Welcome to The Librarian Is In, The New York Public Library's podcast about books, culture, and what to read next.

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We're so excited! Frank and Crystal have a guest this week and it's the lovely Julie Golia. Have you ever wondered who chooses what belongs in a library's collection? Have you ever wondered what's considered when choosing pieces? Julia can answer that! She is a curator of history, social sciences, and government information at NYPL. Settle in for a great episode about how curators select pieces for collections, the history of advice columns, the guessing game and another tarot reading.

First, Julie wrote a book which delves into advice columns pre-internet: 

Newspaper Confessions by Julie Golia

Newspaper Confessions is the first history of the newspaper advice column, a genre that has shaped Americans' relationships with media, their experiences with popular therapy, and their virtual interactions across generations. Early advice columns are essential—and overlooked—precursors to today's digital culture: forums, social media groups, chat rooms, and other online communities that define how present-day American communicate with each other. (Publisher summary)

 

 

A lot of the conversation reminded Crystal of a YA book:

The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee

When the advice column she secretly writes becomes wildly popular, a young lady’s maid uses her influence to question her society’s fixed ideas about race and gender. (Publisher summary)

 

 

 

 

Frank and Crystal asked Julie for a book recommendation and she chose this novel:

Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson

Lillian and Madison were the unlikeliest of roommates at their elite boarding school: Madison, the daughter of a prominent Atlanta family, being groomed for greatness; Lillian, a scholarship student, plucked out of nowhere based solely on her intellect and athletic prowess. The two were as tight as could be, reveling in their unique weirdnesses, until Lillian had to leave the school unexpectedly. Years later, the two have lost touch, but Madison writes and begs Lillian for help. Her husband's twin stepkids are moving in with them and she wants Lillian to be their caretaker. However, there's a catch: the twins can spontaneously combust when they get agitated, flames igniting from their skin in a disturbing but beautiful way. Disbelieving at first but ultimately too intrigued by these strange children, Lillian agrees. And as they hunker down in the pool house, Lillian and the twins learn to trust each other--and stay cool--just as Madison's family is bracing for a major announcement. It all seems impossible to manage, but Lillian soon accepts that she and the children need each other, urgently and fiercely.  (Publisher summary)

And finally, Julie stumps Frank and Crystal with her Guessing Game pick:

A House on the Heights by Truman Capote

The tranquil life Truman Capote led in the quiet enclave known as Brooklyn Heights stood in sharp contrast to the glittering scene he adored on the other side of the bridge. Yet, for a few contented years in the fifties and sixties, he happily made his home in the yellow brick house on leafy Willow Street. A House on the Heights vividly evokes the neighborhood Capote came to know well and one that he describes as among Brooklyn's "splendid contradictions." Here, in a series of character sketches, its denizens spring to life, including the decade's most celebrated Russian spy; a globe-trotting antiquarian and his gnomic Panamanian wife; and a cat-rescuing dowager with a pointed social agenda (Publisher summary.)

Tell us what everybody's talking about in your world of books and libraries! Suggest Hot Topix(TM)! Send an email or voice memo to podcasts[at]nypl.org.

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Transcript

[Music]

[Frank] Hello, and welcome to The Librarian Is In, New York Public Library's podcast about books, culture, and [inaudible]. I'm Frank.

[Crystal] And I'm Crystal.

[Frank] And guess what, Crystal. You know what.

[Crystal] What? [Chuckle].

[Frank] Well, everyone knows what. We're not going to talk about a specific book, specifically. We're going to have a guest, we have a guest. We have a guest who's listening to all of this preamble. I thought, we thought it would be fun to actually talk to, again, some of our colleagues in New York Public Library, and see what's up with them, and what they're doing, and how they're doing it. I always find that interesting, don't you?

[Crystal] Yes, very.

[Frank] Okay, good [laughter], we're on the same page. So today, everybody, we have Julie Golia, who is the curator of history, social sciences, and government information. Wow. Hi, Julie.

[Julie] Hi, guys. Thanks for having me.

[Frank] Course! That's quite a title.

[Julie] [Chuckle] It's a lot. It's a mouthful. [Inaudible] on one line.

[Frank] Are you, is your office at the Main, 42nd Street?

[Julie] I am. I'm based out of the Schwarzman Building. But I'm one of these curators -- there's lots of curators at the library, but I'm in a -- I think lovely cohort of curators who are not division-based. We're subject-based. And the whole thing about that is that I get to work all across the different research libraries, and all of the different collections and divisions, which is where I like to be.

[Frank] Yeah, I was looking to see looking at the hierarchy because there's so many people who work for New York Public Library, and to see where you fell in there. And it was surprising to see you in collections, because you're under that line, which is really interesting, actually.

[Julie] So one of the things that I do -- well, I do a lot of different things, but one of them is that I get to pick the books on my subject that we bring into the research collections, which is a pretty remarkable thing, if you think about it. We get to essentially decide what books related to American and European history will be in New York Public Library's collections in perpetuity.

[Frank] So you're the one, okay. [Laughter].

[Crystal] --with all the power [laughter].

[Frank] Now I know where to go when there's something's not in the catalog. No.

