Ernesto's Pick

I was chatting with Ernesto, my parole officer, about my blog project earlier this week. He asked me what print sources I've used about subversive images, and I had to admit, none. He wasn't too happy about this (well, I think he was more upset that I tested positive for herion), and chastised me about forgetting the character Henry DeTamble, from "The Time Traveller's Wife." (A book I highly reccommend, by the way.)

"The Time Traveller's Wife," by Audrey Niffenegger, is one of my favorite books, as well as Ernesto's. (Funny story--Ernesto and I actually met in a book club before the liquor store incident.) The main characters are Hentry DeTamble and his wife Clare Abshire. Henry is a librarian--in fact, on the back of the edition I own (2003, Harvest Books, Harcourt Inc.), Henry is described as "a dashing, adventuresome librarian."

It's definitely an interesting portrayal of a librarain: Henry loves punk music, abuses alcohol and drugs and is promisuous before meeting his wife, gets into fistfights, and is an accomplished cat burglar. He also speaks German and French, loves cooking, quotes Rilke and Heidegger, and can hold up his end of an argument over politics and philosophy with doctors and lawyers. So, he's a bad-ass, but a classy, educated bad-ass.

Anyway, I'd be remiss to not mention this book, as it manages to avoid the stereotypes of librarians (there are some scenes with Henry's co-workers, none of whom subscribe to any stereotypes), and also describes some of the inner-workings of a large research library; in this case, the Newberry Library in Chicago. Niffenegger has obvious done some thoughtful research into librarianship. She's also created a character I like to think of the Jungian Archetype of the Bad Ass Librarian.