Donna Seaman
Most careful readers probably fantasize about turning their passion into a career in the book world. But such job skills go far beyond merely plowing through the pages, as Donna Seaman adroitly reveals in her vibrant new memoir, River of Books. Instead, she generously chronicles her immersion in this world of books, literature, authors, and criticism with a profundity that will inspire bookish neophytes and reassure avowed bibliophiles that their passions are both singular and universal.
Seaman, the editor-in-chief and adult books editor at Booklist, published by the American Library Association, is also a member of the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum; recipient of the Louis Shore Award for excellence in book reviewing; the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism; and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award. Her work has appeared in The Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times, among other publications. She has been a writer-in-residence at Columbia College Chicago and has taught at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Seaman’s past works include the anthology In Our Nature: Stories of Wildness; the collection of author interviews Writers on the Air: Conversations about Books; and Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists. She sat down for this interview with Carol Haggas, longtime contributing reviewer for Booklist.
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Carol Haggas: You are such a wide and varied reader, both professionally and personally, which the book explores in intricate depth. The ways you could have handled this subject had to be equally vast. How did you settle on your approach?
Donna Seaman: This is an unusual book, in that I was invited to contribute a title to Ode Books, a series about books and places devoted to books. I found it a challenge, in part, because I felt that I couldn’t write about my work at Booklist; it’s too sensitive.
The purpose of this book was to really celebrate reading, and as someone who really loves libraries and works in a membership organization for librarians, I wanted that to be part of the story. That made me think the best thing to do was to go way back, before I was a professional of any kind, and just tell the stories of books and libraries that made me into the reader I am today.
How did you find the balance between writing about books, libraries, and authors and your personal experiences that were related?
Any time you write, you’re really trying to simplify, clarify, leave lots of things out, make lots of decisions about which stories to tell. My original idea for River of Books was to have it mostly about books and very little about me, but that I would use my story as a reader as the river, the water that floated the books.
You describe your childhood in which books and libraries provided not only sanctuary but places of escape and revival. Were you aware at the time that you had this deep level of appreciation, or is this something you recognized later?
I always knew. I knew right from the start. I was deeply grateful. When I was in grade school, we had a library club, and I couldn’t wait to join it. Libraries were always the places I felt the best in, and museums, and being outside. I was a really happy kid in the woods or on the beach. I just recognized something about libraries early on and knew I could rely on them.
Reading the anecdote of your father paying you to write book reports, I couldn’t help thinking, “how prescient, Mr. Seaman, to mold the future book reviewer and editor.”
My parents were always trying to get me to stop reading because, you know, a kid’s supposed to be a kid, have friends, go outside, which I did, but my impulse was always to go to my room and read. My parents made attempts to get me to socialize and they complained about my constant reading. At some point, my father just realized how stubborn I was, and that I wasn’t going to change, so we decided that if I wanted my allowance, and I was going to read anyway, I had to produce these book reports. He didn’t know I was already keeping reading notebooks, which I kept very secret, so I was happy to write the reports. They were pretty responsible, serious little accounts.
You reference Chicago railroad tycoon John L. Crear founding a free public library, but with restrictions, such as it “must not contain nastiness and immorality” such as “dirty French novels and all skeptical trash and works of questionable moral tone.” Obviously, this brings us right to the doorstep of the current proliferation of book banning and assaults on libraries. How would you advise librarians and teachers of young and developing readers who encounter this today?
That’s a huge question and, of course, is part of my life at the American Library Association, which is the center for everything professionals need to deal with challenges and book bans. We have the Office of Intellectual Freedom, with a great website, and the “Unite Against Book Bans” website also has huge amounts of information. This is not my personal field of expertise, but it is a part of my professional life.
What can you advise the reading public, given these times?
What I would say to readers, civilians, regular people: support your public libraries. Support the fundraising. Support librarians personally. Use your library. Check out books. Thank librarians. Attend library programs. Support your teachers. Support school librarians. The citizenship side of this is essential. We’re still a democracy and voting decisions have huge impacts on library funding. Go to library board meetings if you’re worried about your library. That participation as readers and parents who are raising readers really matters.
