November's books (reposted)

#15, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (1884) and #16, Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (1925).

Another two-fer.

Huck Finn was another book I read in high school that whizzed past my head. Zzzzzzzp! No traces left from the passing. Later, as an adult, I reread it and discovered what Twain was all about: that sharp, funny "American" voice that speaks as if naive but in reality sees the world just fine, thanks. I cannot believe anyone reading this book thinks or thought that Twain advocated slavery or racial inequality. It is of course Huck whose world-view is undone by the discovery that Jim is a man, like any man, not an object to be owned or ordered about.

Then, as now, Twain's bluntness (in Huck's mouth) offended people. He intended to do so, and intended that people stop being racist by confronting the dirty secret of their racism and change. It is a satire, folks!

It is not a young adult novel. I wish people would stop treating it as f it were, simply because Huck is a "young adult." It is a grown-up person's book, and if we recognize that, we'll all be happier and more sensible. Personally, I dislike Tom Sawyer. He is a Ferris Beuller-sort of hero, a show-off and a bully, and I like Huck as a character much better. I know too many Toms and not enough Hucks.

Mrs. Dalloway wasn't the first Woolf novel I read, but the first one I understood. It certainly helped me figure out what Woolf was doing with space and time in her novels, which was the modernist key, I think. Or maybe I am wrong and never got it. But... this novel opened the world of Woolf's writing to me, and coupled wiht Hermoine Lee's brilliant biography, made me understand Woolf's art and voice. Better, actually, than all that talk about Woolf as a feminist and as a woman writer--how about just as a writer, like Twain or Hemingway or any other of the writers on my list.

JANE EYRE: The New One

Since Jane Eyre was one of those seminal books for me as a young girl (2.11.10), of course I went to see the newest version, starring MiaWasikowska as Jane and Michael Fassbinder as Mr. Rochester, directed by Cary Fukunaga.

General overall comment: go see it if you are a fan of the book or the story.

Caveat: the screenplay by Moira Buffini moves like a house a-fire and has a more Gothic feeling than I think the novel embraces. Buffini includes sizable segments from the three parts of the book: Jane's life prior to coming to Thornfield Hall, her life at Thornfield/with Mr. Rochester, and her time with St. John Rivers (played by Jamie Bell), who actually gets a lot more time than his character warrants.

But everyone is here: Mrs. Reed and her nasty children, Mr. Brocklehurst and Helen Burns, and the crew at Thornfield. In fact, the most famous actor in the piece is Dame Judi Dench, who plays Mrs. Fairfax; Dench is of course spectacular as a working actress in her prime and graciously plays this small secondary role, mostly in scenes with the young Wasikowska.

My major arguments against this new version are personal. One, the screenplay, besides rocketing along so quickly there are none of Bronte's subtleties, also starts in an unlikely and ultimately flawed place: with Jane's rescue on the moor by St. John Rivers. Thus, while she "recovers" and starts to embrace her new life with the Rivers family, she flashes back to her childhood and time with Mr. Rochester, memories triggered by what feel like very cliched comments from the Rivers brother and sisters.



Jane is ogling the mutton-chops!

 And the book is very clear: St. John Rivers is a more typical "hero" than Rochester -- better looking, more selfless, more in keeping with a mainstream religious and political audience. he is the obvious choice, if you will, and the reader is meant to be surprised and affected by Jane's refusal to choose him rather than the problematic Rochester. Jamie Bell is unfortunately hampered by some mutton-chop whiskers that simply became more fascinating than his acting (yes, it's true) and kept him from in any way appearing heroic. No way was Jane even tempted -- which is all too clear.

Gothic Hero

Second objection: Fassbinder was handsome in a brooding sort of way, but did not have the humor or intelligence Rochester amply demonstrates in the novel. Jane doesn't fall for her employer's looks (that is made clear) but for the fact that his spirit, his character, his self is as stubborn, intelligent, quirky, and free-willed as her own. Fassbinder's Rochester is a weeper (oy, the sensitive Gothic hero!) and doesn't have nearly the right amount of self-aware arrogance the novel demonstrates. The Rochester here is more Harlequin Romance than Bronte, sadly. he's not bad, but in my opinion the best Rochester was Toby Stephens (2006 BBC-TV version).

Third objection: there is absolutely no time to breathe, to appreciate, the enjoy the story. It's a roller coaster ride. Which disappointed me, because the end result was more Danielle Steele than Charlotte Bronte: a romance where there is no need for pausing because the whole thing is so shallow that it is like eating whipped cream. No need to chew. Whereas, as I see it, Jane Eyre is actually more like a savory beef pot pie, thick with gravy and veg. Not solely romantic, but delightfully seasoned, filling, and, on a cold winter's night on the moors, something you're glad to linger over.

And Bronte's novel is, in fact, not solely a romance but a social critique, an indictment of class inequity, and a compelling portrait of an intelligent young woman who knows that because of her lack of fortune and pretty face, she has limited opportunities and yet she is a fierce, free, intelligent, compassionate being. It is about atonement and forgiveness, it is about paying for the mistakes of our youth, it is about love (and not merely romantic love, but filial love and deep friendship). it is about judging people by their appearance, and (in a very early form) an indictment of the social text that some people, because they are rich or beautiful, are superior to or more entitled than the poor, the ugly, the crippled in body or mind.

Jane sees the world very clearly, and while she understands that her perceptions are colored by her love, her envy, her fear, or her anger, she records for us her perceptions and her prejudices without being preachy or priggish.

The movie eliminates that in favor of Jane as romantic, helpless heroine, the little girl enamoured of and healing the damaged hero... except (spoiler alert!) he is never damaged as the novel requires in its hard justice. And the film ignores Bronte's sense of justice, which is hard and perhaps thus not comfortable to our pink-clouded romantic eyes.

