Ex Libris
Emma Cline's The Guest and some fantastic bookplates
Over the past few years, I have come to discover that there is nothing more American than a grifter, it is a theme that plays throughout the history of the USA. I do love a good grifter story, they seem to be more apparent with the advent of the internet - but they have always been around. The US provides a perfect cultural atmosphere for grifters or con artists due to the mythical belief that anyone can become someone. The ongoing loneliness pandemic that seems to just get worse with every generation leaves many vulnerable to anyone who offers any kind of connection. My preoccupation with reality shows such as Catfish and 90 Day Fiancé, first hand experiences with online dating, along with the endless articles about the mental health crisis give endless examples.
Emma Cline’s newest book The Guest - which I wasn’t going to read and then it came in at the library so I started reading and could not put it down - gives us a character who exists to temporarily Animorph into the connection that desperately lonely people are looking for. Cline was inspired by the 1968 John Cheever short story “The Swimmer,”1 about a man in an American suburb who unabashedly decides to swim across 8 miles of private swimming pools to travel home. Alex, the unreliable narrator of Cline’s book does not reach the level of George Santos grifter greatness nor is she a brazen white middle-aged man, but she is in many ways a lot more interesting.
Alex is an Instagram ready 22-year-old New Yorker who spends the week leading up to Labor Day grifting through the Hamptons. The reader only knows what Alex tells us and only sees what Alex sees. Cline said in an interview that Alex is a “camera” and what and how she observes what is going on around her is how the reader gets to know her. I definitely found myself rooting for Alex, even though her actions are so morally gray, and we never learn why exactly she does the things she does. I often think that knowing why a character is the way they are is overrated – this might be controversial - origin stories are sometimes redundant, unsatisfying, and not nearly as interesting as you might have hoped. As someone who has a master’s in Criminal Justice - I have always found that the environment that provides the opportunity for the behavior much more interesting. I am a strong believer that literature does not happen in a vacuum and there is a reason that Emma Cline created the character of Alex now. Or could she be a character the appears at any point in American history or is there something about this moment?
Guardian Long Read Suggestions (read/listen)
If you are looking for an interesting story that has nothing to do with the news - I highly recommend listening to or reading the Guardian’s long read about the history of the Guinness World Records.
Archive: Bookplate Collection
The Ex Libris Collection from Budapest’s Museum of the Applied Arts contains around 70,000 pieces, most of them bookplates with small amount of bookmarks. The archive comes from three famous collectors - Kálmán Rozsnaya (1871-1948), Viktor Kühnemann (?-1915), and Reszo Dr. Soó (1903-1980). The collection spans across Europe and North America, mostly between the late 19th century and around the 1950s. If you really dig you can find some really pornographic ones from some dirty old professors (if you are into that kind of thing). Below are a sample of the ones that I really liked.
If you want to see more of my highlights from this archive, you can check out the Pinterest board I created.
If you enjoy the Unreliable Newsletter please consider sharing. I hope you all have a lovely week. I will also put some up on the new Unreliable Newsletter Instagram grid.
you can also access this through a collection of John Cheever stories through Libby from your local library.
Love these bookplates!