On the Scene: Tolstoy, The Harvard Bookstore and Nina Sankovitch

Reportage by Matthew Clair

I was writing. My novel. Well, I wasn't really writing, more like thinking. I was thinking about characters, rolling their pasts through my head, re-imagining biographies and family trees, childhood birthday parties and mid-life crises. Ok, I'll be honest. I was actually on Facebook. The point is this: I was desperately trying to write but I was stuck. I needed inspiration. 

So, I hopped on the bus and headed straight for Harvard Square. I walked up Plympton Street and made a sharp turn into the Harvard Bookstore, where I had heard a reading would be taking place. I longed to hear from another writer, to learn about his or her process, to gain some sense that this (writing) is possible. 

The event was a discussion and reading by Nina Sankovitch of her memoir Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading. Early, I took a seat near the front and waited, watching as young, well-dressed summer school students consumed an entire row with their giggles and a few elderly people with hearing aids hobbled to seats in the very front row. Oh, the typical Harvard reading.

Soon the room grew quiet as Sankovitch was introduced. In purple heels and a black dress, she took to the podium with the faint timidity of a new author (a graduate of Harvard Law School, Sankovitch began writing in 2008, and this memoir is her first book). Her first words, about the death of her sister and the need to find comfort and guidance in books, framed the rest of her discussion.

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair is a memoir about loss and magic and books. It is about the things we take for granted in life and the ways in which reading can help us connect with the world and with others. Sankovitch shared how her decision to spend a year reading one book a day was a decision that grew out of the love she and her deceased sister shared for books and for one another. Throughout the reading and the question & answer period afterward, Sankovitch shared books that inspired her, helped her through her loss, and made her believe again in the magic of books.

As the discussion drew to a close, Sankovitch mentioned an 1890 edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Twice Told Tales. She recalled how when reading it she came across a passage that struck her, something about the language in the passage she found beautiful. The passage, she noticed, had been underlined. Some other person, somewhere and at sometime had also been moved by the very same passage. She now shared a life, a story, an understanding in common with another person whom she would never meet. This, I learned, is the magic of books.