[Julie] That's right. Then come to me and I'll help you out, exactly.

[Frank] Okay. It's always good to have connections. it's amazing how big this library is, you know. I mean that's what's sort of [inaudible] about doing this. I want to ask you so many things but please tell us about your fascinating journey to the New York Public Library starting with your earliest memory.

[Laughing]

[Julie] It was in my mother's womb now [laughter]. Well, interestingly, I think, I'm a historian, I'm not a librarian. I always joke that I'm library adjacent and have such a love of librarians. And so I got my PhD in history, but I think you know being historian is more than a degree, and I feel like in some ways I feel like I was a historian since -- maybe my earliest waking moment of being a historian was maybe in my teens, my early teens. I remember going up to on like a family trip to Poughkeepsie, and we went to the FDR House, and then we went to [inaudible] which is Eleanor Roosevelt's house, and thinking a little bit about gender history. And ways that we remember the President, a male sort of public figure, and then the ways that we think about the women who had such an influence on his life. And I won't say that's like my earliest memory of thinking about gender in history, and what the things that we remember, and prioritize, and record, and the things that we don't. And then I studied history in college, and I spent a couple of years working in documentary film, and I worked in a really wonderful movie about the history of Tupperware. And then I got my PhD at Columbia, and the whole time I was there I kind of felt like maybe I didn't want to be a professor and envisioned a broader audience for the kind of history that I wanted to do. And so when I graduated I went into the field of library and museums. I worked at the New York Historical Society for a little while. I spent a wonderful decade at the Brooklyn Historical Society which is now part of the Brooklyn Public Library system and I arrived at the library in the auspicious month of February 2020 [inaudible] and spent a few weeks on site until Covid hit. And an interesting thing about that I will say is that I got to work on a lot of different things as a curator. And one of the last exhibitions I worked on at Brooklyn historical society was a history of public health in Brooklyn. We looked at 400 years of sickness and health. And what a wild time to come into a collecting position at a foremost collecting institution and start to think about what it means to collect around this historical period. So actually that's one of the major things I've been doing since I started here is how do we collect and preserve the era that we're living through now?

[Frank] Wow. That really is interesting. I know you're working on a bunch of projects. This is a crazy question because it's probably too broad and too weird. But you just said something that I think about all the time lately, especially, is when you collect history, and you go through all the material and stuff like that, like in your training, do you have an eye, or a sense, or a method about how you look at history as it's told by another historian, I guess, which is material that the library might collect, and figure out where they're coming from, like if there's a bias, if there is a perspective, if there is something that adds to the conversation, that doesn't add to the conversation. I mean, what you said about FDR and Ella Roosevelt, it's sort of like a very intriguing way as a young person to look at what you were looking at, and that was something that just happened in your brain, it seemed, and gave you this perspective history. And history could have been written multiple ways about them and has. How do you go through all this to find the truth, shall we say, to use a crazy word that my, what does it mean?

[Julie] Yes I know we historians do not considered truth to be among our currencies [laughing]. And actually we have very complicated relationship with the notion of facts, as well.

[Frank] Yeah. But you're right that's a huge question. It's almost 'the' question, if you will. And you're getting right to the nub of all about we do. So I think what I'm -- so I will say first that there's a long standing sort of debate, and a very complicated relationship with the notion of objectivity in history. So I think this is something that is often held up like in journalism, for example, as like a paragon to strive to. And I think one things one thing that historians, historically, have struggled with is the idea of objectivity. So it's just something I think about in my own research as well. Objectivity itself has almost a gendered nature to it, right? Like the notion of the very fact-based, hard news approach to it, feeling almost male, right. And then the idea of kind of like a subjective opinion emotionally-wrought kind of concept of truth being a female thing, right? So even that idea has a gender history in and of itself. But I think one thing that maybe like a teenage Julie was doing up there in Poughkeepsie, is I was looking and thinking about the notion of silences in our historical record. And in my job, right now, I think really deeply about the notion of silences in the archives-- what have we chosen to collect, and what have we chosen not to collect? And there's great power in that, in ways that can be deeply problematic. And if we look at collecting institutions really across history, across the country, across the world, so many more things haven't been preserved than have been preserved. And so from my perspective as a curator, I think one of my major roles is to think about the reparative nature of the work that I do. How can we locate those silences? How can we seek to fill in some ways that may mean deprioritizing something that the library specializes in which is textual material. To think about things like oral histories, and to think about the different ways the different communities pass down and tell their stories. And then, of course, to think of how to empower communities to also preserve their own story. They don't think these materials don't necessarily have to come to the New York Public Library or even to a collecting institution, but ways that communities can recognize their own record as historically significant and be empowered to preserve it themselves.

[Frank] Wow. You come prepared.

[Laughing] You know what you're doing. Crystal, what's going on over with you? Do you have any questions for Julie?

[Crystal] I mean I love that because I feel like a lot of an older way of thinking about libraries and librarians [inaudible] neutrality, right? We just let this information flow to us and slip out to other people. But I think there's this active engagement that needs to happen that clearly you're doing, and a lot of library workers are doing, and I think that's really important in like assessing a lot of historical things and the information that comes across to us because if we are being neutral, it's never really neutral, right, because certain things have more power or certain things are pushed forward more. And we have to take this active role in thinking about the information that we collect and give out to people too.

