Book Club Kits: The Librarianist

 

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From bestselling and award-winning author Patrick deWitt comes the story of Bob Comet, a man who has lived his life through and for literature, unaware that his own experience is a poignant and affecting narrative in itself.

Bob Comet is a retired librarian passing his solitary days surrounded by books and small comforts in a mint-colored house in Portland, Oregon. One morning on his daily walk he encounters a confused elderly woman lost in a market and returns her to the senior center that is her home. Hoping to fill the void he's known since retiring, he begins volunteering at the center. Here, as a community of strange peers gathers around Bob, and following a happenstance brush with a painful complication from his past, the events of his life and the details of his character are revealed.

Behind Bob Comet's straight-man facade is the story of an unhappy child's runaway adventure during the last days of the Second World War, of true love won and stolen away, of the purpose and pride found in the librarian's vocation, and of the pleasures of a life lived to the side of the masses. Bob's experiences are imbued with melancholy but also a bright, sustained comedy; he has a talent for locating bizarre and outsize players to welcome onto the stage of his life.

With his inimitable verve, skewed humor, and compassion for the outcast, Patrick deWitt has written a wide-ranging and ambitious document of the introvert's condition. The Librarianist celebrates the extraordinary in the so-called ordinary life, and depicts beautifully the turbulence that sometimes exists beneath a surface of serenity.ABOUT HORSEKentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. 

 

 
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
 
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
 
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. 
 
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
 
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
 
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. 
 
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
 
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
 
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. 
 
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
 
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
 
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. 
 
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
 
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
 
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.

 

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“Brooks’ chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Horse isn’t just an animal story—it’s a moving narrative about race and art.” —TIME

“A thrilling story about humanity in all its ugliness and beauty . . . the evocative voices create a story so powerful, reading it feels like watching a neck-and-neck horse race, galloping to its conclusion—you just can’t look away.” —Oprah Daily

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. 
 
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
 
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
 
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.

SEE LESS

ABOUT HORSE

“Brooks’ chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Horse isn’t just an animal story—it’s a moving narrative about race and art.” —TIME

“A thrilling story about humanity in all its ugliness and beauty . . . the evocative voices create a story so powerful, reading it feels like watching a neck-and-neck horse race, galloping to its conclusion—you just can’t look away.” —Oprah Daily

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. 
 
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
 
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
 
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.

SEE LESS

ABOUT HORSE

“Brooks’ chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Horse isn’t just an animal story—it’s a moving narrative about race and art.” —TIME

“A thrilling story about humanity in all its ugliness and beauty . . . the evocative voices create a story so powerful, reading it feels like watching a neck-and-neck horse race, galloping to its conclusion—you just can’t look away.” —Oprah Daily

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. 
 
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
 
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
 
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.

SEE LESS

ABOUT HORSE

“Brooks’ chronological and cross-disciplinary leaps are thrilling.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Horse isn’t just an animal story—it’s a moving narrative about race and art.” —TIME

“A thrilling story about humanity in all its ugliness and beauty . . . the evocative voices create a story so powerful, reading it feels like watching a neck-and-neck horse race, galloping to its conclusion—you just can’t look away.” —Oprah Daily

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

A discarded painting in a junk pile, a skeleton in an attic, and the greatest racehorse in American history: from these strands, a Pulitzer Prize winner braids a sweeping story of spirit, obsession, and injustice across American history

Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack. 
 
New York City, 1954. Martha Jackson, a gallery owner celebrated for taking risks on edgy contemporary painters, becomes obsessed with a nineteenth-century equestrian oil painting of mysterious provenance.
 
Washington, DC, 2019. Jess, a Smithsonian scientist from Australia, and Theo, a Nigerian-American art historian, find themselves unexpectedly connected through their shared interest in the horse—one studying the stallion’s bones for clues to his power and endurance, the other uncovering the lost history of the unsung Black horsemen who were critical to his racing success.
 
