The Archivist

by Martha Cooley

Book Overview

A young woman's impassioned pursuit of a sealed cache of T. S. Eliot's letters lies at the heart of this emotionally charged novel -- a story of marriage and madness, of faith and desire, of jazz-age... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0316158720
• ISBN13: 9780316158725
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Little Brown and Company
• Length: 328 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.8" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 and higher

Customer Reviews

Passion in still corridors of poetry

The intellectual has a heart, and it beats beneath the skin as surely and as powerfully as that of the emotional romantic. This is the reminder in Martha Cooley's fine novel, "The Archivist" -- that there can be passion even where there is restraint, that there can be hatred even if it is never given voice, that there can be love even when it must be denied. "The Archivist" is a simple story, a man who works in the archives of a prestigious library, maintaining collections of the rarest of rare materials, including a series of hundreds of letters written by the poet T.S. Eliot to a woman named Emily Hale. This collection of Eliot's letters is a bequest, meant to be held onto and not released to anyone for many years to come. These letters also act as the fulcrum of the story that unfolds, both thematically and literally. Matthias, the archivist, has his routine disturbed by a young woman named Roberta, a poet who is determined to see Eliot's letters. In talking with Roberta and getting to know her, Matthias is drawn inexorably down the road of his past, remembering his wife, also a poet, who killed herself. These two intersections of time, Matt's past with his wife and Matt's present as he gets to know Roberta, are further tied to revelations about T.S. Eliot himself, his own wife Vivienne, and the unique relationship he shared with Emily Hale. It is this level of intricacy, one layer of story peeling back to not only reveal further layers, but to intertwine with them, that gives "The Archivist" such a magical tone throughout. Though the basic story idea is simple (no massive conspiracies or plots here -- just a lonely man, his work, and his memories), Cooley turns it quickly into something rare and fragile, the sort of story where one misstep could cause utter failure. But she never missteps or errs in what she tells or how she tells it. These characters, how their past and present are tied together in their love for the same poet and the regrets left over after World War II, how their lives come to intermingle, fray apart, then come together again, is nothing short of remarkable. Cooley's subtlety and restraint throughout "The Archivist" is admirable, and calls to mind "The Remains of the Day." Both are novels in which the reader can sense the passions and deep feelings of the characters running just under the surface, but unlike other authors she never overplays it. It never comes bursting out in a final rush of unbridled emotion -- instead, it flows steadily but cautiously forward and leaves the reader to enjoy the trip. In too many novels, the author will focus on either the mind or the heart. Either the story is heavily intellectual while almost devoid of real emotion, or it goes the other way, giving free rein to emotion while downplaying or just ignoring the capacities of reason. "The Archivist" skillfully mixes both aspects, and tells a deceptively simple tale of a man, two of the women in his life, a poet, and a culture

a different perspective

Not to reiterate what else has been said, but to add another perspective about Judith's struggle to come to grips with the new heritage of the Holocaust. Or doesn't come to grips. Depends on who you ask.As I read this book, I was drawn into a world I usually can't penetrate - post-World War II America, from a Jewish perspective. What were people thinking, feeling? Guilt? The need to research and learn, as if needing to bear witness? Because that has become comprehensible and normal. And yet, Judith's attempts to understand, the bear witness, to acknolwedge that what happened across Europe between 1933 and 1945 cannot fade off into the past - that it must, in fact, remain very much in the present. In order to learn and see what happened, in order to see the effects this has on people. As for Matt and Roberta - Matt frustrated me for the same reasons he frustrated Judith - he was beguiling and safe and totally lacking in compassion. Roberta - the new incarnation of Judith - was interesting, compelling and altogether fascinating. Their relationship was interesting and kept me wondering what the end result would be, hoping that it wouldn't end in some tawdry bedroom affair. This is a fabulous book, and Martha Cooley is able to ellicit emotions and feelings that most of us don't want to deal with.

