Customer Reviews

The Archivist

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

My only minor complaint about this book is the somewhat ponderous middle section devoted to Mattias' wife's letters as she slides deeper and deeper into depression. I think the author probably did that on purpose, but after the very lively first hundred pages that snag the reader into a terrific story about the world of libraries and archives, it was somewhat of a dramatic change to be stuck in the middle. I enjoyed the meta-critical style of this book -- stories about stories woven into other stories: T.S. Eliot's letters, his wife's mental breakdown, Mattias' wife's breakdown and her letters, etc... I'm surprised that people called this book pretentious -- clearly Cooley is a sharp reader of Eliot's. Unless it's really overdone, I hardly ever complain that a book is TOO literary -- I feel lucky enough that she includes some of his finest poems like The Four Quartets. The judith section, though ponderous, is haunting. She can't get beyond the fact that the Holocaust happened and people did not want to acknowledge it. Because of her background and her poetic sensibility, she just can't get over it. The character's are tightly drawn and convincing. The main characters struggle to express his emotions brings back shades of The Remains of the Day. I don't want to spoil the ending, so I hope these brief comments are enough to get you to read this fine book. I read it all in one night.

The intellectual has a heart, and it beats beneath the skin as surely and as powerfully as that of the emotional romantic. This is the reminder in Martha Cooley's fine novel, "The Archivist" -- that there can be passion even where there is restraint, that there can be hatred even if it is never given voice, that there can be love even when it must be denied.

"The Archivist" is a simple story, a man who works in the archives of a prestigious library, maintaining collections of the rarest of rare materials, including a series of hundreds of letters written by the poet T.S. Eliot to a woman named Emily Hale. This collection of Eliot's letters is a bequest, meant to be held onto and not released to anyone for many years to come. These letters also act as the fulcrum of the story that unfolds, both thematically and literally.

Matthias, the archivist, has his routine disturbed by a young woman named Roberta, a poet who is determined to see Eliot's letters. In talking with Roberta and getting to know her, Matthias is drawn inexorably down the road of his past, remembering his wife, also a poet, who killed herself. These two intersections of time, Matt's past with his wife and Matt's present as he gets to know Roberta, are further tied to revelations about T.S. Eliot himself, his own wife Vivienne, and the unique relationship he shared with Emily Hale.

It is this level of intricacy, one layer of story peeling back to not only reveal further layers, but to intertwine with them, that gives "The Archivist" such a magical tone throughout. Though the basic story idea is simple (no massive conspiracies or plots here -- just a lonely man, his work, and his memories), Cooley turns it quickly into something rare and fragile, the sort of story where one misstep could cause utter failure. But she never missteps or errs in what she tells or how she tells it. These characters, how their past and present are tied together in their love for the same poet and the regrets left over after World War II, how their lives come to intermingle, fray apart, then come together again, is nothing short of remarkable.

Cooley's subtlety and restraint throughout "The Archivist" is admirable, and calls to mind "The Remains of the Day." Both are novels in which the reader can sense the passions and deep feelings of the characters running just under the surface, but unlike other authors she never overplays it. It never comes bursting out in a final rush of unbridled emotion -- instead, it flows steadily but cautiously forward and leaves the reader to enjoy the trip.

In too many novels, the author will focus on either the mind or the heart. Either the story is heavily intellectual while almost devoid of real emotion, or it goes the other way, giving free rein to emotion while downplaying or just ignoring the capacities of reason. "The Archivist" skillfully mixes both aspects, and tells a deceptively simple tale of a man, two of the women in his life, a poet, and a culture at war with itself.

Truly, a remarkable novel.

I came upon this book by chance and was thrilled to find a book written in many layers, giving food for thought beyond the obvious story line. I agreed with the reader from Leipire Fork, TN but also felt that Matthew was not stoic but standing at the sidelines of life, even his own; archiving interactions more than participating in them.

This book is for the reader that loves words, subtlety and the invitation to think past his own space and time. The current zeitgeist demands we look at the aftermath of WWII not insofar as economy or political structure but in regard to psychological impact, guilt, and emotion. "The Archivist" certainly accomplishes this purpose.