Based on the remarkable true story of the record-breaking thoroughbred Lexington, Horse is a novel of art and science, love and obsession, and our unfinished reckoning with racism.

SEE LESS

The Librarianist by Patrick Dewitt

From book:

“He had been amassing books since preadolescence and there were filled shelves in half the rooms in the house, tidy towers of books in the halls. Connie, who had been Bob’s wife, had sometimes asked him why he read quite so much as he did. She believed Bob was reading beyond the accepted level of personal pleasure and wondered if it wasn’t symptomatic of a spiritual or emotional deformity. Bob thought her true question was, ‘Why do you read rather than live?”

· Character Exploration: How does the protagonist, the librarian, embody the themes of isolation and connection throughout the novel? What events or interactions shape his character?

· Themes of Knowledge and Ignorance: In what ways does the novel explore the relationship between knowledge and ignorance? How do the characters' views on literature and education reflect their personal journeys?

· Narrative Style: How does DeWitt's writing style influence your understanding of the characters and their motivations? Are there specific passages that stand out to you?

· Community and Belonging: What role does the library play as a community space in the story? How do the interactions between the librarian and other characters highlight the importance of community?

· Humor and Tragedy: How does DeWitt balance humor and melancholy in the novel? Can you identify specific moments where this balance is particularly effective?

· Symbolism of Books: What do books represent in the lives of the characters? How do they serve as tools for escape, connection, or conflict?

· Change and Adaptation: How do the themes of change and adaptation manifest in the librarian’s life? What challenges does he face, and how does he respond to them?

· Personal Reflection: In what ways did the novel resonate with your own experiences of isolation or community? Did any specific moments or characters evoke personal reflections?

· Impact of Setting: How does the setting of the library and its surrounding environment contribute to the overall mood of the story? What does it reveal about the characters’ lives?

· Concluding Thoughts: What do you think is the central message of The Librarianist? How does the ending of the novel impact your understanding of the characters and their journeys?

 

Patrick DeWitt was born on Vancouver Island, Canada in 1975 and currently lives in Oregon,USA. He wrote the screenplay for Terri, a feature film starring John C. Reilly, which premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival, and is also the author of three novels.

His first novel, Ablutions: Notes for a Novel, was published in 2010 and was a New York Times Editor's Choice. His second novel, The Sisters Brothers (2011), is set in the 1850s Californian Gold Rush and is a variation on a western, described by Jake Wallis Simons in The Independent as an 'unsettling, compelling and deeply strange picaresque novel'. It was shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction (Canada), the Scotiabank Giller Prize (Canada) and won the 2011 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize (Canada). DeWitt's third novel Undermajordomo Minor (2015), published by Granta Books, is described Anthony Cummins from the Guardian as a 'deadpan coming-of-age novel'. It was long listed for the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

The Fleeting Moment of the Unheroic Individual: An Interview with Patrick deWitt about “The Librarianist”

by Ryan Asmussen

July 6, 2023

An interview with Patrick deWitt about his latest novel, "The Librarianist"

In The Librarianist, the latest novel from Patrick deWitt—author of The Sisters Brothers, French Exit—Bob Comet, a 71-year-old retired librarian, has chosen to spend the majority of his life reading, sequestering himself cozily in the pages of the world’s great literature. In his younger days, after Bob’s best friend Ethan had a marriage-destroying affair with his wife Connie, Bob decided that his best course of action was to sink himself into the secure world of books, of fully stocked, neatly organized stacks, and regularly-renewed library cards; to keep himself largely to himself. Now, in his older age, a chance encounter with a resident from a nearby nursing home compels him to delve into the lives of several of the home’s eccentric inhabitants, revising his life, whether he likes it or not, from the passive voice to the active. Not only that, but Bob is forced to go backwards, into his past, to finally examine how his time with the vaudevillian duo of June and Ida, on the rough road in search of performance venues, led him to experience the kind of life-affirming animation one cannot receive from literature. “Why do you read other than live?” Bob imagines strangers asking him—The Librarianist confronts this rather tricky, existential question on behalf of its protagonist and, by extension, his fellow-reading readers.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Ryan Asmussen

What was the impetus for this story? Was there, at least to some extent, already a Bob Comet, or did the character just arrive?

