the books i should have read

I'm Back

2012-01-03T15:09:00.000-05:00

If anyone reads this I will be astonished. I have left this blog to sit lonely and forgotten in the vast sea of abandoned internet pursuits for five months. And I confess, I haven't read much that would fit into this blog's stated purpose.

Oh, I've been trying to get myself to read past part one of Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald, but I'm so frightfully appalled by his attempts to portray women realistically and so completely disinterested in the plot that I'm finding it hard going. So I suppose that's my review of that.

I also made a valiant attempt at Henry David Thoreau's Walden but I found it so difficult to get past his pompous self-importance draped in a thin facade of humble living that I wanted to throw my Kindle across the room every time I read a few more pages. What a terrible person! Why would anyone in their right mind model their life or philosophy on his writings?

What I've really been enjoying reading lately are things like Bill Bryson's At Home and Mike Nappa's 77 Reasons Why Your Book Was Rejected, both hilarious and endlessly informative.

But more importantly, I haven't been doing a lot of reading because I have been doing a lot of writing. In fact, I've just finished writing a novel. It is a big milestone in my life as I've started a number of ill-fated stories and never finished them. So to manage more than 80,000 words, the last of which being The End, is, to me, a great accomplishment.

Now that the first draft is done, I will be doing revisions and then letting some close friends and colleagues take a crack at the manuscript, so I will have more time to read. And I plan on starting with a couple of these lovely books that my mother gave me for my 32nd birthday yesterday.

So if you're still reading, thank you. And I will try to be more faithful to this space.

Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences

2011-08-06T23:59:00.000-04:00

It's hard to talk about a 600-page book in a blog. Suffice to say, if you are interested in reading a biography of Ernest Hemingway, this is the one you should read. I have had this biography in my possession for a decade and have only just read it through. I wish I hadn't waited quite so long.

I don't think there is even one letter written by, to, or about Hemingway that biographer James R. Mellow hasn't read. While the book occasionally gives too much detail about peripheral people in Hemingway's life, it sheds much light on the circumstances surrounding Hemingway's writing, which enriches the reader's experience of reading Hemingway's works and is just plain interesting to anyone who writes. It is told from a respectful but not obsequious vantage point, complimenting when appropriate and pointing out the many negative aspects of Hemingway's character, personal life, and lesser works.

The picture Mellow paints of Hemingway is one of a young man with great talent and boundless drive who uses people to his advantage and discards them when they are no longer necessary or get his ire up. Mellow's Hemingway is infinitely complicated and creative, carefully and deliberately developing a public persona that suited his needs and fed his ego. But he is also a man with many regrets and who feels tremendous pressure and eventually succumbs to overwork, emotional and mental instability, and physical discomfort brought on by a lifetime of accidents and injuries. As I read I was alternately impressed and disappointed in Hemingway, and altogether glad I would never interact with him. He was a drunk and a womanizer and a liar and he loved the unspeakably cruel sport of bullfighting.

But he was indeed a master of his craft.

Film Adaptation - Heartland

2011-07-26T13:45:00.000-04:00

Heartland is a 1979 film based on the letters of Elinore Pruitt Stewart, published first in The Atlantic Monthly and then in book form as Letters from a Woman Homesteader. As I read the letters I could picture so easily what Elinore described as she was such a good writer. There were many points at which I thought that this would make an excellent movie, but then I would wonder what to include and what to leave out as there is so much material. Really it would be a great miniseries. But in the late '70s, with a budget of $600,000, someone made it into a film.

Here's what the filmmakers got right:

~The realities of life on a Wyoming homestead/ranch in the early 1900s, including husbandry. There was no disclaimer at the end of the credits that said "No animals were harmed in the making of this motion picture" and there was no way they could have claimed that anyway. They show a fairly disturbing slaughter of a pig and the branding and gelding (is it called that with cattle?) of dozens of calves. Yuck to the nth degree and quite cruel. But, again, the harsh realities of life in that part of the world at that time.

~The setting is phenomenal. I believe it was filmed in Montana rather than Wyoming, but the landscape is perfect and forbidding. So much wind. You really get a feel for just how hard this life actually was. However, I don't think they filmed at all during the spring and summer months because none of the flowers and beauty that Elinore describes are shown. Also, the sun apparently never shines, rises, or sets in Wyoming. It is perennially cloudy. Or at least that's what this movie would have me believe.

~Conchata Ferrell, the actress who plays Elinore, looks a lot like her. It's almost uncanny. And Rip Torn was probably a good choice for Clyde Stewart.

Here's what the filmmakers got wrong:

~The character of Elinore. This is the most important thing to get right (in my mind) and they botched it. In her letters, Elinore is joyful. In every letter one can feel her smiling. She exudes wonder and amazement at her surroundings, toughness without being harsh, energy and spunk. In the movie Elinore seems flat, bitter, frowny, and unimaginative. She looks the part but her attitude is completely wrong.

~They made no use of the actual language that the real Elinore used in her letters. This is a story begging for a narrator. Other than the bits of dialogue (made up rather than adapted from her letters) and some mournful sounding score, this is a silent movie. Elinore's story is a fascinating one, but only because she tells it so well. That's what makes it so special. The filmmakers lost all of the richness of her letters by not using them as a basis for narration.

~When Elinore moved to Wyoming her daughter Jerrine was just two years old or so, which makes their solo adventures (also missing from the film) so much more incredible. In the film she looks to be at least seven years old. She is also fairly quiet, sullen, and mostly expressionless. Not good.

~They missed out on so many wonderful characters to whom Elinore's letters introduce us. No crazy Southern Zebbie, no devout Mexican couple, no argumentative German couple, no bandits stealing horses, no frightened new mother snowed in under the stars. The movie focuses only on Elinore, Clyde, and Jerrine, who become flat and severe. There are moments where the real characters of Clyde and Elinore come through, but they are few and far between.

~It's just boring. Boring. How could this story be made boring? I don't know, but somehow thy managed to do it.

My feeling is that the time is right for a well-done miniseries based on these letters, with good narration and the whole cast of characters. The BBC does miniseries so very well. I wonder if they would ever tackle a story of the American West...

In Our Time

2011-07-25T11:23:00.003-04:00

Many of the short stories we read in high school and college are the product of a young Ernest Hemingway. His first collection of stories was published in the States as In Our Time in 1925 when he was just 26 years old. An earlier, far slimmer volume called in our time was published in Paris the year before. The stories contained in In Our Time are separated by short, fairly violent vignettes about World War I and bullfighting that don't tend to make it into the anthologies as much. The short stories in the book are

On the Quai at Smyrna
Indian Camp
The Doctor and the Doctor's Wife
The End of Something
The Three-Day Blow
The Battler
A Very Short Story
Soldier's Home
The Revolutionist
Mr. And Mrs. Elliot
Cat in the Rain
Out of Season
Cross-Country Snow
My Old Man
Big Two-Hearted River (in 2 parts)

I remember reading most of these in school. They seemed boring to me as a teen and I'm not sure most high school students are really the right audience for these. They examine themes that most people under age twenty just don't deal with. We read these deceptively simple stories about facing the end of the carefree chapter of life while most of us are generally only thinking about how youth will never end and about what that boy/girl across the room thinks of us. We're not ready for these subtle studies on complex relationships.

Many of the stories in In Our Time are Nick Adams stories, which, read in order, tell a definite story that reflects many of Hemingway's own feelings at the time as he dealt with the reality that he was to be a father. The Nick Adams stories express dismay at (or at least disappointment with) the thought of being tied down, physically and creatively, to a wife and baby, mingled with moments of hope that things could be not quite as bad as feared. Nick hops a train to escape his reality and goes fishing instead, an activity he knows by rote and which gives him palpable satisfaction. In the real world parallel to the Nick Adams stories, Hemingway divorced his first wife Hadley in 1927 when their son was four years old. The Nick Adams stories romanticize Hemingway's time in Northern Michigan, before responsibility, before "consequences."

In college especially it was drilled into my head (though the idea never took hold) that when you read a story you read it independent of the author. You are free to interpret it as you wish, using a variety of frameworks that guide interpretation, as long as you don't look too closely at what the author "intended" to say. This always irked me. As someone who writes, I believe that everything an author writes contains clues to his or her life and thoughts. With no author is this more obvious than Hemingway.

Now halfway through the substantial biography Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences, I'm more convinced of this than ever. Hemingway wrote his early stories and his first major novel, The Sun Also Rises, with real names of real people that he changed (or, on a couple occasions didn't change) during rewrites. Even then his friends and enemies recognized themselves in the pages, as Hemingway often recorded actual incidents and conversations, which were rarely flattering, more as a reporter would than a novelist. This makes a lot of sense when you realize that he was a reporter at the time. Don't tell me the author doesn't matter. The issues he wrestles with in In Our Time and The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms are issues he actually wrestled with in real life. Parental relationships, regret over broken relationships with friends and a first love, fear about being tied down, estrangement from his wife, mixed feelings about raising children.

And how can it be otherwise? I suppose a writer just writing stories to ride waves of trends and sell lots of books might lack sincerity and authenticity in his/her writing, but a writer of literature that lasts is usually exploring big issues that not only affect everyone (hence the longevity of these great books) but also have affected his/her own life. Literature that lasts is real, first and foremost.

I think of all the stories in In Our Time, "My Old Man" and "Big Two-Hearted River" stick with me the most. They are on the longer side and highlight Hemingway's ability to describe the complex social interactions that go on between people and also those complicated interior moments that make up the majority of our lives. They show his talent for painting a very specific picture of a specific place. They cover places that figured prominently in his young life, Northern Michigan and Italy/Paris. They address loss of faith in people and loving someone even after you realize they are not quite who you thought they were. And they show the author's deep love and longing for a part of life that was gone forever. They allow people to be flawed, deeply, as we all really are. They mourn.

Letters from a Woman Homesteader

2011-06-22T00:20:00.002-04:00

For Mother's Day this year I received a Kindle. I promptly filled it with dozens of free public domain works, including Letters from a Woman Homesteader, which is a collection of letters from Elinore Pruitt Stewart to Mrs. Coney, a former employer of hers. It only took reading one letter and I was hooked.

I had never heard of this book, but upon searching for more information about Elinore, I found that she has something of a cult following. Here are the basics. Elinore was born either in Arkansas or Oklahoma (reports vary) in 1876, the eldest of nine children. She was married and had a daughter. Her first husband died and she took her baby daughter further west and worked as a laundress and nurse for Mrs. Coney in Denver. It is this former employer to whom the letters are addressed, written after she filed a claim on land in Wyoming in 1909.

And what letters! Elinore is a consummate storyteller, bringing to life the the beauty, grandeur, and danger of Wyoming and the colorful people who were settling it in the early 1900s. She introduces her readers to people of all types, including immigrants from Ireland, Germany, and Mexico. She paints vivid pictures of sleigh rides through a vast white landscape, a cattle drive and the search for bandits, a desperate woman alone on a starlit winter night giving birth to her child, an eccentric and ancient Southerner and his lost love, sunset wagon rides across a landscape covered with wildflowers, and so much more. Her interactions with the interesting people in her "neighborhood" are endlessly fascinating.

But what makes her letters so fresh and compelling is that Elinore is a fearless woman in a time when her sex were considered too delicate for "men's" work and still would not have the right to vote for another decade. She was not afraid of hard work and taking chances. And yet she was feminine, writing not only of mowing hay but of raising children, making meals, sewing garments, and matchmaking.

One of my favorite of her letters involves an impromptu trip she took with her then two-year-old daughter. The menfolk were off on a cattle drive and their women were making a trip into Utah. Her employer (who may have been her husband as well at this point) had forbidden her from going because the trip was dangerous and he didn't think it would be good for her daughter Jerrine. Here is the first part of that letter.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Next day all the men left for the round-up, to be gone a week. I knew I never could stand myself a whole week. In a little while the ladies came past on their way to Ashland. They were all laughing and were so happy that I really began to wish I was one of the number, but they went their way and I kept wanting to go somewhere. I got reckless and determined to do something real bad. So I went down to the barn and saddled Robin Adair, placed a pack on "Jeems McGregor," then Jerrine and I left for a camping-out expedition.

It was nine o'clock when we started and we rode hard until about four, when I turned Robin loose, saddle and all, for I knew he would go home and some one would see him and put him into the pasture. We had gotten to where we couldn't ride anyway, so I put Jerrine on the pack and led "Jeems" for about two hours longer; then, as I had come to a good place to camp, we stopped.

While we had at least two good hours of daylight, it gets so old here in the evening that fire is very necessary. We had been climbing higher into the mountains all day and had reached a level tableland where the grass was luxuriant and there was plenty of wood and water. I unpacked "Jeems" and staked him out, built a roaring fire, and made our bed in an angle of a sheer wall of rock where we would be protected against the wind. Then I put some potatoes into the embers, as Baby and I are both fond of roasted potatoes. I started to a little spring to get water for my coffee when I saw a couple of jack rabbits playing, so I went back for my little shotgun. I shot one of the rabbits, so I felt very like Leather-stocking because I had killed but one when I might have gotten two. It was fat and young, and it was but the work of a moment to dress it and hang it up on a tree. Then I fried some slices of bacon, made myself a cup of coffee, and Jerrine and I sat on the ground and ate. Everything smelled and tasted so good! This air is so tonic that one gets delightfully hungry. Afterward we watered and restaked "Jeems," I rolled some logs on to the fire, and then we sat and enjoyed the prospect.