[Crystal] Crystal, I think the parallels there to librarianship are actually really significant because when we think about what a librarian does on a daily basis, so much of that has to be rooted in the community, and rooted in empathy. And I think there's a way that that feels like -- oh, well, historians shouldn't think with their emotions, and feel with their emotions, and analyze with their emotions. And I actually take a different approach to my work, and to collecting work which is what does it mean to go into your work with empathy. To meet people where they are. It's hard work and it's long-term work it's something that librarians do every day, and I think it's something that my field, in a lot of ways, can learn so much from.

[Frank] I have to think about the library degree itself is, it does give you obviously some skills and technical stuff ,but I think if it as a process you go through to show that you care about what you do in the most basic way. And I would think absolutely someone can earn that degree on the job, or in some other ways, as well, in a very general sense. But you just -- I didn't know when I asked you the first question, I didn't realize what I was leading to, but now I do, because it's been on my mind too lately, about truth and news and objectivity. And I read it a tweet by a mom that I retweeted on [inaudible] twitter how she said her son stopped getting his news from social media like a young kid and read five books and his anxiety is gone. And I've always thought like reading a book can be an anxiety reducer -- of course, the subject matter could be anxiety making -- but there's something about communing with that book that there's no other intrusion, there's no other conversation, just between you and that author and that content. And I find something very pleasing about that, a very stabilizing. And what you just said Julie, I realize being the elder statesman than I am, when I was younger I craved sort of what the internet promised which was a dismantling of the ivory tower, like the gatekeepers, so to speak. Even though librarians were gatekeepers. That the regular guy could write an article for the New Yorker and not have to go through, jump through hoops and stuff. I dreamed of writing for the New York, and then, of course, a lot of that did happen like with the internet, like the social media is news. I mean the news, the nightly news will refer to social media as a source. It's become completely crazily democratizing we know, in some ways it's become this crazy inferno of misinformation, and just nutsy-ness. Hearing you speak, it made me realize I now am going back to that yearning for someone who cares, and who is diligent, and who has some sort of ethic, some sort of, like I said about librarianship someone who cares to tell this best as they can in the best way they can what they're seeing is happening. And you just sort of said that, you know what I mean? I want now you to be in charge of United States media, do you mind?

[Laughing]

[Julie] I'm on it. It's actually what I'm going to do right after this podcast. I'm heading over there right now.

[Frank] I mean it's not a big deal, it's not a big job but I sort of realized now I want librarians, and historians, and curators to come together and say you know, we're going to focus this for you, and really care and do the best we can. So there's not a lot of this crazy conversation that's making this teenage boy anxious, and now he's reading these five books, hopefully, good ones, and is mentally calmer and maybe more focused. So --

[Julie] Yeah I mean I think that the nub of what you're saying is that the internet moves at such a unbelievably rapid pace, the nature of discourse in an internet saturated world moves at an almost, you almost can't see it pace. Then the fundamental nature of, for example, archival research is the opposite. It is you go into an archive for months and months to learn to really immerse yourself in something. One of the things that people don't always realize about doing history work is that 90% of what you see, when you're doing that research, is a dead end. [Laughing] It's deeply frustrating, it's not sexy. It is like, it is tough and deadening in some ways. I have some funny stories about doing the research for my book about going outside to the light. You know, oh my god [chuckle]. But there's no, there's very little space for that in the world that we live in today, do you know? And I think, and I feel actually one of the groups that I feel worse for, worse for is journalists who really enjoy that long form immersive research experience of journalism. And those who actually have the capacity to do that are few and far between and deeply privileged, right? It is a deep privilege to have an editor who says go for a few weeks and just dig into something. So I mean I actually write a lot about the internet in my own research, and there are many great things about the internet, but that is to me one of the things that makes me sad about the speed of the world that we live in, is that we're losing that fundamental skill, which by the way, you know to your earlier point, Frank, should not be only for the trained historian to do. I actually think one of the most important things that we can do is bring students studying pharmacology into the library and teach them how to do document analysis on 18th, 19th, 20th century documents. So many different young people can get so much out of that experience, even if their plan is not to be in an historian.

[Frank] You know that's been an age old library thing, and especially now more than ever is an important because I think about the quality, the question of time that -- oh I just don't have time to do a deep dive, well, you do you owe it to yourself. I mean like reading magazines, I subscribed to paper periodicals which I never did in my whole life, but I do now because I want that experience of reading a longer form article, and saying I can focus on this one niche subject right now because it's important to focus and then go from there. The internet forces you to skitter around wildly. But to get that message across especially to younger people has always been a challenge in the library, but a good one, and the worthy one. And I see it -- you will get those kids who realize that, ah yes this is where this stuff is at. This is where the real stuff is, and if you just focus and make some time for it. It's like getting that sense of like you have the time. It's for your brain. It's worth it. It'll pay off. You know, I didn't think we'd get so deep here. [ Chuckle ] But you did mention your research on a book and I'd like to move on to this because I also love librarians or people who work in the library who also create. I mean, that's sort of the dream. Like I try to cultivate that in my library about people using the library as a space and materials to create. You wrote a book. Here comes the shameless plug, but it's I'm happy to do it because it actually sounds very interesting. Can you tell us about that, your book?

