tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57343608841446648182024-03-20T06:28:56.559-07:00Gently ReadA book blog containing book reviews and recommendations.gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-68338137468078924412012-09-22T17:01:00.001-07:002012-09-22T17:01:34.130-07:00Slammerkin by Emma Donaghue<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 1px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 1px; color: #181818; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 19px;">The "heroine" (I use the term loosely) of this book is Mary Saunders, a teenage prostitute living in the slums of London, circa 18th century. Mary's defining characteristics are a fierce will to survive, a burning resentment of the miserable deadening poverty she was born to, and an unquenchable thirst for color and fine fabrics. While reading the book I was reminded of a cross between Moll Flanders and Sarah Waters' Fingersmith. Encountering a rough life on the streets, she becomes educated in how to survive, but the knowledge twists her in numerous ways, and her moral compass goes haywire. This is a compelling book, especially the first half; the descriptions are vivid and the plot pulls you in. It's well-written. At first you find yourself rooting for Mary, but eventually you feel pity for her and not much else. By the end I was simply hoping that somebody would stop her from victimizing others.</span>gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-58580706336638563542012-07-07T09:19:00.000-07:002012-07-07T09:19:43.452-07:00Miss Marjoribanks by Margaret Oliphant"Miss Marjoribanks" is a big, thick, hilarious book about middle-class Victorian society. Margaret Oliphant is often compared to Jane Austen but her humor is more subversive and ironic. Lucilla Marjoribanks is only 18 when she returns home from boarding school, determined to forego marriage in order to devote her life to "being a comfort" to her widowed papa and a "leader" of her very tiny provincial community. Lucilla is described as a physically large and imposing young woman, possessed of singleminded will and formidable energy, and she is quite a comic marvel as she sets about making over Carlingford society in her image. She does this by redecorating the drawing room, hosting Thursday evening get-togethers, doing a bit of matchmaking, a smidgeon of charity, and "setting an example for the young people". She's a legend in her own mind, a Napolean, a genius at micromanaging the lives of others, who figures that she has ten years to accomplish her goals before she "starts to go off", like an old piece of cheese. She never goes up against the stultifying social conventions of the time. Oh no, she embraces them wholeheartedly, because Lucilla is nothing if not conventional. She expects marriage proposals to come her way regularly, and sees them as as her just due, but at the same time she's careful to keep her emotions "unengaged". She "respects" religion and the clergy, but never actually believes in anything, because that would be <u>so</u> Low Church. She bosses and patronizes people so charmingly that she engenders only admiration, not resentment. Friends and neighbors get a tear in their eye, and think "dear girl", while she's walking all over them. Her strategizing and plotting are so complex that it sometimes was a challenge just keeping up with her... but never fear, Lucilla has it all figured out. Yet there is an underlying sadness and a threat, which becomes apparent 2/3 of the way through the book, when there is a sudden reversal of fortunes. And it is brought home that the position of an unmarried middle-class woman in Victorian society was precarious indeed, and there really <u>is</u> a gaping chasm below Lucilla's feet. The conclusion of the book is not as triumphant as you might wish, because the reality is not as rosy as Lucilla's determination to see it.<br />
<br />gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-10850862877323094512012-06-02T10:17:00.001-07:002012-06-02T10:17:10.727-07:00Hilary Mantel - Bring Up the Bodies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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It was with a sigh of satisfaction that I finished the last
pages of “Bring Up the Bodies”, the sequel to “Wolf Hall”, Hilary Mantel’s version
of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. How anyone could breathe new life into this
hoary old saga is a miracle, but Mantel (May I call you Hilary?) does it so
powerfully and brilliantly that I want to kiss the hem of her gown.</div>
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To me, the difference between a good writer and a great
writer is that a great writer makes you want to slowly reread whole sections
again and again, so you can soak up the experience and make it last longer. She
not only portrays the political and sexual intrigues of Henry’s court, the
monstrous egos, subtle manipulations, and dangerous traps, but she does it in a
way that makes it all seem as relevant as today’s headlines. </div>
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Like this:</div>
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“But Parliament cannot see how it is the state’s job to
create work. Are not these matters in God’s hands, and is not poverty and
dereliction part of His eternal order?...It is an outrage to the rich and
enterprising to suggest that they should pay an income tax, only to put bread
in the mouths of the work shy.” </div>
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Mantel’s insights in to the human condition are timeless,
and that’s what she brings to life in this book. The historical details are
there; in fact every page is steeped in them. But the inner monologue, the feelings
and the thoughts are as familiar as the inside of your own brain. What do five
hundred years signify when it comes to the real core of human motivation?</div>
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And how does she take Thomas Cromwell, one of the most
feared and demonic figures of history, and turn him into the most sympathetic
and decent one in the book, whose principles are no worse than they should be,
given the bloodthirsty times he is living in? At the same time she gives us a
sense of the terror he strikes in the hearts of those who are unlucky enough to
come up before him in his role as agent and prosecutor on behalf of the King. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mantel keeps the two sides of him in
balance. He is a grief-stricken father mourning his wife and two little
daughters, who died from the sweating sickness. He keeps a lockbox with their
necklaces and Latin exercise books, and he remembers a Christmas costume made
of peacock feathers that his daughter wore for a parish play. He misses his
wife: “She is a blur now in his mind, a whisk of skirts around a corner. That
last morning of her life, as he left the house he thought he saw her following
him, caught a flash of her white cap….By the time he came home that night her
jaw was bound and there candles at her head and feet.”</div>
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The other side of him is the ruthless pragmatist who knows
what must be done: “Would Norris understand if he spelled it out? He needs
guilty men. So he has found men who are guilty. Though perhaps not guilty as
charged.” As he patiently, and wearily explains to his nephew, “Once you have
exhausted the process of negotiation and compromise, once you have fixed on the
destruction of an enemy, that destruction must be swift and it must be perfect.
Before you even glance in his direction, you should have his name on a warrant,
the ports blocked, his wife and friends bought, his heir under your protection,
his money in your strong room and his dog running to your whistle. Before he
wakes in the morning, you should have the axe in your hand.”</div>
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In “Wolf Hall” there is a scene where Thomas first sees the finished
portrait of himself done by Hans Holbein, and he says, startled, “Christ, I
look like a murderer”, and his son Gregory says to him, "Didn't you know?"</div>
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He’s a complex character and Mantel makes him a fascinating
one.</div>
<!--EndFragment-->gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-25197343292099961972012-05-26T10:33:00.003-07:002012-05-26T10:34:28.414-07:00Anya Seton"Green Darkness" by Anya Seton: This is the fourth of Seton's books I've read and I had very mixed feelings about it. I really loved her other books, "Katherine" and "The Winthrop Woman", which were true historical novels. The historical detail and the behavior and interior life of the characters seemed faithful to the era they lived in. The novels were "all of a piece" and nothing rang false. Whereas "Green Darkness" and "Dragonwyck" fall more into the category of the English or American Gothic romance/thriller, centered around a beautiful, seductively innocent heroine who is enraptured with a dark & glamorous "hero" who later turns out to be psychotic. You know, a bit of a bodice-ripper. "Green Darkness" is actually a hybrid creature that combines elements of both styles--gothic romance and historical fiction. The book is divided into three parts, with a time travel / reincarnation plot device that allows the characters to simultaneously inhabit the 16th century Tudor era and the 20th century.<br />
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Nope, just didn't work for me.<br />
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So many of the reviews I read (later on, after I'd finished the book) mentioned that they'd first encountered this book as a teenager. That explains a lot. I can definitely see how this book would thrill an adolescent with a romantic turn of mind. I will never forget discovering "Wuthering Heights" as a 15-year old and being absolutely blown away... I'd never encountered <u>anything</u> so romantic as poor Cathy and her mad Heathcliff on the moors. But being 57 and a little jaded, it's not quite my thing.<br />
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I'm looking forward to reading "Bring Up the Bodies", the sequel to Hilary Mantel's "Wolf Hall". Now <u>there</u> is a writer who can capture the past and interpret the mindsets of people who lived five centuries ago, so skillfully that you feel as if they are whispering their story directly into your ear. I can't wait.<br />
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</div>gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-17441527319874697992012-05-06T15:39:00.003-07:002012-05-06T15:40:05.268-07:00Gaskell, Maugham, and The Time Traveler's WifeFinished reading Elizabeth Gaskell's "North and South" and W. Somerset Maugham's "The Painted Veil". Promptly followed that up by viewing the 2004 BBC mini-series of "North and South", which Netflix tagged as "dark and romantic". Indeed it is, what with Richard Armitage casting dark, smoldering looks at Daniela Denby-Ashe, who at first responds by acting snippy and offended, letting her prejudiced attitudes toward brash Northerners and men of trade overtake her well-bred British manners. The early sparks between them lead to mutual misunderstandings and later, to longing and unrequited passions. I make it sound drippier than it is; actually, I think, the developing romance between them is actually handled quite nicely, with both of them moving gradually and subtly from their initially disastrous first impressions to a deeper understanding and appreciation for one another. I loved the way the older generation is portrayed in this series, which is due to sensitive directing and great acting. Tim Pigott-Smith and Lesley Manville as Margaret's parents are lovely and warm-hearted, and not the rigid and limited characters of the novel. Sinead Cusack as Mrs. Thornton adds tremendous layers of depth to her character, making her much more complex and appealing than she comes across in Gaskell's book. Overall, a good example of how the filmed version can <i>sometimes</i> be an improvement on the original source material.<br />
I'm waiting for my DVD of "The Painted Veil" (2006, with Naomi Watts and Edward Norton) to arrive in the mail. If nothing else, it should be a feast for the eyes in its depiction of 1920's colonial China. <br />
<br />
In the meantime I am in the middle of "The Time Traveler's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger, a best-seller, apparently, although I don't quite get why. It starts out with a science fiction premise which is promising...Henry, the main character has a "chrono-displacement disorder" that causes him to time travel unexpectedly and without warning. Despite this malady he falls in love with and eventually marries Clare, who he first meets when they are both in their 20's. She is able to stick with him and to accept the fact that he's liable to drop out of her life at any given moment and vanish into another time and place, because she remembers meeting him at various stages of her childhood & adolescence, when he time-traveled back to her past. Never mind-- it isn't supposed to make sense. It's a good premise that it entirely wasted in my opinion. The love story just isn't that interesting, and neither are Clare and Henry. Much is made of her long, red hair, and his interest in punk rock bands of the 70's. They have a lot of sex, to indicate how strong their bond is. They have trouble making their relationship work because of Henry's tendency to disappear at critical moments, but you're meant to believe that their love is strong enough to withstand the stress. Please. This was also made into a movie version in 2009 but I don't think I can bear to watch it. The reviews were uniformly devastating. On to better material, hopefully.<br />
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<br />gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-6327732052292865552012-04-30T14:54:00.002-07:002012-04-30T14:54:44.389-07:00Time slipsDon't know what happened to my blogging. February went by in a rush of making travel plans to go to Israel, and travel is what we did. Then spring seemed to seep into everyone's bones and people woke up and started calling me to do garden work. So that took up all of March and April. I did do some reading during this time but very little writing (other than emails and Facebook posts!) and no blogging.<br />
Books I read: Toni Morrison, "A Mercy"; Sylvia Townsend Warner, "The Flint Anchor"; F.M. Mayor, "The Rector's Daughter" and "The Third Miss Symons"; Julian Gloag, "Our Mother's House". My book club is reading "Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China" by Jung Chang, and I'm trying so damn hard to finish it but it's long and repetitive, and although it's inherently a gripping story, it is recounted in the driest possible manner. Of everything that I've read, only the Toni Morrison stands out as a brilliant piece of literature. I'm going to finish Eliz. Gaskell's "North and South" and move on from there to Maugham's "The Painted Veil" and maybe next to Elizabeth Bowen. I'm curious about Bowen, don't know how I'll like her. <br />
I've decided to only keep the books I love and give away the ones I feel lukewarm or ambivalent about. That should thin out the bookshelves. I got rid of so much when I moved, creating loads of space at the time. But that was two years ago, and by this point I've accumulated as much as I ever had, if not more.<br />