The moon was so new that its light was very dim, but the stars were bright. Presently a long, quivering wail arose and was answered from a dozen hills. It seemed just the sound one ought to hear in such a place. When the howls ceased for a moment we could hear the subdued roar of the creek and the crooning of the wind in the pines. So we rather enjoyed the coyote chorus and were not afraid, because they don't attack people. Presently we crept under our Navajos and, being tired, were soon asleep.

I was awakened by a pebble striking my cheek. Something prowling on the bluff above us had dislodged it and it struck me. By my Waterbury it was four o'clock, so I arose and spitted my rabbit. The logs had left a big bed of coals, but some ends were still burning and had burned in such a manner that the heat would go both under and over my rabbit. So I put plenty of bacon grease over him and hung him up to roast. Then I went back to bed. I didn't want to start early because the air is too keen for comfort early in the morning.

The sun was just gilding the hilltops when we arose. Everything, even the barrenness, was beautiful. We have had frosts, and the quaking aspens were a trembling field of gold as far up the stream as we could see. We were 'way up above them and could look far across the valley. We could see the silvery gold of the willows, the russet and bronze of the currants, and patches of cheerful green showed where the pines were. The splendor was relieved by a background of sober gray-green hills, but even on them gay streaks and patches of yellow showed where rabbit-brush grew. We washed our faces at the spring, -- the grasses that grew around the edge and dipped into the water were loaded with ice, -- our rabbit was done to a turn, so I made some delicious coffee, Jerrine got herself a can of water, and we breakfasted.

Shortly afterwards we started again. We didn't know where we were going, but we were on our way.

That day was more toilsome than the last, but a very happy one. The meadowlarks kept singing like they were glad to see us. But we were still climbing and soon got beyond the larks and sage chickens and up into the timber, where there are lots of grouse. We stopped to noon by a little lake, where I got two small squirrels and a string of trout. We had some trout for dinner and salted the rest with the squirrels in an empty can for future use. I was anxious to get a grouse and kept close watch, but was never quick enough. Our progress was now slower and more difficult, because in places we could scarcely get through the forest. Fallen trees were everywhere and we had to avoid the branches, which was powerful hard to do. Besides, it was quite dusky among the trees long before night, but it was all so grand and awe-inspiring. Occasionally there was an opening through which we could see the snowy peaks, seemingly just beyond us, toward which we were headed. But when you get among such grandeur you get to feel how little you are and how foolish is human endeavor, except that which reunites us with the mighty force called God. I was plumb uncomfortable, because all my own efforts have always been just to make the best of everything and to take things as they come.

At last we came to an open side of the mountain where the trees were scattered. We were facing south and east, and the mountain we were on sheered away in a dangerous slant. Beyond us still greater wooded mountains blocked the way, and in the canon between night had already fallen. I began to get scary. I could only think of bears and catamounts, so, as it was five o'clock, we decided to camp. The trees were immense. The lower branches came clear to the ground and grew so dense that any tree afforded a splendid shelter from the weather, but I was nervous and wanted one that would protect us against any possible attack. At last we found one growing in a crevice of what seemed to be a sheer wall of rock. Nothing could reach us on two sides, and in front two large trees had fallen so that I could make a log heap which would give us warmth and make us safe. So with rising spirits I unpacked and prepared for the night. I soon had a roaring fire up against the logs and, cutting away a few branches, let the heat into as snug a bedroom as any one could wish. The pine needles made as soft a carpet as the wealthiest could afford. Springs abound in the mountains, so water was plenty. I staked "Jeems" quite near so that the fire-light would frighten away any wild thing that tried to harm him. Grass was very plentiful, so when he was made "comfy" I made our bed and fried our trout. The branches had torn off the bag in which I had my bread, so it was lost in the forest, but who needs bread when they have good, mealy potatoes? In a short time we were eating like Lent was just over. We lost all the glory of the sunset except what we got by reflection, being on the side of the mountain we were, with the dense woods between. Big sullen clouds kept drifting over and a wind got lost in the trees that kept them rocking and groaning in a horrid way. But we were just as cozy as we could be and rest was as good as anything.

I wish you could once sleep on the kind of bed we enjoyed that night. It was both soft and firm, with the clean, spicy smell of the pine. The heat from our big fire came in and we were warm as toast. It was so good to stretch out and rest. I kept thinking how superior I was since I dared to take such an outing when so many poor women down in Denver were bent on making their twenty cents per hour in order that they could spare a quarter to go to the "show." I went to sleep with a powerfully self-satisfied feeling, but I awoke to realize that pride goeth before a fall.

I could hardly remember where I was when I awoke, and I could almost hear the silence. Not a tree moaned, not a branch seemed to stir. I arose and my head came in violent contact with a snag that was not there when I went to bed. I thought either I must have grown taller or the tree shorter during the night. As soon as I peered out, the mystery was explained.

Such a snowstorm I never saw! The snow had pressed the branches down lower, hence my bumped head. Our fire was burning merrily and the heat kept the snow from in front. I scrambled out and poked up the fire; then, as it was only five o'clock, I went back to bed. And then I began to think how many kinds of idiot I was. Here I was thirty or forty miles from home, in the mountains where no one goes in the winter and where I knew the snow got to be ten or fifteen feet deep. But I could never see the good of moping, so I got up and got breakfast while Baby put her shoes on. We had our squirrels and more baked potatoes and I had delicious black coffee.

After I had eaten I felt more hopeful. I knew Mr. Stewart would hunt for me if he knew I was lost. It was true, he wouldn't know which way to start, but I determined to rig up "Jeems" and turn him loose, for I knew he would go home and that he would leave a trail so that I could be found. I hated to do so, for I knew I should always have to be powerfully humble afterwards. Anyway it was still snowing, great, heavy flakes; they looked as large as dollars. I didn't want to start "Jeems" until the snow stopped because I wanted him to leave a clear trail. I had sixteen loads for my gun and I reasoned that I could likely kill enough food to last twice that many days by being careful what I shot at. It just kept snowing, so at last I decided to take a little hunt and provide for the day. I left Jerrine happy with the towel rolled into a baby, and went along the brow of the mountain for almost a mile, but the snow fell so thickly that I couldn't see far. Then I happened to look down into the canon that lay east of us and saw smoke. I looked toward it a long time, but could make out nothing but smoke, but presently I heard a dog bark and I knew I was near a camp of some kind. I resolved to join them, so went back to break my own camp.

At last everything was ready and Jerrine and I both mounted. Of all the times! If you think there is much comfort, or even security, in riding a pack-horse in a snow-storm over mountains where there is no road, you are plumb wrong. Every once in a while a tree would unload its snow down our backs. "Jeems" kept stumbling and threatening to break our necks. At last we got down the mountain-side, where new danger confronted us, -- we might lose sight of the smoke or ride into a bog. But at last, after what seemed hours, we came into a "clearing" with a small log house and, what is rare in Wyoming, a fireplace. Three or four hounds set up their deep baying, and I knew by the chimney and the hounds that it was the home of a Southerner. A little old man came bustling out, chewing his tobacco so fast, and almost frantic about his suspenders, which it seemed he couldn't get adjusted.

As I rode up, he said, "Whither, friend?" I said, "Hither." Then he asked, "Air you spying around for one of them dinged game wardens arter that deer I killed yisteddy?" I told him I had never even seen a game warden and that I didn't know he had killed a deer. "Wall," he said, "air you spying around arter that gold mine I diskivered over on the west side of Baldy?" But after a while I convinced him that I was no more nor less than a foolish woman lost in the snow. Then he said, "Light, stranger, and look at your saddle." So I "lit" and looked, and then I asked him what part of the South he was from. He answered, "Yell County, by gum! The best place in the United States, or in the world, either." That was my introduction to Zebulon Pike Parker.

- - - - - - - - - - -

Elinore goes on to describe the time she and Jerrine spent with Zebbie, who also shows up in several other letters. They did eventually make their way home and the menfolk were none the wiser as they were still out on the round-up. I like to think if I were in her position I would have done the same thing, been that adventurous.

In the last letter in the collection, Elinore tells her friend the results of her experiment as a woman homesteader. Just four years after she filed on her land, she had married her employer, Mr. Stewart, and they had four children, three of whom survived. Yet, during these intense childrearing years, Elinore managed to prove to herself and women everywhere that a woman could do just as well as a man homesteading. Here is that last letter in full.

- - - - - - - - - - -

DEAR MRS. CONEY,

This is Sunday and I suppose I ought not to be writing, but I must write to you and I may not have another chance soon. Both your letters have reached me, and now that our questions are settled we can proceed to proceed.

Now, this is the letter I have been wanting to write you for a long time, but could not because until now I had not actually proven all I wanted to prove. Perhaps it will not interest you, but if you see a woman who wants to homestead and is a little afraid she will starve, you can tell her what I am telling you.

I never did like to theorize, and so this year I set out to prove that a woman could ranch if she wanted to. We like to grow potatoes on new ground, that is, newly cleared land on which no crop has been grown. Few weeds grow on new land, so it makes less work. So I selected my potato-patch, and the man ploughed it, although I could have done that if Clyde would have let me. I cut the potatoes, Jerrine helped, and we dropped them in the rows. The man covered them, and that ends the man's part. By that time the garden ground was ready, so I planted the garden. I had almost an acre in vegetables. I irrigated and I cultivated it myself.

We had all the vegetables we could possibly use, and now Jerrine and I have put in our cellar full, and this is what we have: one large bin of potatoes (more than two tons), half a ton of carrots, a large bin of beets, one of turnips, one of onions, one of parsnips, and on the other side of the cellar we have more than one hundred heads of cabbage. I have experimented and found a kind of squash that can be raised here, and that the ripe ones keep well and make good pies; also that the young tender ones make splendid pickles, quite equal to cucumbers. I was glad to stumble on to that, because pickles are hard to manufacture when you have nothing to work with. Now I have plenty. They told me when I came that I could not even raise common beans, but I tried and succeeded. And also I raised lots of green tomatoes, and, as we like them preserved, I made them all up that way. Experimenting along another line, I found that I could make catchup, as delicious as that of tomatoes, of gooseberries. I made it exactly the same as I do the tomatoes and I am delighted. Gooseberries were very fine and very plentiful this year, so I put up a great many. I milked ten cows twice a day all summer; have sold enough butter to pay for a year's supply of flour and gasoline. We use a gasoline lamp. I have raised enough chickens to completely renew my flock, and all we wanted to eat, and have some fryers to go into the winter with. I have enough turkeys for all of our birthdays and holidays.

I raised a great many flowers and I worked several days in the field. In all I have told about I have had no help but Jerrine. Clyde's mother spends each summer with us, and she helped me with the cooking and the babies. Many of my neighbors did better than I did, although I know many town people would doubt my doing so much, but I did it. I have tried every kind of work this ranch affords, and I can do any of it. Of course I am extra strong, but those who try know that strength and knowledge come with doing. I just love to experiment, to work, and to prove out things, so that ranch life and "roughing it" just suit me.

- - - - - - - - - - -

In 1926, Elinore was injured while mowing hay and never fully recovered from her injuries. She died in 1933. We have a hidden treasure in her records of her life as a homesteader. Not only do they open up a beautiful landscape and a colorful group of people, they preserve information about a time that is long gone now in this country. There was a frontier, even into the 20th century, that intrepid people were blazing. I had no idea that just a few years before the first World War that people were still filing claims and settling the West.

In school we focus so much on political history that we often miss the history that might really connect with us. Many people don't like memorizing dates and the names of generals and the results of battles. But these same people would likely gladly immerse themselves in such a book as Letters from a Woman Homesteader. The personal element is so lacking in history classes, which is what makes many history classes so ghastly boring. I minored in history and find history fascinating, but even I was bored in many a history class. I think supplementing the facts and figures with interesting personal accounts of everyday life is probably the best way to get back lost attention from students. Without the personal element, no one in the history books are truly "real" to us. They are merely data.

A Room of One's Own

2011-04-29T23:26:00.001-04:00

When my husband and I were looking for a house in 2005 one of the two or three we were seriously considering was a 2.5 story house built in 1900. The neighborhood was less than ideal and the front porch was falling off and there was no closet space and the kitchen had zero appliances (and not even clear places one might put appliances if one could afford to buy them—which we couldn’t) so we bought our current house instead, which was built in 1939.

I love our little brick house and almost everything about it. But I still think about that house with the blue and white wooden siding that was built in 1900. It had diamond-shaped leaded windows, hardwood floors, high tin ceilings, beautiful built-in bookshelves, and the most gorgeous corner fireplace, all original to the house or else very early modifications. But most of all, it had that romantic third floor with the sharply sloping roofline and the little dormer windows. The moment I realized that third floor existed I was ecstatic. Because I could imagine writing up there. Without giving a thought to what my husband might want to do with that space, I claimed in my heart as my own creative space.

