The Second Life of Books
How Amy Krouse Rosenthal reinvented the author/reader relationship
I. In which the author first discovers Amy
In classic Microfascination style, I came to Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s work through another book: John Green’s The Anthropocene Reviewed. I loved it! Through a series of endearing and playful essays in the vein of Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights, John “reviews” different aspects of the world we live in. By looking closely at subjects like scratch ‘n’ sniff stickers, the world’s largest ball of paint, and velociraptors, John connects us to bigger truths about humanity, and then caps the review off with a star rating. It’s a wonderfully unique book — one that only John Green could write — and it was through his essay about “Auld Lang Syne” (a five-star review, in case you were wondering) that I was first introduced to Amy.
Amy did so many wonderful things in her life that no bio I’ve come across satisfactorily summarizes all the interesting stuff I’ve learned about her in just the last month. For example, John shares that she hired someone to walk around one of her events just giving everyone compliments. (Imagine getting to put that one on your resume.) This delightful anecdote seems very representative of what I’ve learned about Amy; I could write a whole essay that’s just a list of little facts like that, except I don’t think it would ever end.
For the purposes of this essay, it’s important to know that Amy wrote two memoirs: one in the form of an encyclopedia, and the other a textbook. “Textbook” not just meaning a book split into sections around specific subject matter, but also the first book to provide opportunities for reader engagement via text message.
Oh boy, I thought, sending a telepathic thank-you note to John Green. I’m really going to like this.
II. In which the author describes Amy’s memoirs with the underlying goal of trying to convince you to read them, just because they were so much darn fun
Where do I begin with Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life? On the inside of my copy’s cover, Amy tallied the number of times she used particular words. (Coffee: 23. Weird: 6. Love: 78.) She included a list of suggested wine pairings. She took the liberty of using the copyright page to inform us that she was “not responsible for the short, edible window between the banana is not ripe enough and the banana is rotten.”
Encyclopedia also includes a Reader’s Agreement, which you are obliged to sign before continuing (“You agree to see for yourself just how perfectly this book cues up with Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz”); an Orientation Almanac (in case you’re reading the book another thousand years from now); a timeline detailing the book’s creation (beginning in 965 with the birth of Sei Shonagon, obviously); and Amy’s Alphabetized Existence, complete with relevant tables, diagrams, and illustrations. From start to finish, Encyclopedia brims with fun little asides and digressions, every page holding some small new joy.
The seeds of Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal are peppered throughout Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, if you look closely. And should you wish to open any of the doors that Amy placed before you, Textbook teems with further opportunities. Maybe you want to share a serendipity story, or wish a stranger good luck? Or perhaps you have a lead regarding the mystery of Amy’s lost copy of A Moveable Feast? Or you could make a contribution to the Live Rainbow Feed, to be preserved in the Permanent Archive of Beautiful Ephemera.
I believe that every book begins a new life on the day of publication. It leaves the author’s hands and moves into the world, where each reader will form their own unique relationship to it. But the way that Amy Krouse Rosenthal expanded the possibilities for that relationship was special. I think she understood the second life of her books better than most.
III. In which the author makes careful note of Amy’s interest in serendipity and coincidence, which will be relevant later, so pay attention
Amy wrote a lot about serendipity, a topic that’s perennially interesting to me, too:
1. If you like something, you tend to be on the lookout for it. And if you’re on the lookout for it, you tend to find it, or it—Yoo-hoo! Over here!—finds you. And so it goes, for me, with serendipity and coincidence. It’s something I like, so it’s something I notice and attract.
In this section of Textbook, she went on to list a number of notable coincidences from her own life, such as a silver link bracelet bearing her son’s name and birth date — which she never took off for two full decades — breaking at the exact moment that she thought the words It’s time to let him go, as his departure for university was fast approaching.
Amy concluded:
10. About these coincidences, the data and mathematicians are clear: Such things happen all the time. Then again, Einstein (pretty good at math) was also quite clear when he concluded, There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
11. I’m going with B, everything.
IV. In which the author mourns the ostensible discontinuation of the texting component and similar bonus material — but don’t worry, the essay’s not over yet
I should probably mention here that as far as I could tell, the texting component has been discontinued. My own message either disappeared into the void or went to some disgruntled individual who regularly gets texts from folks curled up in bed under a reading lamp while trying to interact further with a published object.
Something similar eventually happened after the publication of Marisha Pessl’s Night Film. This cult classic novel follows journalist Scott McGrath as he investigates the death of Ashley Cordova, daughter of notoriously reclusive film director Stanislas Cordova. But the story isn’t told solely with traditional words on a page; the book is filled with emails, text messages, patient records, incident reports, news articles, comment sections, and a mysterious recurring symbol shaped like a bird.
Previously, if you scanned this symbol with your phone, you could pull up additional content on a companion app. You didn’t have to do this — the book stands (quite magnificently) on its own, and you’re welcome to just read the story and leave it at that. BUT, if you were game, you could follow Night Film’s narrative beyond the page in ways that begin to blend with real life.
The flipside of these bonus digital innovations is that they do tend to have an expiration date. (Seeing as I read Night Film about a decade ago, I went to look for that app just now and could no longer track it down today.) Still, I love seeing authors get the chance to experiment and have fun, even if the results don’t last forever. This remains a central element of the joy I get from reading and working in books — witnessing the continued expansion of possibility for what a book can do and be.
V. In which the author tries to entice you to visit Amy’s various websites (kind of like a travel agent, but for the internet)
The good news is that many of the bonus features are preserved via the Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal website. Since Amy’s books are so engaging, it makes sense that she also intuitively understood what made the internet fun. Clicking around on her various sites reminded me of my own early experience of the internet, back when it felt like every hyperlink held a whole new world.
