession: "Pleading never works with me," he concedes, "but authentic and angry self-interest does." <P> Betrayal figures heavily in <i>The Archivist</i>. For starters, Roberta feels betrayed by her parents, German Jews who had spent World War II in hiding and emigrated to the U.S. soon afterward, re-creating themselves as Christians. She has only recently discovered her Jewish background. The irony is that Matthias's wife had also been an Eliot adept and had felt violated by a false version of her own past and destroyed when confronted with the realities of the Holocaust. No wonder Roberta sees the Hale letters as a Holy Grail, the key to her questions about religious conversion and identity. <P> What holds this exceptionally ambitious and layered first novel together is the love all three main characters have for the pleasures of the text and the knowledge they share that time is, as Eliot writes, both preserver and destroyer. Eliot, after all, had wanted Emily Hale to destroy his letters (and in reality they are sealed until 2020, safe at Princeton University). Martha Cooley is deeply concerned, as are her characters, with questions of conscience, privacy, action and inaction, and security--personal and scholarly. If there is one parallel too many in this impressive work, perhaps that is more like life than some of us care to admit. --<I>Kerry Fried</I> 471315 1998 The Archivist: A Novel total:560|5:93|4:196|3:191|2:67|1:13| 560 1969 899 100 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 3 3 false Sat Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 08 12:07:27 -0700 2007 Sat Sep 08 12:22:12 -0700 2007 more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 3 2 false Mon Mar 17 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Mar 10 20:22:42 -0700 2008 Mon Mar 10 20:23:03 -0700 2008
Let me explain. There are three main charac...more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 3 1 false Sun Aug 05 06:17:03 -0700 2007 Mon Nov 19 14:00:14 -0800 2007 more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 5 1 false Wed Apr 02 18:16:24 -0700 2008 Tue May 13 10:00:27 -0700 2008
stylistically, it's a bit of a break in my reading trend right now--a more traditional-feeling ...more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 2 1 false Sun Dec 14 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 01 12:50:49 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 23 18:03:44 -0800 2009 more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 3 0 false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Jul 24 17:01:36 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 24 17:02:28 -0700 2009
Thoughts about the book: This book reminds me in many ways of one of my all-time favorite reads, Possession. The novel has sev...more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 3 0 true Sun Oct 11 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Sep 26 07:53:02 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 13 10:11:32 -0700 2009
The book was very well written and easy to read. However, the story was very disturbing and in the end, disgusted me, so much so that it made me not like the book, hence the moderate star rating. The Archivist, Matt, was a...more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 3 0 false Tue Feb 03 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 03 09:28:42 -0800 2009 Tue Feb 03 09:33:33 -0800 2009 more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 2 0 false Fri Dec 10 00:00:00 -0800 1999 Thu Aug 13 07:37:06 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 13 07:37:52 -0700 2009 more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 3 0 false Tue Aug 04 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 28 08:53:55 -0700 2009 Wed Aug 05 10:37:46 -0700 2009 more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 5 0 false Wed Nov 25 03:49:02 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 25 04:05:50 -0800 2009 more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 4 0 false Thu Nov 13 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Tue Nov 11 19:39:22 -0800 2008 Fri Nov 14 11:23:34 -0800 2008 1 more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 1 0 false Sun Aug 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 13:57:23 -0700 2009 Tue Aug 18 13:59:59 -0700 2009
Haha anytime I hate the way a book is written, I compare it the DVC, I know, I know. But ...more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 2 0 false Sat Aug 29 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 29 16:37:42 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 29 16:40:29 -0700 2009 more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 0 0 false Sat Jul 18 20:54:45 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 18 20:54:57 -0700 2009 more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 3 0 false Mon Oct 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon May 18 11:19:22 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 01 09:16:33 -0700 2009
The book itself has different parts, four I think in total.

Part one, describes Matt's job basically as an archivist. He's got some issues about guilt, stemming from his wife, Judith, who was sent to a psych ward called Hayden. Hi...more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 4 0 false Tue Aug 12 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Thu Jun 26 13:32:41 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 24 07:51:57 -0700 2008 more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 5 0 false Tue Jul 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Mar 15 17:30:33 -0700 2008 Thu Jul 10 09:50:14 -0700 2008
i can't think of another book that explores this subject so well...
it all starts with the image of the archive and its attendant associations, the hale bequest becomes particularly resonant in this regard in that it represents a cache of highly ch...more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 4 0 false Sat Dec 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Jan 05 07:17:34 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 05 07:19:57 -0800 2008 more...]]> 482964 0316158461 9780316158466 527 93 3.52 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1175126737m/482964.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/482964.The_Archivist_A_Novel 5 0 false Sat May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Sun Dec 09 17:15:16 -0800 2007 Sun Dec 09 17:16:00 -0800 2007
It's the story of Matthias, an archivist at a university library. He guards the collections from heat, damp, light, and--in the case of those bequests that are sealed--from prying eyes.

Into his life comes...more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=482964