Thinking about reality

One of our long time library friends loaned me Listening for Madeleine: A Portrait of Madeleine L'Engle in Many Voices, by Leonard S. Marcus. What a fascinating read!

I'm sure you all know of Madeleine L'Engle's books -- A Wrinkle in Time, Meet the Austins, A Circle of Quiet, etc. etc. She was a prolific author of books filled with the wonder of family and the world. Ms. L'Engle was an outspoken defender of the freedom to read and generously gave of her time to other writers, readers and librarians.

As was made public in a notorious New Yorker article published in 2004, she also was an accomplished editor, excising unpleasant or unflattering truths from her journals before publication and retooling memories to suit herself. In Listening for Madeleine, Marcus interviews people from all parts of Ms. L'Engle's life to try to capture the full story of a larger-than-life personality, and presents the resulting stories pretty much as is. I was rapt.

He's taken some flak, Cynthia Zarin (of the New Yorker profile) has taken some flak, Ms. L'Engle's daughters have certainly taken some flak, for exposing misery and ugliness in her life, but I'm grateful. These interviews remind me that people are multi-faceted, that memory is flexible, and that learning and growing as a human being means we must work through our personal demons, sometimes in very public ways. I am sorry that her family was harmed by her writings and her denial, and yet I still love The Twenty Four Days before Christmas and A Ring of Endless Light and Two-Part Invention.

A Wrinkle in Time introduced young readers to the concept of other, unknown dimensions. I appreciate being reminded that people, too, have many dimensions, known and unknown.