What I love about Amy’s websites (both for herself and Textbook) is that they’re full of fun little extras. They don’t just hold her bio and more information about the book. They invite you to share your wishes and find the secret messages and take a moment just to listen to the rain.
The Textbook site also provides the chance to view results from the text invitations in the book. (I loved the gallery of readers’ serendipity stories in particular!) In curating all of the different responses to her memoir, Amy’s website becomes more than a monument to the wonderful book she wrote — it celebrates her readers, too.
VI. In which the author details a few of her favorite instances of connection that stemmed from the publication of Amy’s memoirs
Amy sent 800 good luck messages from readers out into the world in bottles, at least one of which has since been discovered (by a group of Swedes vacationing Southern Florida).
Amy FedExed various homemade pecan pies to her readers.
Amy got matching tattoos of the word “more” with a sixty-two-year-old librarian from Milwaukee named Paulette.
VII. In which the author seemingly digresses to discuss the possibilities of memoir, and the reader’s attention might drift as a result, but it ties back to Amy in the end, so stay with me on this
Earlier this year, I interviewed the writer and critic Richard Scott Larson, who had just published his first memoir: The Long Hallway, a look back on his coming-of-age experience through the lens of the movie Halloween. Richard shared that he used to think memoir was only for those who lived “exceptional lives,” like professional athletes and movie stars. But through his personal discovery of queer writers like David Wojnarowicz, Hervé Guibert, and Derek Jarman, he realized:
…the urgency of life writing, the urgency of writing a memoir, can just be to express the very specific thing you’re going through, to communicate your mundane normal existence, and convey the urgency of it to someone else.
A few months later, I read Amy’s foreword for Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life:
I was not abused, abandoned, or locked up as a child. My parents were not alcoholics, nor were they ever divorced or dead. We did not live in poverty, or in misery, or in an exotic country. I am not a misunderstood genius, a former child celebrity, or the child of a celebrity. I am not a drug addict, sex addict, food addict, or recovered anything. If I indeed had a past life, I have no recollection of who I was.
I have not survived against all odds.
I have not lived to tell.
I have not witnessed the extraordinary.
This is my story.
For a long time I thought I might only ever write fiction, that I might only have interesting things to publish if I made them up. But the truth is, you don’t have to live a wildly eventful life in order to write about it. Every life is extraordinary in its own way through the simple fact of individual perspective.
Nobody sees the world exactly like you do. Nobody else has the unique amalgam of experiences that make up the person you are.
This is why I’m perennially delighted every time I take my seat in a movie theater or curl up on the couch with a new book. What an incredible privilege, to exist in a world that holds so many stories.
This seems to be something that Amy intuitively understood and took great joy in. Amy didn’t just want to sell you a book. She wanted to get a tattoo with you and mail you a pie and see the rainbows through your eyes, too.
VIII. In which the author writes the part of the essay she didn’t want to write, because it broke her heart
If you recognize Amy’s name, it might be from any number of things. Her radio work, her 30+ children’s books, the bestseller list, her short films, her TED talks. Or, it might be for her final essay: a viral Modern Love column titled “You May Want to Marry My Husband.” Amy died ten days after it was published, which is a sentence I absolutely hate writing.
There’s a bittersweetness to discovering a book you love after the author’s death. They’ve made you see the world anew, but the author is no longer here to share that world with you. I know it’s small comfort, but I do take heart in the knowledge that the work is a way of living on past your own departure. I will always be grateful for all of the authors I get to meet even after they’re gone.
IX. In which the author reveals her own personal moment of serendipity, which was foreshadowed earlier on in the essay (aren’t you glad you paid attention?)
While I was researching Amy and her work at the beginning of this month, I discovered that Rahm Emanuel had officially declared August 9th Amy Krouse Rosenthal Day in Chicago. I had no idea of this when I set out to write about her; it was just a week away when I found out. The timing was perfect, but how would I celebrate?
In both memoirs, Amy writes about “purple flower moments,” a sort of inventory-taking of your particular present:
PURPLE FLOWER
There is a single purple flower a couple feet from where I am sitting. I am feeling poorly dressed and missing my long hair. I am at Café De Lucca in Bucktown, and there is a purple flower—that’s how I would define this moment. And you, your moment? Where are you at this moment? E-mail me and tell me. If you are the hundredth person to do so, I will bake you a pie and FedEx it to you. You will have to trust me on this.
So I started collecting these purple flower moments. All seemingly very ordinary, and yet they were made up of experiences and observations and feelings that only I could have.
Here’s one: On August 9th, I left a café and found a purple flower, right outside the door. Before then I’d been feeling a bit out of sorts, but I saw that purple flower and it was like the moment lit up from within. Almost as if reading Amy’s writing had changed my relationship to purple flowers forever.
It’ll never stop being cool to me, the fact that art can do that.
Here’s another: It’s August 31st and I’m sitting at my desk, and I have both of your books beside me, and I feel very happy to have read them.
This one’s for you, Amy.
This month I wanted to give a shoutout to The Amy Krouse Rosenthal Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to fund ovarian cancer research and childhood literacy initiatives in honor of Amy Krouse Rosenthal.
And in personal writing news, two things to share:
I’ve got another movie essay in Bright Wall/Dark Room about genre, grief, and life’s curveballs through the lens of one of my favorite films from the last decade: The Night House.
Also, if you’re an artist having any doubts about the path you’re on, you might check out my Write or Die interview on creative longevity and The Long Run with Stacey D’Erasmo.
See y’all again in September!
I loved this!! Really makes me want to read her work.