Book bans have existed as long as there have been books, throughout history, just like war. It’s a form of war; part of war; part of politics and power grabs; part of trying to keep the population ignorant and deny people books. It’s also part of antisemitism and racism and every other oppressive movement you can think of. We need to protest and stand up against it and support writers, teachers, and librarians. People become fully part of their society by reading. You learn about the past and the present, about how other people feel and think. You learn about things that have happened and things that were prevented from happening. It’s all part of the same web.
Do you ever wonder how the young Donna Seaman would react if she were in her school library today and saw books being removed or banned or if she was denied the ability to check out a book? How would she cope with the current challenges?
Yes, I have thought about that a lot because I really sympathize with librarians who are being hampered from doing their job, and also for young people who need books to help them feel like they’re part of the world, that they’re not alone, and that all experiences are legitimate. What would I have done? I would have been really, really angry and I probably would have written letters and tried to do something about it. I was raised to be a participating citizen, and I certainly would have gone to my parents immediately, and they would also have taken action. I would have been freaked out and angry and tried to protest, for sure. I did all kinds of protesting as a teenager, even younger, so I definitely would have objected strongly and been upset.
You did stage a protest of sorts when you decided to switch schools, a mission you took on yourself. You set the scene of impulsively hopping on your bike to ride to the alternative high school you thought would be a better fit for you. This seems like the kind of quest one of your many literary heroes at the time would do. Were you constantly aware of being influenced by any of the strong characters you admired?
All the things I read about intrepid young people pushing against the tide I’m sure gave me, I don’t know if you’d call it confidence, but it gave me the conviction to follow through on things I thought I needed to do. I was never quite the sort of reader who pictured myself as enacting things like my heroes in books, but I certainly was very inspired by the stories of quests and adventures and setting off on your own and finding your own path. It definitely seemed like a way to live to me – the idea that you have to go out, you have to take chances, you have to meet the stranger, to be brave, to break rules, to get on that path and head forward, no matter what. I love all the quest stories and all the hero stories. I think I was kind of in that mode and there was a lot to make me feel like I should do that.
For this book, you worked with Ode Books, a publishing arm of Chicago’s Seminary Co-op Bookstores. For Ode, or any publisher for that matter, you’re the rare author who can also supply her own cover art. Can you talk about the image you selected for River of Books?
This work was painted after I graduated from art school. I was in Chicago, working, and I was painting watercolors as my main medium. I actually did a series of paintings about rivers; I was just obsessed with rivers and always have been. I read about them a lot. These watercolors are completely imagined rivers, but I was inspired by the River Styx, which is the underground river that the souls of the dead have to cross to get to the afterlife.
This is an apt segue to talk about the death of your sister, Claudia, which you write about very gracefully and movingly. You read voraciously through that unbearable grief, at a time when “brain fog” is a common response. Did you know instinctively which books you could dive into to bring you respite?
You use the word “instinct.” I often feel I have a divining rod for books, even assigning books to reviewers. There must be some guiding echolocation. Of course, I was in deep shock and deep mourning, but reading is just sort of how I cope. I may have had some of these books, but I know I went out and bought The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens. I was desperate to have something new and comforting, and something I long wanted. I was always trying to save up to buy books and I knew that was something I wanted to have forever.
Other episodes you write openly about come under the heading of what politicians might euphemistically call “youthful indiscretions.” What was the authorial decision-making process in determining what to include and how frank to be?
The whole thing is sort of a quest story. How did I get from one place to another? A lot of the stories I include are about transitions, stepping through doorways or heading off on trips. I was looking for things that moved the story forward.
I hope parts of the book are funny. There’s a lot about loss and sorrow, but my instinct is to laugh about things whenever possible, so I was also trying to tell stories on myself that were self-deprecating and, I hoped, amusing and that were things people would relate to. I was also looking for things that tied to place in ways I thought were illuminating, so I was thinking of it as a voyage of sorts, through those years. I tried to stick to the idea of the forming of a sensibility and the books that helped with that.
