SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Anne Fadiman's new book of essays take on topics that might not seem the most urgent of our times. But we soon learn otherwise. She writes about a pet she couldn't pet, a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet Series 2 printer that she couldn't bring herself to replace, eating M&Ms according to color and how that relates to relaxing her scrupulous rules for grammar. She is one of the foremost essayists in America, and her new collection is called, with characteristic precision, "Frog: And Other Essays." Anne Fadiman, who's also a professor and writer in residence at Yale, joins us from New Haven. Thanks so much for being with us.
ANNE FADIMAN: It's wonderful to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: Anne, I can't think of a better way to begin than by asking you to read the first paragraph from the title essay.
FADIMAN: I'd be delighted.
(Reading) Until last summer, we had a dead frog in our freezer. When Bunky died, George and I thought we should wait to bury him till both our grown children were home, so we put him in a Ziploc bag and propped him on his side on a shallow shelf in the freezer door just above the ice maker. Bunky was flat and compact and very soon as rigid as a cellphone. He fit perfectly. I'd always wondered what Kitchen Aid intended that shelf for. It was too narrow for any food I could think of, but now we knew it was intended to hold a frog.
SIMON: Well, bless Bunky. How did he enter your family life?
FADIMAN: By accident, like most unpetable pets of his sort, via a tadpole coupon left under a Christmas tree by a grandmother, eventually redeemed and a tadpole arrived in the mailbox. And at that point, we thought that this tadpole would be as evanescent as most frogs seem to be, but he lasted for at least 16 years.
SIMON: Does the fact that Bunky was utterly silent...
FADIMAN: Oh, he wasn't silent. At night, he ribbeted.
SIMON: Well, I meant in response to you. But all right. Go ahead.
FADIMAN: In response to us. Yes, his ribbits, very poignantly, were theoretically to attract female African clawed frogs. And of course, the nearest African clawed frog was God knows how many hundreds of miles away and wasn't going to respond. But thinking about Bunky's role in our family made me ask myself questions like, well, what is a pet? Must there be reciprocal affection? What do we owe a pet? We owed him more than we gave him. And that's what this very ashamed, guilty essay on a seemingly trivial subject is about.
SIMON: You seem to really love a good list. What's the attraction there?
FADIMAN: I think a good list is almost like a poem. I love the notion of gathering a bunch of disparate things together and thinking very carefully about which things should be next to other things. What sequence do we want? What's going to sound good? In my own essays, I'm certainly not a poet, but lists are maybe the closest clumsy thing I can do to approach a poem.
SIMON: Let's give that a try. Could I ask you to read the supplies carried by Robert Falcon Scott's first Antarctic expedition on the Discovery?
FADIMAN: Absolutely. So this takes place in 1902.
(Reading) Its cargo included guns, axes, saws, sledges, skis, compasses, chronometers, barometers, thermometers, microscopes, telescopes, magnetographs, theodolites, fireworks for signaling, explosives for blasting through ice, a windmill to generate electricity, a balloon for aerial surveys, a set of magic tricks, a collection of theatrical costumes, a piano, a harmonium, 36 cases of sherry, 5,000 pounds of marmalade and more than 1,500 books, 48 of them by Sir Walter Scott. The Discovery also carried a single typewriter, a Remington No. 7, on which Ernest Shackleton, the third lieutenant in charge of holds, stores, provisions and deep-sea water analysis, would perform an additional and perhaps even more vital duty as the founding editor of Antarctica's only magazine, the South Polar Times.
SIMON: All right, you've convinced me. That's kind of poetic.
FADIMAN: Thank you. I'm glad that you see it that way.
SIMON: What struck you about the South Polar Times? Which I confess, I let my subscription lapse.
FADIMAN: Well, most people have. It was a pretty hard magazine to subscribe to. Each issue came out in a very limited edition, as in one copy. So there were these two expeditions to Antarctica, led by Robert Falcon Scott in 1902 and 1911. And because for many months of the year, it was pitch dark and they couldn't try to get to the South Pole, and they couldn't do any scientific work. The idea was, how do you keep the men from getting depressed and going nuts? And part of it was, let's have a magazine. And so every month or so, a new issue would come out with hand-drawn illustrations, contributions, many of them comical, by the men on the expedition. It was passed around and chuckled over and read hundreds of times, one of the most touching periodicals I've ever heard of because all these men were facing grave danger and the strong possibility of death as soon as the sun started to come out, and, indeed, five of them did end up dying on the way back from the South Pole. But, boy, they just acted like teenage boys making fun jokes and sharing in-crowd humor.
SIMON: That kind of reminds you of the power of the printed word, doesn't it?
FADIMAN: Yes. And, of course, in this case, it was the typed word. Each expedition had one typewriter, and that typewriter belonged to the editor of the South Polar Times.
SIMON: In these days of short bursts for attention, do people have time anymore for real essays that can have a complexity of thought?
FADIMAN: I think we have to make time. And I'm always scratching my head because so much of technology is supposed to save us time. We should have a lot of time left in our lives to not only read an essay - that's pretty short. You know, we should be able to read war and peace. So if we can't even read an essay, I think that we're really in a pickle.
SIMON: But I wonder, have people grown to doors, click by click, strident opinions, but not complex, nuanced ones of the kind you can find in your essays?
FADIMAN: Yes, why do you think I wrote these essays?
SIMON: OK. That was easier than I thought.
(LAUGHTER)
FADIMAN: I'm trying to break through that kind of black and white, yes or no, let's say it in less than a page. Let's make the opinion always clear. Let's never change our opinions. You know, that sort of thing is OK for the newspaper, but it's not OK for the essayist who lives in a grayer, more nuanced, I hope, sometimes more subtle, and mainly more surprising area. The essayists I like best surprise me, and that's what I try to do in mine. I'm sure not always with success, but that's what I'm attempting.
SIMON: Anne Fadiman. Her new book, "Frog: And Other Essays." Thank you so much for being with us.
FADIMAN: It was a total pleasure.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE CB3'S "BUNNY HOP") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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