I need to exert some willpower and be ruthless about weeding out the chaff.gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-90327140620874280002012-01-22T11:43:00.000-08:002012-01-22T11:43:11.632-08:00Time, Seasons, and the Making of ListsYesterday the winds were so fierce; they tore off the last remaining dead foliage clinging to the sycamores and liquidambers. I no longer have those spiky little balls carpeting my lawn, and I'm grateful for that because I kept stepping on them. The birches, crape myrtles and valley oaks have been stripped bare for weeks, and even the koelreuterias have dropped their beautiful seed pods. It's Jan 22 and the landscape finally has that wintery look. Except that at this very moment the pear trees are bursting into full blossom, o I suppose that means spring is on the way. The seasons in SoCal sure are weird. Are we coming or going? I'm never quite sure.<br />
<br />
I'm going to keep track of my reading this year, not just the books I post about, but all of it. Even the embarrassing stuff. Here's the list for 2012 so far: The Sisters by Mary Lovell (see post); Neil Gaiman's The Sandman; Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes; Fruit of the Tree by Edith Wharton (also posted); Jo Walton--Farthing and also Ha'Penny; Mark Vonnegut--Just Like Mental Illness Only More So.gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-12685770244699439012012-01-21T11:40:00.000-08:002012-01-21T11:40:53.931-08:00The Sisters:Saga of the Mitford Family by Mary S. Lovell<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYvwF7TxlgwMRvslLLJSt_b_1deDFPQaQndzOSB0FQidewmiBQGzMVcFGsLoVm2iLaBB_KoBiVc9LEc081Gwzmj6rzEk8OgMqY84-AB9sMNIfdmEVAnj3xGeqWSldnS8dpC70_b0F67Ill/s1600/Mitford_sisters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYvwF7TxlgwMRvslLLJSt_b_1deDFPQaQndzOSB0FQidewmiBQGzMVcFGsLoVm2iLaBB_KoBiVc9LEc081Gwzmj6rzEk8OgMqY84-AB9sMNIfdmEVAnj3xGeqWSldnS8dpC70_b0F67Ill/s320/Mitford_sisters.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">The Sisters: Saga of the Mitford Family – Mary S. Lovell</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I rarely read biographies. I find myself getting so bogged down in extraneous detail that my eyes glaze over. That’s why “The Sisters” is so unusual. It’s certainly the first time I’ve come across a biography that I had to read compulsively without stopping. In the midst of a Downton Abbey binge, I picked this up because of the topic of British aristocratic families between the wars adjusting to upheaval of the early 20<sup>th</sup> century, etcetera. Being American, I didn’t know much about the Mitford sisters when I started, although I’d heard of Nancy Mitford’s novels “Pursuit of Love” and “Love in a Cold Climate”. And I was vaguely familiar with Jessica Mitford, and knew she had written “The American Way of Death”. But this was merely the tip of the iceberg. Once I discovered the entire family—six sisters, one brother, and their parents, cousins, spouses, etc. –well, it was too, too fascinating, as the Bright Young Things would have said. While reading the book I was continually thinking, “What? I-don’t-believe-it-this-can’t-be-for-real!” as the bizarre eccentricities and absurdities piled up. There is enough material here for at least two or three mini-series on the BBC. How is it possible that no one has yet done a biopic or even a spoof of a biopic? Maybe it’s because the last of the sisters, Deborah, is still alive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I have no way of knowing how closely she adheres to the factual record, but Mary Lovell has a good reputation, having written other fine biographies (Amelia Earhart, Richard Burton, Beryl Markham) before this. My understanding is that she built upon the work of others, but she also made ample use of her access to Diana and Deborah, who both granted extensive interviews.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Mitford girls were the ultimate in tabloid fodder in Britain during the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. The public couldn’t get enough of them, and it’s not hard to see why. They were famous for being aristocratic, good-looking, fashionable, witty, charming, etc. In addition they were also wildly eccentric, outrageous, naïve, impolitic and controversial. They inspired admiration as well as hatred. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I will try to quickly run through the highlights. The family consisted of Farve -- David Freeman-Mitford, the 2<sup>nd</sup> Baron Redesdale -- and Muv -- Sydney Bowles, whose grandfather “Tap” Bowles founded two successful magazines, “Vanity Fair” and “The Lady”-- and their offspring. The seven children were raised in a highly protected, isolated, rural atmosphere of genteel poverty. They were sheltered if not exactly cosseted. Forbidden to go to school, they were taught at home (at least the girls were) so their education was spotty, but the necessities were not neglected: riding, French, the concept of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">noblesse oblige</i>, and of course, manners and deportment. The children relied on one another for company, and they were a very close and loving family that also quarreled violently and existed for years on what they referred to as “non-speakers” with one another. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Nancy was the eldest. She dabbled in socialism, and authored several witty books based on fictionalized accounts of her family and friends, but she mainly dressed beautifully, partied lavishly, and hung out with the right crowd of funny, glittering people –the ones who were immortalized by Evelyn Waugh in “Vile Bodies” and “Brideshead Revisited”. Later in life she moved to Paris and carried on a long-term affair with Charles de Gaulle’s right hand man, Col. Gaston Palewski. </div><div class="MsoNormal">Pam, the second-born, was apparently the most domesticated and the least outrageous of the sisters. She did not care about politics or parties, but was content to be a gentlewoman farmer and breeder of animals. She married Derek Jackson, a world-renowned physicist who was one of a set of identical twins. On the day of their wedding (or the day after, I’m not sure), Derek's twin brother was killed in a motoring accident and he never got over the loss. After they divorced she entered into a lesbian relationship that lasted for the remainder of her life.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Diana was the most stunningly gorgeous of the sisters, although they were all unbelievably beautiful. Married at a young age to Bryan Guinness (heir to the Guinness brewing fortune) she left her husband to embark upon a scandalous affair with Sir Oswald Mosley, principally known as founder of the BUF, i.e., British Union of Fascists. Mosley was perhaps the most reviled man in Britain during WW2 and the post-war years. Diana and Mosley eventually married, but the marriage was kept secret for over a year so as not to upset his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">other</i> mistress, who was his first wife’s sister. Diana herself was an ardent supporter of Fascism and a great admirer of Adolph Hitler, as was her mother and several of her siblings. She attended rallies at Nuremberg, as well as the 1936 Olympics, as Hitler’s personal guest. Her close connection to him as well as to Winston Churchill (who was a cousin) made her a person of interest to the British secret police, who regularly tapped her phone and monitored her whereabouts. Diana and Oswald both spent three years interned in a British prison as enemy sympathizers under the infamous Regulation 18B, which suspended habeas corpus during wartime. Her sister Nancy was one of those who informed on her. There were protest demonstrations in the streets upon the Mosley’s release from prison in 1943.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Next in line was Unity, who also became obsessed with Hitler when she was a teenager, and worshipped him as if he were a god or a rock star. Unity took this hero worship to extremes that nobody could have anticipated. She became part of Hitler’s inner circle, and moved to Germany to be near him. It was long suspected that they had an affair but this was never proven. Unity was vilified in the British press as a rabid Fascist and anti-Semite. Wherever she went in England, crowds gathered and sometimes erupted in violence. She came to believe that it was her destiny to broker an alliance between Britain and Germany in order to prevent war between the two countries. When despite her best efforts, war was declared, her reaction was to take a pistol and shoot herself in the head. She survived, with significant brain damage, but was never the same. Hitler paid her hospital bills in full. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Whew, I need to catch my breath. Okay, onward we go…</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The next youngest sister was Jessica (Decca) who rebelled against the rest of the family by became a noted Communist. She quarreled endlessly with her family over politics and it ultimately led to a schism. As a youngster Decca kept a bust of Lenin in the room she shared with her sister, while Unity decorated her side of the room with Nazi flags and swastikas on the wall. At age 18 Decca ran away from home and eloped to Spain with her second cousin Esmond, a nephew of Winston Churchill. (Decca was also related to Winston through her aunt Clementine.) The young couple dreamed of fighting with the Loyalists against Franco, but they later moved to America, which caused a total breach with the family. When WW2 broke out Edmond enlisted in the Canadian RAF and was shot down over the North Sea. Decca subsequently married a Jewish lawyer from Oakland, CA, joined the American Communist Party, and became a civil right activist. <br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">The youngest sister, Deborah (Debo) married Lord Andrew Cavendish, later Duke of Devonshire. Lord Andrew’s brother, Billy Hartington, married Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy (yes, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">those</i> Kennedy’s). They had to marry against their families’ wishes, (particularly those of Rose Kennedy. Her objection was due to the time-honored quarrel between Catholics and Protestants.) This couple’s happiness was doomed from the start. As soon as they returned from their honeymoon, Kathleen received word that her brother Joe Jr.’s fighter plane had been shot down. One month later they got the news that Hartington had also been killed in action. It was as a result of Billy’s death that Debo’s husband Andrew inherited the dukedom. Debo is still alive and breeds fancy chickens on the ancestral Chatsworth estate.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Somewhere in the middle there was Tom, the only brother, who went to Eton, served with distinction in the war, and was killed in a skirmish with Japanese forces in Burma in 1945. Tom also had a fling with British Fascism, and was an admirer of Hitler, but he later fought on England’s side against Germany. He never married but had male and female lovers.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Have you followed me so far? And this is all one family! It’s not only mind-boggling to consider what they themselves did to attract attention, but also to contemplate the others they either knew intimately or rubbed elbows with. Which turned out to be everybody of importance in the 20<sup>th</sup> century on both sides of the Atlantic, and I do mean everybody. This included their relations, the Winston Churchills, as well as their friends and close acquaintances, including Evelyn Waugh, Aldous Huxley, Kay Graham, Cecil Beaton, the Kennedy’s (Jack, Ted, Bobby, etc.), Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson (who Muv amusingly tried to look up in the Peerage and was puzzled at not finding her there), Lucien Freud, Harold Macmillan, and various Queens of the Realm.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">How fascinating can you get? I mean, really!</div>gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-6660905529106740052012-01-19T12:48:00.000-08:002012-01-19T12:48:23.167-08:00Edith Wharton - Fruit of the Tree<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I really do love Edith Wharton; I’ve read a lot of her fiction over the years, ever since I first fell in love with House of Mirth. Not everything is flawless, but she certainly comes close to perfection most of the time. Just got around to reading this lesser-known novel, published in 1907. For some reason it has been largely out of print for years. Not considered one of her best efforts, some people find it heavy-handed, a little preachy and melodramatic. I don’t care to quibble; in my opinion, a “lesser” Wharton fiction is still better than many contemporary works, even some that achieve best-seller status. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">“Fruit of the Tree” has all of what many consider the hallmarks of her better known work. These are 1) detailed, biting depiction of American upper-class society in the late 19<sup>th</sup> and early 20<sup>th</sup> centuries; 2) deep understanding and empathy for her characters as they struggle to reconcile individual happiness and well-being with the implacably cruel moral judgments and requirements of society; 3) examination of the insufficiencies of communication between people, of how difficult it is for two people to truly understand one another.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Wharton is great as usual in her skewering of the wealthier class--that privileged 1% who’ve always been with us, the ones whose luxuries and comfort are purchased at great cost to others. There are three main characters—Bessy Langhope, a pampered young widow who has inherited a bustling, profitable textile mill; John Amherst, who is himself a gentleman to the manor born, but has thrown aside convention and taken a job as an assistant manager in the mill; and Justine Brent, a sensitive and intelligent young nurse who befriends them both. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Bessy is a tender-hearted young woman who has always taken her wealth for granted. She’s given very little thought to the fact that her dresses and vacations would not be possible if not for the sweat and toil of the underfed and uneducated mill workers who must accept dangerous substandard working conditions if they want to feed their families. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Upon meeting Bessy for the first time, John sees an opening, a glimmer of hope, and he seizes his opportunity to awaken Bessy’s social conscience and possibly enlist her help in reforming the deplorable conditions at the mill. She in turn is equally drawn by his personal magnetism and his compassionate ideals. This quickly leads to their falling in love and marrying. While Bessy starts out enthusiastically supportive of John’s plans, she soon begins to feel unhappy and neglected. Their marriage starts to founder, and Justine steps in as go-between and peacemaker. It gets much more complicated than this, as the novel draws on other themes and subplots, including euthanasia, industrialization, worker’s rights, modern medicine, drug addiction, blackmail, capitalism run amok, conspicuous consumption, and income redistribution.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s a lot of meat to cram into one book, especially when the majority of the plot centers on a romantic love triangle. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I can see how Wharton could be accused of heavy-handedness in places. The millworkers come across as caricatures, like the twin waifs in Dickens’ “Christmas Carol”, intended to convey the abstract concepts of ignorance and want. They are unimportant except as they illustrate the larger problem of income inequality and social justice. Of course, this attitude exactly mirrors that of John Amherst, and constitutes his primary failing as a human being and a husband—he, too, is blinded by his zeal for the larger moral question, and doesn’t see how his behavior causes harm every bit as great as that which he’s trying to alleviate.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Every novel by Wharton focuses on the way people often suffer from the moral tangles they get themselves into, and the terrible choices they are forced to make. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Few authors have her ability to delve as deeply and to portray the human cost in such heartbreaking terms.<o:p></o:p></span></div><!--EndFragment-->gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-66198889422119432002011-12-28T00:02:00.000-08:002011-12-28T00:02:19.068-08:00Little, Big - John Crowley<blockquote class="tr_bq"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u0BfYbakZBQ/Tvpl4lQ8HnI/AAAAAAAAAAQ/uHiLtrT3Ex0/s1600/Crowley-Little-Big.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-u0BfYbakZBQ/Tvpl4lQ8HnI/AAAAAAAAAAQ/uHiLtrT3Ex0/s1600/Crowley-Little-Big.jpg" /></a></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I'm going to try to review Little, Big, and I hope I don't get tangled up, but it may be unavoidable because it's that kind of book. I really liked this book but I can see that I'm going to have a difficult time explaining why others would enjoy it. It's a modern fantasy but it's also a sad and moving saga about several generations of the Drinkwater clan, whose members have always had a rather unique connection to the realm of Faerie. They are not <i>of </i>Faerie themselves, but they believe themselves to be of special interest--both "protected", as well as privy to certain knowledge that ordinary people lack. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The book jumps back and forth chronologically across space and time, and it is sometimes useful to refer to the family tree in the front of the book, especially since characters of different generations sometimes share the same name. There are certain constants that anchor the story, one of these being the family home--Edgewood-- a spectacular but now-crumbling edifice that was built around the turn of the century by architect and family patriarch, John Drinkwater. Edgewood is an amalgam of many houses, or several houses that overlap each other. Think of a drawing by M.C. Escher...corridors with odd turnings that don't follow the laws of physics, staircases leading nowhere, etc. Edgewood is a character in its own right, from its lintels to its floorboards, including the mice nesting inside its walls. It is set in a bucolic landscape on the outskirts of a large city, which is referred to as The City, or sometimes the Apple, but it's not really the NYC that we all know; instead it's some dystopian version of it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The book opens with Smoky Barnable setting out on a journey that will culminate in his marriage to Daily Alice, his beloved. However, his mode of travel has to meet certain conditions: he has to walk rather than ride, and must beg or find a place to sleep, but not pay for it with money. Smoky goes along willingly with this, because he's been told that that he is part of the Tale, as is everyone in the Drinkwater clan. But what the Tale is, nobody knows. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There is no use trying to summarize the plot, since plot seems to be the least of the author's concerns, and is almost incidental to the fun to be had from reading this 500+ page tome. It's the opposite of a page-turner; it meanders along in a leisurely way, and wanders off on tangents about religion, philosophy, and the weather. The atmosphere is dream-like and a lot of the action actually occurs while people are asleep or dreaming. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The characters are interesting and memorable. First, I love their names, like Nora Cloud, George Mouse, and Violet Bramble. While their lives contain the same ratio of joy to disappointment as other people's, theirs have an added layer of tragedy due to the baleful influence of Faerie, which exerts control in ways both great and small. People fall in love at first sight without knowing why, and feel themselves being pulled in various directions according to some overarching Destiny. If they <i>think</i> they have any idea what or why, eventually they realize they are mistaken.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The writing and the imagery are beautiful and, what would be a good word?-- enchanting. In fact, a comment made by someone about Edgewood, the house, is an equally apt description of what reading the book is like: "You can get lost for days in there. For days." </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">There is an ancient Wild Wood, an enchanted fish that dimly remembers having once been a man, and a kingfisher who grants wishes and strikes bargains (bargains in which the humans inevitably come out on short end of the stick). If hearing about all these talking animals puts you in mind of Narnia, please know that it's nothing like that at all. Because there is also frank and sensual descriptions of sex, experiments with hallucinogenic drugs, filth, poverty, and death. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Things remind you of other things...there are many subtle allusions to Lewis Carroll, both his writings and his photographs. I've never before read a novel that deals with the well-documented Edwardian craze for spirit photography, or the taking of photographs that, once developed, revealed ghostly images that were invisible to the naked eye.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The nature of Faerie is that it is elusive; it can't be nailed down, but can only be experienced like a dream, a half-forgotten memory, or something glimpsed out of the corner of your eye. The elusiveness of "Little, Big" will either charm and delight you, or it'll annoy the heck out of you. Depends upon your nature.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div>gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-86454976025512324972011-11-13T08:57:00.000-08:002011-11-13T08:57:16.006-08:00Post Apocalypse SCI FI<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Dear </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Gentle Reader,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">I went 6 months without blogging at all; the reasons why are too numerous to mention. But during that time my reading hardly slackened and I even took notes for future posts. So I have lots of material at the ready. I dusted off the following from my summer reading:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">If you are a devoted reader of books, you probably harbor somewhere deep inside your heart a soft spot for science fiction. Maybe you don't confess it openly. I know I don't. Doesn't seem very elegant, or, I don't know, <i>seemly</i>. Especially for a dignified person of a certain age. But there it is...a life-long jones for sci-fi and fantasy. So I've been on a binge lately and meaning to post an appreciation of post-apocalypse novels. Why specifically appreciate post-apocalypse novels? This may sound strange, but despite the fact that thematically they explore my worst nightmare—AKA the end of the world--I find them oddly comforting. Since we seem hell bent on destroying ourselves anyhow, it can be kind of uplifting to imagine what kind of new world we could create out of the ashes. Of course when I embarked on my binge...er, research... into this genre, I went online and checked out other people’s lists. Whoa. I realized just how many of these books exist that I haven’t yet read yet . Now I’m left with another pile of TBRs…</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">On to the ones I did read...</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">“Alas, Babylon” by Pat Frank, published 1959. I can now understand why this classic had such a large influence on a whole generation of post-nuclear holocaust books. There is something very all-American & apple pie about this tale. I can envision the movie starring a young Tom Hanks, with George Clooney in the small but important role as the doomed older brother. Set in a small town in Florida after a nuclear attack by USSR devastates most of the US of A, the story concentrates on the survivors and their fierce determination in coping with the aftermath. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The book was written just before the Cuban missile crisis in1962, at the height of our national anti-Soviet paranoia. In the tiny town of Fort Repose, in central Florida, we meet our protagonist, a Korean War veteran named Randy Bragg. The opening scene has Randy receiving a disturbing and cryptic message from his brother Mark, an Air Force colonel who is on assignment in the “Hole”. The Hole is the SAC (Strategic Air Command) headquarters, a supposedly indestructible bunker, four stories underground, where the government is directing US military response to any potential enemy attack. Mark warns Randy that the unthinkable—a nuclear attack by the USSR-- is imminent, and asks Randy to look after his wife and two kids in case anything happens to him, a likelihood on which you can bet your bottom dollar. (What? You wanted subtlety?)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The story is told from a strictly 1950’s male perspective, which can get truly annoying at times, with the author showing off his knowledge of military and technical jargon, and waxing poetical about atomic submarines and fighter planes. Gender roles are pretty rigid: the heroes are tough, manly men who keep their heads in a crisis, and the women are sexy, competent, good at taking the children firmly in hand, yet still prone to breaking down and weeping on the men’s shoulders.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The book’s greatest strength is in the thoughtful way it examines what life would be like in the aftermath. When the major population centers of the world have been vaporized, any semblance of functioning government or infrastructure is non-existent, all power and communication has been cut off, and money is rendered worthless, how do ordinary people cope? Eschewing any maniacal back-to-the-Stone-Age, Mad Max type of scenario, Frank rationally, calmly considers what polite, civilized people actually might do when they are left without food, cars, electricity, antibiotics, and running water. This is for me where it gets interesting.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Our previously held assumptions and priorities are turned upside down. Divisions between rich and poor are erased overnight (there's no need for money, folks!). Racial and class prejudice hang on a bit more stubbornly, but those differences quickly go by the wayside. What matters most is physical strength and mental stability, and the all-important access to fuel, batteries, gasoline, kerosene, uncontaminated food and water, medicine, guns and ammunition. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Frank has some interesting ideas about what happens to different personalities when faced with a crisis. Why do some people grow in stature and become leaders, while others succumb to savagery, superstition, or magical thinking? Some can’t face reality and keep clinging to the hope that any day now, power and services will restored and things will return to normal. Some are spared by the immediate holocaust but end up dying anyway because they can't make the necessary mental adjustment. Survival of the fittest.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">For a more current take on this theme, try “A World Made By Hand” by James Kunstler.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Also, “Into the Forest” by Jean Hegland.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Kunstler’s version is based on the premise that contained in his nonfiction book, “The Long Emergency” where he lays out his argument that as the earth depletes the supply of oil, our global infrastructure will collapse and we will need to go back in time and back to the land, returning to a way of life where people were self-sufficient and neighbors relied upon one another to survive. In “A World Made By Hand” we skip over the horrific details of the apocalypse and its immediate aftermath, and we go straight to a time about 20 years after the collapse, when the survivors have come out fitter and stronger and are in process of forging a new world. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">As Kunstler envisions this potential new society, it almost sounds kind of appealing. We’ve traded in a national highway system, power grid, and computer chips for a primitive (but sustainable!) water system powered by gravity, and medicines made from plants grown in the backyard. It’s kind of like Little House on the Prairie. People have to re-learn the practical trades of yesteryear: carpenters, blacksmiths, weavers, and shoemakers. Everyone needs to grow their own food, make their own clothing, and slaughter their own livestock. We are all locavores in the new post-industrial world. One fortunate by-product of the collapse of oil, coal, and fossil fuels, is that the formerly polluted rivers, streams, and air have returned to a state of pristine cleanliness. Horses have taken the place of automobiles and currency has been replaced by a barter system. A semi-feudal system of government seems to be cropping up in places where law and order is brutally enforced, but there are also pockets where something resembling democracy is slowly starting to re-establish, albeit on a small scale. The surrounding country is a dangerous place –there is an outlaw community composed of bikers and lowlifes who spend their time looting and pillaging, and enforcing their own brand of rough justice. There is violence and death, but it is also hopeful and humanistic. Women are subjugated, relying totally on men for sustenance and protection, and functioning as housekeepers and bedmates. And there are some confusing supernatural elements that add little of entertainment value but do much to distract.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">***************************<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">“Lucifer’s Hammer” by Larry Niven and Jerry Pourcelle. Won both the Hugo and the Nebula award. I’m not sure why I read it except that a lot of folks loved it, and it was touted as classic of the genre. (In retrospect I wish I had read Stephen King’s “The Stand” instead.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book details the end of civilization as brought about by a massive comet striking the earth’s surface. The comet collides and sets off a chain of consequences, including earthquake, tidal waves, fires, flooding—the whole nine yards-- which wipe out most of mankind and plunge us into another ice age. It’s like a speeded-up version of global warming.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The novel was published in 1977 and it feels dated, and not in a good way. I usually enjoy the experience of being immersed in the politics and culture of another time, but I find the ethos of these particular times a bit unpleasant-- maybe because I lived through them the first time around.