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By MARGO HAMMOND, Times Book Editor
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 23, 2000
Let's call it My Excellent Library Adventure.
Here was the deal. During National Library Week, I was to lead discussions of Pete Hamill's Snow in August at six book clubs that regularly meet at St. Petersburg's six libraries. Six libraries in four days. Joyce Sparrow, librarian at the Mirror Lake Branch, had come up with the idea after she read about a similar project in Seattle called All of Seattle Is Reading . . . .
Sparrow and the other librarians picked the book. When they had asked for my input, I suggested Joseph Heller's Catch 22 in honor of the great writer who had recently died, but I was outvoted. The librarians believed Snow in August, with its themes of prejudice and intolerance, would have wider appeal.
I read the book and was hardly bowled over. In fact, I was downright annoyed by Hamill's deus ex machina ending in which the 11-year-old protagonist, Michael Devlin, conjures up a supernatural being to smite the neighborhood bullies who had put a Jewish shopkeeper into a coma. Hamill had created a wonderful character in Michael, an Irish Catholic boy who immersed himself in Captain Marvel comic books, struck up a touching friendship with the rabbi and cheered on Jackie Robinson. But Hamill's fantastic ending seemed like a cop out to me. Was this really the only response to intolerance that Hamill could offer? Was looking to something outside ourselves really the way to fight prejudice?
Set on the edge of the appropriately named Booker Lake on Ninth Avenue N and 37th Street, the St. Petersburg Main Library was my first stop. Only a few people showed up, but lack of numbers didn't slow anyone down. Sitting in a circle of folding chairs in the library's auditorium, we duked it out.
Snow in August, I learned quickly, is a book that brings out strong emotions. "I love this book," one woman said, clutching it to her bosom. "It's the best book I have ever read."
She envisioned it being made into a movie, directed by Steven Spielberg.
For her and many others whom I met throughout the rest of the week, the fantastic ending of Hamill's novel didn't come as a surprise at all. The book, after all, began like a fairy tale: "Once upon a cold ... ," several people pointed out. "I knew I was in for something that was not real when I saw that title," another said.
And what about the objection of reaching out to something outside yourself for solutions? "Sympathetic magic," declared a woman who told us she had a bachelor's degree in anthropology. The golem, a kind of Jewish Captain Marvel, called forth by Michael was really a projection of himself, she said. Another woman thought that the violence visited on the anti-Semitic hoodlums was the wrath of God acting against those who are intolerant.
At the Azalea Branch every seat was taken as we wedged ourselves in around several tables in a smallish meeting room, passing around cookies, coffee and soft drinks since there was no room to mill about. All the libraries offered refreshments during the discussions in honor of National Library Week. "It's the only time it's permissible to have food in the library," librarian Alicia Ellison told the book club members in the filled-to-capacity meeting room at the North Branch.
We were mostly white, middle-aged to elderly and female, though a black woman, an Asian woman and several men were also part of the mix. In library after library, we fell into two camps: those who passionately defended Snow in August and those, like myself, who continued to have reservations about the book. Some of us were bothered by what we saw as ethnic stereotyping. Are stereotypes really what you want to indulge in when writing a book encouraging tolerance? Others were bothered by the coarse language used in the book. Did kids really speak that way in 1947 Brooklyn when this story took place?
At the end of each of the discussions, the conversation inevitably turned to the problems of prejudice today. Were people more prejudiced than they were when Michael Devlin was struggling for answers in the '40s? Or have we made progress?
Again we were divided. Many believed that people have become more open to diversity than ever. Others insisted ethnic and racial divisions had deepened. "There are more guns today, and that has made things more violent," someone pointed out. Everyone agreed, though, that some things have changed for the better. "In the '40s," an older black woman at the Johnson Branch on 18th Avenue S, pointed out with a smile, "I wouldn't be sitting here talking about this book with you, that's for sure."
Reading my schedule wrong, I missed the meeting at the South Branch, but the group had carried on a lively discussion of Snow in August without me, the branch librarian told me. My last stop was the Mirror Lake Branch in downtown St. Petersburg. By then, nearly 100 members of six book clubs in six St. Petersburg libraries had debated, held forth, exchanged views and heard opinions about a single book, sharing at times their own lives and struggles with prejudice in the process.
What did I get out of the week? Although I still wish Pete Hamill had offered something more than just a child's perspective in Snow in August, I came away with a greater respect for what he was trying to do in his book. I also came away with a recipe from one of the book club members for a grits and ground beef casserole.
As the signs I saw hanging on all six library's facade said, libraries do change people's lives.
Interested in discussing Snow in August by Pete Hamill? The Peninsular Branch Library at 3909 Neptune St. in Tampa will discuss the book May 27 at 10 a.m.