I am unembarrassed to admit that I read, and cherish, the website “Cute Overload”. I breeze by “I Can Has Cheezburger”, “Cats in Sinks”, “My Cat Hates You” and various other sites full of adorable animals every few days. I cry at stories about heroic, lost or abused animals and barely made it through a recent visit to the Atlanta Humane Society. I am a sucker for cats, and therefore a sucker for books about cats.
I’m also a library employee. I went to what is generally known as “library school”, and although I am not a librarian (I’m an archivist, damn it!), I do work in a library and my field shares the philosophy and code of public service that is at the core of librarianship. For these reasons, it seemed that Vicki Myron’s current bestseller, Dewey, was made for a reader like me. Unfortunately, the sweetness of Dewey’s story is almost completely obliterated by Myron’s style and clumsy philosophizing.
Vicki Myron was head of the Spencer (Iowa) Public Library for 25 years. She is the kind of women who values family, public service and has a deep and abiding love for the town of Spencer and the state of Iowa. One cold December morning, the coldest of the year, Myron and another library employee found a tiny orange kitten shoved in the library book drop. The kitten was almost frozen, with frostbite on each paw, and Myron, with the help of her staff, nursed the kitten back to help. They named him Dewey Readmore Books and he became the country’s most famous library cats.
Myron’s book is primarily a chronicle of Dewey’s life, focusing on his mannerisms and habits and the ways in which they pleased library staff, patrons and visitors from all over the world. Dewey was clearly a special cat, in that he was extremely good with people, particularly children. I felt myself close to tears at the story of Dewey’s rescue, and only a monster wouldn’t be touched by the story of Crystal, a nonverbal girl without the ability to move her limbs or head, who would squeal with delight when Dewey would jump up on her wheelchair for a puppeted petting and then willingly sleep zipped inside her jacket.
Despite these stories, I was annoyed by Myron’s narration. The book is as much about the town of Spencer as it is a bout Dewey; Iowa was in economic crisis when Dewey was found, and his slowly growing fame not only brought the town together, but helped increase tourism to a severely depressed area. However, Myron is ill-equipped for any deep analysis and incapable of seeing beyond the borders of Iowa to the hard times that hit all over the country in the 1980s (my own father lost his contracting business when construction went bad in Texas). Her tone is frequently defensive; Myron seems to think that the rest of the country does nothing but mock Iowa and Middle American values as we swill out martinis and enjoy the unearned good life.
The third big story in the book is Myron’s own biography. We learn about her hardscrabble childhood, disastrous marriage, poor relationship with her daughter, and many, many illnesses, including her own breast cancer and cancer in members of her immediate family. At many times these episodes seem like filler; at others they are opportunities to tell other Dewey stories, but they are always also object lessons about the strength and upstanding morality of Iowans.
In addition, Myron has a severe case of “Precious Moments” disease when it comes to her own relationship with Dewey. As much time as Dewey would spend with patrons, other library staff, and even her own daughter, Myron is convinced that he really only loved and communicated with her. Last October I lost my own precious kitty to lung cancer. That’s her photo at the top of this post. Her name was Sparkle and I was devastated by the loss.
Like Myron, I felt like my relationship with my cats was special, and I wallowed in guilt that I had not noticed (or understood) the early signs of her illness. I completely understand how much an animal can mean to a human and I empathize with Myron, but Myron’s convictions are off-putting. When an elderly Dewey makes his last trip to the vet (it’s not a spoiler; you know from the introduction that this moment will come), she is hurt that Dewey would keep his sickness a secret from her. This is just the most egregious example of Myron attributing human-like qualities to Dewey. It makes her less of a professional relating a history and more of a stereotypical crazy cat-lady librarian. It hurts a story that is both touching and inspirational, set in a time and place that is ripe for more serious analysis.
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