Well, we didn’t end up in that house and we don’t have a third floor. But I started thinking about that house again when I started reading A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf.

First published in 1929 when Woolf was in her late forties, this essay (or series of linked essays as there are six chapters) takes readers on an imaginative exploration of literature by men about women and literature by women. Woolf touches on so many subjects in this slim volume that is ostensibly just about women and fiction, it’s difficult to settle on just one for this blog.

Despite what seems like a straightforward subject that might call for a stern and forceful delivery on the repressed state of women, Woolf addresses the subject of women and fiction in a flowing, creative way that is neither bitter nor accusatory. She tackles the subject with such grace that it is hard to imagine an honest man reading this book and coming to a different conclusion.

Her basic argument, if you can call it that, is that women must have the same freedoms that men have enjoyed for centuries if they are to create literature that is truly art. These freedoms are free time, a secure place to write where there will be no interruptions, and financial independence. Digging deeper one sees that beyond their immediate material benefits, these freedoms really represent freedom from fear of criticism and expectations that because woman are woman they will operate under a stricter set of rules and virtues than their male counterparts.

During this discussion, Woolf actually makes some astute remarks on the nature of fiction itself, whether written by a man or a woman. Consider . . .

“To write a work of genius is almost always a feat of prodigious difficulty. Everything is against the likelihood that it will come from the writer’s mind whole and entire. Generally material circumstances are against it. Dogs will bark; people will interrupt; money must be made; health will break down. Further, accentuating all these difficulties and making them harder to bear is the world’s notorious indifference. It does not ask people to write poems and novels and histories; it does not need them.”

“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.”

“Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.”

“Praise and blame alike mean nothing. No, delightful as the pastime of measuring may be, it is the most futile of all occupations, and to submit to the decrees of the measurers the most servile of attitudes. So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.”

“Now the writer, as I think, has the chance to live more than other people in the presence of this reality. It is his business to find it and collect it and communicate it to the rest of us.”

“Do not dream of influencing other people . . . . Think of things in themselves.”

“To work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.”

All such true statements that any writer who is a true artist should take to heart. But for the woman writer in Woolf’s day, there are added shades of difficulty as she tries to create. Until very recently in the scheme of history, women did not generally have the right to own property, to vote, to work in most professions, to choose not to get married and have children. Even the children they bore from their own bodies belonged exclusively to their husbands in a legal sense and would automatically be his in case of divorce.

Women, unless they were royalty or married to a wealthy man spent their days cleaning, doing laundry, raising large broods of children, weaving cloth, making clothes, filling feather ticks, cooking large meals, baking bread every day, feeding chickens, and milking cows. None of this is terribly conducive to creating works of art. Woolf reminds us that works of art like Shakespeare’s plays “are not spun in mid-air by incorporeal creatures, but are the work of suffering human beings, and are attached to grossly material things, like health and money and the houses we live in.”

In Woolf’s imaginative description of a woman searching for something to speak about when she is called upon to lead a discussion of women and fiction, her researcher says of the literature before the nineteenth century, “It is a perennial puzzle why no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song or sonnet.” But of course we know why they didn’t. It was a vocation and calling that, no matter what their gifts, was closed to them. The only woman poet I remember reading from Shakespeare’s time is Queen Elizabeth I and you can bet she wasn’t doing her own laundry and making her own meals and scrubbing her own floors.

“Any woman born with a great gift in the sixteenth century,” says Woolf, “would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half witch, half wizard, feared and mocked at.” A gift must have an outlet. and then it must not be sullied by bitterness over one’s condition. Woolf has much criticism for women writers who abandoned their characters and stories to get up on their hobby horses and insert little rants in their novels. Here is a sampling of that criticism.

“She will write of herself where she should write of her characters.”

“She left her story, to which her entire devotion was due, to attend to some personal grievance.”

“One has only to skim those old forgotten novels and listen to the tone of voice in which they are written to divine that the writer was meeting some criticism. . . . She had altered her values in deference to the opinion of others.”

“It is fatal for any one who writes to think of their sex. It is fatal to be a man or woman pure and simple; one must be woman-manly or man-womanly. It is fatal for a woman to lay the least stress on any grievance; to plead even with justice any cause; in any way to speak consciously as a woman. And fatal is no figure of speech; for anything written with that conscious bias is doomed to death. . . . it cannot grow in the minds of others.”

Woolf does have unqualified praise for Jane Austen and Emily Brontë (though not Charlotte Brontë, who apparently let her bitterness at being denied opportunities show). Of Austen, Woolf writes, “Here was a woman about the year 1800 writing without hate, without bitterness, without fear, without protest, without preaching. That was how Shakespeare wrote . . . Her gift and her circumstances matched each other completely.”

It is not that women did not have reasons for their grievances. Consider this passage, which I found to be one of the most incredibly astute observations in the book:

“If woman had no existence save in the fiction written by men, one would imagine her a person of the utmost importance; very various; heroic and mean; splendid and sordid; infinitely beautiful and hideous in the extreme; as great as a man, some think even greater. . . A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger. Some of the most inspired words, some of the most profound thoughts in literature fall from her lips; in real life she could hardly read, could scarcely spell, and was the property of her husband.”

But Woolf does not find even this to be reason to sacrifice true art in order to complain and point fingers in fiction. Instead she suggests to women writers that they have the unique opportunity to fill in the gaps of history and literature, to write about the things their male counterparts have left out.

“All these infinitely obscure lives remain to be recorded . . . and [I] went on in thought through the streets of London feeling in imagination the pressure of dumbness, the accumulation of unrecorded life . . . . All that you will have to explore . . . . Above all, you must illumine your own soul with its profundities and its shallows, and its vanities and its generosities, and say what your beauty means to you or your plainness, and what is your relation to the everchanging and turning world of gloves and shoes and stuffs swaying up and down among the faint scents that come through chemists’ bottles down arcades of dress material over a floor of pseudo-marble. . . . And there is a girl behind the counter too—I would as soon have her true history as the hundred and fiftieth life of Napoleon or seventieth study of Keats and his use of Miltonic inversion.”

Prophetically, Woolf voices her opinion that the tide is turning and the world is changing in woman’s favor. “In a hundred years,” she says, “women will have ceased to be the protected sex. Logically they will take part in all the activities and exertions that were once denied them.”

It didn’t even take that long. I’d say that day is clearly here, right now. Sure we may have instances of unequal pay (which should anger us and compel us to work for justice) but generally speaking the average woman has within her grasp “money and a room of her own.” Whether most of us have enough idle time to satisfy Virginia Woolf is another matter.

Film Adaptation - The Sun Also Rises

2011-02-28T22:25:00.000-05:00

I don't remember if I've mentioned my strange relationship with Ernest Hemingway on this blog. My first experiences with Hemingway were in high school when I read some of his short stories, The Old Man and the Sea, and The Sun Also Rises. I categorically did not like him or his writing. I thought he was a womanizing, animal-killing, arrogant jerk and I found his writing spare, boring, and pointless. Then in college I was assigned The Sun Also Rises again and I loved it. And from then on I enjoyed reading Hemingway's sparse prose and teasing out the meaning from it. I even came to dislike (more and more, it seems) writing that gave away too much (which nearly all modern books I've read in the past ten years do) and assume that the reader is just too darn stupid to figure things out for herself.

It has been awhile now since I read The Sun Also Rises, so I thought I'd search out a film version for fun. Lo and behold, I found one made in 1957. It seemed so familiar as I watched it that I suspect I watched it or parts of it in school at some point. I'm getting to the age where I suddenly find myself becoming more and more like my parents, who practically keep a list of films they've seen so that they won't accidentally rent them again. As I live with a man who can quote at least half the lines of any given movie after just one viewing, I'm sure my developing forgetfulness is cause for concern. After all, our vernacular is in large part based on films we've seen together. But I digress.

Whether I had seen it in part or in whole before, the 1957 version of The Sun Also Rises was typical of the time in which it was made.

The lead male role, that of Jake Barnes, the newspaperman who was rendered impotent by an injury sustained in the Great War, was played by Tyrone Power. This was his second to last credited film, followed by Witness for the Prosecution (aside: I was in that play in high school, so there's my connection to Mr. Power). He had been in film since the 1930s, apparently known for his swashbuckling. My main impression of him as I watched The Sun Also Rises was that his eyes had only one setting: wide. He had a fairly surprised look on his face for most of the picture. Which is strange because I never really thought of Jake being all that surprised by anything.

Ava Gardner played Lady Brett Ashley, and played her very well. She exhibited a wide range of emotions and is so striking to look at. She's gorgeous. My only complaint regarding her is really directed to the costume designer. The story takes place in the mid 1920s (a contemporary novel when it was written) and they have Brett wearing clothes that are much more at home in the 1950s when the film was made. What a waste, when 1920s costumes are so fun.

Brett is the woman whom Jake loves. They met when Jake was in the hospital and Brett was a nurse. Sound familiar? Apparently Hemingway was prettty fixated on this experience in his own life, as this is the second time in reading his novels I've run into it, the first being A Farewell to Arms. Of course, Brett and Jake cannot be happy together because Jake can't perfom and apparently that's a deal breaker for Brett. So Brett spends the movie/book chasing after other men.

Flynn with Hemingway

One of these men is her fiance, an Englishman named Mike Campbell, played by the very entertaining Errol Flynn, also a swashbuckler nearing the end of his career, and, as fate would have it, the end of his life. He died at the age of 50 just two years after this film was made. He has portrayed Robin Hood, Don Juan, princes, captains, and kings, but in this film he plays a rip-roaring drunk who's lost his family fortune and couldn't care less about it. Though I imagine his character is supposed to elicit pity or perhaps some judgment, Flynn played it so amusingly that I found myself liking him very much and enjoying his stupid exploits.

The other supporting roles of Robert Cohn and Bill Gorton were also well played by successful actors with long careers (Mel Ferrer and Eddie Albert, respectively). The most baffling casting choice by far was Robert Evans as bullfighter Pedro Romero. He was terrible and didn't look remotely attractive. Today he looks pinched and tragically tanned, and he didn't look much better in 1957. This photo is actually quite flattering, but he didn't look that way in the film. Perhaps the make-up department is to blame. Who knows. As a viewer I just could not believe that Lady Brett Ashley would fall for him.

I was not surprised to see that his page on IMDB was light on content. He apparently failed as an actor not long after this movie and worked for the clothing company his brother cofounded (Evan-Picone, which I think makes fairly nice clothes), later returning to the movie world as a producer, to which I'm sure he is better suited.

As a whole, the movie was faithful to the book and it was especially faithful to the bullfighting scenes (and actually, extremely educational). Animal lovers beware, however, because this was filmed before the strict standards of animal care were in place in the movie making business, and it appears they filmed actual bullfights in Spain, where, of course, the point is to make the animal suffer and die (so very strange).

Ernest Hemingway and the End of the World

2011-01-20T20:03:00.000-05:00

It's been a terribly long time since my last post. December is an especially busy month and I didn't tackle any books I should have read. However, I have been reading a very long (736 pages) and thorough biography, Hemingway: A Life Without Consequences by James R. Mellow. I've only just followed Hemingway home from Milan and into the writing of the Nick Adams stories. As I work my way through the biography, I'll pick up short stories I've missed along the way and perhaps a novel or two (until I get sick of Hemingway and need to read something different). I'll report on those readings here and will be able to add interesting background information I've learned from the biography.

In the meantime, I've gotten involved with a "literary" project of a very different kind (I use the term "literary" very loosely here). A number of writers/friends of mine/my husband and I have embarked on a writing project that is sure to bring Literature down a notch. Beauty and the Mark of the Beast: A Dispensational Thriller (written by committee) is an ongoing, serialized send up of bad End Times novels and the whole dispensational culture. The five of us are taking turns writing chapters with no plan and no knowledge of what the others are writing. Each writer will move the story further and eventually all of our characters will somehow interconnect as they find their way through the Rapture, the Tribulation and a some pretty lame special effects.

It's going to be apocalyptically bad.

The prologue and the first two chapters are up. Mine's the latest, but you'll want to start with the prologue to get the full story so far. Follow Beauty and the Mark of the Beast. You probably won't regret it.

November

2010-11-30T10:35:00.000-05:00

I'm sharing this lovely 1891 Emily Dickinson poem on the last day of November, one I'd never read until this morning.

NOVEMBER

Besides the autumn poets sing,
A few prosaic days
A little this side of the snow
And that side of the haze.

A few incisive mornings,
A few ascetic eves, —
Gone Mr. Bryant's golden-rod,
And Mr. Thomson's sheaves.

Still is the bustle in the brook,
Sealed are the spicy valves;
Mesmeric fingers softly touch
The eyes of many elves.

Perhaps a squirrel may remain,
My sentiments to share.
Grant me, O Lord, a sunny mind,
Thy windy will to bear!