From reviews I've read, "The Reader" deals with the same subject from a completely different perspective. Unfortunately I haven't read "The Reader" as yet and cannot make a comparison.

I have to admit that I didn't enjoy reading this book most of the time. I found it interesting, and I respect the author's talent, but I couldn't squeeze any enjoyment out of the characters and their actions. Many reviewers have said that they didn't enjoy the middle part of the book -- but for me it was the most compelling. The least interesting part of the book for me was the relationship between Mathias and Roberta Spire -- I found her tedious and strange and unbelievable in the extreme. Also, I couldn't understand her emotions at her family's betrayal -- it made no sense to me.

Judith was the only character who stood out in any kind of clear way to me. Her madness and obsession seemed entirely logical and believable. There are people in the world who can internalize the knowledge of huge evils -- such as the Holocaust -- and turn it into something positive in their own lives. It can drive them to work for justice, or to become more contemplative, or to at least try to learn from the lessons of the past and not let the knowledge of evil affect their daily life in a negative way.

And then there are the people, like Judith, who, upon realizing the vastness and profundity of evil in the world -- represented in this book by the Holocaust -- cannot synthesize it into a balanced and logical view of the world. The evil consumes them and taints everything that's good in their lives. The enormity and utter incomprehensibility of the truth of evil drives these people to an obsession -- like Judith's obsession with the cabalistic principle of "healing the world". Have not we all felt like this at one time? Haven't we felt that one act or event so colors the world with the red and black of true human evil that we cannot avert our internal gaze from it? Haven't all of us, in sad and trying times, felt that the evil has become more real and more effectively powerful than any good we have known?

Most of us can pull ourselves from this, with strength and others' help. Judith cannot -- whether because of her manic depression, or because her vision of the world and knowledge of the evil is so keen that it causes her manic depression we will never know. Her descent made perfect sense, and is a horrifying example of madness and how it kills a person, even before the body is dead.

I read this book hoping for more investigation into Eliot -- it's there, but it's incomplete. This is not a literary criticism of Eliot's poetry encased inside a novel. I felt the skimming of Eliot's substance to be a bit cursory -- yes, the characters quoted his poems and explored his motives, but never in a complete way. I can understand why Eliot was chosen -- his poetry has always been popular because it is quotable in a variety of situations, and is, at least on the surface, quite accesible. For me, Eliot has written some of the few 20th century verses that spring to my mind in daily life, in relation to people and situations. He was an easy choice for this novel, but not as completely explored as I would have liked. I found the parallel between the Eliot/Vivienne - Mathias/Judith relationship to be incongruent.

And, as I mentioned before, the whole Roberta Spire story really sank to a depth of irrelevance.

I would have liked it more if the book concentrated more on Judith and Mathias, and the relationship of them to Eliot's poetry. I was also hoping for more of a treasure hunt or mystery involved with the Emily Hale letters. It's not there.

Perhaps I've mised Ms Cooley's point :) I found the cabbalistic and Judaism references interesting, as well as the archaelogical mining of old Manhattan jazz culture.

If you're thinking of reading this because you're a Eliot hound, there are other, better books. If you're looking for a literary mystery, move on. If you're looking for a love story, move on. This is about mental illness and 20th Century history -- the rest seems to be window dressing to me.

That said, Martha Cooley is a fine writer.

I stayed up late enraptured by the discovery of this marvelous first novel. Complex , literary, it revolves around Matthias, the archivist of literary documents at a prestigious university library. He is the gatekeeper of letters written by T.S. Eliot to a woman who he loved for most of his life, Emily Hale, and then spurned after his religious conversion to the Anglican Church. These letters are the bequest of Hale to the library, not to be opened until the year 2020, to scholars. Into Matt's life comes Roberta, a poet, who is obsessed with seeing the letters as a way to understand her own religious identity. Interwoven with the story of Eliot's relationship with his wife Vivienne, committed to a mental institution by Eliot, is the story of Matt's marriage to the dark, unfathomable Judith who is also a poet. Eliot's life is the 'stillpoint of the turning world' upon which the lives of Matt, Judith and Roberta balance as each of them comes to terms with hidden secrets, revelation, religious identity, faith, solitude, obsession and the spiritual vacuum created by the aftermath of WWII and the Holocauset. This book is multi-textured; a delicate tapestry of meaning is woven. It's finely crafted like a beautiful symphony as themes, exposition and resolution are spun by the author. And when all is finally woven together magic occurs, and the reader learns something valuable about his or her own life. Any reader can ask for nothing more sublime from an author than this.

