on consideration I wouldn't call those files mixed-up, just differently organized

[rushthatspeaks]

I am not as immensely grieved to hear of the death of E. L. Konigsberg as I have been to hear of other authors' deaths (still not over losing Diana Wynne Jones and that's been some time), but she was and remains one of my formative writers. She fused a no-nonsense pragmatism and practicality with the ability to let her characters dream big. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is in many ways a fantasy novel, even though nothing physically impossible happens in it. It's just so unlikely, that they go live at the Met, that no one catches them. The whole book is so unlikely as to, when all its circumstances are put together, be in essence impossible, but it's so carefully grounded in physical reality and in logistics that you can let that slide. One of Ursula Le Guin's reviews of her own novel The Beginning Place describes that book as 'for persons who need to know that the best way to get downtown is to take the bus'. I believe she meant this self-disparagingly, but I would use that phrase to describe many of Konigsberg's works, and I mean it as a compliment. If you are running away from home to go live in a museum, you may wish to start by obtaining a train schedule.

My favorite has always been Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, which is not a book about which I have ever seen much discussion, possibly because of the length of the title. I treasure it because both of the principal characters are kinds of weird kid I have also been, and because it is consistently funny without ever being comedy of embarrassment, and because it understands that a certain kind of thirteen-year-old girl, let loose in a reference library, will take up witchcraft as a hobby (well before learning about it as a religion) and then be confused when everyone around reacts... the ways they tend to react.

But I have literally never read a Konigsberg I didn't like. If she was anything like her books, she was brisk and funny and kind, and I have always wished her well, and I still do.

Comments

[anne]

OH MY GOD YOU JUST FOUND THAT BOOK FOR ME I LOVE YOU SO MUCH. Wow. I'd forgotten all about it until I got to Macbeth and then there it was.

[wordweaverlynn]

I am so sorry to hear this -- I love her work.

[zeborah]

Commenting late because I just got to the library on the way home today and have just finished reading The Mixed-up Files. (I read Jennifer, etc as a kid and stumbled on it again a year or two back.) The copy they had was the 35th anniversary edition with an afterword in which she says "I am not yet as old as Mrs Frankweiler"; it's satisfying that she did end up not only reaching but passing that age.

[gallian.livejournal.com]

well said. thank you for this.

[sovay]

My favorite has always been Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth, which is not a book about which I have ever seen much discussion, possibly because of the length of the title.

That was the first one of hers I ever read, because of the title. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler was the one derspatchel was looking at when I told him the news.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

I loved that book when I was a kid, and it is still deeply intertwined with the way I think about museums. However, that was well before I learned to pay attention to author names, so I am only just now learning about her other books. It sounds like she had an amazing ouvre.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

If she was anything like her books, she was brisk and funny and kind, and I have always wished her well, and I still do.

So do I.

Nine

[faerieboots.livejournal.com]

This pretty much summarizes how I feel about hearing of her passing, too--well said indeed.

[gwynnega]

Both those books were immensely important to me when I was a kid.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

When we went to New York a couple of years ago, I dragged the guys through the Childhood Lit Tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was mostly a Mixed-Up Files Tour. It was bliss. I appreciated that book so much, because wonder comes to the practical planners among us as well as to those with their heads further in the clouds.

Also I adore The Beginning Place. So there's that.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

I loved Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth. It says something about the world I grew up in that I didn't notice the racial bits through umpteen rereads, from 1976 through the early 1990s.