A Farewell to Arms

2010-11-21T21:06:00.001-05:00

Hemingway in Milan during WWI

I work for a publishing house that publishes, among other things, a lot of women's inspirational fiction. As a result, I read many books each year that involve young, beautiful widows on the frontier beginning unlikely relationships with tough-as-nails men, going through various trials and misunderstandings, and emerging triumphant with wedding bells ringing, all against a thoroughly described romantically wild landscape. As a former English major, reading all these sunny, happy endings can get decidedly old and one longs for the delicious complexities of tragedy.

This is why I rely on Hemingway for pleasure reading lately. Simple, to-the-point, unromanticized reality described through stark action and quick, realistic dialogue.

For the past month or so I have been inactive on this blog, but it is not for lack of reading. During that time I've been picking away at A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway's second and perhaps gloomiest novel. Written in 1929, A Farewell to Arms is largely autobiographical. The main character is an American who drives an ambulance during WWI (as Hemingway did). He is injured and falls in love with a nurse (in the story it's British Catherine Barkley, in real life it was American Agnes von Kurowsky). In the book Catherine must undergo a C-section, in real life Hemingway's then wife Pauline was undergoing the same. Etcetera.

Original 1929 cover art - far cooler than
the lame late 1990s cover of my copy.

Most of the chapters are rather short, and I believe that is why it took so long to read the book. I usually read in bed before I go to sleep. A long chapter forces me to stay awake to read it, but a short one encourages me to put the book down after just one rather than risk getting involved with a longer chapter and then be too tired to finish it. But like For Whom the Bell Tolls, the last 50 pages of this novel forced me to keep up and keep reading no matter how many chapters it took.

The story is both a war story that shows the utter destruction, futility, and stupidity of war and a romance that shows, contrary to the inspirational women's novels I so often read for work, everything doesn't just "work out." The couple's affection is shown almost exclusively through dialogue, again unlike inspirational women's fiction that shows most of the emotion or affection between characters through those characters asking themselves questions like, Could I be falling in love with this rugged, unsophisticated man? Mother would be scandalized!

Instead, you get quotes like these:

"Perhaps wars weren't won anymore. Maybe they went on forever."

"In September the first cool nights came, then the days were cool and the leaves on the trees in the park began to turn color and we knew the summer was gone."

"We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war."

"I did not say anything. I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it. There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity."

"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry."

Bleak. Yeah, I know. But sometimes you just need some good, bleak literature to cleanse the palate.

Amazingly, this book has been made into a movie twice, once in 1932 and again in 1957. I say amazingly because it would take a very light hand and a dark sensibility to make this story into a good movie. Here are the movie posters for these two films:

Take a wild guess which one seems to be closer to the sensibility of the book. If you guessed the one on the left, you're correct. This is a tragedy. The couple on the right looks like they're on a weekend ski trip. Look at the font they use for the title, for crying out loud. Nothing tragic about that.

I'd like to see both of these films and see how they hold up to the book. Obviously the first was made in response to the book's popularity when it first came out, as it released just three years later. The second was obviously made in order to capitalize on Hemingway winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954 (for The Old Man and the Sea).

By way of closing, I realize that Hemingway is not for everyone. But to me he is like a lifeline that connects me back to the world of the despondent and despairing, to the realities of this broken world. And I don't know about you, but I need that sometimes.

Film Adaptation - The Great Gatsby

2010-09-04T21:25:00.000-04:00

I could just as easily have named this post “The Sparkly-est Movie Ever Made,” but for clarity’s sake, let’s keep it at the bland “Film Adaptation – The Great Gatsby.” I picked up the 1974 movie version of The Great Gatsby this summer as I aimlessly browsed the “classic” movie selection at a local, non-chain DVD rental place called Video-To-Go (a selection which is far more extensive than the classics section at any other rental place to which I’ve ever been). I picked it up partly because rentals were 2 for 1 that day (I also rented the most recent iteration of Alice in Wonderland, Inglourious Basterds, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) and partly because I’ve developed a mild obsession with 1920s and 1930s fashions and I was looking for ideas for sewing projects. I had seen this film in high school when I read The Great Gatsby for the first time and remembered vividly a few scenes (most notably the cheesy “shirt tossing” scene, which we will get to later). But I wondered if my impression of the movie might have changed over the 15 years. Incidentally, this book has been filmed five times (1926, 1949, 1974, 2000, and 2007) which is exactly how many times I was required to read the book for English classes in high school and college.

Let’s jump right into it by looking at the ways the two main characters, Gatsby and Daisy, were portrayed in the 1974 version.

Daisy – From my admittedly limited experience of Mia Farrow's screen offerings, I have come to this conclusion: Mia Farrow is not a great actress (though I have always liked her voiceover in The Last Unicorn, even in that fantastical film she’s a bit overwrought). Feel free to defend her and suggest a movie to redeem her in my eyes. Granted, the character of Daisy is a little out there and has ridiculous lines thanks to Fitzgerald, but Farrow bordered on absurd. Her bug-like features were emphasized with make-up, causing her to look not aristocratic and sprightly, but how I imagine a hostage would look after three to six months of malnourishment and mistreatment. Dark eye make-up is decidedly not meant for freckly blondes with hollow cheeks.

Gatsby – If Farrow’s portrayal of Daisy was over-the-top, Robert Redford’s interpretation of Gatsby is emotionless and robotic. Maybe this juxtaposition was purposeful on the part of the filmmakers, but it might have been done a bit more subtly. And anyway, Gatsby is not an emotionless character. He is filled with longing and desire, which needs more than just a stiff hand melodramatically lifted toward the blinking green light across the bay. I guess I just wanted more of a human feel from Redford because I’ve never actually liked the character of Gatsby all that much. I wanted to like him like Nick does, but Redford didn’t get me even halfway there.

Any scenes with both Farrow and Redford in them were doubly prone to melodrama and cheese, the worst offender being when Gatsby and Daisy are dancing together (forever) while wearing their old clothes and the audience is treated to an embarrassingly bad, whispery voiceover track of Daisy and Gatsby talking. Gag. An iconic though, in my humble opinion, almost incomprehensibly stupid scene is the “Such beautiful shirts!” scene where Daisy is weeping over all of Gatsby’s many-colored shirts that he has sent over from Europe. First of all, no one would just start tossing shirts around their room, I don’t care who you want to impress with your material wealth. Second, I know this scene is in the book, but as a filmmaker you have the option of doing a little extra editing. Why not leave this scene on the cutting room floor along with the shirts?

There were, however, some extremely well-done scenes, and they almost always involved Bruce Dern. The best performances by far were those of the supporting cast: Sam Waterston as Nick, Bruce Dern as Tom, and Lois Chiles as Jordan. Believably and skillfully portrayed. (I just have to ask—was it a requirement that nearly all of these actors appear on Law & Order at some point later in their careers? For it seems more than 50% of the actors in this film did just that.) And of course the costuming is very nicely done, as are the sets.

The final scene sets a nice, tragic tone, which was how Fitzgerald wanted to leave his readers, I think. But the filmmakers couldn’t leave it at that. In the most blatantly inappropriate, emotionally wrenching turnabout, they leave the audience with a bunch of gaily dressed people prancing around outside in some unnamed place to the tune of “Ain’t We Got Fun.” What? [SPOILER ALERT] Gatsby was murdered, no one came to his funeral, his “friends” abandoned him, and his grand house stands empty but for the ghosts of unfulfilled dreams, and then suddenly I’m subjected to this? Bad, bad filmmaking. It’s supposed to be tragic.

All in all, if you haven’t seen this film, I wouldn’t bother. After seeing the movie I did reread the book. It had been 10 years or more since my last reading. I do like the book, despite its faults, because Fitzgerald does have an incredible knack for phrasing that I hope to cultivate in my own writing. I underlined so many passages it would be foolish for me to retype them all here. But if you’re interested, let me know in a comment and I’ll dig some up.

Mrs. Dalloway

2010-08-25T14:14:00.004-04:00

I can’t quite believe it, but never in my time as an English major was I ever required to read Virginia Woolf. What? How is that possible? A review of my shelf of literature anthologies from college reveals that my British literature classes didn’t even break into the 19th century, let alone the 20th when Woolf was writing. Brief excerpts of a few works of hers appear in the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women and a collection called Modern Women’s Stories, both of which I picked up second hand for my own reading, not for a class. I spent much time on Modern American writers, but none whatsoever on British writers of the Modern period.

I know that I’ve read a fair number of good quotes by Woolf, and I did enjoy the movie The Hours which I knew was written after the writer read Mrs. Dalloway. And somewhere along life’s journey, perhaps a church rummage sale, I picked up a copy of Mrs. Dalloway for myself. I began reading it one night in bed, as I generally read books nowadays. I kept reading and reading through the lengthy, rambling sentences until I was getting too tired to comprehend it. I flipped ahead to see where the chapter might end, then realized with no small amount of confusion and exasperation that it did not. There were no chapters. Just one long train of thought the reader is to follow until the very end with no breaks whatsoever.

That’s fine and dandy and I was interested to see how she pulled it off, but I knew I could not read this book piecemeal in the evenings before bed. Having a full time job, a toddler, and other commitments, I put the book aside, thinking I would really not be able to do it justice for some time. But a weekend trip to Denver for a friend’s wedding proved the perfect opportunity. I would be traveling alone, would be on a total of four planes in three airports, and would be staying alone in my hotel room. So I popped Mrs. Dalloway into my purse and was off. I finished the book before I left the Denver airport and was left with nothing to read on the plane rides home. It was that quick of a read and that good. Fantastic. I feel mild irritation that I was deprived of Woolf’s writing during my college years and never took the time since to pick her up.

Woolf was raised in a very literary family and was obviously extremely intelligent. She had some college level education, including Greek, Latin, and German, and was an important part of literary, philosophical, and political circles in London. But her life was laced with loss and tragedy. She lost her mother and a half sister when she was in her teens, and she lost her father as a young woman. She and her sister Vanessa were sexually abused by two of their half brothers, and Virginia suffered many episodes of nervous breakdown, some which even left her institutionalized for a time.

Because of this combination of personal triumph and tragedy, she is an extremely sympathetic writer. In Mrs. Dalloway, her characters all have their flaws, but as a reader you understand why and you empathize with them. And she does this with absolutely no direct appeal to the reader to be understanding; it is all done strictly through telling this little detail and that little story so that the characters blaze to life on their own. Woolf’s hand is light and the reader is whisked from one character to the next in just one day.

Anyone who has seen The Hours is familiar enough with the general storyline. Clarissa Dalloway, a 50-something woman of means, is throwing a party. That’s it, really. It’s the day of the party and the reader sees preparations made, flowers bought, and a dress mended. But into this seemingly simple story intrude the innermost thoughts of a variety of characters, including Clarissa’s husband, her old flame, the best friend of her youth, her daughter, her daughter’s tutor, an unwanted guest, a man suffering from shell shock and his fretful young Italian wife, doctors, a duchess, and more.

With uncanny precision, Woolf tackles issues of class, politics, gender inequities, mental illness, medical malpractice, religion, faithfulness, and, most of all, love. All of these issues remain with us today in different forms, which is what makes this story one that lasts. I believe that is why The Hours was so successful. But even that very clever movie doesn’t come close to plumbing the depths of Mrs. Dalloway or the mind of Virginia Woolf.

Not only is her subject matter interesting, Woolf is an excellent writer. I marked many clauses, sentences, and whole paragraphs that impressed me. Here are a few so you can get a taste of her writing (and if you think this is too much, know that I found it hard to narrow it down to just these examples).

“How much she wanted it—that people should look pleased as she came in . . . half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew . . . for no one was ever for a second taken in.”

“Then, just as happens on a terrace in the moonlight, when one person begins to feel ashamed that he is already bored, and yet as the other sits silent, very quiet, sadly looking at the moon, does not like to speak, moves his foot, clears his throat, notices some iron scroll on a table leg, stirs a leaf, but says nothing—so Peter Walsh did now.”

“Whatever he took up he did in the same matter-of-fact sensible way; without a touch of imagination, without a spark of brilliancy, but with the inexplicable niceness of his type.”

“With twice his wits, she had to see things through his eyes—one of the great tragedies of married life. With a mind of her own, she must always be quoting Richard—as if one couldn’t know to a title what Richard thought by reading the Morning Post of a morning!”

“The compensation of growing old . . . was simply this; that the passions remain as strong as ever, but one has gained—at last!—the power which adds the supreme flavour to existence,—the power of taking hold of experience, of turning it round, slowly, in the light.”

“He thought her beautiful, believed her impeccably wise; dreamed of her, wrote poems to her, which, ignoring the subject, she corrected in red ink.”

“Big Ben was beginning to strike, first the warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable.”

“Every man fell in love with her, and she was really awfully bored.”

“Outside the trees dragged their leaves like nets through the depths of the air; the sound of water was in the room and through the waves came the voices of birds singing.”

“As she sat there, waiting, looking down, he could feel her mind like a bird, falling from branch to branch.”

“How odd it was to know him and yet not know a single thing that had happened to him.”