I admit that it takes some personal discipline to read this book. Depending on my mood, it can be easier to read a page-turner or a book that offers a more action-oriented plot. But The Archivist offers solid rewards for those readers who care to engage with the characters to uncover the gems of meaning contained in the story.

This novel reminded me of some other great works about madness, such as Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. The "heroine" Judith, if she can be called that, documents her descent into ever-deeper madness in her journal, which takes up the middle portion of the book. I found this section highly compelling, as the journal entries have an inexorable quality that made me understand early on that there would be no redemption for Judith.

I also enjoyed the way Martha Cooley applies passages of T. S. Eliot to the lives of the main characters. While I have always loved Eliot, reading Cooley's interpretation of his work deepened my appreciation for this great poet and led me to re-read The Waste Land, which I am doing now.

And near the end, when Matt comes to believe that he mishandled Judith and her mental illness, I found myself identifying with something quite unrelated from my own life, which tells me that the feelings Cooley describes are universal, and not tied only to her characters and their situations.

I'm struck by the level of sophistication and nuance that Cooley serves up in her first (and apparently, only) novel and hope that we see more entries from her in the near future. While it is true, as another reviewer has observed, that this novel is likely to appeal to "bookworms," I don't believe that we are the only critters who will find it worthwhile. All serious thinkers, particularly those who are interested in Eliot, will enjoy this novel.

Martha Cooley's beautiful first novel, The Archivist combines T.S. Eliot, jazz and the Holocaust in a wonderfully assured manner.

The Archivist opens in the 1970s and tells the story of Matthias Lane, a lapsed Protestant in his early 60s. Outwardly, Matthias seems to be the perfect archivist; he is both orderly and reclusive. Working at a mid-sized American library, Matthias' days are routine until a young poet named Roberta Spire asks for access to restricted material.

The restricted material Roberta wishes to access are letters from T.S. Eliot to an American woman and they have been sealed from the public until the year 2020. Roberta, however, is sure those letters contain the answer to the mystery of why Eliot converted from Protestantism to Anglo-Catholicism as well as why he rejected his emotionally unstable wife, Vivienne. Roberta, whose parents escaped Nazi Germany and later converted to Christianity, reminds Matthias of his own wife, Judith, a Jew who became obsessed with the Holocaust during the days following World War II.

The relationship between Matthias and Judith forms the heart of the novel and their marriage contains many elements of the Eliot's own failed union. Cooley echoes Arthur Miller's play, Broken Glass and its character of Sylvia Gellburg in that Judith's preoccupation with the Holocaust becomes more than just a preoccupation, it becomes the trigger, along with her interfaith marriage to Matthias, that leads to her degeneration into psychosis and eventual institutionalization.

Despite their religious differences, Matthias and Judith are drawn together by a mutual love for poetry and jazz. They are a happy couple until the war intervenes. Judith then falls into a deep depression that Matthias can neither understand nor feel himself.

The rift between Matthias and Judith only widens as she becomes more and more absorbed in her own Judaism. Just before her institutionalization, Judith becomes obsessed with the idea of tikkum olam (healing the world) as the only possible reparation for the ramifications of the Holocaust's evil.

Although this is primarily Matthias' story, we do get a look at the world through Judith's eyes through a series of her hospital diary entries. In the hands of a lesser writer, this could have been jarring and distracting, but Cooley handles it like a master. Furthermore, her portrait of Judith is so real and powerful that her diary soon becomes all-absorbing.

There are many novels that contain characters who eventually unravel and descend into a world of madness. Many of these novels are well-written while others tend to veer off into melodrama. This one could have been one of the more melodramatic ones had Cooley not characterized Judith so well. As it is, we cannot fail to feel her pain and empathize with her plight.