[Julie] Sure. So last year my book came out. It's called Newspaper Confessions: History of Advice Columns in a Pre-Internet Age. I just have to say for everybody who's been slogging away at a book for a long time, this was a project that was two decades in the making. I started working on it in my first year of graduate school. In 2003, 2004, and the book came out last year. I'm very proud of that, actually [laughing] of how long did it took me because you know, it's -- we'll talk about the book in a second, but it's challenging being a scholar, having a full-time job. I got two little kids. This is a book that was a product of five in the morning wake up call, before they were banging on my door and stuff like that. And so this is my big pitch to keep working [laughing]. You'll get there everybody, you know. But the book looks at the history of advice columns in the period that most people don't think about that is before Dear Abby and Ann Landers. So I looked at advice columns from about 1895 when they really start to be a force in American newspapers to around World War II where you really see a paradigm change that eventually leads into Abby and Ann. And one thing that I argue is that advice columns were incredibly, they promoted a democratic discourse. You have people writing in over and over, sometimes writing to each other in ways that look uncannily like chat rooms or comment sections of the internet that we look and that we interact with today. And they're using a language that we think was invented in the 90s with the rise of the world wide web was really essentially established a century before in the pages of the newspaper. The idea of being an anonymous person, who speaks advice but also really seeks just to be heard. And empathy, and to have other like-minded people give credit to what they're saying. So when you read the book, and you look at some of the entries, I do think any reader will be just blown away by the way that it really feels like you're looking at Reddit or Quora or the common section of old websites like Gawker and things like that. It really feels like an online community.

[Frank] It's exciting when I was thinking about this I realized when I was a kid I loved reading the newspaper. And the three things I would only read in the newspaper were the comics, Ann Landers, and anything to do with Patty Hearst [chuckles]. This shows how old I am. In the early seventies, Patty Hearst kidnapping fascinated me, but I'd read any article, then Ann Landers, and then the comics. I loved it. It's funny what you say about that because you're absolutely right. And the thing with Ann Landers though I was trying to think of why I loved it so much. Like what was it about it? It was just a clue into adult life. There was also questions for adult life, and also to see what somebody, again, like we said before, an authority would say, because she was an authority. And that when you can get obsessed with Reddit, and someone asked the question like they would have to Ann Landers, and then you get all these comments, and sometimes you're like oh, this is really interesting because there's a conversation happening. But then and, again, here I go. Eventually it tires you out and devolves because then it's just 80,000 voices who have all different opinions, and you're sorta like how do I even remember the question was anymore? Like you get caught in that you know. There's a finite, there's unfair or not version of Ann Landers because it's just her voice, and Reddit is more democratic that has a lot, but there was something satisfying about whether, about having this finite situation. And the internet can be incident, anyway.

[Julie] Well, it is, it's a perfect example of the decline or at least the diffusion of authority in in the culture that we live in. I mean I think and I don't know if I'm allowed to say this in the podcast, but one of the really cool comparisons is Reddit's Am I the asshole? Right, where [laughter] --

[Crystal] Ah, yes.

[Frank] Yeah.

[Julie] And you're either it's YTA you're the asshole, or NTA not the asshole. There's N-O, no assholes here, and then and [inaudible] you're exactly right. I mean these are people writing in and they may really like, they're in a jam. They don't know what the answer is on something, and the thing with Ann is that she did, and Abby -- they did give you that authoritative voice and there's your answer, but there are steps to that, you had to write your letter, and she had to choose it, right, does it actually get published? There is good evidence that most advice columnists actually wrote back to all the letters they got. They had a big staff, they had a lot of canned responses for very common answers, and so most people would get a response. But again this is like the flip side of the beauty of the speed of the internet, as here's a person suffering. I mean, maybe, I'm dealing with a racial microaggression at work, or I'm afraid to come out to my parents, and then you get this immediate response from people. I mean that is like the potential to save lives, and I think that is a really remarkable thing. But going back to Ann and her authority. I think one thing that is really significant about advice columnist as a model, is that her authority and the authority of advice columnists that came for her lies and her gender.

[Frank] Mm.

[Julie] General audience advice columns, we're talking largely about women who pioneered this path, right. And they said we are good at our jobs because we're women. And in fact you hear all these stories about like Miss Lonely Hearts supposedly an advice columnist is a man pretending to be a woman. A man could never do what I do, right. And I think it is this one really fascinating place where women said you know what? I'm not even getting into your gender games. This is just ours, back off. [ Chuckles ] This is ours and they made a lot of money. They were real pioneers and celebrity journalism. Remarkably successful, known nationally in some cases, globally. So it's this really remarkable example of where women leaned into that idea of [inaudible] journalism. They said yeah, oh yeah, we're doing this because we're women and we're rocking it. And I applaud them for that, it really you see, again, you see the remnants of this, and the sort of the future versions of this like momfluencers on Instagram, right? These are people who are saying I'm an apologetically feminine, in some cases, very conservative icon that I want people to model their lives after. They're drawing on precedents that were established again a hundred years ago in the pages of the newspaper.