Woolf does an admirable job making the reader feel the environment, the light, the breeze, the crowds, the sounds. She takes us through the day, seamlessly moving us from the fresh, promising morning to the bustling and shifting afternoon, to the enchanted but anxious evening. Following are examples.

The morning:
“Everywhere, though it was still so early, there was a beating, a stirring of galloping ponies, tapping of cricket bats . . . wrapped in the soft mesh of the grey-blue morning air, which, as the day wore on, would unwind them, and set down on their lawns and pitches the bouncing ponies, whose forefeet just struck the ground and up they sprung, the whirling young men, and laughing girls in their transparent muslins who, even now, after dancing all night, were taking their absurd woolly dogs for a run.”

The afternoon:
“A puff of wind (in spite of the heat, there was quite a wind) blew a thin black veil over the sun and over the Strand. The faces faded; the omnibuses suddenly lost their glow. For although the clouds were of mountainous white so that one could fancy hacking hard chips off with a hatchet, with broad golden slopes, lawns of celestial pleasure gardens, on their flanks, and had all the appearance of settled habitations assembled for the conference of gods above the world, there was a perpetual movement among them. . . . and in spite of the grave fixity, the accumulated robustness and solidity, now they struck light to the earth, now darkness.”

The evening:
“Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic thinned . . . I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning, I disappear, but London would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.”

While Virginia Woolf is obviously fond of punctuation, particularly commas and semicolons, I don’t begrudge her the markings. With her long sentences the commas and semicolons act rather like nails holding together a structure built of clauses; without them, the entire sentence would be in jeopardy of collapsing under its own weight. And anyway, once you get in the spirit of the stream of words, you hardly notice the punctuation anymore.

After reading Mrs. Dalloway I count myself a fan of Virginia Woolf and will be on the lookout for more of her works in used book stores and rummage sales.

The Enormous Radio

2010-06-30T09:43:00.003-04:00

John Cheever was born in 1912 and died in 1982 at age 70. He was best known for his short stories but he did write a few novels. Most of his stories take place in the area he was familiar with—New York’s Upper East Side and Massachusetts.

My introduction to Cheever was through the short story “The Swimmer” in which a man decides to swim his way home from a party, pool by pool in his wealthy neighbors’ back yards. That story made a lasting impression on me because of a tiny sprinkling of the surreal. When the man finally reaches home, the house is abandoned and dilapidated. The tale, which seemed a straightforward narrative about a guy swimming and chatting with neighbors, becomes a commentary on lifestyle and finding meaning in life. But the reader doesn’t notice the switch until almost the very last paragraph.

I enjoy short stories that mix a little bit of the strange and a little bit of social commentary with a simple story. I became a fan of John Cheever for this reason, as well as Flannery O’Connor. I’ve not spent much time writing short stories, but I suppose if I ever do I would use these two writers, along with Anton Chekov and Franz Kafka, as my models.

Whoever wrote up this paragraph of the Wikipedia article about Cheever did a very nice job describing his writing:

His main themes include the duality of human nature: sometimes dramatized as the disparity between a character's decorous social persona and inner corruption, and sometimes as a conflict between two characters (often brothers) who embody the salient aspects of both—light and dark, flesh and spirit. Many of his works also express a nostalgia for a vanishing way of life (as evoked by the mythical St. Botolphs in the Wapshot novels), characterized by abiding cultural traditions and a profound sense of community, as opposed to the alienating nomadism of modern suburbia.

On a recent bike trip to Barnes & Noble in East Lansing, I picked up a recent printing of a 1979 collection of the short stories of John Cheever. This collection won the Pulitzer Prize when it was first published. The stories are arranged chronologically according to when Cheever wrote them and he says in the preface that he wished they weren’t because it put his most immature work at the beginning. He said that he felt the first two stories were almost embarrassingly immature to him. After reading them, I agreed that they were not what I was hoping for. But it was obvious that from the very beginning Cheever was interested in commenting on the differences between public and private lives and personalities that are opposed to one another. In the third story, “The Enormous Radio,” Cheever starts to hit his stride.

In “The Enormous Radio,” a couple gets a new, very ugly radio to replace their old, unreliable one. This new radio picks up interference around the apartment building, so they call someone to repair it. After that, the couple cannot hear any real radio stations . . . but they can tune into different apartments in their building. What starts as an amusing bit of entertainment spying on their neighbors soon turns ugly as the wife in the story becomes obsessed with listening in and encounters the less than pretty private sides of people. She and her husband are then forced to confront their own underlying issues.

If this story isn’t regularly assigned today it absolutely should be, not just in English classes but in sociology classes. It’s a fascinating study of what we choose to show to one another and what we choose to hide. This is a lively debate today as the Internet and social media are changing the way we think about these issues. The days of being able to maintain distinctly different personas for different people and situations in our lives (home, friends, school, work, those younger than us, those older than us, church, etc.) are fading away as all of the various people involved in our lives are allowed to see us as we present ourselves on Facebook. It’s harder to develop separate and finely-tuned personas for these disparate groups.

For instance, my friends on Facebook include my parents, sister, cousins, and in-laws; coworkers and authors we publish; friends from high school, some of whom are in life situations like mine and others who still spend most of their free time in bars and haven’t settled into a family life or career; church members; former students; former professors; and miscellaneous people with whom I’ve made some sort of connection over the years but who don’t fall neatly into any of these categories. Normally, even if it isn’t intentional, we would act and talk slightly differently with different people. We might change our vocabulary, our tone, our level of sarcasm, discussion subjects, the number of curse words we use, etc. This is usually something we do without thinking about it.

So when our various personas are no longer separate, when our many public and private selves are, to an extent, forced to meld together, it takes us further away from the world depicted in “The Enormous Radio.” This could be a very good thing, keeping us from destructive behaviors we would be ashamed for the world to know about. But it can also cause problems, like the stories you hear of bosses firing employees because of things they say online to disparage their work, or employers checking up on prospective employees to see what they are like online. Some people keep separate Facebook profiles, one for work and one for “real” friends, to avoid the “worlds colliding” problem.

What do you think? Do you think social media is good or bad for society? Why? Do you think we should be completely transparent to each other? Or do you think maintaining a bit of fiction in our lives is healthy?

The Wolves at the Door

2010-06-15T19:36:00.000-04:00

English majors study literature written in English. Focus is put on long and short fiction, poetry, and sometimes plays and essays. However, I don’t recall ever having been assigned a biography other than autobiographical slave narratives like My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass, and The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. Written by Himself. I always found that these glimpses into the lives of real people were fascinating in a way that pure fiction was not. Even today, I love to read books and watch movies that are based on real events.

I would have liked to read some biographies of some of the many authors we studied, but during my time in higher education it was out of fashion to do much background study on an author. Professors instead preferred reading through a postmodern, deconstructionist lens that didn’t consider authorial intent. I have an excellent biography of Hemingway that I started long ago but haven’t finished. I think I may pull it out again later this year and read it straight through.

The biography is a form of literature and there are plenty of them written in English, so why did I spend so little time with the genre in high school and college? You might argue that spending too much time reading about one figure would be time wasted since there were so many great and terrible people you might read about. But reading biographies is a fascinating and context-providing way to study history and sociology.

A couple years ago my father-in-law handed me a biography he thought I would like to read. It sounded extremely interesting and I knew I would love to read it. For whatever reason I didn’t pick it up until a month or so ago. I’m now just a chapter and the epilogue away from finishing.

The Wolves at the Door is the engrossing story of Virginia Hall, a American woman who served as an Allied spy in France during the entirety of the Nazi occupation. Despite having a wooden leg (codenamed 'Cuthbert'), being only about 30 years old, and being of the fairer sex, this incredible woman commanded hundreds of men over five years, first as an agent for the British SOE and then as an agent for the newly created American OSS. She acted as a radio operator, a saboteur, a safe house operator, an interpreter, and a vital piece of the resistance puzzle. Her biography is filled with stories of close calls, daring jail breaks, and silent strength. I looked forward to reading more of it each night. Her story would make a great movie.

As someone who minored in history, I find myself wondering why history students are also deprived of biographies. They put a human, personal face on the places and dates we must memorize. They bring history alive.

I certainly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in WWII stories, in women’s studies, in espionage, or in the country of France. Despite having already known a fair bit about the European theatre of WWII, I learned many interesting (and disturbing) things about the particular struggles of the French people during the occupation and the years leading up to it.

So tell me—what biographies have you read that have stuck with you? Why were they so powerful?

The Pickwick Papers

2010-06-09T14:48:00.000-04:00

In my first post on this blog I mentioned that I had never read any works of Charles Dickens. Technically, this is true, however I did remember that a high school English teacher did read aloud A Christmas Carol to us one year. I do want to read some Dickens at some point . . . but not right now. So, for all you fans of classic British Literature, I bring you guest blogger Valerie Marvin.

Valerie has a BA in Russian and Eastern European Studies from the University of Michigan and an MA in Historic Preservation from Eastern Michigan University. She works in a prominent historic building in Michigan and blogs about architecture, sewing, baking, cheesy musicals, and other items of interest at The Victorians Didn't Even Like Pink! Her favorite books are Jane Eyre, Crime and Punishment, and Little Women.

On to her review . . .

************************************************

A couple of months ago, a friend from work and I decided to do something a bit crazy. We decided that over the next couple years, we are going to read, together, all of Charles Dickens’ novels, in chronological order. Yes, yes, I know. We’re gluttons for punishment . . . but what else do you expect from two people who spent their years in college studying American, British, and Russian literature? If any of you are also crazy enough to think that this sort of thing sounds like fun, however, you’re welcome to jump in at any time. Our rule is one novel a month, every other month.

We started off in March by reading The Pickwick Papers. Before we started, I really didn’t know what I was getting into, as my only experience with Pickwick was the reference to it in Little Women. (Remember the paper that the girls write, with Beth’s story about the squash? I love that chapter!) I assumed that like much of Dickens’ writing, it would be a little dark and a bit grim. Boy, was I surprised! Instead of sinking into a thick, London fog-like gloom, I found myself laughing out loud multiple times. This is not the dark Dickens I had read before . . . this was hilarious satire!

The Pickwick Papers is less of a chronological novel than a series of adventures had by four well-meaning but rather bumbling men (Pickwick, Snodgrass, Tupman, and Winkle) who have nothing to do but travel around England, going from inn to inn, and generally getting themselves into scrapes, as Jo March would say. Be it a local election (my favorite part), a troublesome romance, or an ill-planned hunting adventure, the four gentleman never fail to act rather silly and prove that they are not really experts at anything, despite their claims. It is a refreshing change from most 19th century British classics, full of perfectly choreographed hunts and elegant balls. Instead of waltzing their way through the novel, these four lovable gents trip, gallop, and occasionally fall flat on their faces in the mud.

The most famous character from the novel, ironically, is Mr. Pickwick’s servant, the venerable Sam Weller. Street-wise Weller, with his thick lower-class accent is a perfect literary foil to his master, who generally looks to Sam to get him out of sticky situations. Sam is gallantly loyal to Pickwick, whom he guides with a gentle, non-obtrusive hand out of many rather awkward situations. Sam’s father, Mr. Weller (or is it Veller?), is also another likable character with a great sense of humor. I often found myself snickering over his complaints about his wife, who spends a great deal of time singing the praises of her tipsy minister (who professes to be a teetotaler) and raising money to send flannelettes to the poor orphans in Africa. (Think about that one for a minute.)

Another interesting thing about Pickwick is the fact that bits and pieces of many of Dickens later novels manifest themselves in one way or another at random intervals. Some, like the old man who is visited by ghosts from his past in a graveyard, are quite obvious. Others, like Pickwick’s brief stay in the poorhouse, remind the reader of several of Dickens’ other works, including Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. Dickens also has a bit to say about the legal system—perhaps a foreshadowing of Bleak House?

If Pickwick has one major flaw, it is the length of the novel, which can get a bit tedious at over 700 pages. By the end I found I had to remind myself of who some of the characters were (there are a lot of them!) and how exactly they all connected together. The last few chapters seemed a bit rushed, as Dickens worked to tie up a lot of loose strings and settle everyone in secure and happy situations.

Despite these flaws, though, I can say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Pickwick Papers, and would recommend it to anyone who appreciates satire, anyone who has read too many novels about refined British gentlemen, or anyone who cares to get a glimpse into the mind of a young and talented Charles Dickens.

How Not to Write a Novel

2010-05-31T17:12:00.001-04:00

Strictly speaking, this book has no business being discussed on a blog about Literature (and neither will the next one I review) but it is a book that would greatly benefit Literature-lovers-turned-would-be-novelists. And Literature students often find themselves in writing classes and reading books about writing. As far as that genre goes, this is probably one of the more useful titles out there. It would save a lot of unpublished writers a lot of wasted time and effort. (Lest you think I'm talking down to unpublished writers, bear in mind that I count myself among their number.)