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The book divided into thirds, dealing with the Before, During and After the Impact (as the runaway comet strikes the planet-- which the characters refer to as “Hammerfall”). The first third of the book is spent introducing the large cast of characters and unfortunately it reads like a formulaic disaster-thriller. This is not good writing. You know how some people dislike books that have too much description in them? Well, this book has too much dialogue--page after page of hokey repartee, and dreary, repetitive interior monologue. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Reading the book feels like watching a 1970's disaster movie where they did a hack job on the screenplay and blew the budget on special effects. The good guys are the science nerds: the techies, astronomers, astronauts and nuclear plant technicians, who know how to save the world but are prevented from doing so by the craven shortsightedness of…drum roll for the villains, if you please… politicians and whoever controls the purse strings. You know, those goddam bastards who cut the NASA budget and ruined the space program. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The heroes are macho survivalists who work out, know how to use firearms, drink whiskey and smoke cigars, and one sexy woman, everyone else is so weak or ethically challenged they deserved to have perished in the initial conflagration. One of the good guys is a techie nerd who is in charge of a nuclear energy plant that is so well constructed that it’s basically the only structure left standing after the asteroid strike; It suffers no loss of cooling, no radiation leakage, nuthin’! Why?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because it’s just built so damn well…<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> If ONLY we hadn’t listened to Al Gore and his army of gutless environmental freaks, and had built us a ton more of these, we wouldn’t have a global warming problem today! <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">It takes us half to two-thirds of the way through the book until we finally get to the interesting part, which is the speculative part of science fiction: just how would society remake itself after every aspect of government and industry and technology and civilization as we know it is smashed to bits, and what form would it take?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">There is a definite political message here; the author must have had envisioned a society that was a cross between Ayn Rand style libertarianism and techno-survivalism-- a right wing mish-mash where the rugged individualists with a deep respect for the latest technology are morally superior to the low life scum. Here the bad guys are environmentalists, religious fanatics, urban ghetto street hoodlums, “women’s libbers”, hippies, commune dwellers, trade unionists, and Russians who still believe in communism. Feminists don't fare too well either, even though there is a token female on the space shuttle, as well as a token black astronaut. Stereotypes abound, from biker gangs to ghetto hustlers to sexy women with courageous hearts and great legs. One of the characters muses that the silver lining to Hammerfall is that it effectively puts an end to “women’s lib”. And in the scenario that’s being portrayed here, the status of women immediately devolves to that of property, a prize given to the strongest and manliest men. All power is transferred to the men with the biggest guns. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">There are a couple of good points, like the media blitz that crops up around the early news reports of the comets, the excitement among people who wanted something crazy out of the ordinary to happen, something to spice up their routine, the religious fanatics who sprang up, to pray the comet away, the end of the world preachers who were making a fortune by soaking the gullible and the frightened. Also the people who see the end of the world as a way out of their own personal financial difficulties, legal troubles, unhappy marriages, or in one case, the perfect excuse for a demented rapist to commit murder and mayhem without having to worry about doing jail time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The fact that this novel was written years before our 24-hour infotainment cycle had taken over the culture, makes it surprising in that it is so prescient. The book gets more interesting from page 200 on, which is the point of Hammerfall (as they call the moment of impact). The story is told from multiple viewpoints, as different people experience the asteroid strike and its aftermath…scarier than your-worst nightmare...fireballs in the sky, earthquakes, tidal waves, terrible electrical storms, seas boiling, Keeps dwelling on images smashing cars, collapsing bridges, bursting dams, and breaking glass, people screaming. You can just picture the TV movie that will be made from this book. Except that it never did get made into a movie. The film “Deep Impact” came closest to it. There are some memorable images, such as two archaeologists witnessing the second eruption of The Greek volcanic island Thera; a surfer riding the tsunami, (to him its just a very big wave), while knowing his death is imminent. Then there are the images that are completely -woops! - over the top: a couple throw a dead baby out of a car window, Four astronauts, two Soviet and two American, make their reentry into earth’s orbit, parachute into a cornfield, and as they emerge from the space capsule they are met by a band of hostile men with machine guns and rifles pointing at them<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Apparently the authors didn’t know where to draw the line between shivery fun and creepy-disgusting. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><o:p> ***************</o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Now I need to read Stephen King’s “The Stand”, but it’s over a thousand pages so I guess I should wait for the right time, like maybe when I am in bed for a week with the flu. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">****************<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">“Canticle for Liebowitz” by Walter Miller is in a class by itself. It was published in novel form in 1959, and as such it won the Hugo award in 1961. But it originated as three novellas that were published earlier in sci-fi magazines. Except for the plot device of nuclear war, fallout, mutants, and in the third part, space travel—the book is more philosophical than speculative. It poses questions rather than answers. It is ironic allegory--sardonic, ridiculous, tragic, humanistic, eloquent, darkly cynical, yet ultimately hopeful. Its topic is humankind, specifically our propensity for self-destruction and self-deception. It’s a view of Mankind from a distance, as we might be seen by our Maker: stubborn and ignorant but containing the spark of divine genius. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">This is a fairly well known book so I won’t summarize the plot. The book is steeped in the rituals and traditions of the Catholic church, and most of major characters are clergy. One of the main characters is a comic fool or wandering Jew that would feel right at home in an I.B. Singer tale. Gimpel the Fool becomes a wandering holy man in the end. It posits the argument that as civilization crumbles and we are thrown back to another dark age, the church is the only organization that is capable of protecting and preserving all the knowledge of the world throughout the millenia. Eventually (a few thousand years later), we pull ourselves up out of ignorance, superstition, and barbarism, to the dawn of a new enlightened age. The gears of industrialization get humming again; we reinvent the light bulb but we can’t change our essential nature and are driven by hubris right back to the brink of destruction again. When will we ever learn? Apparently there is a God, but what does he want from us? Why does He allow suffering? What is the meaning of human suffering (see Camus--The Plague)? <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Scientists and all educated people are seen as being to blame for nuclear destruction, so in the new world they burn all the books and kill all the literate people. People proudly wear the title of Simpleton (badge of ignorance) as a badge of honor. This mirrors the galloping anti-intellectualism of today.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Here are some of my favorite quotes from “LIebowitz”:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">"From a distance one's adversaries seemed fiends, but with a closer view, one saw the sincerity and it was as great as one's own. Perhaps Satan was the sincerest of the lot."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">"Where's the truth? What's to be believed? Or does it matter at all? When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is the bloodier."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">"Is the species congenitally insane, Brother? If we're born mad, where's the hope of Heaven?"<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">"It will come to pass by violence and upheaval, by flame and by fury, for no change comes calmly over the world."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">"To Brother Librarian, whose task in life was the preservation of books, the principal reason for the existence of books was that they might be preserved perpetually. Usage was secondary, and to be avoided if it threatened longevity."<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">More of my favorite Canticles (this book is craaazy!):<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">His supreme Unctuousness<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Albertian Order of Liebowitz<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Age of Simplification<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Poet-sirrah!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Memorabilia<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Mrs. Grales, the bicephalous tomato woman<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><o:p>Note: </o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">There was a fair bit of Hebrew and quite a lot of Latin in the book. (For some reason, large chunks of the Catholic Mass were quoted verbatim.) I found it helpful but not necessary to read with a Wikipedia list of Latin phrases open at my side. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Helvetica;">**************</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">TBRead:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The Stand- Stephen King</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Philip K. Dick</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The Female Man- Joanna Russ</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Joan Vinge</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Vonda McIntyre- Dreamsnake</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">C.J. Cherryh</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">TBReviewed:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The Dispossessed- Le Guin</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Left Hand of Darkness- Le Guin</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Lathe of Heaven- Le Guin</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Octavia Butler</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">James Tiptree</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Thomas Disch</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Kelly Link</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Tanith Lee (not sci fi but fantasy)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
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</div><!--EndFragment-->gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-82513120853095982362011-11-12T10:57:00.000-08:002011-11-12T10:57:17.269-08:00Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Colum McCann is not a native New Yorker. He’s an Irishman wearing an “I heart NY” shirt. And not just any New York but the filthy, broke, careening-out-of-control New York of the 1970’s, before Rudi Giuliani cleaned everything up. I remember that NYC—I lived there. Tribeca was still a slum, Central Park was too dangerous to walk in at night, CBGB’s, Sid Vicious, and “Son of Sam”. A hard place to love, but some glorify it. This is another one of those novels (it's getting to be a cliché, this structure) made up of interlocking vignettes about disparate characters, whose lives, unbeknownst to them, are in some mysterious way connected. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book opens with a description of a seminal event— the high-wire walk between the twin towers by Philippe Petit in 1974, which was later documented in the film “Man on Wire”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a really cool and crazy stunt at the time, but post 9/11, from a distance of almost three decades, Petit’s walk has taken on a deeper, allegorical meaning. Set against the grim despair of the lives being lived down below, it is a life-affirming counterpoint: the acrobat dances on air as the angels watch, while back on earth we are a lot closer to hell than to heaven. One of the main characters is Corrigan, an Irish Catholic lay brother who is too good for this world. He befriends the prostitutes outside his Bronx walkup and lives a monastic existence. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found him very unbelievable and somewhat pretentious. Corrigan’s brother, Ciaran, is more down-to-earth but also a cliché of sorts, as are the foul-mouthed prostitutes-- Jazzlyn and her mother, Tillie, who turn tricks together. Tillie’s character has some tragic weight to it, at least. So does Claire, a Park Ave. matron whose son has died, and she is trying very hard to make a connection with some other women in a group for grieving mothers, but they think she is a wealthy snob.</div><div class="MsoNormal">The writing was lyrical and the images poetic, but the characters were a bit cardboard-y and one-dimensional. There was a falseness to it. I just didn’t get this book. </div><!--EndFragment--><br />