[Frank] Hm. I wonder if that has to do with a maternal thing, like the maternal advice [inaudible] it'll be okay, you can come to me.

[Julie] Here's the interesting thing about the advice column that I profiled, and I dug really deeply into their lives, is that I profiled three white columnists and one black columnist, who she's amazing among the most remarkable historical figures I've studied, I'll talk about her in a second, Princess Mysteria. [Inaudible] in Princess Mysteria [chuckle]. The three mainstream white columnists that I looked at all gave out, yeah, I would say moderately conservative advice like you know you need to be beautiful for your husband, you need to run a tight ship at your house, but you were fundamentally a mother. You should be no nonsense but you're rooted in the home. I think it's like what you would that kind paradox of early 20th century womanhood, most impossible to attain, right. None of them could meet those standards themselves [laughter]. They were all the breadwinners in their households. And so they were telling women to stay at home, they were telling women to focus on their families, be an icon of beauty and stability for your husband. But they were hiring people to take care of their children, if they had children. Some of them didn't have children, so it's a perfect example of how they could not live up to their own conservative, their requirements in ways that are similar to like a Phyllis Schlafly in the 1960s and 1970s, when you see all the backlash against the ERA. This is a woman who's telling women to stay at home while she herself is running a national campaign against the ERA. You know we can all see the irony in that. But while those white columns were so conservative I was so amazed to find this remarkable column in the Chicago defender which is the black weekly that ran between 1920 and 1930 penned by a woman named Princess Mysteria who was a Vaudeville mesmerist which means that she read people's minds. Did a little bit of research on her and found that she, though she told us that she was born in India at the foot of the mountain top, she was actually part of the great migration. She was born in the south came up to Chicago with her family, became a fixture on the Vaudeville scene. And then even if she had this exotic persona, she gave out this remarkably practical advice to women that prioritized safety and self-reliance, and the protection of themselves over, for example, the maintenance of their marriage. So if you know white columnists like Dorothy Dix were saying stay married no matter what, if a woman wrote into Princess Mysteria saying my husband is a drunk and he's losing our money. Divorce him. Get out. Take care of yourself. She encouraged people to divorce almost daily, weekly in her column. And her priority was women's safety and women's self-reliance. And she is, I think, a real progenitor of what we today call intercessional feminism.

[Frank] Wow. That's almost like more bold than Abby and Ann because they would usually say talk to clergy.

[Laughing] I'm not touching that one.

[Julie] They did a lot of things that were pioneering. They talked about, Abby and Ann talked about aids before the President did. But you're right, and they were both married with children, and emphasized their [inaudible] as these sort of maternal icons. But Princess Mysteria is one of the one of the coolest people in my book.

[Frank] See this is the thing I was talking about before. It's like a very specific story you're telling about advice columnists. But the more you talk about it, the farther the tentacles reach in terms of the subjects we cover. That's what I meant before about focusing on one thing, and then you think it's such a niche thing but then you learn so much about life. And about roles we play, and about society. I mean Princess Mysteria sounds far more progressive than columnists I read in the 70s. She just went there where you think, and now Reddit would go where Princess Mysteria, I mean it's very interesting.

[Crystal] I would almost disagree with that because I think Reddit like there's this democratic aspect to it. But like the user base I think is primarily men, and you get some threads where you're oh, you really see that user base coming out, right. So, yeah, sometimes not so progressive.

[Frank] That's a good point, because I also was thinking when Julie was talking that I didn't -- when I read Reddit I don't know who's talking. I don't click on all their profiles, so I don't know if they're men, or women, or what their agenda is. And usually someone in there says why are you asking for medical advice on Reddit? Like there's always one of those. Get off Reddit, and go to the doctor [inaudible]. And talk about the immediacy you said Julie someone takes a picture like a growth on their foot, and they're like what is this? And then Reddit weighs in [chuckle] and then the length of time it would take to write into an advice column, it's about an issue would, is a process like you indicated. Really interesting. What's the title of the book, again?

[Julie] Interestingly I will say there is an equivalent of that in advice columns where people would write in and say what is this plant? Or how do I formula [inaudible] my child? It's like it was they treated it -- advise sounds like the internet [chuckle] and then people would respond with their suggestions in their answers. The book is called Newspaper Confessions: A History of Advice Columns in a Pre-Internet Age. It's from Oxford. It's also in our catalog, so people can borrow it from the New York Public Library.

[Frank] Perfection. Well I can talk about this forever. Thank you so much. But I want to get to two things. I want to, first of all, do you have a book recommendation for us, unrelated to your own, that you're reading or have read recently that you want to tell people about?

[Julie] You know this is just, it's so interesting because as somebody who reads for work, it can be so challenging to read for pleasure. But one of my new year's resolutions has been to immerse myself more in sort of the pleasure of fiction reading which I felt like I had really gotten away from. So I just read a book called Kevin Wilson called Nothing To See Here. Have you guys talked about that yet?

[Frank] Oh no.