How Not to Write a Novel is a hilarious handbook that shows its readers how to write novels that will guarantee they will never be published. From dialogue and settings to soapboxes and thesaurus abuse, each aspect of writing a novel is covered. Every "rule" includes an example and as the book goes on the examples get ever more amusing. Even the back cover copy opens with an example that sets the tone for the book:

"What do you think of my fiction book writing?" the aspiring novelist extorted.

"Darn," the editor hectored, in turn. "I can not publish your novel! It is full of what we in the business call 'really awful writing.'"

"But how shall I absolve this dilemma? I have already read every tome available on how to write well and get published!" The writer tossed his head about, wildly.

"It might help," opined the blonde editor, helpfully, "to ponder how NOT to write a novel, so you might avoid the very thing!"

Now, if you're an aspiring author and you have a sense of humor, this book can be a useful aid. As I read it, I recognized some problems with my own writing and will be able to watch for those problems as I write and revise. But if you are an extremely sensitive writer who can't take advice and can't take a joke, you might be better off avoiding this title. I also realized that I have read a number of modern books in the past five years that suffer from some of the many mistakes described. So even published authors could benefit from reading this tongue-in-cheek look at poor writing.

Reluctance

2010-04-30T17:04:00.003-04:00

I enjoy poetry that evokes a feeling from the reader. The best poems give voice to those feelings we have that are difficult to describe. Even a common emotion or feeling like love can be described in incredibly evocative ways such that one feels the meaning rather than understands it.

The following work by Robert Frost, is such a poem. With vivid images, Frost makes me understand that ache, that disappointment, that finality that we all feel at various times in life.

Reluctance

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.

The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.

And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question "Whither?"

Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?

This poem was first published in England (where Frost met with more success early in his career than in his home country of America) in 1912 when Frost was 38 years old. It was the last poem in the collection called A Boy’s Will, which includes a number of wonderful poems, but none of the standard high school English class fare we all read. Obviously, it was the absolutely perfect poem to end a collection.

I wonder that it isn’t more well-known, because I think this inability to bear the end of a thing is at least as common today as it was then, perhaps even more so. We are eternally nostalgic, yet we are also continuously moving on. Our ends are necessarily as numerous as our beginnings. We finish high school, we finish college, we end relationships, we move out of our family’s house, we wreck our favorite car, our dog dies, we have a child (thus ending our youthful freedom), we leave a job. Our favorite TV show goes off the air, our favorite blog comes to an end, summer vacation ends, our best friend moves away, a parent dies, our health fails. And ultimately we all have in our future the time when we will end our lives on earth.

Life is full of the end.

To me this is a very poignant poem and one that I know I will reread often now that I’ve discovered it. Fall has long been my favorite season (though spring is making a go at it in recent years) but it is the perfect illustration of the emptiness and sadness with which we are left when something important ends—those crisp, dried leaves of our regrets blowing away as memory fades, the snow covering the past.

A little melancholy, but still sweet in a way. It seems to me that bittersweet sentiment most accurately captures real life.

The Poet's Mind

2010-04-29T09:58:00.002-04:00

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was poet laureate in Britain from 1850 (when he succeeded William Wordsworth) until his death in 1892. His writings are where we get several common phrases, including “‘tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.” And if you’re interested in his life, historical context, and publications, check out the entry on Wikipedia to get started. You don’t have to know a poet’s context in order to enjoy his poetry, but it can certainly enrich your understanding and appreciation.

Many of Tennyson’s poems rely heavily upon medieval and classical myths and legends, which is why they are probably doomed to falling increasingly out of rotation in our educational system. Most students don’t learn nearly as much anglocentric history and culture as they would have even 50 years ago. And, like much poetry from the 18th and 19th century, if you don’t know what would have been common for people to know at the time (i.e., Greek myths, the Bible, European history) some poems will be a bit bewildering. One poem that does not seem to rely on this tradition, however, caught my fancy as I read it a few nights ago—“The Poet’s Mind.”

Tennyson has been accused, in his own time and ours, of being a bit too sentimental. And I guess I see this poem as a response to his critics (though I have no idea of the circumstances of its first publication, so I may just be making that up). Here it is in its entirety for you, and I’ll do my best to retain the correct formatting despite Blogger’s limitations:

THE POET’S MIND.

I.
Vex not thou the poet’s mind
With thy shallow wit:
Vex not thou the poet’s mind
For thou canst not fathom it.
Clear and bright it should be ever,
Flowing like a crystal river;
Bright as light, and clear as wind.

II.
Dark-brow’d sophist, come not anear;
All the place is holy ground;
Hollow smile and frozen sneer
Come not here.
Holy water will I pour
Into every spicy flower
Of the laurel-shrubs that hedge it around.
The flowers would faint at your cruel cheer.
In your eye there is death,
There is frost in your breath
Which would blight the plants.
Where you stand you cannot hear
From the groves within
The wild-bird’s din.
In the heart of the garden the merry bird chants,
It would fall to the ground if you came in.
In the middle leaps a fountain
Like sheet lightning
Ever brightening
With a low melodious thunder:
All day and all night it is ever drawn
From the brain of the purple mountain
Which stands in the distance yonder:
It springs on a level of bowery lawn,
And the mountain draws it from Heaven above,
And it sings a song of undying love;
And yet, tho’ its voice be so clear and full,
You never would hear it; your ears are so dull;
So keep where you are: you are foul with sin;
It would shrink to the earth if you came in.

In these verses we see that the poet’s mind, like a wild bird or a sacred fountain in a lush garden, cannot abide the presence of the “sophist.” A sophist, in this case, would have been a rhetorician or philosopher who claimed that the answers to all questions could be logically ascertained. Reason would be the highest virtue, emotion the greatest vice. To the poet’s mind, the sophist is like a poison. And to the sophist, the poet and his poetry are incomprehensible. The sophist lacks the ability to understand the emotion of poetry or the impetus to write it.

Now, I am not generally a sentimentalist, though I think I tend that way when it comes to talking or writing about the natural world. But I think Tennyson is right. There are some people who cannot abide poetry, and poetry cannot abide them. And these two worlds, at their most extreme, should not be allowed to collide. Some people straddle the line between absolute allegiance to science and reason and absolute devotion to faith and feeling (though truly I think this is a false dichotomy in some ways) and are able to appreciate the poet for who he is and the sophist for who he is. But to Tennyson’s mind, it would seem, logicians had no business messing around with poetry (or criticizing poets, perhaps).

My very favorite lines are the first four:

Vex not thou the poet’s mind
With thy shallow wit:
Vex not thou the poet’s mind
For thou canst not fathom it.

And I think these lines could be applied to all kinds of critics who do not take the time to appreciate where an artist is coming from and what he or she is trying to accomplish.

Poetry, in General

2010-04-28T14:28:00.006-04:00

Yikes! It's been weeks since I last posted, but it's not because I haven't been reading. On the contrary, I have been working my way through scads of poems by Robert Frost and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Why these two particular poets? Because I have a book of selected works by Frost and a one volume of a set of Tennyson's complete poems.

Everyone reads a bit of both of these poets in school. You might remember "The Charge of the Light Brigade," "Crossing the Bar," and "The Lady of Shallot," which are standard Tennyson fare in high school. As for Frost, you've likely read "Birches," "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening," "Out, Out-," "The Death of the Hired Man," "Mending Wall," and, of course, the ubiquitous "The Road Not Taken." And if you read my last post, you've read "Nothing Gold Can Stay." You read a lot of Frost in school because it's fairly easy and fairly evocative.

Now, I found as I got in bed each night this month that while both Frost and Tennyson have taken up residence on my night table, I reached for Frost more often. I attribute this phenomenon to a few things. First, his poems tend to be a bit shorter than Tennyson and I often don't get into bed until quite late. Second, they are in modern English and thus require less mental energy to read. Third, Frost's poetry evokes the natural world, which I love to think about, especially in the spring. Fourth, the typeface was simply larger, making it much easier to read as my eyes got sleepy.

At any rate, though I am not yet through either collection, I did make a couple discoveries - new poems from each I had never read and that spoke to me immediately, without even taking time to reflect or interpret them. These I will examine separately over the next two days (the last two days in National Poetry Month).

But for today, I'd like to talk about poetry in general and get some feedback from you. It seems to me that people either purposefully read poetry, purposefully seek it out, or they just don't. You are either a poetry lover or you are indifferent. Do you find this to be true? Now, granted, there is a lot of bad poetry out there and one has to be discerning, but I really like poetry. To boil down a thought or a story into comparatively few lines of verse (compared to say a novel or an essay) and to do it with carefully chosen words, meter, rhyme, and form takes a lot of talent and a lot of learned, practiced skill.

The reason there is a lot of bad poetry out there, I think, is because some people look at it as "easy" because it's short. Slap a few lines down on paper about my feelings, ignoring form, rhyme, meter, vocabulary, etc., and you've got a poem. Nonsense. True poetry that endures is careful, deliberate, and disciplined. Free verse has its place, but I very much doubt that some random person's three pages of rambling, semi-incoherent thoughts on philosophy scrawled in ajournal should be read and valued alongside the precise and purposeful works of Shakespeare, Donne, Burns, Shelley, Eliot, or Dickinson. These people sometimes took years to finish a poem of just ten lines. That's commitment.

So I have to ask, do you like poetry? Do you hate it? Are you indifferent? Why? How was poetry taught to you in school? Do you write poetry? What do you strive for in your poetry? What do you think is the "point" of poetry?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

National Poetry Month

2010-04-05T19:09:00.008-04:00

April is National Poetry Month and thus I have been reading from three different books of collected poems: John Donne, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Robert Frost. Throughout the month I plan on posting on various poems, but this evening I'd just like to share a short Frost poem because it is timely. Driving home from an errand this evening I noted that the trees have suddenly sprouted their yellow-green flowers and tiny baby leaves. So . . .

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Written in 1923, this simple 8-line poem isn't just about spring. It is about moving from that transient moment of promise to the time after, when the potential has not quite been fulfilled. An appropriate little poem that shows the beauty of understatement and simple imagery. One of the reasons I do love Frost's poetry.

Nine Stories

2010-03-29T13:26:00.013-04:00

Last night I finally finished J. D. Salinger's Nine Stories. On the whole, it certainly improved my opinion of Salinger's writing. Though the volume was bookended by the weakest stories, the seven stories between showed far greater depth of insight and skill in storytelling than I have pulled from The Catcher in the Rye. Below I'll briefly comment on the good and bad (from my own, humble point of view) in each of the stories.

A Perfect Day for Bananafish
Good: Great dialogue over the phone that tells you enough back story to sense a problem, but not enough to seem expositional. Keeps you guessing. Lovely little beach scene with the child (aside: Salinger writes children better than anyone I've read).
Bad: The ending. Really? C'mon. You couldn't have thought of something a little more creative than that? Call me a cynic, but that doesn't pull my heartstrings or make me think the story is deep and moving. It seems like a cop-out. (Notice the grace with which I talk about the ending so as not to give it away to those of you who would like to read it. You're welcome.)

Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut
Good: Again, great dialogue that draws you in even as it keeps you, as the outsider in the conversation, still sort of out. Makes a very simple scene (two women visiting and chatting over drinks in the living room) very interesting. Makes you want to know the backgrounds of the characters more, but keeps you as a fly on the wall and doesn't explain anything to you. You have to figure it out on your own. Also, I really like the way one of the women comes to a realization of what she has become and how life has changed without her permission.
Bad: I can't remember anything at the moment.

Just Before the War with the Eskimos
Good: We get another dose of Salinger writing young people, this time girls in their early teens. You see the standard catty-ness and competition between teen girls, but also underlying resentment about family and money. More great dialogue. (aside: Maybe this is where Catcher failed me; the dialogue in that book was great, but a lot of the inner monologue seemed lacking to me.) I loved the ending of this one.
Bad: Again, I can't remember any critical thoughts while reading this one.

The Laughing Man
Good: A really original story about a story. The narrator is a teen boy who is part of a kind of after-school program for boys run by one guy (The Chief) in his 20s. The Chief is a storyteller. Each time he's with the boys and they're in the bus ready to go home from their activities, he tells a little more of a macabre story set in China about a grotesque character called The Laughing Man. The story is bizarre and captures the imaginations of the boys. But things cannot always remain as they are. Like in Catcher you get a glimpse of what might be Salinger's own despair - that the perfection you see in your situation in childhood cannot stay, cannot hold back the passage of time.
Bad: I could have used one more paragraph at the end. It stops very abruptly. But, come to think of it, that may be purposeful as the story that the Chief is telling stops abruptly. So maybe it's good.

Down at the Dinghy
Good: Salinger shows his skill writing children again, this time a precocious (actually, I would say naughty, disobedient, and saucy) little boy of four who refuses to get out of a boat or listen to his very patient (I would say longsuffering) mother. I liked the way Salinger wrote the interplay between the mother and son, showing that while it seemed like the boy had the upper hand, the mother, in the end, knew what he needed and was more compassionate for him and less stern than I would have been in a similar situation.
Bad: The mother's name - Boo Boo - was a bit of a distraction. And the last sentence seems uncharacteristically sweet and trite for Salinger.