<!--EndFragment-->gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-62829571314076809152011-11-12T10:36:00.000-08:002011-11-12T10:37:48.211-08:00Sarah Waters and Margaret Atwood<div class="MsoNormal">“Fingersmith”; “Night Watch”; “Alias Grace”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m back! What a lot to catch up on. Follow me down a winding path as one thought/ one book leads to another. </div><div class="MsoNormal">I have been reading Sarah Waters and so far I’ve plowed through 3 of her 5 books; however I’m only going to review “Night Watch” and “Fingersmith”, which are number 3 and 4, respectively, and were both short-listed for the Man Booker and the Orange Prize. Waters’ bio says she was born in Wales in 1966, and is an associate lecturer with the Open University. But possibly this is just a sideline because I can’t see where she finds the time to teach while also writing compulsively readable books that win prizes and get made into films by the BBC. She should be better known than she is because she’s a hell of a writer. One reason why her work isn’t more widely known may be that she is categorized as a LGBT author, and I think this pigeonholes her and perhaps limits her appeal. But it’s a false distinction.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Her books are populated with gay and lesbian characters who fall in love and make each other happy or miserable as is usually the case. As a straight person I didn’t find anything about her writing that was unsettling or disturbing, or outside of my experience. On the contrary, Waters is sensitive and skilled in evoking the mysterious ways and reasons, both physical and emotional, that cause people to be drawn to one another.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Anyhow…”Night Watch” is a fast, absorbing read. I don’t usually feel drawn to World War 2 era stories, it’s just not my favorite historical period. But I was fascinated by the vivid portrayal of life in London during wartime-- the rationing, the food shortages, the bombed-out streets and buildings, the wailing sirens, blackout curtains and air raid shelters. Given the fact that incendiaries are dropping from the sky and as one person says, “we might all be dead tomorrow”, people are driven to recklessness. They’re ready to throw away caution and convention in exchange for honesty and the pursuit of a life-affirming passion. The story is told in reverse chronological sequence, starting in 1947 and working backwards to 1941, and the characters are explained through the gradual reveal of their history. They seem tangentially connected to one another at first, but they are linked in ways that become clearer as the plot unfolds. I grew to sympathize the most with Kay, who after the war spends her time wandering around the streets of London, dressed like a man, and searching for something indefinable. She felt most alive during wartime when driving an ambulance and pulling people out of burning buildings (an opportunity that came about due to the shortage of men). Another character, Viv, meets for secret trysts with her married boyfriend, while wondering what she can do to sort out her damaged brother, Duncan, who spent time in prison for reasons that aren’t clear until later. A fourth major character, Helen, is analytical and introspective. Even though consumed with jealousy and self-loathing, she is the narrator whose consciousness is most awake and observant.</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Fingersmith” is a tour de force, in my opinion. It’s a contemporary version of the Victorian sensational novel, ala Wilkie Collins, and it has more than a whiff of Dickens and George Elliot. Brimming with Gothic atmosphere, it left me turning pages at 3 AM because I couldn’t stand the suspense. For such a convoluted storyline, I never had any difficulty in following it. I was totally drawn in by the multiple twists and double-crosses, the complex characters (NO one is as they seem), and by the sheer depth of human cruelty and kindness. As in “Night Watch”, the story is told from more than one viewpoint; events are first recounted by one character, and later retold by a different one, with missing information filled in. There are details galore to get lost in…so much research went into this book! Research about the state of the field of psychiatry and Victorian ideas about curing the insane; about ladies’ clothing—the silks and taffetas, petticoats and stays--and what a lady’s maid’s duties are; about the resentments of the servant class and the power plays among the maids and footmen in charge of running those large country estates; about the petty thieves and grifters who live in the underbelly of London. Careful thought has gone into naming the characters: Maud is the name of a white-gloved lady, while Sue is a common servant’s name. There is an elegant but coldhearted scam artist known to all as Gentleman, and a criminal couple who run a sort of orphanage/boarding school for fencers of stolen goods and pickpockets, and go by the Dickensian monikers of Mrs. Sucksby and Mr. Ibbs. I won’t go into any further detail because the less said the greater the fun, and this one is a treat.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Reading about the travails of the madhouse in “Fingersmith” made me want to segue right into “Alias Grace” by Margaret Atwood, which is, I believe, her first foray into historical fiction, rather than her usual contemporary realistic or futuristic speculative novels. “Alias Grace” takes as its starting point the true story of Grace Marks, a notorious Canadian woman who in 1843 was convicted of murdering her employer and his mistress. Because of her gender and her tender age (she was 16 at the time of the murders) she wasn’t hung for the crime but sentenced instead to life in prison and she spent some years in a mental asylum. She always maintained her innocence, and in fact she claimed to have total amnesia regarding the murders. Atwood tells the story through Grace’s words and memories, and also through the letters and notes of a young doctor, Simon Jordan (who I think is a fictional character). Dr. Jordan attempts to help Grace while at the same time making his own reputation as a practitioner of the brand new field of psychotherapy. He has Grace tell him her dreams and he employs the technique of free association to try to help her remember. If he is successful at proving her innocence, she may be able to get a pardon, so they both have something invested in the relationship.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Grace has had a lot of time to think about her situation and she has developed a strong will and some good survival skills. She isn’t a victim but she may in fact be innocent of any crime. Whether she is evil, insane, a heroine or a dupe, is something we never can quite decide. She’s an unreliable narrator at best, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to believe in her innocence. The story is beautifully written and really gives a flavor of mid-nineteenth century North America. I totally enjoyed it.</div>gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-80433407442310157942011-11-03T11:37:00.000-07:002011-11-03T11:37:20.982-07:00Reading for a Summer Afternoon While Lying in a Hammock Drinking a Glass of Iced Tea<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style>
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Elizabeth von Arnim- The Enchanted April (published 1922)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">"For those who appreciate wisteria and sunshine"--<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">This book is a confection-- light-hearted, romantic in the best sense, and very witty. If this appeals to you, you may find that it becomes one of those comfort books, to be indulged in when you are under the weather and need an ice cream soda for a pick-me-up. In answer to those picky people who object that the plot is too unrealistic, and the ending overly sweet…well, IMO that is the point. It’s a comfort book, after all. Four English women, each of them unhappy in her own way, meet as strangers and chip in together on a month's stay at an Italian villa. The women have precious little in common with one another other than a vague dissatisfaction with their lives. A vacation like this should have disastrous results, one would think. But San Salvadore, in this case, functions like a mythical Forest of Arden—a magical realm where everyday matters recede, people are thrown together, comical little misunderstandings occur, visitors come and go, and the unexpected happens. The forced intimacy and the inefficiencies of the Italian postal system combine with the sensual Mediterranean climate to create a hothouse atmosphere, where friendship, healing, and romance can blossom. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book is funny, too, in that wry, ironic British style.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I especially loved the interior monologues of repressed and lovelorn Rose Arbuthnot: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;">It was just possible that she ought to go straight into the category Hysteria, which was often only the antechamber to Lunacy, but Mrs. Arbuthnot had learned not to hurry people into their final categories, having on more than one occasion discovered with dismay that she had made a mistake; and how difficult it had been to get them out again, and how crushed she had been with the most terrible remorse.”</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Mike Newell directed a film version of this book in 1991, but in my opinion the movie falls a teensy bit short. Despite richly rewarding performances from a veteran British cast—Miranda Richardson, Alfred Molina, Jim Broadbent, and Joan Plowright (who was nominated for an Oscar for her role as Mrs. Fisher), the tone of the movie is just a tad uneven. But it’s still fun to watch on a rainy afternoon. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Winifred Watson - Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Written in 1938, this lighter-than-air piece of puff pastry makes for an afternoon snack, not a substantial meal. Miss Pettigrew is a frowsy spinster governess who serendipitously stumbles right smack into the center of a glittering, high fashion, hard-drinking party scene, and suddenly she finds herself having the best time of her life. The story takes place over a 24 hour time period and chapters are organized into time segments, like “12:18 AM to 2:37 AM”. Miss Pettigrew, with a couple of drinks in her, realizes she has a heretofore hidden talent when it comes to meddling in other people’s affairs and helpfully smoothing the often rocky path to true love.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book is like a glass of champagne—happy, sparkling, delicious. I have one quibble: There are a couple of anti-Semitic references that constitute the single jarring note in an otherwise close-to-perfect experience. I’ve experienced similar feelings of shock and dismay when reading Trollope, particularly “The Way We Live Now”. Obviously, we must consider such bigotry within the context of the times,. But for me it was still a fly in the ointment.</div><!--EndFragment-->gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-25616287693391525162011-11-03T11:32:00.000-07:002011-11-03T11:32:56.410-07:00Booth Tarkington and Stella GibbonsWoops, how did so much time go by? The book blog is long overdue for an update...<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Booth Tarkington- The Magnificent Ambersons (published 1919)</div><div class="MsoNormal">A family epic that takes place in the early 1900’s, just as the country is undergoing vast changes resulting from the growth of industry, the automobile, and urban sprawl. Tarkington takes his time in telling the story and he spends the entire first chapter discussing the history of the town, its social structure, the fashions of the day, and how the privileged Amberson family dominates and runs the town with their money and influence. By the time he is finished, you feel like you know what it’s like to live there, too. Only then does he introduce us to George-- the spoiled, arrogant only son who runs roughshod over everyone, including his own family. George is impossibly bratty. He treats others with a rude sense of entitlement that he justifies out of a misplaced sense of pride in his family’s name; and he lives according to his conviction that there is something degrading in the notion of a gentleman “doing” rather than “being”. George is due to have his “comeuppance” one of these days, and like the townspeople, we only hope that we’re around to see it happen. What George is too blind to see is that the world is changing around him, and that his money and family position will not be enough to save him in the new world order.</div><div class="MsoNormal">This, of course, is the novel that was the basis for the classic Orson Welles film. Reading the book for me was like watching a very leisurely version of the film…I couldn’t help visualizing Agnes Moorehead as Fanny and Joseph Cotton as Eugene. The book goes into more detail about some worthwhile secondary characters, and the financial misfortunes that lead to the Amberson family’s ruin are more fully explained. George is also less of a villain in the book, his redeeming qualities being more apparent. The farewell scene between George and Lucy that takes place outside the drugstore, as he is leaving for Europe, affected me much more deeply in the book, whereas in the movie it left me cold. “The Magnificent Ambersons” was actually the second book in a trilogy by Tarkington (the other two were “The Turmoil” and “The Midlander”) that dealt with social and economic changes in America from the mid-19<sup>th</sup> century until World War 1.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal">Published in 1932, this fits into the category of oddball British satiric humor, in the vein of P.G. Wodehouse, but on a completely different plane of battiness</div><div class="MsoNormal">from that of Jeeves and Wooster.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gibbons is skewering a lot of prototypes here. In these pages we make the acquaintance of witless polo-playing gentry, cigar-chomping Hollywood moguls, and sex-obsessed London intellectuals. Flora Poste, our plucky heroine, is a sophisticated London girl of the strictly modern type, who quite suddenly fins herself orphaned. She is not terribly bereaved, never having been all that close to her parents. Still, she needs a roof over her head, so she decides to move in with her hardscrabble rural relations, the Starkadder clan. Cold Comfort farm is the name of the gloomy, dilapidated ancestral home in Sussex, and Flora is told repeatedly that “There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm”, as if that explains everything. No matter. Our girl senses that this situation has intriguing possibilities. </div><div class="MsoNormal">One by one we meet the relatives: Aunt Ada Doom who once “saw something nasty in the woodshed” and has refused to come out of her room for 20 years; Amos, the paterfamilias, who loves to preach hellfire-and-brimstone sermons designed to make you feel the flames of hell licking at your feet; Cousin Judith, who desires to be left alone in her “web of solitude”, as she devotes herself to atoning for some unspecified long-ago offense; waifish Elfine who flits around the Downs in rags, spouting poetry and communing with the trees and squirrels; Seth, of the smoldering good looks and outsized sexual appetite, who secretly yearns to be in “talkies”; and Urk, who was betrothed to Elfine in infancy and calls her “my little water-vole”. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This oddball bunch are unwashed, inbred, and speak in an impenetrable Old Sussex dialect, but they are innocents for all that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Flora feels it’s her duty to drag her unwilling relatives into the 20<sup>th</sup> century and she’s certainly not one to shy away from a challenge. She gets to work at once making “improvements” on the farm and its inhabitants, and you will find yourself looking for a good perch from which you can watch what’s going to happen, as our Flora sweetly turns everyone’s lives upside down and lets in the light. </div><div class="MsoNormal">Gibbons was a journalist and a poet, and claimed to be “not always sure whether a sentence is Literature or whether it is just sheer flapdoodle”. She has some fun in this book satirizing the style of literature exemplified by D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Hardy, and Emily Bronte—and their somewhat tortured descriptive passages. “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Something earthy, something dark and rooty as the barran that thrust its tenacious way through the yeasty soil had crept into the old man’s voice with the words. He was moved. Old tides lapped his loins.” <o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal">I found myself laughing out loud at the way the Starkadders continually address Flora as “Robert Poste’s child”, in place of her name; and at Adam Lambsbreath, the 90-year old man of all work, who “cletters the dishes” with a thorny branch. When Flora buys him a dish mop and suggests he might make a better job of the washing-up if he were to use it instead, Adam is unaccountably moved, so much so that that he fetishizes the object. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“I mun hang it up by its liddle red string above the dishwashin’ bowl…Aye, ‘tis prettier nor apple-blooth, my liddle mop.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>What delicious nonsense.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Something about this novel kept reminding me of Jane Austen’s “Emma” as I was reading it. Several things actually. There is the fact that the movie version of Cold Comfort Farm starred a young Kate Beckinsale, who later starred in the movie version of “Emma”. But there’s also the central theme: a bossy young girl loves to meddle in other people’s affairs and indulges in her favorite pastime as if people were playing pieces on a chessboard. Sounds like our Flora, doesn’t it? The difference is that Emma interferes where she isn’t wanted and makes a mess of things, where Flora succeeds magnificently in her meddling. Not to mention the number of marriages that occur in consequence.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s all kind of heartwarming and endearingly loopy. I recommend it.</div><!--EndFragment--><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><!--EndFragment-->gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-72541259733072092952011-05-07T11:58:00.000-07:002011-05-07T11:58:10.623-07:00Henry James - The Other House<div class="MsoNormal">Henry James- The Other House- published 1896</div><div class="MsoNormal">Having just read The Other House and trying to sort out my feelings about it. It is kind of perverse, and not always pleasurable, but it picked up pace toward the second half of the novel and from that point it left me breathless to know what would happen. Most James novels center around conflicts of moral character, but this is one of the few where there is also a substantial plot involving a fortune, a deathbed promise, a love triangle (or quadrangle?) and a murder, complete with a body. I have long admired Henry James but I don’t generally consider his work as being much of a “pleasure read”. He’s legendary for constructing vast run-on sentences that go on for a page and a half. Almost as if he’s deliberately aiming not to be understood, he creates impenetrable thickets of double negatives that force the reader to labor over passages, reading them six or seven times just to tease out what the heck he’s saying. One possible reason for this irritating habit is that he switched in mid-career from writing in longhand to dictating to a tape recorder and having a secretary transcribe his words. Apparently this freed him from having to worry about where his sentences began and ended. Perhaps without intending to, he greatly influenced the development of the stream of consciousness technique used by Virginia Woolf and others. But even if reading James requires more effort than I’d like, nobody matches him for insight into the dark, squirrelly corners of the human heart. He is unparalleled at elucidating the intertwining, contradictory motivations of passionate people who find themselves cruelly imprisoned by Victorian standards of propriety. His books are all about proper English manners that often conceal ungovernable passions and bad intentions.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Other House revolves around two well-to-do British families who live next door to each other. Their well-appointed, capacious country homes provide the setting for the action, with luscious gardens, manicured lawns, and servants bringing tea. The action concerns six young people and two older, wiser characters who stand aside and observe the goings-on, first with bemusement, and later with horror. The young people comprise three couples, but everyone is in love with someone they can’t have or is promised to someone they don’t want. Their interactions are like an elaborate dance with the figures briefly meeting, clasping hands, and releasing each other in order to switch partners.</div><div class="MsoNormal">The story begins with a young wife who thinks she's dying, but before she dies she means to extract a promise from her handsome, charming husband not to remarry during their daughter’s lifetime. Tony (even his name conveys his unselfconscious magnetism) agrees to this only as a way of humoring his wife, because he’s convinced she’s just being morbid and nobody- not even the doctor - really believes she’s going to die. But then she does die unexpectedly, from complication of childbirth.Her childhood friend, Rose, and another young woman, Jean, are both engaged to other people, but are both hopelessly in love with Tony. He is attracted to them both, but is honor bound to remain forever unavailable. The result is an uneasy stasis, where everyone attempts to maintain a friendly-brotherly-sisterly relation to one another. Underneath that, however, there is a subtle struggle of wills taking place. Years elapse while everyone lives uncomfortably with his or her unfulfilled wishes and unspoken assumptions. The tension gradually builds as each character entertains the unspoken thought: What if the child should die? Then wouldn't Tony be free to remarry? It's understood that they have all actually considered this ghastly possibility, and everyone is so careful not to give the appearance of seeking any advantage from the situation. Creepy, isn’t it?</div><div class="MsoNormal">My favorite character, and the one in whom I most feel Henry James’ authorial presence, is Mrs. Beever, a proper Victorian dowager who wields her power of personality over everyone. She is fiercely devoted to her son Paul, and wants to see him happily married to Jean, whom she has pre-selected for him. Paul goes along with her scheme but he’s diffident and frankly doesn’t have his heart in it. Here’s a passage from the novel where she is struggling to come to grips with her disappointment in Paul: <b>"He looked at her with an air he sometimes had, which always aggravated her impatience, an air of amused surprise, quickened to curiosity, that there should be in the world organisms capable of generating heat. She had thanked God, through life, that she was cold-blooded, but now it seemed to face her as a Nemesis that she was as a volcano compared with her son."</b></div><div class="MsoNormal">Rose Armiger is the most fascinating character and she is the only one Mrs. Beever can’t succeed in dominating. In fact, Rose proves to be more than her equal in strength of will and adroit maneuvering. At first I admired Rose for refusing to be cowed and for being smarter than almost everyone, but soon her cleverness starts to take on a tinge of evil. By the end of the novel her character has basically descended into madness.</div><div class="MsoNormal">The internet is a wonderful invention. A little research resulted in two nuggets that afforded me tremendous insight into this novel and its place in James’ career. First: Lynn Sharon Schwartz wrote an article for The Threepenny Review in the fall of 2000 which takes note of the fact that this novel actually started out as a theatrical play that was never produced. Between 1890 and 1895 James all but abandoned writing novels and tried very hard to be a playwright instead. It was a disastrous move. Only two of his plays were produced and one of them, Guy Domville, resulted in James being jeered and hissed off the stage. After this horrible experience James returned to novel writing and created some of his renowned masterpieces, like Wings of a Dove and The Golden Bowl. But first he took the premise of this unborn play and reworked it into a novel. Here I quote Schwartz:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times;">True to its roots, </span></b><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times;">The Other House</span></i><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times;"> reads like a play fleshed out with detailed stage directions: “Gradually, as she talked, he faced round again; she stood there supported by the high back of a chair, either side of which she held tight.” Books First, Second, and Third correspond to three acts, set in a drawing room, a garden, and another drawing room, with characters coming and going, mostly in twos and threes, twining and untwining their intricate relationships; the scenes, or chapters, are crowded with incident and end abruptly at cliffhanging moments, usually when a new character enters, as in French drama.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">Here’s the other little nugget: In 1968, one Dorcas Ann Turner, B.A., did her masters’ thesis on “Henry James’s Tales of Tormented Children”. Her starting point was that James’s traumatic botched venture into the theater brought up deep-seated feelings of being a tortured youth (his difficult relationship with a harsh father and a more successful brother may have also played a part). Most of the novels of this middle period deal with the theme of a child who is the innocent victim of selfish, irresponsible and depraved adults. It’s a brilliant deduction, and so true! It has made me want to go back and re-read What Maisie Knew and The Awkward Age and his shorter works, Turn of the Screw and The Pupil. I plan on blogging about some of these in the future.<span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 16pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Resources: </div><div class="MsoNormal">1. <u style="text-underline: #0337A1;"><span style="color: #0337a1; font-family: Helvetica;"><a href="http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/schwartz_f00.html">http://www.threepennyreview.com/samples/schwartz_f00.html</a></span></u>,</div><div class="MsoNormal">2. <a href="http://etd.lib.ttu.edu/theses/available/etd-04282009-31295015503492/unrestricted/31295015503492.pdf">http://etd.lib.ttu.edu/theses/available/etd-04282009-31295015503492/unrestricted/31295015503492.pdf</a> </div>gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-51829330937051968912011-04-22T14:26:00.000-07:002011-04-22T14:26:59.096-07:00Lolly Willowes or The Loving Huntsman<!--StartFragment--> <br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"> Lolly Willowes or The Loving Huntsman, by Sylvia Townsend Warner.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Another from the NYRB Classics list. First of all, there is something about that subtitle that intrigues me right off the bat.<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=genrea-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=B004J4WLZA&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><o:p></o:p></span> </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Sylvia Townsend Warner was a contemporary of Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury group. Warner and her lesbian lover, poet Valentine Ackland, lived together for decades, joined the Communist Party and went to Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Warner has found her way back onto the LGBT reading lists, so she may not be so underappreciated now as she once was.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Lolly Willowes was Warner’s first novel (published in 1926). The title character is <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Laura (nicknamed Lolly), the pampered only daughter of a well-to-do Edwardian family living in London during World War 1 and its aftermath. Too docile to take the cause of women's suffrage, too conventional to be an artist and live in a garret, she chooses instead to live with her eldest brother's family and become the overlooked maiden aunt: useful to have around when you have a package to be tied or an errand to be run, and disappearing into the wallpaper when you don't need her. Suddenly in mid-life she rebels and to her family's shocked disapproval, she demands that her brother turn over to her what's left of her inheritance, and she goes off to let a room at a boarding house in the isolated country village of Great Mop. Perhaps there she can finally <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">"have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to you by others, charitable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces of stale bread of life a day..."</i><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Once she gets away from her family, she begins to undergo a change. She takes walks and falls asleep in a pile of dead leaves, and spends weeks puzzling over the other inhabitants of the village. Then she stops puzzling over them. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“She admitted that there was something about them which she could not fathom, but she was content to remain outside the secret, whatever it was. She had not come to Great Mop to concern herself with the hearts of men.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">But her hard-won peace is almost lost when her nephew Titus arrives uninvited for a visit and then decides to stay and make <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">his </i>home in Great Mop, too. Lolly is beyond dismayed.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> “ In vain she tried to escape; transient and delusive had been her ecstasies of relief. She had thrown away twenty years of her life like a handful of old rags, but the wind had blown them back again, and dressed her in the old uniform…And she was the same old Aunt Lolly, so useful and obliging and negligible.” <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Now this is where the story takes an unexpected turn, and a supernatural element is introduced into the plot, but it’s so deftly handled that it does nothing to jar or distract the reader. I hesitate to reveal too much, but I will say that Lolly makes a pact with the devil in order to secure her independence. This development can be accepted on its face or not, as you choose. It works either way, because Warner writes so beautifully.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Since the 1970's Warner has been considered a significant writer in the gay and lesbian community, but I don't see any real lesbian coding or subtext in her work. Not unless you think that the notion of women bonding with other women and maybe even preferring that situation to a male-female bond, is a "lesbian" notion. I don't see it that way and I'm a straight woman. But perhaps I'm naive.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">I've read several other books by Warner after having first encountered Lolly Willowes, including "Summer Will Show" and "Mr. Fortune's Maggot", but Lolly Willowes is still my favorite.<o:p></o:p></span></div><!--EndFragment-->gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-77908695859184268352011-04-21T12:55:00.001-07:002011-04-21T13:11:47.543-07:00A life in service of others: looking for and finding dignity<!