[Julie] Do you know that feeling when it's like two in the morning, and you cannot put the book down, and then you finish it, and you're like ah, it's wonderful and then you go to sleep. I love, love, love that feeling. And I actually feel that is like a formative memory from my teen years where I was like a very voracious reader. You know what I mean? So that's how I felt about this book. It's funny, and I almost don't even want to describe it because it gives away the -- so the punchline of the story you get very early in it, so I almost don't want to give it away of what the story is about. But I do want to say that it has one of the most finely drawn and likable heroine's, anti-heroines that I've read in a while. And I think that's really like what kept me gripped into, to sort of what was going to happen. It's you know got a wonderful sense of irony and sarcasm while still being sort of deeply empathetic. so I highly recommend somebody starts reading it on a Friday, so they can just eat it up over the weekend, and be done with it by Sunday.

[Frank] I see across the desk at the library for sure. Nothing to see here.

[Crystal] Kevin Wilton?

[Julie] Kevin Wilson.

[Frank] Okay, fabulous. Well we'll post that and your book in our in the blog post for the podcast.

[Julie] All right.

[Frank] Oh -- go ahead, Crystal.

[Crystal] I was just going to say hearing you speak does remind me of this young adult book I know if you've ever read it. It's called the Downstairs Girl by Stacy Lee, but the basic premise it's a historical fiction book, is a teen who takes on this persona of like Miss Sweetie and writes this advice column that I think pushes back on a lot of ideas at that time, and pushes for like more feminism, and racial justice, and things like that. But it was a really great sweet historical, fiction romance that came out a couple of years ago. But it just reminded me of that, hearing you talk about the female advice columnists.

[Julie] Going into my [inaudible], and I'm getting it right after [laughter].

[Inaudible] and go into my sim

[Frank] Well, [inaudible] you did your job.

[Crystal] Always have to recommend a book.

[Julie] [Inaudible] librarian.

[Inaudible]

[Frank] So, we haven't done this in a while because we haven't had a guest in a while. So I'm thrilled that we are, but do you -- it's something we love to do. Do you have a little passage you can read to us from a book and we can see if we can guess author, genre, subject matter, anything. It's just a free for all, and also it's a good opportunity hear somebody read which I love.

[Julie] I do. I loved this assignment. It was so fun to think about. I was like I want to get them something that's like you know that's hard, but that they could still get. It was such much fun to think about it.

[Frank] Cool.

[Julie] Here we go. I'm going to let her rip. And it was fun, I was in my little bookshelf and I pulled out something. Okay, here it is. "Though I'd long been acquainted with the neighborhood, having now and then visited there, my closer association began two years ago when a friend bought a house on willow street. One mild May evening, he asked me over to inspect it. I was most impressed, exceedingly envious. There were 28 rooms high ceilinged, well-proportioned, and 28 workable marble mantle fireplaces. There was a beautiful staircase floating upward in white swan simple curves to a skylight of sunny [inaudible] gold glass. The floors were fine, the real thing, hard lustrous timber. And the walls. In 1820, when the house was built, men knew how to make walls thick as a buffalo, immune to the mightiest cold, the meanest heat. French doors led to a spacious rear porch reminiscent of Louisiana. A porch canopy, completely submerged as though under a lake of leaves by an ancient but admirably vigorous vine weighty with grape-like bunches of wisteria. Beyond a garden, a [inaudible] tree, a blossoming pear, a perched black and red bird bending a feathery branch [inaudible]. In the twilight, we talked, my friend and I. We sat on the porch consulting martinis I urged him to have one more, another. It got to be quite late he began to see my point. Yes, 28 rooms were a rather lot, and yes it seemed only fair that I should have some of them. That's how I came to live in the yellow brick house on Willow Street."

[Frank] Well, I got to say, Crystal and I did an episode on cozy reading, and I was very, I had a very hard time figuring out what cozy was [inaudible] --

[Crystal] [Inaudible] angry [chuckle].

[Frank] And one of the things which I did [inaudible] what?

[Inaudible] Well, one of the things I came upon was like realistic. Like talking about the coziest sometimes going to sleep [inaudible] houses and walking through rooms and how I would redo them. That was pretty h-hot, what you just read. And then when you said martini, I put the cherry on top because I was like a martini in this house? I'm like oh, it was heaven to here --

[Julie] -- with the wisteria. Oh [inaudible] redolent. I love it. Marble the staircase floating up, I mean, -- that is cozy, almost bordering on something less than cozy.

[Crystal] Frank, have you seen that [inaudible] Zillow skits that are done in a really sexy way? I feel that you would resonate with that a lot, but [inaudible] reading, by the way it was beautiful.

[Frank] Do you have any ideas Crystal? I mean it's not Dickens, it's more --

[Crystal] It's more contemporary, right? Because that was the way they talked about like it was built in the 1800s made me think it was definitely in the past. Plus the martini, I was like this seemed --

[Frank] Right, exactly.

[Inaudible]

[Crystal] The martini is a real clue, a real clue.

[Julie] Oh, boy. Is it? -- Is it?

[Frank] The thin man.

[Crystal] Uh, no. I've read those books, and I love those books [inaudible].

[Frank] In the movies they're always drinking martini.

[Crystal] Yes, yes.

