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Letter of Recommendation

That day the four of them went to the library, though at different times. The library assistant, if he had noticed them at all, would have seen them as people who belonged together in some way. They each in turn noticed him, with his shoulder-length golden hair. Their disparaging comments on its length, its luxuriance, its general unsuitability -- given the job and the circumstances -- were no doubt reflections on the shortcomings of their own hair. Edwin wore his, which was thin, greying, and bald on top, in a sort of bob.....


This is the opening of Barbara Pym's masterpiece, "Quartet in Autumn." Pym had been a major novelist who had fallen off the public's radar; she had gone unpublished for approximately fifteen years. But she wrote "Quartet" for fun, for her own amusement, and it then almost-randomly attracted an editor--and Philip Larkin and John Updike and the Booker Prize people hopped on-board....and the rest is history.


"Quartet in Autumn" is funny and very bleak. A couple of elderly people retire from a desk job--and no one makes a move to replace them. One stops eating and dies. The other sees her "country spinster" plans evaporate; she also sees how her associates don't actually listen to her, or care about her struggles. This is closer to Chekhov than to Ryan Murphy; problems aren't magically solved at the end. Pym *can* recognize what is delightful and absurd in a sad situation--she writes at length about a dotty woman who leaves her abandoned milk cartons on library shelves--and so you never feel fully lost in despair, if you're reading one of her books.


I'm obsessed with the opening paragraph, because it's about the odd hairstyles of four elderly people. The four people can't tolerate a young library assistant's flowing hair, and they mask their discomfort with scathing "hair critiques." ("A librarian shouldn't look like THAT.") I feel I know these people, and I'm instantly drawn into their world.


That's how I spent the last part of Christmas vacation.

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