Shelf Esteem is a weekly measure of the books on the shelves of writers, editors, and other word lovers, as told to Emily M. Keeler. This week’s shelf belongs to Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, award-winning creative writing instructor and the author of four books, including All the Broken Things, which will be published in the spring of 2014. Her books are primarily in her bright office, with ancillary shelves in the hallway and bathroom keeping control of the overflow. Kuitenbrouwer’s office is in her west-end Toronto home, which shares her home with her husband Marc, two of their three sons, and a very friendly, big brown dog named Chester.
I generally don’t keep any books on the main floor of the house, because I wouldn’t be able to have a proper conversation; I’d be admiring my own embodied knowledge. It’s just an act of vanity to be sitting on a couch, having conversation with somebody, meanwhile glancing at—there’s this great scene in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, in which Stein talks about how she had this dinner party with all these famous artists, between the wars. She and Alice were worried, or I guess it’s Gertrude and Alice, they were worried about the artists arguing. So they organized the room so that each artist was sitting opposite his own art. Of course, their house was full of all these beautiful paintings. But because the artists would only be glancing at their own beautiful works of art, they couldn’t argue apparently.
Upstairs, there are books everywhere. Even in the bathroom. I don’t want to put too many books in there, though, they’ll get to sucking up water. In the hall it’s kind of just overflow. There are a lot of kids books here. And then the kids each have their own bookcases, with more books in them. Which is basically me, cheating by having my children’s books in their rooms. I kind of buy books for them, in the hope that when they leave home they leave the books here. None of this was here when we moved in. It was just walls. Marc built it for me, and as soon as he built it, I had half of it filled. I thought Oh, this is great, I’ll never fill it. And now I have this and overflow as well, and overflow on the side tables. Yeah. So I guess I have a problem.
When I was teaching online it was with the New York Times, and because it was the New York Times brand I had this great calling card to ask authors to speak to the class. I’d sometimes asked authors, if they were to choose one of their books for me to focus on which would it be. And they would sometimes choose books that I wouldn’t have chosen myself. I don’t know if I really want to say anything—it’s kind of rude, right? But it doesn’t really matter; I find that the books I teach that I don’t find so fabulous, my students often love them. There’s so much subjectivity in the medium, so much variance.
