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| Ardent Brownfield |
Ardent Brownfield is one of our library assistants on the Public Services team. Our library assistants help out with the library's service desk schedule and much more! Ardent helps write blog posts for the library's blog team! Let's learn a little bit about Ardent in this Not So Frequently Asked Questions interview.
1. What are you currently reading?
I’m rarely, if ever, a one-book-at-a-time kind of person. I’m currently balancing: My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enríquez, and 12 Bytes by Jeanette Winterson. Each is quirky and delightful in its own way.
2. What is the strangest item you’ve “bookmarked” a book with?
A spoon. Correction: The spoon I was using, still slick with Nutella. When you’re reading, desperately, and someone desperately requires your attention, one must resort to desperate measures. This is the measure of a good book.
3. What did you want to be when you grew up?
My first career aspiration was to build a hotel where I could keep every animal that didn’t have a home. Cats. Dogs. Birds. Raccoons. You name it. When I realized this wasn’t the most lucrative endeavor, I decided I wanted to be an author. The irony is not lost on me.
4. What’s a book you wish you could read again for the first time?
This is a tough one…either Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson—my first ever Winterson novel—or my favorite Winterson novel, The Passion. I couldn’t tell you what either plot lines are, so I won’t try. Her work is labyrinthian and stratified. Shovels, trowels, spades, brushes, and sieves later, and I haven’t even begun to breach the “crust” of her work. As such, I find that each time I reread a novel of hers, it’s as though I’m reading it for the first time. Stumbling across such arrestingly strange, experimental, enigmatic greatness is a rare gem. I hope you get the chance to witness her work.
5. Do you have any pets?
Are you a real librarian if you don’t have cats? I have three. Perhaps I’m overcompensating. Perhaps I enjoy coming home to shredded furniture and broken family heirlooms. Perhaps I prefer my coat to have its own coat. You decide. Here’s a picture of my cat—everyone loves pictures of cats.
6. What are your favorite podcasts?
Singularly, “Where Should We Begin? With Esther Perel.” Her podcast—as well as her two published works—is striking, smashing, all of the violent ways of describing unparalleled work. She incisively explores modern relationality and its necessities: intentionality, emotional intelligence, non-verbal attunement, and playful connection. And she does it with the most gorgeous accent.
7. If you could time travel to any literary era for one day, where would you go?
I’m torn between the Victorian era and the Edwardian. Sometimes, I fancy the idea of being a corseted feminist raconteur in the 19th century. Other times, I fancy the idea of being a non-corseted feminist raconteur in the early 20th century. I’d love nearly nothing more than to have a tête-à-tête with Virginia Woolf over a cuppa.
8. If you could shelve yourself in any section of the library, where would you belong?
Where fiction ends and non-fiction begins. I’m a big believer in telling oneself like a story. Reading yourself as a fiction as well as a fact can be incredibly liberating. You’ll know what I mean if you decide to pick up a copy of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Come to think of it, I think I’d like to be delightfully misshelved between two Jeanette Winterson novels.
9. If you were a candle, what would your scent be?
An intoxicating blend of mahogany, rosewood, spiced musk, bergamot, warm amber, and patchouli. Picture an idyllic wood-paneled library, jammed and gorged with books new and old. An aroma so thick and heavy that you can’t stand to linger longer than five minutes. It’s the introvert’s first line of defense. The second line of defense is when I tell you all about my favorite books until you can’t tell if you’ve passed out from the aromatics or my info dumping.
10. What advice would you give college students at Chatt State?
I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer this question. But I give a great deal of unsolicited advice to my younger brother. For this exercise, you are “Younger Brother”. It typically goes something like this:
Younger Brother: I'm lost. I don’t know where I’m going or what exactly it is that I want once I get there. Sometimes I think I have an idea of what I want but then, everything sounds so good. How do you decide?
Me: My best piece of advice is to try as many things as you humanly possibly can in your undergrad. Take a class in Jazz or Tap. And Tap. Mortuary Science. Family Enterprise—Family Enterprise and *then* Mortuary Science so that if you can’t figure out how to make your own family dynamics work, at least you can get rid of the body. Puppet Arts. Arctic Studies. Avoid English (it may change your life in the best of ways, but they lied—it doesn’t translate to a career). Beekeeping. Artificial Intelligence. Quantum Physics. Forgotten Languages. Once you’ve extended yourself in as many directions as humanly possible, follow your intuition. That tug that you feel? You have to follow it. Anything else would be an absolute betrayal of your entire existence. Remember, you can be anything that you have the passion to back. If you want to get your masters in Existential Angst with a Concentration in Literary Overanalysis and Tea-Brewing Techniques, I’m sure it would make for an interesting dissertation. Some folks might think call you a dreamer or a misanthrope for it, but trust me when I say, it’s much better to disappoint others now than to disappoint yourself later. Also, make sure to take every opportunity to travel. Real wealth is of the mind. Oh, and one final thing. Your twenties are going to be a real challenge; I won't sugar coat it. You're going to constantly hear the tick tick ticking of a clock somewhere in the back of your skull. You're not crazy. It's just reverberations along the mortal coil, life reminding you that it is finite. Even so, and this may seem antithetical, but I promise it's not: try not to take life or yourself too seriously. I’m an English major after all.
Younger Brother: I was just trying to figure out my Taco Bell order...
