The Ghosts of Owners Past: The People of the Book

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I’m leafing through a used book, and to my wonder, a check falls out. Made payable to the Tolrevo Clinic for just over $2,000!! The name in the upper left corner identifies the check as belonging to one Sarah K. Cheever, of Baltimore, MD. I silently whistle: I bet Sarah was frantic to have misplaced that check! The date reveals that the check was written in May of 1993, so this has certainly been long-canceled, an expensive “bookmark” that Sarah evidently never found.

Why was Sarah writing such a big check to the Tolrevo Clinic? Was she sick? Had she gone over the amount her insurance would cover? Or, maybe, was she paying a bill for a loved one? Perhaps it was a donation to the Clinic for some new construction project or expensive piece of medical equipment. I wonder where Sarah is now. I briefly entertain the idea of sending her a letter, telling her I found this check so many years after she must have wondered where she lost it. Ultimately, I decide my contacting her would be too intrusive, that it may bring up bad memories of nearly two decades ago. What if Sarah – or the person whose bills she was paying – is now deceased?

I’d never found a check before, and haven’t since, but on a weekly basis, I find receipts, old lottery tickets, bookmarks from other stores, postcards, family photos, business cards, Post-It Notes, grocery lists. I always wonder about the slice of life I’m being presented. Sometimes I know to whom the book belonged; many times, I don’t. I wonder whose hands it has passed through, if they enjoyed the story, why they were reading this particular book, who bought the book and where, where the book has traveled.

In her 2008 novel, The People of the Book, Pulitzer Prize winning author Geraldine Brooks traces the story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, infusing her fiction story with many of the true events that surround the history of this rare, illuminated Jewish devotional book. A haggadah gives the order of readings and rituals for the Passover Seder. The Sarajevo Haggadah is believed to have been made in Spain, in the mid-1300s, and rescued by Spanish or “Sephardic” Jews who were fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. Its unusual survival across centuries of war, persecution, exile, religious and political fanaticism, the call for its destruction, and many hiding places, is only one of the attributes that makes it remarkable. The other is the detailed, colored pictures, so like the illuminated Christian Scriptures of the same era, but rarely (if ever) found in Jewish work, since such illustrations were seen by many to be idolatrous.

Brooks weaves together some fictionalized characters – such as her protagonist, the book conservator and rare book expert, Hanna Heath – with the historical characters such as the Sarajevo Museum’s chief librarian, Dervos Korkut, who stole the Haggadah right out from under the noses of the Nazis who sought to destroy it.

Of course, I find this kind of mystery especially fascinating with the provenance and journey of a book, but the same curiosity can be applied to any object – a house, a piece of furniture, a painting, a musical instrument. Author and art historian Susan Vreeland created a similar kind of story in her novel, Girl in Hyacinth Blue, which traces a recently-discovered painting back through all its owners. In addition to Vreeland’s lovely prose and the life she breathes into each historical era through which the painting passes, the question that drives the novel is whether or not the painting was created by Johannes Vermeer, or merely by a talented copycat.

Before I read Girl in Hyacinth Blue, I’d been charmed by a similar theme in the 1999 film, “The Red Violin”, which traces the story of a violin – from the 17th century of its creator, forward through all the owners, including an 18th century monastery in Vienna, a series of Gypsy Rom owners, a young noble Englishman and his Russian lover, and China during the Cultural Revolution, to present day. Like “Hyacinth Blue”, the big question surrounding the violin is whether or not it was made by Stradivarius.

Though this technique is not original, it seems to me an excellent way to build a story, tie together many interesting characters, and teach some history, geography, and art along the way.

Accordian Crimes, or Girl with a Pearl Earring? Tell Hobo the books you know that share the stories of an object and the people who touched them, via email, at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com. Looking for a past slice of life? Check the archives at Hobo’s blog, http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com.