Read This Now: Books For July 2016

Anne R. Dick, Anne and the Twentieth Century (Point Reyes Cypress Press, 2016, pointreyescypresspress.com): “The twentieth was a great century to live one’s life in,” Dick writes. “I loved every bit of it, although I didn’t know it at the time.” At almost 90—she was born in 1927—Dick saw a good chunk of it, too, partly here in St. Louis. Local readers (especially those of us prone to pawing through old Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps and photo archives at the History Museum) will get a huge kick out of vicariously experiencing St. Louis in the streetcar era through her novel-like prose and carefully chosen historical photographs. She also gives a blunt, vivid account of the city during the Depression and World War II and talks about the challenges of being a smart, book-loving young woman during a time when you either lunched with the ladies or became a schoolteacher or a nurse. Dick managed to find much greater adventures than that; she and her college pals hung out at gritty art bars such as the Blue Lantern and Little Bohemia down on the riverfront, where she met her first husband, poet Richard Rubenstein, best friend of Jay Landesman and co-founder of the groundbreaking little magazine Neurotica. They moved to the Bay Area in the 1950s, bought art and Modernist furniture, and befriended the San Francisco Renaissance poets. Then, after the arrival of three little girls, the Rubensteins bought a glass-walled house in Point Reyes Station, near the beach. Anne’s still living there, writing poetry, making art and jewelry, and studying Spanish. The adventures she’s had between the time she moved in and today are impressive by any standard (she was Philip K. Dick’s third wife). Even if her life had been routine and dull—which it’s not been at all—her frank, funny, lyrical writing style would still make this memoir a delight. Like all good writers, she could write about spray starch and make it interesting; lucky for us, as she admits, she was never all that fond of housework.