Martha Cooley's first novel, The Archivist, has its roots in two points of fact. One is the troubled nature of T.S. Eliot's marriage to his first wife, Vivienne. The second is that Emily Hale, his confidante throughout this period, gave to Princeton University Library the letters Eliot wrote to her on condition that no one be allowed to read them until the year 2019.
In the novel, Matt Lane is the self-described "guardian" of these letters, a post he assumed after his wife, Judith, committed suicide. As an archivist, he is a fastidious, bookish snob who is "rough on pseudo-scholars" and "antagonized" whenever "some unscrupulous researcher" asks for a peek at the restricted correspondence. He tolerates the encroachment of technologies (fax, computers, microfiche) into the library, but thinks they ultimately have nothing to do with an intellectual life.
His aloofness is breached by Roberta Spire, a young poet and graduate student who asks to see the so-called Hale letters. He sees in the student's eyes the "genuine intention" he can't help but respond to. His conversations with Roberta about Eliot's relationship with Vivienne and Emily Hale become more than the tests he conducts to assess her worthiness as a scholar. They lead him to reexamine his own troubled life with his late wife.
As the story unfolds through Matt's first person narrative, parallels between T. S. and Vivienne Eliot's real-life experience become manifest in the lives of Cooley's fictional couple. In particular, Vivienne Eliot is given a voice through the character of Judith. Like Vivienne, Judith writes poetry and, over time, begins to show signs of emotional instability. Matt finds obsessive and frightening Judith's need to learn the truth about the Holocaust and about her own Jewishness. Ultimately, he persuades her to allow him to commit her to an institution where she lives for six years before taking her own life.
In one of the most effective sections of the novel, we hear Judith's voice through the pages of the journal she kept while institutionalized. Just as Eliot had pleaded with Hale to destroy his letters, Judith wished her journal to be destroyed after her death. Instead, it is returned to Matt, who reads it and locks it away. But only after he meets and is attracted to Roberta is he forced to come to terms with his own culpability in the destruction of his marriage and his wife.
As an archivist, Matt Lane is an anachronism. His type existed once, but is rapidly being replaced by professionals who are dedicated to making collections accessible to as broad an audience as possible using available technologies. Were a poet's confidante to bring letters to Princeton today, any restrictions accepted would be more reasonable ones. Happily, Cooley gives her archivist hero a non-stereotypic personality. He is depicted as an emotionally complex man who faces disturbing aspects of his past with honesty and maturity and who learns, finally, how to love. His concluding act of redemptive destruction is not the impulse of an archivist, but that of a poet. - Cathy Henderson