--StartFragment--> <br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Virginia Woolf- Flush: A Biography<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=genrea-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0156319527&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">This book is a departure from Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking style experiment. If you find yourself becoming a little bit restive or impatient while floating on Mrs. Dalloway's stream of consciousness, this book will restore your equanimity. Woolf wrote it as a way to “ease her brain” after the intense effort she put into writing “The Waves”. It was meant to be a light thing, and she predicted that it would sell in embarrassingly large numbers, and that she would “very much dislike the popular success of Flush”. It did end up to be her best-selling book during her lifetime, but today it is largely forgotten. So Virginia's fears were groundless: Flush didn’t end up taking away anything from her reputation as a serious writer. I hope she’s pleased.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Flush was the name of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel, and Woolf relates the love affair and marriage of those two celebrated poets (Barrett and her equally gifted husband Robert Browning) through the consciousness of a dog. Flush was given to Elizabeth by an acquaintance who admired her poetry, and he spent his early years curled up on Elizabeth’s sickbed, keeping her company during her time as an invalid in her father’s house, throughout her courtship and elopement with Browning, and their subsequent life in Italy. For source material Woolf relied largely upon Barrett Browning’s letters and her own close observation of her pet spaniel, Pinka. She allowed her fertile imagination and prodigious intelligence to do the rest. The style of the book is straightforward and direct, very much how a dog <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">would</i> tell his story if given the opportunity. Woolf manages to make you inhabit the canine consciousness of Flush, not in a cutesy or trivial way, but with seriousness, keen insight, and with considerable wit.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The book opens with a brief history of the ancient origins of the Spaniel breed, and mockingly compares the “aristocracy of dogs” with that of humans, raising questions as to what constitutes “noble birth” in men and dogs—the curled tail, the light nose, or the coat of arms? Flush conforms to the strict guidelines of the British Kennel Club, so we know he’s sufficiently well bred to make a suitable companion for a lady. We note the change in Flush’s fortunes when he moves from the country to the elegant house on Wimpole St (“as long as Wimpole Street remains, civilization is secure”), where the smells of roast beef wafting from the kitchen combine with the scent of furniture polish & Oriental carpets to let his canine intelligence know that he is in a different world now. We learn about Flush’s new home the same way he does, through his senses. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">We understand the rage and jealousy felt by Flush when that interloper, Mr. Browning, comes between him and his mistress, and we sympathize as he does his best to get rid of the usurper, even going so far as to bite him on the ankle. To no avail. Flush has to learn his place. We feel his terror and loathing on the occasion of his being kidnapped by “hairy ruffians” and held for ransom. And when Elizabeth and Robert go to Italy, we share in his joy at the foreign sounds and smells, and the newly discovered freedom of running off the leash with the Italian dogs, who, to Flush’s surprise, are all mongrels. No breeding or pedigree at all! <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">A dog lover’s book if ever there was one, “Flush” is an amalgam of animal story and biography, but it’s better than both.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">More on the subject of Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Flush the dog has a supporting role in the next book, too, but he doesn't come off nearly as well.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Margaret Forster - A Lady's Maid, published 1991 <iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=genrea-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0345497430&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">Told from the point of view of Lily Wilson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s maid, who devoted her life to the invalid poetess' care, moving with her to Italy and caring for her until Barrett's death. The life of a lady's maid in the 1800's was without question a hard one. Being "in service" usually meant a lifetime of sacrifice and servitude. Enmeshed in a complicated relationship with Browning that at various times encompassed the roles of nurse, go-between, advisor, confidant, friend, and servant, Lily demonstrates her loyalty again and again, even helping Elizabeth defy her father's wishes and carry out her elopement with Robert Browning. Yet Lily (who is called “Wilson” by her mistress) is not permitted to pursue her own desires for love, a husband, and a family, but must sublimate all of her own needs in the care of a querulous and controlling employer, whom she nevertheless loves deeply. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica;">The aspects of the book that interested me the most were the love story between Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, and the unyielding class divisions that existed in Victorian times, even among the intellectual elite. I thought the author dealt with the latter very successfully. There was none of that smug and superior 21st century sensibility looking back at a less enlightened age, as is sometimes the case with historical novels.<o:p></o:p></span></div><!--EndFragment-->gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-569293427408051422011-04-13T22:33:00.000-07:002011-04-13T22:33:47.589-07:00Thoughts about Diana Wynne Jones<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">I was truly saddened to read that Diana Wynne Jones passed away on March 26<sup><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">th</span></sup>. I came across this news via the internet; as a matter of fact, I read about it on a book blog.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">I first discovered DWJ about 15 years ago when my daughter asked me to buy her a copy of Witch Week. Of course I read it myself. It was right up my alley, being both a children’s book and one having to do with magic. This was around the time that Harry Potter was catching on in a big way, and I wondered if JK Rowling had read the Chrestomanci series. Both series have a few things in common. For instance, both are set in a world where magic is an accepted part of life. Some people are born with magical ability, while others are not. And those who do have it have to be carefully trained in its proper use, so they don’t endanger themselves or anyone else. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Anyway, I went on to read everything by DWJ that I could get my hands on, and I have re-read much of it many times. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Jones has been a major figure in the sci fi / fantasy literature world for a long time, and a lot of people are in mourning right now. The most emotional reminiscence / celebration of her life that I’ve seen so far was written by Neil Gaiman <a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/03/being-alive.html">http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/03/being-alive.html</a> . Gaiman was a personal friend of DWJ for many years, and at various points she seemed to serve as his mentor, mother, critic and muse.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The Guardian published an obituary ( <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/27/diana-wynne-jones-obituary">http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/mar/27/diana-wynne-jones-obituary</a>) that did a good job of putting Jones' body of work into its proper context. The obit also pointed out that Jones’ early life experiences contributed to her rare ability to convey the feelings of a child who has been abandoned, neglected, and left to fend for himself. Not because the adults in his life are evil or cruel, but because they’re too selfish and self-absorbed to remember that he is there. Despite the fact that many of her child protagonists are without an adult to care for them in the way that every child deserves to be cared for, they're still resilient and capable of figuring things out for themselves. Jones herself discussed this aspect of her life in detail in an autobiographical sketch that was published on her official website (here it is: <a href="http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/autobiog.htm">http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/autobiog.htm</a> ) It’s well worth a look, if you’re interested in how she came to write the kinds of characters she is famous for. She also talks about her childhood encounters with two legendary giants of the children’s literature world, Arthur Ransome and Beatrix Potter, both of whom apparently hated children!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">I’m not going to review any of Jones’ books now because I’m about to go on a DWJ reading binge and I’ll probably re-read most of them, or at least my favorites. So I’ll save the reviews for later. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">For right now I just want to do homage, so I'll simply list what in my opinion are her best.<iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=genrea-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0064472698&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=genrea-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0064473368&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=genrea-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=073943389X&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe> <iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=genrea-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=006447268X&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=genrea-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0061478784&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=genrea-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0765342472&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe><iframe align="left" frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=genrea-20&o=1&p=8&l=bpl&asins=0064473554&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="align: left; height: 245px; padding-right: 10px; padding-top: 5px; width: 131px;"></iframe></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">And finally, here is another link, this one to an real live scholarly paper written by Deborah Kaplan and published in the Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. With footnotes and works cited. It's rather interesting in a geeky sort of way. <a href="http://www.suberic.net/~deborah.kaplan/JFA.21_2.kaplan.pdf">http://www.suberic.net/~deborah.kaplan/JFA.21_2.kaplan.pdf</a> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;">But Diana didn’t take herself that seriously; she possessed humor and modesty and she was a down-to-earth person. You can tell this much from her writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><!--EndFragment-->gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-24805593483093994322011-04-12T14:39:00.000-07:002011-04-12T14:45:18.832-07:00Be afraid, be very afraid<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle (published 1962)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">I tried to get my book club to consider reading this but the cover design of the Penguin Classic edition put people off. The black and white line drawings have a silly, cartoonish look, and the slimness of the volume, only 146 pages, makes it seem like a children's book. But it is definitely not.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">This book is both a whodunit and a masterful depiction of mental illness, conveyed with such economy of language and such a subtle tone, that I was floored. Jackson is another mid-century writer who has undeservedly dropped out of sight. When the New Yorker magazine published her short story, “The Lottery”, in 1948, it generated an unprecedented amount of hate mail, so you know she had her finger on the dark pulse of something. Aside from “The Lottery”, I had never read anything of hers previously, although I had heard about her funny housewife tales, so I thought she was an early version of Erma Bombeck, writing about fallen cakes and muddy paw prints on the linoleum. I quickly discovered what I had been missing. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">Castle starts out like a child's Halloween story...there is a creepy mansion on the hill whose inhabitants are never seen, except for Mary Katherine (Merricat), the 18 year old narrator. Merricat, herself a bit unhinged, trots into town every week to stock up on groceries and to demonstrate, through her presence, that the Blackwoods are still there. She has to put on a brave face as she encounters the unaccountably hostile attitude of the villagers, who torment her with nasty rhymes and cross to the other side of the street when they see her. Merricat is a dreamer who defends herself with elaborate fantasies; she pictures the villagers with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">"their rotting hearts coveting our heaps of golden coins" </i>and compares them to taloned birds of prey, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">"striking, gashing with razor claws". </i>The Blackwoods have always been set apart from the villagers as a consequence of wealth and breeding, but that is not the only reason for this antipathy. Something happened at the mansion years ago-- an accidental death by poisoning, followed by a murder trial—that’s referred to obliquely, almost in passing. But this event has forever changed the way the Blackwoods are regarded by their neighbors. Shunned, they retreat into splendid isolation and utter reliance upon each other.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">The members of the Blackwood family—virginal, motherly Constance; fragile Uncle Julian; and dear, strange Merricat--are highly sympathetic characters, and we feel for them. Their attitude of wounded dignity and downtrodden pride makes perfect sense given the harsh treatment doled out by the community. But over the course of the book, the reader is made increasingly uncomfortable as we become more aware of just how damaged and off base our unreliable narrator is. Jonathan Letham in his introduction to the Penguin edition says Jackson is "perpetually underrated and persistently mischaracterized as a writer of upscale horror", when rather than say, the paranormal of a Stephen King, her great subject was the "wickedness in normality"-- the way that everyday evil manifests itself in our very hearts. Jackson is a brilliant writer; she lets things develop at a leisurely pace, never says too much when less will do, and she made me care so deeply about the Blackwoods that I never stopped reading, with my heart in my mouth, until at last I knew what would become of them. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">BTW, read the introduction after you finish the book, not before, if you don’t want to have the ending spoiled. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">I'm in the middle of reading Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House"; it'll be interesting to compare the two when I'm finished.