Beautifully Assured and True-to-Life

Martha Cooley's beautiful first novel, The Archivist combines T.S. Eliot, jazz and the Holocaust in a wonderfully assured manner.The Archivist opens in the 1970s and tells the story of Matthias Lane, a lapsed Protestant in his early 60s. Outwardly, Matthias seems to be the perfect archivist; he is both orderly and reclusive. Working at a mid-sized American library, Matthias' days are routine until a young poet named Roberta Spire asks for access to restricted material.The restricted material Roberta wishes to access are letters from T.S. Eliot to an American woman and they have been sealed from the public until the year 2020. Roberta, however, is sure those letters contain the answer to the mystery of why Eliot converted from Protestantism to Anglo-Catholicism as well as why he rejected his emotionally unstable wife, Vivienne. Roberta, whose parents escaped Nazi Germany and later converted to Christianity, reminds Matthias of his own wife, Judith, a Jew who became obsessed with the Holocaust during the days following World War II.The relationship between Matthias and Judith forms the heart of the novel and their marriage contains many elements of the Eliot's own failed union. Cooley echoes Arthur Miller's play, Broken Glass and its character of Sylvia Gellburg in that Judith's preoccupation with the Holocaust becomes more than just a preoccupation, it becomes the trigger, along with her interfaith marriage to Matthias, that leads to her degeneration into psychosis and eventual institutionalization.Despite their religious differences, Matthias and Judith are drawn together by a mutual love for poetry and jazz. They are a happy couple until the war intervenes. Judith then falls into a deep depression that Matthias can neither understand nor feel himself.The rift between Matthias and Judith only widens as she becomes more and more absorbed in her own Judaism. Just before her institutionalization, Judith becomes obsessed with the idea of tikkum olam (healing the world) as the only possible reparation for the ramifications of the Holocaust's evil.Although this is primarily Matthias' story, we do get a look at the world through Judith's eyes through a series of her hospital diary entries. In the hands of a lesser writer, this could have been jarring and distracting, but Cooley handles it like a master. Furthermore, her portrait of Judith is so real and powerful that her diary soon becomes all-absorbing.There are many novels that contain characters who eventually unravel and descend into a world of madness. Many of these novels are well-written while others tend to veer off into melodrama. This one could have been one of the more melodramatic ones had Cooley not characterized Judith so well. As it is, we cannot fail to feel her pain and empathize with her plight.This is a book of several disparate themes, of stories within stories, but Cooley ties them all together. Matthias, with Roberta as his catalyst, is finally able to perform an espe

A Keen Exploration of the Use of Religion

I was fascinated by the exploration of T.S. Eliot's poetry in this novel and by the use of religion as a coping mechanism when life becomes too acute. There was also a very different interpretation of a Jewish vs. Christian response to the presense of evil and our responsibility in life (atonement vs. redemption).

A Brilliant, Electrifying, Literary First Novel

I stayed up late enraptured by the discovery of this marvelous first novel. Complex , literary, it revolves around Matthias, the archivist of literary documents at a prestigious university library. He is the gatekeeper of letters written by T.S. Eliot to a woman who he loved for most of his life, Emily Hale, and then spurned after his religious conversion to the Anglican Church. These letters are the bequest of Hale to the library, not to be opened until the year 2020, to scholars. Into Matt's life comes Roberta, a poet, who is obsessed with seeing the letters as a way to understand her own religious identity. Interwoven with the story of Eliot's relationship with his wife Vivienne, committed to a mental institution by Eliot, is the story of Matt's marriage to the dark, unfathomable Judith who is also a poet. Eliot's life is the 'stillpoint of the turning world' upon which the lives of Matt, Judith and Roberta balance as each of them comes to terms with hidden secrets, revelation, religious identity, faith, solitude, obsession and the spiritual vacuum created by the aftermath of WWII and the Holocauset. This book is multi-textured; a delicate tapestry of meaning is woven. It's finely crafted like a beautiful symphony as themes, exposition and resolution are spun by the author. And when all is finally woven together magic occurs, and the reader learns something valuable about his or her own life. Any reader can ask for nothing more sublime from an author than this.