You move your physical story from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood and beyond through your geographic journey from the East Coast to the Midwest by anchoring the anecdotes to what you were reading at the time. When you arrive in Chicago after art school in Kansas City, that includes everyone from Gwendolyn Brooks to Sandra Cisneros. Not every new Chicagoan would immerse themselves in this way.
I was happy to have this opportunity to write about Chicago. I felt, as a New Yorker coming here, that Chicago literature was underappreciated yet incredibly rich and interesting and varied. My way of understanding things is by going to the library, the bookstore, to look for novels, poetry, as well as history. I read endless books about Chicago history and Chicago architecture and the lake and did a lot of research to know where I was and how people felt. I became really entranced by that.
One of the writers you concentrated on was, of course, Studs Terkel. You write, “Studs was such a tireless defender of our freedoms of speech and freedom to read, speaking out against the banning of books and any and all interference with our intellectual freedom. He praised librarians as heroes.” What do you think the national discourse would be like today if Studs could be part of the discussion?
He’d be so appalled at Trump and all the polarization and all the lies and attacks on books and librarians. He would be completely outraged. He was pretty outraged during the post-9/11 period when there were attempts to make libraries reveal the books people checked out as part of the Patriot Act, that great intrusion into our personal life. That stayed with him, and he kept warning about that kind of thing. He would be completely appalled at how far things have gone in the post-Obama era, after a time when things seemed so hopeful and forward-looking. The backlash has been so cruel and harsh. He would have seen it in historical context, of course, but he also would have done all he could to help people push back.
You landed at the American Library Association as an editorial assistant, saying you “felt as if I’d found my habitat. Not only was my reading habit valued, so was my impulse to write about what I was reading.” How has working on the “inside” of the publishing world altered your appreciation for the work of authors and libraries?
It deepened my understanding and so deepened my appreciation. I’ve met amazingly talented, brilliant, devoted, dedicated people in the publishing industry and, of course, librarians as well, who are some of the great readers, the great heroes of books, and are interesting, energetic, smart, funny, quite hilarious people. People who share the devotion to the written word.
Every week I feel like I am learning something new, still, and that’s the beauty of this world, because it is always fresh and interesting and challenging. I don’t lose that sense of awe and gratitude. It is just an ongoing education and affirmation of things I care about.
Your homage to the joy, relevance, and art of reading can serve as a reminder to those devoted readers who incorporate books into their lives as effortlessly as breathing. But it also serves as a very personal invitation to those who have not embraced as fully reading’s therapeutic effects. What do you hope readers of either cohort take away from your book?
I think when I was writing it, I was hoping that people would feel their own reading passion affirmed, endorsed, to feel that they are part of the world that I feel I’m a part of. Maybe they’d remember aspects of their reading lives they haven’t thought about in a long time. I wanted it to be a pleasurable experience, too, and just encourage people to think about how, when you’re forming yourself in your early years, how important it is to be free to explore intellectually as well as in other ways. That reminded me about one aspect of nature writing that is so tough. Nature writing deals with miracles of creation that are under threat, and while I was working on this book, of course I was thinking about how books are under threat, and book people themselves are too, and how distressing that is and how wrong that is.
Let’s end with this excerpt from River of Books. When describing your sister’s funeral service, you mention the rabbi’s selection of Wordsworth’s “Ode: Intimations of Immortality,” which brought such comfort to you. You said, “I knew then that I was choosing to dwell in a realm that would always sustain me. I saw that literature was a river, enduring and deep, that it flowed without ceasing across space and through time. I knew that I could rely on it, that I could always immerse myself in it and find sustenance and hope.”
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Carol Haggas is a freelance writer and editor with more than 20 years experience writing for Booklist Magazine, Foreword Magazine, and Another Chicago Magazine. She also offers manuscript evaluation, synopsis development, and developmental editing services. She lives in suburban Chicago with her husband.
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