</div>gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-10775654556774697562011-04-12T14:33:00.000-07:002011-04-12T14:45:18.835-07:00Mildred Pierce - first book, then TV series<div class="MsoNormal">James. M. Cain – Mildred Pierce</div><div class="MsoNormal">This vintage classic (published 1941) pulled me in out of simple curiosity inspired by the recent television mini-series starring Kate Winslet. The old Joan Crawford film had a melodramatic, film noir feel to it that is very misleading as regards the original story. The book is atypical and stands apart from the rest of the Cain detective story oeuvre. Instead it is a psychologically probing character piece about a woman with a very definite set of values and motivations, indelibly set within a certain time and place-- early Depression middle America. Even though the book is so time-specific, it nevertheless resonates with today’s belt-tightening, pride-swallowing, recession-weary times. </div><div class="MsoNormal">The story opens with Mildred, driven by pride and humiliation, kicking her husband Bert out of the house. Bert is really a sweet guy, and he loves Mildred and their two children, but he’s disappointed her because he’s failed at business, failed to support his family, and is having an affair--hence the humiliation. She gets the house and the car, but she’s still beset by encroaching poverty. So she does the unthinkable and takes a waitressing job, a desperate move for which her social-climbing daughter never ceases to demean and punish her. Even after Mildred builds a hugely successful business and is earning enough money to support all the slackers in her life, she still feels diminished, like she's being looked down upon by the world. She yearns for love, but when she holds it in her hand, she has a need to seek out and magnify its flaws. </div><div class="MsoNormal">The one person in her life who Mildred cannot win over to her side is her daughter, Veda, who ends up being the most interesting character in the novel. Veda is a monster of manipulativeness, who manages to wrap everyone around her finger. Her singing teacher is the one who sees her most clearly and provides the most succinct analysis of her character; he says that she’s blessed with a God-given gift of a voice—one in a million-- but as a human being she’s a poisonous snake who loves nobody but “her own goddam self”. He’s so right there.</div><div class="MsoNormal">There are other fascinating characters, like Mildred’s snobby nemesis Mrs. Forrester; Lucy, the neighbor with both a heart of gold and her own self-interested motives; and Monty-- the man whom Mildred loves but can’t respect. Monty is a most interesting combination of rakish romanticism and pathetic nobility. The book is full of slang of the type that you find in hardboiled detective fiction from the 30’s and 40’s by authors like Cain and Raymond Chandler-- i.e., “That’s the trick, baby” and “Yee gods and little fishes”-- but I found this added to the fun, and was not at all annoying. The novel is not kind to any of its characters, and it is sad to the core, but it’s very, very good.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Having just finished watching the HBO miniseries, I really admired it from all angles...it was faithful to the tone of the book, without the soap. Kate Winslet portrays Mildred as clearly torn between her many competing roles and desires. The acting throughout was superb, and the set design and overall look of the film (director Todd Haynes is a genius!) was very detailed and true to the period. I loved the lingering shots of 1930's radios, automobiles, clothes, and a gleaming Vulcan commercial cookstove.</div>gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-50528907957218491112011-04-11T18:52:00.000-07:002011-04-11T18:52:34.124-07:00Richard Hughes - A High Wind in Jamaica (published 1929)<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal">Richard Hughes – A High Wind in Jamaica (published 1929)</div><div class="MsoNormal">This book was the first title in the NYRB Classics series. I had read this many years ago and the only part I remembered was something about a very sad and touching relationship between a little girl and a pirate. I was curious to see how it would strike me on the second reading. </div><div class="MsoNormal">This book is remarkably odd and original, especially considering its date of publication. The opening chapter is like a fever dream… a ruined, falling-down sugar plantation in Jamaica, in the mid 1800’s, after the Emancipation has destroyed the reigning economic system with its basis in slavery. Nature is run amok. The birds and bats and swarming insects have reasserted their dominion over the place; the vegetation grows so rampant that it has smothered entire buildings. This disquieting setting is the home of a family of English children who are barely civilized; they behave like little savages while their preoccupied and clueless parents make half-hearted attempts to keep them in line by making them wear shoes. We are barely into the first chapter when a series of cataclysmic events takes place, in rapid succession. Without warning, God’s own paradise is transformed into a seething mess, “hell’s pandemonium”. And all of it is described beautifully, evocatively, and yet so matter-of-factly that for the moment we put aside the question of whether or not it’s plausible. This chapter sets the scene for the remainder of the story, most of which takes place on the high seas, after the parents decide that the children should return to England for their own safety. But of course they don’t accompany them. No, they put them on a merchant ship bound for England in the care of an incompetent captain and his drunken crew, who are somehow expected to take charge of the children during the voyage. This proves to be a very bad idea, when shortly thereafter, the ship is set upon by pirates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The narrator confidentially explains: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Piracy had long since ceased to pay, and should have been scrapped years ago; but a vocational tradition will last on a long time after it has ceased to be economic, in a decadent form.” </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pirate vessel, having looted the merchant ship of all its valuable cargo, sets sail with the children accidentally still on board. The pirate captain would really love to get rid of them, but he can’t figure out how to accomplish it. It quickly becomes a question of who are the more savage—the children or the pirates? </div><div class="MsoNormal">The tone of irony and emotional detachment in recounting a tale of death, cruelty, and sexuality makes for a very interesting perch from which to view the action. We recoil at the corruption of innocence and the evil done on both sides. The author displays an impressively deep insight into the psychology of children’s minds, how they can be damaged and yet resilient; and also how they think so differently from adults. A brief excerpt from the book deserves quoting here: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Being nearly four years old, she was certainly a child; and children are human…but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby; and babies of course are not human—they are animals, and have a very ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even snakes… Subconsciously, too, everyone recognizes they are animals—why else do people always laugh when a baby does some action resembling the human, as they would at a praying mantis? If the baby was only a less-developed man, there would be nothing funny in it, surely.”</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This rings true for me; I have a clear memory of my own children when they were newborn, and they seemed far closer to slippery, mewling animals than they did to immature human beings. </div><div class="MsoNormal">I think this book must be an early example of that odd little subgenre: children left on their own. Other examples of which are “Our Mother’s House” and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The Cement Garden.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many reviewers have also compared it to “Lord of the Flies”, but in that case the kids-as-amoral-savages theme is used as a prop; whereas in Hughes’ book the children have been tragically misunderstood and abandoned by the adults in their lives, and their behavior never feels allegorical; it feels nothing if not real. <u>Because</u> they feel real to us, they break our hearts, we want them to be happy, and we wish we could save them.</div><!--EndFragment-->gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5734360884144664818.post-50601190841043346862011-04-11T18:48:00.001-07:002011-04-11T18:48:52.079-07:00Why blog?<div class="MsoNormal">Why I’m writing a blog. I started perusing book blogs on the internet because I wanted to see both what other people were reading, and what they thought about what I was currently reading. Most book bloggers, I discovered, are would-be writers themselves. I’m not a writer; I am more an appreciative and devoted reader. I read a great deal and I always read for enjoyment. Pure enjoyment is almost the sole motive behind my addiction to reading, except, occasionally, when the spirit moves me, I will read in order to learn about a subject I’m interested in. But only if a book can give me actual pleasure, in the sound of the words and the way the sentences flow together, and the images the words conjure up in my mind; otherwise, I might as well be slogging through a swamp. The experience is without sound or color. It leaves me empty, and I read to feel full. Certain books appeal to me and others don’t, and lately I’ve begun to think more about these preferences, and what they stem from. So that is something I’d like to explore in this blog as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As I said, I’m not a writer. It’s also true that I’m even less of a talker. I belong to a wonderful book club—the members are all lovely, charming women who are very smart and articulate, and once a month we get together to talk about books. I have belonged to this group for years. I always have definite opinions about the books we read, and I really do try to express them during book club, but I rarely succeed. I become tongue-tied and at a loss for words when trying to explain what I like or don’t like, or why a particular author’s words made me feel perturbed or angry or ecstatic. I think this is due to the fact that my brain works slowly and I need time to sort out my thoughts before I can verbalize them. I think more clearly when I’m writing than I do when I’m talking.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So a book blog seemed the right forum for conveying my thoughts about the books I read and what I actually get from them…what it is about them that either fills me with delight and makes me want to scribble notes in the margins, or makes me want to rip the pages out and hurl the book across the room.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Is anyone going to read this blog? I really don’t know, and it probably doesn’t matter. My daughter writes a food & diet blog that she doesn’t want <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">anyone</i> to read so she’s only told three people about it. As for me, I would be tickled pink if someone were to read my blog and respond with comments of his or her own. But who knows if anybody else will see or know or care? Maybe I’ll end up just talking to myself.<br />
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<div class="MsoNormal">I mostly read fiction, and I have some favorite genres that I go back to repeatedly: 20<sup>th</sup> century fiction, the Victorians, historical fiction, memoirs and diaries, science fiction, fantasy, and children’s literature. I have a soft spot for Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, E.M. Forster and Anthony Trollope, but I also like more muscular prose—Wallace Stegner and Graham Greene come to mind. When it comes to non-fiction I have certain favorite authors—Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, Oliver Sacks, and Mary Roach, but I think I want to stick to fiction ( at least in the beginning).</div><div class="MsoNormal">When I think about the books that I’ve been reading over the last few months, most of them fall into a category I think of as 20<sup>th</sup> Century Forgotten and Neglected Works. These consist of books by authors who have fallen out of fashion, or minor works of well-known authors that just aren't read anymore. The way this started was that a few months ago I read “The Razor’s Edge” by W. Somerset Maugham (a choice made by my book club). Razor’s Edge was my first exposure to Maugham, and it was a revelation. It was so remarkably good that I’m still thinking about it months later; it spurred me on to read more of him (more on that later) and yet I suspect Maugham doesn’t get much traction these days. He's one of those forgotten authors whose books gather dust on library shelves. Authors fall in and out of fashion, and I guess that's to be expected, and yet...isn't it a shame? Maugham is a fantastic writer; he's just not very modern.</div><div class="MsoNormal">We (collectively) are always lusting after the latest fashionable thing, whatever's new. This is an aspect of society that irritates me a great deal. My favorite article of clothing is a cashmere sweater I bought in 1979. When I see similar sweaters in the department stores today, there’s absolutely no comparison in terms of fit, feel, sturdiness, thickness, softness…where am I going with this metaphor? Maybe I just feel more at home in the past than the present. I get impatient with meta-fiction and experimental fiction, or writing that is too obsessed with its own cleverness. Some current day authors are so self-satisfied and clever that they make me want to light a bonfire under their books. Not that there aren't wonderful, skilled storytellers of the current era whose work I enjoy: Michael Chabon, Ian McEwan, Yann Martel, Junot Diaz. Maybe it's a false distinction...new, old, whatever. The most basic requirement of a good book is the ability to be transport the reader to another time and place. The human condition is timeless and unchanging, but so is the need for a change of scenery now and then. Maybe that's why I gravitate toward books that are a generation or two removed from the present. I also tend toward books with a strong female sensibility, some of which tend to get categorized by the publishing industry as “women’s books”. (Or that loathsome term, “chick lit”, which is such a misnomer and does a horrible disservice to writers everywhere.) But I need to backtrack for a minute here and clarify that by “women’s books” I am not talking about romance novels, books about chocolate and shopping, or 99% of the Oprah canon. Women's books do not have to be written by women, and they don’t even necessarily have to be about women. They do usually tend to be about the things that women are interested in, which frequently but not always, means life, families, and the insides of people’s heads-- as opposed to metallurgy, bomb making and mountain climbing. Above all, they must be well written—that is, with clean, sharply worded, intelligent writing as opposed to attention-grabbing, overly stylized prose. Many of the books I have been reading lately are part of the NYRB Classics series and the list put out by Persephone publications. I will confess that I was drawn initially by the gorgeous artwork on the covers, partly by the idea that their lists contain undiscovered gems waiting to be unearthed and some nice person has already done the digging for me.</div></div>gentlereaderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11220600369322848272noreply@blogger.com0