www.montereycountynow.com APRIL 17-23, 2025 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY 19 Library’s collection, is another piece of Orlean’s that will soon be adapted into a film; Paramount TV purchased the rights. Therefore it’s not exactly surprising that the Carmel Public Library Foundation created by the Harrison Memorial Library invited Orlean to the Sunset Cultural Center as a highlight of this year’s programing. There will be a lot of talk about libraries on Tuesday night, April 22, as well as an update on a memoir Orlean is finishing, set to be published on Oct. 14. “Susan Orlean was selected as our 2025 annual fundraiser speaker because of her unique gift for storytelling, her passion and love of libraries and her far-reaching diverse readership,” noted Alexandra Fallon, executive director of Carmel Public Library Foundation. What is Susan Orlean uninterested in? Nothing, really. She is into architecture, animals, coffee, gospel, origami, taxidermy and umbrellas. Many of these topics became the subjects of her New Yorker articles. Her neighbor once told her about his revolutionary umbrella invention, hence the 2008 story about an enlarged canopy with a sort of tail on a tuxedo. Intrigued by the niche world of taxidermy, the art of preserving an animal’s body by mounting or stuffing, Orlean wrote about the 2003 World Taxidermy Championships and its fanatics. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Orlean studied at the University of Michigan and then moved to Portland, Oregon, where she started working as a journalist for the alternative weekly newspaper Willamette Week. Freelancing for Rolling Stone, Esquire and Vogue, she became a staff writer for the Boston Phoenix and later a regular contributor to the Boston Globe. As a staff writer for The New Yorker, she moved to New York City in 1986 and later purchased a farm in upstate New York; she relocated to Los Angeles in 2011, where she now lives in the Kallis House, designed in 1946 by the modernist architect Rudolph Schindler with sweeping views of the San Fernando Valley and bobcats walking around. The Orchid Thief is a book about obsession as much as it is about orchids. Its main character is flower aficionado John Laroche from Florida, who is not above theft trying to obtain a certain type of orchid. Orlean followed him on his wild escapades through the swamps and the Seminole Tribe’s land. A moving character study, the book also portrays the niche but obsessive flower-selling subculture. Why does Laroche do what he does? “I think the real reason is that life has no meaning,” Orlean quotes him as saying in the book. “You wake up, you go to work, you do stuff. I think everybody’s always looking for something a little unusual that can preoccupy them and help pass the time.” Sounds innocent enough, but Orlean concludes that “orchid hunting is a mortal occupation.” Orlean, as worldly as she is domestic, is always surrounded by animals, horses and chickens on her former farm, or cats and dogs in a more urban setting. She loves all the animals and has written quite a bit about them. In 2012 she published Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend, a book on the dog who started as an orphan and became a movie star; in 2001 she published On Animals, a book of essays about chickens, pigeons, tigers, panda bears and more. “If I were a bitch, I’d be in love with Biff Truesdale,” she wrote to open her 1995 article about a show dog, a boxer named Biff Truesdale. Libraries are Orlean’s favorite places to visit. As a child, she used to go there regularly with her mother, who was a big reader. In The Library Book, Orlean talks about her disbelief that, as opposed to a candy shop or a toy store, a young reader discovers that she can browse for hours—and take back home as many books as she wishes. “The library is a whispering post,” she wrote. “You don’t need to take a book off a shelf to know there is a voice inside that is waiting to speak to you, and behind that was someone who truly believed that if he or she spoke, someone would listen.” Naturally, Orlean is neither the first nor last writer fascinated by libraries. That’s how many readers become writers—and why libraries are burnt by enemies of a given culture, from the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria by Julius Caesar in 48 BCE to Hitler’s onslaught that destroyed over 20 libraries in Italy alone. Libraries are full of secrets, hence the Index of Forbidden Books (1550-1966) and contemporary attempts to ban books on gender and sexuality. One of the reasons you haven’t heard about the big and destructive fire in the Los Angeles Central Library is that the same day, on April 29, 1986, Opposite page: Susan Orlean has been writing since the 1980s. Two of her books have been adapted into movies. Left: This still from Adaptation shows Meryl Streep as Susan Orlean, observing her subject, John Laroche (played by Chris Cooper). Her interest in orchids grows as she covers his obsession. Below: Meryl Streep as Susan Orlean, embracing her orchid adventure in the 2002 movie Adaptation. Susan Orlean @susanorlean • Jan 30, 2022 I once wrote a story about the Super Bowl for the New Yorker and forgot to mention who won the game. Susan Orlean @susanorlean • Jul 7, 2022 I honestly can’t remember if I’ve had kids with Elon Musk or not. COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES ENTERTAINMENT
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