Patrick deWitt

Bob Comet is an invention, and it took some time before he arrived. In an earlier iteration of the novel, Bob was not the character you meet in The Librarianist, but a much wilder personality, a sort of post-Beat dreamer of unrealistically weird dreams, whose erratic behaviors precipitate his divorce from Connie. This story failed to deliver, or I failed to induce its delivery, but I kept the names and eras and locations and continued to dig and push and slowly, over a period of months, this other story came into focus. 

Ryan Asmussen

The structure of the narrative is very fluid in its temporality. Why did you decide upon the way it’s set up now as opposed to, say, a more traditional linear, chronological path?

Patrick deWitt

I could make up something to say in answer to this, pretend I thought it all through and worked out the advantages of an eccentric timeline, but that’s not how my writing mind operates. The truth is that I just set the chapters and eras down in a way that felt commonsensible and pleasing. Obviously I was aware of the non-linear aspect of the story, but my decision not to alter this was less about aesthetics than the sense that the novel was revealing or announcing its form to me. 

Ryan Asmussen

The character of Ethan is deeply important not only to the plot but to the character of Bob and his growth. Ethan is essentially a foil to Bob.

Patrick deWitt

Ethan and Bob are opposites, and their friendship exists as a mutual fascination society. Ethan looks up to Bob as a man devoted to the solitary study of literature; Bob is envious of Ethan’s visceral life experience. Bob’s relationship with Ethan ends badly, but the result of this is that Bob burrows more deeply into his own personality than he would have otherwise. Ethan’s legacy, then, beyond the pain he has introduced into Bob’s life, is to bring Bob closer to his true self, which is not so shabby a deal, when you weigh it all

Ryan Asmussen

The characters of June and Ida really take on a larger-than-life role in the novel’s final third; they’re very unlike anyone whom we’ve met so far. They could easily have a novel of their own. What was your envisioning of their role in the story, thematically?

Patrick deWitt

Because Bob’s childhood is a lonely and sometimes fraught one, I wanted him to experience comradeship; and in wondering what sort of people might recognize young Bob’s qualities, Ida and June came to mind. I could have gone on and on with that group, it’s true. Actually I did go on and on—I cut quite a lot of that story away in edits. 

Ryan Asmussen

Where do you see this novel fitting in with your previous work? How much of a departure for you might it be?

Patrick deWitt

A book is informed by the circumstances under which it’s written, and The Librarianist was composed during a period of dependable not-happiness; because of this, the text is painted with a sense of melancholy that sets it apart from the rest of my work. Also, it seems to me that I’ve written a comparatively traditional novel—less fanciful, less volatile, perhaps truer or more plain in its emotional sentiments. 

Ryan Asmussen

What, above all, is the most lasting idea about or impression of Bob you hope to leave in the reader’s mind? At the close of day, who is this man?

Patrick deWitt

Bob’s story was written as a hat-doff to the interior life, the life of the minor citizen, the small life of modest accomplishment and general stillness. I have no illusions that this novel will change anyone’s point of view; but maybe the occasional reader will recognize something of their experience in Bob, and feel connected or soothed. In the face of the shrill and hateful sound of humanity eating itself, let us remember to praise small stories, the fleeting moment of the unheroic individual. 

RYAN ASMUSSEN is a writer and educator who works as a Visiting Lecturer in English at the University of Illinois at Chicago and writes for Chicago Review of Books and Kirkus Reviews. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, he has published criticism in Creative Nonfiction, The Review Review, and the film journal Kabinet, journalism in Bostonia and other Boston University publications, and fiction in the Harvard Summer Review. His poetry has been published in The Newport Review, The Broad River Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Compass Rose, and Mandala Journal. Twitter: @RyanAsmussen. Website: www.ryanasmussen.com.