For Esmé - with Love and Squalor
Good: I liked the first part of the story where the main character, an American soldier in Devon, England, is talking with a little British girl in a restaurant. I loved the way Salinger described the way the little boy moved. Fantastic writing. It put me right there. And the conversation between the soldier and the girl was wonderful.
Bad: The story ends with a story that the soldier writes for the little girl. It didn't live up to my expectations, so what started out as a great short story ended not with a bang, but a whimper.

Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes
Good: Again, the conversation over the phone was done well. Salinger conveyed the anger and worry of one character juxtaposed with the calm, almost boredom, of the other. We get information about the two men and the person they are discussing in realistic little bursts and we are not told any more than we absolutely need to know (and maybe a little less). If you haven't noticed, I like that sort of cagey writing.
Bad: I didn't really get to caring about the characters at all. I suppose it was difficult to relate to them.

De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period
Good: This was my favorite of the stories. A young artist cons his way into a teaching position at an art school that turns out to be not quite what he expected. And right when he finds a silver lining, it is wrenched from his hand. This was the only story that made me laugh out loud. It was (I think) the longest story in the book. And it was the only one that had an honest-to-goodness conclusion. A very satisfying read and likely the only one I will go back and read again in the future.
Bad: Nothing. It was all great.

Teddy
Good: Interesting setting on a passenger ship going from England back to America. Surprising subject matter (strange American kid has realized that he had former lives and has been getting interviewed by philosophy professors in Europe; can he see the future? can he not?).
Bad: The mechanism for ending the story is, like "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," not to my liking. But in this case it is at least a bit more creative. I don't know. The whole Hindu reincarnation discussion . . . I just have no interest in it. This was a weird story. I wish I had just ended with "De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period."

All in all, any short story lover would benefit from adding this to their collection, but I challenge those of you who don't read short stories to give them a chance. Seems like once we leave school few of us give short stories a chance. In addition, any writer looking to capture the essence of a character by describing just a few traits or actions would learn a lot from these stories.

I didn't really think it would ever matter to me, but I do think it's too bad that Salinger was not more prolific. I could have read nine more. Reading this book did put me in the mood for more short stories, and I have a large number in my collection at home, so look for more posts about short stories in the future. I find it is too bad that the novel is the standard way we consume fiction. Short stories do so much more to highlight an author's skill. Actually, a great many novels would likely be better as short stories.

The Screwtape Letters

2010-03-22T21:41:00.007-04:00

As someone who writes back cover copy for a living, I tend to read it with an eye toward quality. Is this good copy or not? What can I take from this to make my own work better? The back cover copy on the very 1990s-looking Broadman & Holman edition of C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters is good copy and creates the perfect setup and explanation of this slim volume for the uninitiated:

"My dear Wormwood, . . ." So begins this product of C. S. Lewis's wickedly funny imagination, a correspondence between two devils, Screwtape and his young nephew, Wormwood. As the senior fiend advises his young apprentice in leading humanity astray, Lewis delves into questions about good and evil, temptation, repentance, and grace, offering knowledge and guidance to all who are trying to live good Christian lives.

A perfect, pithy description of the content of a book whose small size conceals great depth of wisdom and breadth of philosophical discussion.

Because it is an explicitly and unapologetically Christian book, I would not expect to have been assigned The Screwtape Letters in my public high school or my liberal arts state-funded university. However, I run in circles (in my personal religious life and in my professional life) in which C. S. Lewis is positioned in the spiritual hierarchy just below Jesus, about on par with the Apostle Paul. He is eminently quotable and showed such excellent scholarship and wit that I think secretly all Christian writers must hope in their heart of hearts that they are even a tiny bit like him. Most are not, of course, as his level of writing and thinking is ever more rare.

So I have heard and read quotes from this book for some time. In fact the reason I started reading it was to help my husband who was looking for a quote he thought he remembered being in there. This book had been on our shelves since we got married almost ten years ago, and I had never opened it. So Saturday evening I read the first half of the book and I finished it while on the treadmill tonight.

Though it is but a scant 100 pages as typeset in my copy and can be easily read in one sitting (if one does not start at 10 pm as I did) this book really deserves a slower, more thoughtful reading. A class or reading group could spend a week discussing but one of the 31 "letters" because of the religious and philosophical questions they raise.

I recommend that every Christian, whether new in the faith or a lifelong church member who prays daily, tithes weekly, takes Communion monthly, and fasts yearly, read and digest this book. Every believer will see himself or herself, his struggles and temptations, her fears and comforts, somewhere in this book. Sometimes convicting, sometimes comforting, The Screwtape Letters is brutally honest and unflinchingly clear in distinguishing good from evil, right from wrong, profitable activities and attitudes from unprofitable ones.

I'm not sure what a non-Christian would get out of this book, but I would welcome any comments from non-Christians who have read it.

Film Adaptation - Daisy Miller

2010-03-04T10:43:00.006-05:00

This week while plugging away on the treadmill I watched the 1974 film version of Daisy Miller starring Cybill Shepherd. I was pleasantly surprised that, for the most part, the film didn't seem like a 1970s film (I guess part of that would be the costumes and hairstyles). And I was also pleasantly surprised that this film made me like the story more.

You may recall in my last post that I thought the story was a bit melodramatic. Having seen the film version, I realize that what made it seem that way was the narrator. There is no narrator in the film. Every spoken word is lifted straight from the written story, but the narrator's voice has been replaced with the visual elements of film, and the tale is better for it.

Of course, oftentimes film versions of books or short stories are pretty wretched. It seems like a whole slew of them were done in the 1960s and 1970s and they're not all pretty. Perhaps having an ambivalent view of the source material helps one appreciate the movie more because it's going to have to work hard to be a let-down. It's not like seeing a movie version of a book you adore (let's say, Watership Down) and realizing it really leaps and bounds away from telling the story as well as you did in your head as you read the book.

What novel-based movies have you seen that you think sent the author spinning in his or her grave? Which have you seen that made you like the book more? Which have you seen that absolutely were ten times better than the book?

Daisy Miller & The Aspern Papers

2010-02-20T09:13:00.009-05:00

Needing a break from modern writers like Hemingway and Salinger, I thought I'd try someone from the 1800s. Henry James is one of those authors I never encountered in my schooling. I think perhaps I read part of an essay of his in an anthology, but it may have been someone else. I have, however, had a book with four of his short fiction stories for many years without cracking it open. I found I had mistakenly shelved it with my British authors, when in reality he was an American living in Europe - an early expatriate.

I have always liked the idea of being an expatriate. Not that I don't like America, and not that a European country would be perfect or even better in general. But the architecture, histories, art, languages, and culture of various European countries is intriguing and far older and richer than our young country could have. I think most people who write can imagine the romance of lounging in an Italian piazza or a French cafe or near the ruins of an English castle, drinking coffee, smoking, and penning fantastically inspired verse.

James' writing is romantic in that way, but it is not too sentimental - which is good for me. The first two stories in this little collection were Daisy Miller and The Aspern papers. After Daisy Miller I was ho-hum about starting another story, but I was pleasantly surprised by The Aspern Papers.

Daisy Miller is the story of an American young women in Switzerland and Rome who is not well-bred and doesn't try to understand or follow the decorum expected in these foreign lands. An American man who has lived in Geneva most of his life tries to keep her from ruining herself because he has a crush on her, but she will not be saved. I won't give away the ending, but I'll say that it was supposed to be emotional and I just found it hackneyed. There is a 1974 movie of Daisy Miller starring Cybill Shepherd which is on my Netflix queue, but at the rate we're watching movies these days, it may be some time before I actually see it.

I went on to The Aspern Papers with no expectation that I would be thrilled with it. After the first chapter of this novella, I was hooked. Based on the true story of a scholar who tried to insinuate himself in the home of Claire Clairmont (half-sister of Mary Shelley and mother of Lord Byron's daughter) in order to gain access to private papers, The Aspern Papers is the story of a biographer who is looking for letters from fictional poet Jeffrey Aspern to the last living person who had known and perhaps loved him. The man begins lodging at the Venice home of the ancient Juliana Bordereau in hopes that he can see the papers, only to be met with formidable resistance.

Oddly, James himself was fiercely private and destroyed many of his own personal papers and even allegedly asked friends to burn letters that he sent them. Yet he presents his protagonist in a sympathetic light while he portrays Juliana as greedy and unreasonable. James keeps up the suspense until the very end of the story - will he get the precious papers or will Juliana burn them because her age and failing health makes her sense the end is near? Can he trust her niece Tina (earlier editions have her named Tita) to help him? Or is she an agent sent from Juliana to find out his intentions?

James also does a really nice job of setting this story. I can't imagine it happening anywhere but Venice. Reading The Aspern Papers, I don't just want to visit Venice; I want to live there. The descriptions of the city and the canals are loving yet not overwrought. You feel as if you're floating around at sunset in a gondola or lounging in a verdant walled garden in the balmy, starry night.

I really do appreciate an author who truly puts you in a setting. And they don't need to describe every detail of every building and every character and every piece of clothing to do it. In fact, that sort of over-descriptive writing keeps me out of a story, like I'm a bystander. It's far better to take one or two elements and let those set the mood while leaving your reader to fill in the rest.

Here's an example of what I find to be good descriptive writing because at the same time you are learning about the surroundings, the story is moving forward:

The temperature was very high; it was such a night as one would gladly have spent in the open air, and I was in no hurry to go to bed. I had floated home in my gondola, listening to the slow splash of the oar in the dark narrow canals, and now the only thought that occupied me was that it would be good to recline at one's length in the fragrant darkness on a garden bench.

Even never having been to Venice, I know exactly what sort of night James is describing, those hot, humid summer nights where you wouldn't want to be inside if you didn't have air conditioning, if the slight night breezes were your only hope for real comfort. It's humid enough in Michigan, surrounded as we are by great lakes and wetlands. Now imagine if the very streets were water!

James puts me right there in Venice but at the same time the story moves from the canal to the garden. I don't know what's growing in the garden or what the protagonist is wearing, because that doesn't matter. What matters is that I know what sort of night it is because that's what brings our protagonist into close contact and intimate conversation with Juliana's niece. She is outside in the garden because of the heat.

The exact color of Tina's hair or eyes is unimportant. The style of her dress is unimportant. Even the expressions on their faces are unimportant. Yet many writers spend paragraphs describing these very things. Why? They have no bearing on the story - ever. They are a waste of words, more often than not. Little things like this are what separates writers whose work will endure from those whose work floods bookstores today and is remaindered tomorrow.

All in all, I would recommend The Aspern Papers to those who enjoy a bit of mystery with European flavor. I don't think I would recommend Daisy Miller as strongly, but if you like stories about manners and customs, it is a somewhat interesting treatment of the differences between American custom and European. It might explain how some Europeans view Americans even today.

The Catcher in the Rye

2010-02-13T12:27:00.005-05:00

Do you ever read something and when you get through the last page and close the book just think to yourself, "Well, that was pointless?"

Yes, yes, I know the "point" of The Catcher in the Rye (loss of innocence, yearning for the simplicity of the black and white world of childhood, the confusing time between childhood and adulthood, etc.). But when I finished the book this afternoon and put it down on my desk and thought about whether I got anything more out of it than I did the first time around when I was 15 years old, I came to this conclusion: not really.

While I was reading it, I did manage to feel more sympathy for Holden, which was a strain at times. I did feel bad that he felt so alone and misunderstood and unloved. But it's hard to keep that sympathy going when he's badmouthing nearly everyone he comes across and causing his own downfall simply by being lazy and self-centered.

I was brought up to believe that if things went wrong, it was probably my own fault. I heard "use your head" and "that's common sense" more than once, I can tell you that. And I'm not complaining about it. I'm glad that I was taught to own my mistakes and try harder next time. And as someone who enjoyed school and applied herself in order to excel, I find it very difficult to understand why someone would completely slack off and do nothing. How boring. So it is hard for me to relate to Holden Caufield.

Here's what I did like about the book. I liked the way Holden described things using hyperbole, referring to his childhood as 50 years ago or the play he saw with Sally as being about "five hundred thousand years in the life of this one old couple." And I especially liked the passage about how comforting it was that nothing changed behind the glass in the museum.

The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way.

I think to some degree we all get that sort of strange feeling when we revisit some place from the past and find it all as it was but we are different. I got that feeling when I revisited some old haunts of my college and young married days in Grand Rapids, Michigan (see my other blog). This wasn't the only passage with which I identified, but it was one of the ones I know that I couldn't have identified with when I read it at age 15. In a way, my revisitation of this book is the same thing. I have 15 years more under my belt and now I find I can be a bit more sympathetic and understanding.

But that doesn't mean I like the book. I still really don't like Holden Caufield. I find that the message of the book teeters between poignant and pointless whining, veering dangerously toward the latter. I'm sorry Holden's life sucks, but if he wasn't such a colossal jerk and slacker maybe it wouldn't be that bad. I appreciate that he wants to scrub out the profanity on the walls, but he is constantly thinking mean, profane things toward nearly everyone he meets. He has a terrible, insulting view of women and he's so wrapped up in himself he can't see that all the guys he despises are probably just as unsure of themselves as he is.