This is a book of several disparate themes, of stories within stories, but Cooley ties them all together. Matthias, with Roberta as his catalyst, is finally able to perform an especially symbolic act of atonement and reparation.

A Brooklynite, Cooley is particularly adept at portraying her setting. We get a real sense of New York City, and especially Brooklyn, in this novel. The characterizations of the minor characters, too, especially, Len and Carol, Judith's adoptive parents and both jazz aficionados, are particularly poignant and true-to-life.

Although The Archivist is a book that deals with an extremely serious theme, Cooley does relieve its intensity and bleakness with light touches of humor. That she is able to do so in a way that is both realistic and effective is a testament to her power as a writer. One of the most poignant of these masterful touches occurs when Judith drags the hospital's Christmas tree outside and burns it.

"Come now," says her therapist. "None of the other Jews here burned down the Christmas tree."

Judith's response is both comic and tragic and perfectly in keeping with her character. "None of the other Jews here," she says, "had matches."

As a bookseller, I review books on a daily basis. This book immediately caught my attention because of the complexity of the story line. Some customer reviews have suggested that the middle section of the book was the slowest, least-accomplished portion of the story. I disagree. I was fascinated by the inner thoughts of a woman who was suffering from a mental breakdown, because much of what she recorded was very perceptive. She would carry on a seemingly normal conversation with her husband and "parents" and then, in a split second, "rage" at perceived injustices. Martha Cooley did a superb job of capturing the hell a mental patient suffers in the binding conflict of racing thoughts and gripping phobias. Ms. Cooley understands that mental illness is not an all-or-nothing condition, but a slow process of losing grasp on reality when one unrelenting fear takes hold of the mind. Judith characterized this descent with the subtlety of real life. As for the other parallel story lines, I agree that they were contrived, but well-written and thought-provoking.

Not to reiterate what else has been said, but to add another perspective about Judith's struggle to come to grips with the new heritage of the Holocaust. Or doesn't come to grips. Depends on who you ask.

As I read this book, I was drawn into a world I usually can't penetrate - post-World War II America, from a Jewish perspective. What were people thinking, feeling? Guilt? The need to research and learn, as if needing to bear witness? Because that has become comprehensible and normal. And yet, Judith's attempts to understand, the bear witness, to acknolwedge that what happened across Europe between 1933 and 1945 cannot fade off into the past - that it must, in fact, remain very much in the present. In order to learn and see what happened, in order to see the effects this has on people.

As for Matt and Roberta - Matt frustrated me for the same reasons he frustrated Judith - he was beguiling and safe and totally lacking in compassion. Roberta - the new incarnation of Judith - was interesting, compelling and altogether fascinating. Their relationship was interesting and kept me wondering what the end result would be, hoping that it wouldn't end in some tawdry bedroom affair.

This is a fabulous book, and Martha Cooley is able to ellicit emotions and feelings that most of us don't want to deal with.

I recently closed a bookstore and, instead of getting rid of the books, am now reading them (some of them at least). This is one I read and have to warn folks: the novel suffers from three fatal flaws, any one of which would have deep-sixed a work of fiction long ago. Flaw number one: adolescent anger directed at inadequate parents. All parents are inadequate; to paint a character with this brush risks making the character obnoxious and whiny. Roberta Spire is both and her anger about her parents not telling her about their Holocaust survival is just silly. Any one who survived the Holocaust by any means is exempt from judgement forever. Flaw two: The Holocaust itself. After Elie Wiesel, it is difficult for non-Holocaust survivors to write seriously about the Holocaust. They simply sound too contrived and too preachy. There is also an unintended comic effect which makes this book sound in parts like a dark parody of a Woody Allen parody of Jewishness. Just not believeable. Flaw Three: Crazy people diaries. These are like dream sequences: they are so contrived and so pretentiously linked to the author's agenda as to cease being believeable in their own right. Drop the 100 page middle section, please. The Archivist himself was a problem, as well, but by the time you get to him, no one's reading anymore. If you really want to read good WWII fiction, try Harry Mulisch, Irene Nemirovsky or Marguerite Duras.