Still No Word from You

When Peter Orner's grandfather was on a ship in the South Pacific during World War II, he sent a letter to his wife every day of the war. She seldom responded, leading him to write to her in 1945, Another day and still no word from you. Orner conjectures that Maybe we read because we seek that word from someone, from anyone. His collection consists of insightful and intimate observations about books, stories, poems, and life--notes in the margin.

Reading his mother's 1959 edition of Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind, he finds a single marginal comment from her: YES. A brief poem by Robert Hayden about the destruction of a spider's web engenders thoughts about how quickly something exquisite can become wreckage, but also that there's no breaking free. . .from the contours of our lives. A story by James Alan McPherson about an old janitor who just wants to talk to someone reminds Orner of that strong desire: Maybe something we say will stick and be remembered. Reading Yaakov Shabtai's novel Past Continuous leads him to think that Minor characters don't know they're minor, until they do. And doesn't this, at some point, include us all?

In Edward Lewis's The Pawnbroker a character says that he reads to make it across the next half hour. The 105 pieces in Still No Word from You provide ample inspiration for those devoted to reading and will remind them of the importance of their own stories.