[Frank] The martini's a real [inaudible], it's my favorite drink.

[Crystal] The martini on the cover? Is in the title, the martini, are these drinkers? Oh, boy.

[Julie] [Inaudible] than that. It's more subtle than that.

[Crystal] More subtle.

[Frank] We always also go for some lavish clues like we'll just ask. It's subtler than that, does it, hmm.

[Julie] Let me tell you a --

[Crystal] It's James Bond [chuckle].

[Julie] [Inaudible].Do you remember the street name? Willow.

[Frank] Yes, Willow.

[Crystal] Okay.

[Frank] I was paying attention to that, but I couldn't, it didn't -- so Willow -- is it in the title, Willow Street?

[Julie] No. [Inaudible] So is it written in the last 20 years? No. But mid-century, yeah.

[Crystal] Giant house.

[Frank] Was it made into a movie?

[Laughing]

[Julie] It should be.

[Crystal] Oh, okay.

[Julie] Oh, gosh. Let's copyright that right now. It'll be an amazing movie.

[Frank] Is the house like a core character.

[Julie] The house is a core character.

[Crystal] Really, okay. So when you read this like the big setup for the story, this comes earlier in the book.

[Julie] Something important is made in the house.

[Frank] Is this [inaudible] --

[Crystal] Something good?

[Frank] -- obviously.

[Crystal] It's not like that house [inaudible].

[Julie] It is non-fiction.

[Frank] Oh, it is non-fiction.

[Julie] But something important was made in the house, so something good. And not like that murderer who killed [inaudible].

[Crystal] Okay. Not that one.

[Frank] Oh, so is it a first person narrative of this person who made something in the house? Ooh, oh, so [inaudible], would you say? Or -- not an inventor.

[Crystal] Liquor make, okay. No.

[Frank] Liquor. Well, martini. What are martinis?

[Crystal] Willow Street. [Inaudible]. Is it --

[Frank] Is there a -- it's not an inventor, though. All right. [Inaudible] When you say that something was made in this house, is it --

[Julie] I'm going to give you another hint too.

[Crystal] Oh, my god, please. You're smart, you know what to do.

[Julie] I worked in Brooklyn --

[Crystal] Okay.

[Julie] -- ten years and have a great love of Brooklyn history. And I will say that something that was made in this book is not as tangible to [inaudible] guys, I think.

[Frank] And so Willow Street's in Brooklyn. Okay.

[Crystal] Oh, my god. I lived in Brooklyn. I'm failing this [chuckle].

[Inaudible] [Inaudible] They made some kind of history.

[Julie] Sort of. You're closer. Have you guys ever been to Brooklyn Historical Society? Everybody listening should go, it's an unbelievably beautiful building in Brooklyn Heights.

[Frank] I should tell you parenthetically the man Charles Booth who did the stained glass windows in Brooklyn Historical did the windows in Jefferson Market. So we have that connection. I don't have any idea. [Laughing] I have no idea.

[Crystal] I have no either.

[Julie] Well, I'm going to show you the cover.

[Frank] All right.

[Crystal] Okay.

[Frank] We're giving in.

[Julie] Oh. >> [Unison] Ooh.

[Frank] A House on the Heights by Truman Capote, one of my favorite authors. See, that's a disappointment. [ Laughter ] Look how thin the book is. For our listeners the book is incredibly thin. I think it's less than 50 pages long. If I didn't want to read from this, I would have used this as my book recommendation because it is the most delicious little read in the whole world. He lived in Brooklyn Heights while he was writing In Cold Blood.

[Frank] Ahh-ha-ha.

[Crystal] Mmm. Okay.

[Julie] He lived in the basement of this house on Willow Street which is still there. People should go and look at it. Is so beautiful but it is not yellow anymore. The most recent people stripped it unfortunately. But it is one of the most stately mansions in New York City. And if you can peek in the back, you can still see the porch that reminds him of Louisiana. It's really remark -- and it's just -- you turn around the corner, and you are at the promenade which is such a remarkable place to take in really the geographic history of New York and why this porch was so important. You see the opening to the lower bay. You see this massive deep water port. You see two waterfronts that shaped the sort of economic history of the city in this country, in this world. And it's like a real place to get deep about New York [inaudible].

[Frank] That was great, and you're absolutely right because I responded to the writing right away, and I love Truman Capote. In Cold Blood's one of my favorite books. And then, you're right. The martini, the southern references, all of it was there. Ahh, you're good, Julie!

[Crystal] Who was he drinking with?

[Julie] Great question. He was drinking with a man named Oliver Wood, who was an incredibly successful stage designer. He's a [inaudible] Broadway. And this was a period, it was a little bit later. Then this really interesting period of the 1940s, where a group of people lived in a building that no longer exists and formed this great [inaudible] commune called February House. And there's a lovely book written by Sherill Tippins, another book recommendation, talks about it was like Gypsy Rose Lee, Carson McCullers, Auden, Paul Bowles -- like a bunch of really awesome people lived there, and they were all sort of feeding off of each other's creativity, and they would have these salons there. And then the house got torn down when they built the BQE.

[Frank] What's the name of that book?

[Crystal] February.