Maybe I'll change my mind when I read Nine Stories, but I just don't think Salinger was that talented of a writer. I don't think it takes much talent to tell a rambling, first person p.o.v. story from the perspective of an angsty teen. And I find myself wondering what it is about this story that teachers love. Because obviously they like something about it, feel it will in some way improve the writing or reading or thinking skills of their students. Otherwise, why assign it? Or do they assign it just to stick it to the man (not realizing that they are the man) as some lingering rebellious boomeresque metaphorical middle finger? "Oh, it's been banned, so let's undermine those stuffy conservative jerks who just want to repress our human nature and assign it to 9th and 10th graders." I dunno. I just don't get it. It seems like there ought to be better books out there about loss of innocence. Anyone know of any they'd recommend?

Early on in the story, Holden says, "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it."

Well, here's one person who wouldn't be clamoring to call up Salinger if he was still alive.

The Great Gatsby

2010-02-11T08:53:00.006-05:00

"Waaaait a minute. Didn't you say in your first post that you had to read The Great Gatsby five times for school?"

Yes, dear reader, you are correct. However, my guest blogger has not. Had not, that is, until this month. And because I cannot get through books very fast these days, and because it is such a rare thing to find someone who hasn't read The Great Gatsby, I am happy to introduce to you Nathan Henrion, book rep by day, aspiring writer by night, and, until recently, Gatsby virgin.
Nathan has degrees in English and Russian Literature and an MBA ("which fought to destroy the humanity in me"), and he finished writing his first novel this year. Nathan and I work at the same publishing house.

Without further adieu . . .

************************************************

In the spirit of Erin’s blog here, I decided to pick up a book I had managed not to read for my entire educational experience. That book was The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. This is a text usually required in high school, but I had found a way to slip under the radar and avoid it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I had taken the college prep or AP English courses, but still, no Gatsby for me.

I was what you might classify as “lazy” in high school, coupled with the gift of never really having to crack the spine of a textbook and pulling high marks. I remember reading the introduction to the Penguin edition of The Canterbury Tales and the back cover . . . seemed like a decent book . . . even wrote a passable paper on it. Never read it till the last year in college.

So after Erin started her blog I thought to myself, alright . . . I’m going read this book and stop being a literary fake.

Well, I honestly have to say that I do not think my life has been diminished these past 35 years by skipping it. The Great Gatsby? Huh, not so great.

The prose was lean, and at 180 pages a pretty quick read. For a look at the 1920s I guess it was all right. Decadent lifestyles in an age of easy money, hard booze, and post war euphoria.

To me, however, it appeared to be a very underdeveloped tale. The characters were as thin as the prose, and the ending (since I am the only one who has not read this, it’s not really a spoiler) was harsh, but not easy to be too empathetic for Gatsby.

I actually had to resort to googling “Why is The Great Gatsby great?” to try and discover some revelation that was obviously lost on me. Needless to say, I just ran into a bunch of Fitzy fanatics.

It is interesting that the story was received rather poorly when F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote it, and only came to prominence in the 1960s—the time that all our English instructors received their education, and then subsequently created the lesson plans they were going to teach from for the next 40 years. Perhaps the moral ambiguity of the tale fit that generation more than any other, and speaks more for the baby-boomers’ aspirations than the actual quality of the writing. The “you are right if it feels right” lessons fitting in more at Haight-Asbury than a New York speakeasy. Then again, that seemed to be the mood of the 1920s too. The Great Depression and WWII shifted people’s perspective more conservatively, only to rebound after people got sick of “Happy Days” living.

And so, maybe that is why it is considered a great American novel, because ultimately, “you are right if it feels right” seems to be the American creed.

I find it a bit interesting that this is required reading in high school. Alcoholism, adultery, materialism, murder, suicide . . . well, I guess that is today’s high school environment, isn’t it?

So this is just my opinion. I’m sure some of you enjoyed this book, I just don’t fall into that camp. Of the books I have read that explore the conflicts between indulgence and attainability, I am just of the opinion that others have executed their stories better.

The theme comparison that came to mind was from The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky . . . affluent society thinking themselves “good” but self destructing, an age of decadent lifestyle by the elite. At 600+ pages, this is obviously a more in depth character study than Gatsby. Reading 1850-1860 Russian literature really set the mark for me in looking at stories that expose the flaws of idealism and dream chasing.

So naturally the examination in Fitzgerald’s piece came across as very underdeveloped to my taste.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

2010-01-30T15:26:00.000-05:00

I was not a fan of Hemingway in high school. I had to read The Old Man and the Sea for American Lit Honors and The Sun Also Rises for AP English. I didn't like either book much at the time. [Aside: Do they assign The Old Man and the Sea to high schoolers because it is short? Because it has a young protagonist? Did the powers that be realize they were picking out both Hemingway's first successful novel (yes, I know that The Sun Also Rises was published after The Torrents of Spring, but that collection of stories, a parody of Sherwood Anderson, was not well-received) and the last that was published before his death for our curriculum?]

Whatever the reason for reading those particular works, I did not like Hemingway at first. However, in college I was assigned The Sun Also Rises in an American Lit class and I loved it. Somehow, in just a year or two, my attitude about Hemingway did a complete 180. I'm not sure why, but I suddenly liked his lean prose, his decidedly un-flowery descriptions, his flawed characters. I appreciated his talent in a way I hadn't before.

After my grandmother died in the summer of 2008, I helped my mother go through her things. I took a few books from her house, including what I think is a first edition copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls. It is missing the jacket, but the paper and printing quality and the copyright page suggest to me that it is from 1940. The surname Foote is written on the inside first page, my maiden name, and I assume this book belonged to my grandfather Charles and was kept by grandma Lorraine after his death. Chuck served in the Philippines during WWII and as I read Hemingway's descriptions of his main character Robert Jordan's thoughts during a few days in the Spanish Civil War, I thought of my grandfather living those same thoughts.

The book is a window into the mind of Robert Jordan, an American Spanish teacher who volunteered to fight the fascists in Spain. It was written after Hemingway covered the Spanish Civil War as a journalist. Jordan serves as a dynamiter and his mission in the book is to find support among the guerrilla fighters in the mountains and blow a bridge when the big attack begins in a few days time.

The first 2/3rds of the book, very little actually happens. Robert Jordan (who is always referred to by the narrator with his first and last name) finds the bands of guerrillas, they eat and drink in a cave, they tell stories of how they came to be there, they worry about loyalty and bravery, and Robert Jordan hooks up with a young woman, variously referred to as "cropped head," "rabbit," or "Maria."

But as I got to the last 1/3, I realized what was really happening when nothing was happening. Slowly but surely, Hemingway was introducing characters, easing the reader into identifying with one or another, and, most importantly, building tension. The characters are tense as they wait impatiently for the time to act and yet fear the bullets and bombs that will come. There is tension as Robert Jordan discovers who he can trust. There is tension as he falls for a girl during war time, knowing that they have to pack everything of a life together into just a few days before they must risk death.

And this tension never completely resolves itself. Some of it does. But in the end, Hemingway leaves his reader looking for another chapter that will finish the story. Which brings to mind one of the things I ended up loving about Hemingway. His writing genius, I think, is in what he does not tell the reader, in what he leaves out. Too many writers (practically everyone I've read in the last five years at least, with a few notable exceptions) of every genre (though some are more guilty than others) do their readers the disservice of explaining too much. They tell their readers everything their characters are thinking and why they are thinking it. They explain every action. They resolve every tension. It's as if they are stuck in literature essay writing mode where they need to explain all their points to a professor.

I work in publishing as a copywriter. All of my writing must be pithy and to the point because I have limited space (the back of a book) and a very specific goal (sell this book). I'm an expert at making sentences shorter, at getting rid of the unnecessary (though interesting) bits of information. I am usually fairly merciless when it comes to editing. I think a good deal of novelists would improve their work by removing a quarter of their manuscripts through cold, hard use of a red pen (or, as in most cases today, liberal use of the highlight and delete functions).

The other thing I like is the short time frame and limited setting in which the story takes place. Three or four days on a mountainside, with much of the story happening in and around a cave. Sweeping epics are nice once in a while, but to boil a story down into a few days takes talent. Give me a story that takes place during one week, one season, or even one year, and I'll usually enjoy it more than one that covers years or even generations. Long time frames often make for just a list of activities. He did this then she did that then they went there then their kids did this blah blah blah. In For Whom the Bell Tolls the blowing of the bridge is the mechanism for telling the story, but the story is not, in my opinion, about the bridge, about the battle, or even about the war. It's about what people do to survive. It's about the qualities of courage, perseverance, working for the common good, and vulnerability. It's about the way we reason with ourselves and justify our actions. It's about all the ways we are the same, one of the main ways being that we die. It's about death.

Another distinctive literary characteristic in this work is the way Hemingway attempts to transliterate particular Spanish dialects in English, using words like "thou" when Castilians speak. He also finds non-obscene ways to portray swearing, a favorite phrase being something like "Que va, I obscenity in the milk of thy fill-in-the-blank." Like Shakespeare, this language seems foreign at first (and I guess it should since it's depicting a foreign language) but becomes normal after a few chapters. Hemingway also succeeds very nicely, I think, at writing about sex without writing about it. Worth checking out.

All in all, while I didn't start out enjoying the experience of reading this book, in the end I do like the book. I've attempted to write this little commentary without too many spoilers. Let me know if I've ruined it for you or piqued your interest. Anyone who likes war stories or psychological stories would probably enjoy reading this book. If you like stories that involve flowery descriptions of lovely pastoral settings or lavish homes or lovely silk gowns, you're probably going to want to skip it. And the rest of Hemingway's works.

And for those who would like to read the words of John Donne from Meditation 17 of Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions that inspired the title of this book, they are below in original prose form (though with the spelling modernized):

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

Holden Caufield Was a Phony

2010-01-28T20:56:00.000-05:00

So, today J. D. Salinger died at the age of 91. I’m sure this was a sad day for Salinger fans, but I have never counted myself among them. When I read The Catcher in the Rye in 9th grade I was just this side of hating it. I thought Holden Caufield was the biggest phony of them all. Immature, egocentric, blaming everyone but himself for his problems. A whiner. I wasn’t brought up to admire Holden Caufield.

But, in the spirit of honoring the dead, I believe I may give The Catcher in the Rye another chance. Perhaps the 15 years since my first introduction to the book will change my reading. And since we have a copy lying around the house, I’ll also take on Nine Stories despite the fact that my husband said that after reading the first three he didn’t want to fall asleep because he was so depressed.

If you’re interested in a bit of background on Salinger, here’s a nicely done article from The Washington Post today.

Why Blog about a Bunch of Dead Writers?

2010-01-28T11:46:00.001-05:00

In high school I took all the English classes I could, well exceeding the requirements. Why would someone do this? If you’re reading this blog, you know why. Because more English classes meant more reading. And if you love to read you understand the impulse to take on additional classes in order to read more. Novels, short stories, poetry, plays, essays—I loved all of it. If it was written in English (or was a good translation) and the writer was in the grave, I wanted to read it.

In college I majored in English so I could read more. I read scads of poems and short stories in anthology after anthology. I read Shakespeare. I read the Expatriates. I faked my way through Tristram Shandy. I read philosophical and political essays. I read slave narratives and sonnets.

However, even with all those classes and all those books and all those poems, there was still a long list of things I should read in order to be a well-read Westerner. Perhaps we didn’t get to Dickens or Melville because they were out of fashion with my forward-thinking postmodern professors. Perhaps my liberal university was embarrassed by anglocentricity. Or it could be because I was assigned the same book in multiple classes. I read The Great Gatsby five times over the course of high school and college, and Heart of Darkness four times. Such time could have been spent on George Eliot or Fyodor Dostoevsky or Virginia Woolf.

What about those writers who have many classic books to their names yet we only had time to read one or two? Can The Sun Also Rises and The Old Man and the Sea really give me a holistic picture of Ernest Hemingway? Is Faulkner summed up in Light in August and As I Lay Dying? How can it be that I have not read O Pioneers! by Willa Cather but I have read The Professor’s House, of which hardly anyone has heard? Why are The Red Pony and Of Mice and Men the only Steinbeck I’ve read? Isn’t there more to James Joyce than A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man?

This blog is a place for me to chronicle my journey through the library of books, poems, short stories, plays, and essays that I should have read in school. As I slowly make my way through the lists and piles, I’ll post reactions, insights, questions, and reviews in this space. I may occasionally ask for contributions from other writers and former English majors. It is my hope that these musings will lead you to pick up some of these classics yourself to discover why they still appear in curriculum, AP English reading lists, and on the shelf of your favorite brick and mortar bookstore.

I welcome your comments, your reading suggestions, your own stories of the books you love. Just keep it civil, please. I know how passions can run high when someone criticizes your favorite author or dumps on the book that you feel defined your youth. Say how you really feel, but refrain from personal attacks. Focus on the works in question and we'll all have a good time.