[Julie] February House.

[Frank] Oh. Did -- I know you interviewed Hugh Ryan who wrote Brooklyn, When Brooklyn Was Queer. Does he talk about that house in that book?

[Julie] He does. [Inaudible].

[Frank] I read about it.

[Julie] We're queer. And it's such a dream, like an artist's dream. You know what I mean? It's like a year that they're there.

[Frank] Exactly. He did talk about that because all these incredible people came together, and it was for this [inaudible] which does sound like a dream. But it only lasted like a year or so. Shows something about the volatility of human beings, but it's still super fascina -- oh, wow.

[Julie] Lovely book. Made it into a musical, actually.

[Frank] Really [chuckle].

[Julie] Yeah.

[Frank] What musical?

[Julie] I think it's called February House. [Inaudible] It was at the public or maybe the Cherry Lane Theater, something like that. But it was a beautiful, has a beautiful score.

[Frank] Wow. You just pushed all of my buttons.

[Julie] Yay!

[Frank] All of them. All right. I can't take any more of this. I feel almost intoxicated [laughter] literature and [inaudible].

[Crystal] Electrified, great.

[Julie] Julie, thank you so much. This is incredible, all right. Crystal, I have my own set but I'll defer to you. Do you want to give us a reading before we leave?

[Crystal] No, no. You should do it from your set. Break them in. Yeah, yeah. But you have to --did you give it a moon bath?

[Frank] I didn't know.

[Crystal] Okay, so apparently I googled this. So just knock on the cards to clear of bad energies, and then draw a card or whatever. [ Laughter ] You give it a moon bath or a salt bath, apparently.

[Frank] [Inaudible] Julie, Crystal started this ASMR thing, and then she ran that course. And now, apparently, we're doing tarot cards. I mean, what I love about tarot cards is it mixes art because like cards are beautiful, and I love artistic expression with, what, advice. [Chuckle] Like we all want advice. And like astrology and all this stuff, even if it doesn't make sense, it's like interesting to think about what something may mean outside of you, like asking advice of a columnist. It all comes together.

[Laughing] All right, I'm just going to make, all right. Here we go.

[Crystal] Did you shuffle them?

[Frank] No.

[Crystal] Did you knock on them?

[Frank] I'll do it -- I did knock on them.

[Crystal] Okay, good.

[Frank] What is this? I don't even know what it is.

[Laughing] What? Oh, I think it's, this is like seven of cups. Is that 7? No, that's 6. God, I'm blind. It's 6. One, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6. All right. Six of -- see I didn't even prepare. I don't know how to do this. Now I can look in the little book.

[Crystal] Yes.

[Frank] [Inaudible] What are they doing here?

[Crystal] We're very new to this.

[Frank] Oh, here. Three, Jesus [Inaudible]. All right. Six of cups. How this will, I guess we can say this is going to be sort of the theme of all three of our day, or our coming days. All three of us. So cups six. It says children in an old garden, their cups filled with flowers, which relates to what we just heard, too. Divinatory meanings. A card of memories and of the past, for example, reflecting on childhood happiness, enjoyment, but coming rather from the past things that have vanished.

[Crystal] Ohh.

[Frank] Another reading reverses this suggesting new relations, new environment, and new knowledge.

[Crystal] Okay.

[Julie] I have a feeling that's exactly what we got in this podcast.

[Crystal] Yeah.

[Julie] Almost eerie. I almost have a little chills, right? That's exactly what we talked about. We talked about the past, and we talked about producing [inaudible].

[Frank] Exactly. Exactly.

[Julie] Wow.

[Frank] I'm getting chills now, too. Are you getting chills, Crystal?

[Crystal] Yes, these cards know us. I'm scared.

[Frank] All right. I'm into this thing. It's so, they're so pretty, and there's so much fun to think about, and it's so great to see these reactions. This was beyond a pleasure, JG. Thank you.

[Julie] Thank you so much for having me. It was so lovely talking about this stuff with you guys.

[Frank] I miss having guests.

[Julie] [Inaudible] promote my book. Thank you.

[Frank] Hey. You know, I love it because you work for New York Public Library, we work for New York Public Library. We love New York Public Library. It's all about New York Public Library [laughing]. And I just love people who follow their passions creatively and make things happen, which you did. And as you exhorted the listeners to do the same, which is wonderful.

[Inaudible]

[Laughing]

[Crystal] In 20 years, so I still have time. I can get that book out, right? [Chuckle].

[Julie] Right. Start now. And I think that actually described so many, I mean that's a relatively new person to the library describes my colleagues is everybody feels incredibly passionately about the work that they do. And we have so many [inaudible] different things at the library. But that is, I think that ties all of our colleagues together. So, yay, NYPL.

[Frank]All right. Perfect. Thank you, so much Julie. And thank you, thank you, thank you. And thanks, everybody, for listening.

[Narrator] Thanks for listening to The Librarian Is In, a podcast by the New York Public Library. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a review on apple podcast or google play. Or send us an email at podcasts@nypl.org. For more information about the New York Public Library, please visit NYPL.org. We are produced by Christine Ferrell. Your hosts are Frank Collerius and Crystal Chen.