This is the same kind of Hollywood mishandling that damaged the Pride and Prejudice of a few years ago: way too Gothic, was too emo to be true to Austen's sense of justice and independence... as well as the author's clear-eyed and harder sense of reality.

Huckleberry Finn, revisited via Daily Show

Just what I said! Done better and funnier by The Daily Show's Larry Wilmore.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-11-2011/mark-twain-controversy?xrs=share_copy

Brilliant response to stupid "political correctness" of "fixing" Mark Twain's original (and brilliant) text. Larry Wilmore calls it like it should be... if we were really both political and correct.

November's books -- final days!

How did I get behind? Hmmm.

#29,  Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee (1997) and #30, Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion (1968)

Back to influential women writers and subjects, in fact.

Virginia Woolf is a marvelous subject but frankly I was more stunned by Lee's approach to biography and to writing history. Her biography of Virginia Woolf is a model of scholarship and compelling writing combined, which is what scholarship should be about. Forget addressing the closed audience of scholars (please!) in jargon-laden phrases that point out our superiority to normal people (please!) and imagine reading interesting, intellegent, and intriguing prose about  intruiging subjects.

This book showed me the way to writing prose for "regular" people as well as scholars. There are too few models.

Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Didion contains an essay that completely exemplifies the way I felt about leaving New York, that marvelous city, when I was 27. "Goodbye to All That" is basically about leaving a party where one has had a good time, but the party has turned sour, for no particular reason, and it is time to go. Hard to leave, but definitely time. I left New York because I had changed, my idea of "adventure" had changed, and I was tired of the antics of the people there. Even now, however, when I read this essay i find myself crying because it was a good time, for a while, and like a lover you remember with pain and happiness, you regret that it did not work out better.

The rest of the essays are also good, but that one alone speaks to my life as if Didion and I were intimate friends.

November's books

#27, Catcher in the Rye by J.D.Salinger (1951) and #28, Julie & Julia by Julie Powell (2005)

I read Catcher in the Rye as a grown-up, which makes much more sense, like reading Huck Finn as a grown-up. It is less an instruction manual than a memory play, and leaves one nostalgic but happy to be an adult and through this terrifying phase of youth.

I thought Salinger did indeed catch the voice of youth and the tone of combined hopelessness and powerlessness one can feel at that time: not old enough to make changes in anything but yourself, but not smart enough to know that is a good thing, ultimately.

We forget he wrote it in 1951: well prior to the usual time of teen angst, the 60s. Fifteen years later, the Holden Caulfields of the 50s were the young generation rebels of the 60s. But it is a post-war novel, too, encompassing all the chaos seen and expressed so differently in European novels (and drama).

Julie and Julia was an eye-opener for me. Julie Powell was stuck, as I have been, and started cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking as well as blogging her daily experiences, to get out of it.

I found her writing charming and her setting of this odd goal refreshing. Why not? Mastering cooking? Why not? The movie focused more strongly on the Julia Child plotline, and given the actors, of course, one would say. Julie Powell comes across as lesser and a bit whiny, as played by Amy Adams, which is more the script than anything. And yet Powell does what Ephron herself did: writes herself out of a dead-end place and into a better one. I found it inspiring, and started a blog to record my own, what? adventures, exploits, etc.

Why not?

November's books

#25, Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, and #26, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

Never Let Me Go is a frightening and moving novel that seems both science fiction and an accurate rendering of the me-centered people we have become. It is now a movie, which I haven't seen, but when I came across this book in 2005, through a friend's recommendation, I read it in a single day. Coud not put it down.

There are three parts, about three children who grow up. I can't really tell you anything about them except that they are British, without giving you a spoiler. And the fact is, the truth of the sotry ahs to creep over you, through Ishiguro's amazing ability to keep you reading despite not knowing what the hell is going on... and the growing fear that it is... I'll stop there.

I am now afraid to read any of Ishiguro's other works, because this one was too powerful. Great testament, isn't it?

Despite that, I highly recommend it.

The Big Sleep is only one of Chandler's few novels. Too few, in my opinion, but it obviously took Chandler a great deal of time to write a complete novel. We should be grateful (and I am) for the handful he left us.

Of course, The Big Sleep features Philip Marlowe, Chandler's most famous detective, living in L.A. during the 30s, 40s, and 50s... when it was something other than the sprawling mega-entertainment mecca it is now, When it was, in fact, in transition. 

Chandler is a fine writer: detailed, exact, and precise, he captures an era and a society that have passed away, other than in period films. His descriptions of the crooks, molls, moguls, wealthy, and down-and-out that pass through Marlowe's life are crisp and compelling; his plots are tightly twisted, surprising, and logical, in the world of illogic and chaos that is moderntity. Although his works were first published in pulp magazines, his writing transcended that. Marlowe is the American version of the alienated man of modern fiction, different from Sam Spade, Dashiell Hammet's detective and Marlowe's peer, because he has no secretary, no partner, no long-time girlfriend, no sidekick.

I also love Chandler's short stories, and especially the collection Trouble is My Business... I only because I wish I could say that when I meet new people: "Hi, I'm Pearl and trouble is my business." "What do I do, you ask? Trouble is my business."  Just for fun.

If you seek good, tight writing and a thrill, read Chandler. Warning: Like Ishiguro, the moral and ethical complications of the life lived in the novel is not easy to take.

November's books

#24, THE GIVING TREE by Shel Silverstein

This is a children's book, and I hate to ruin anyone's happy childhood memories so SPOILER: don't read this is you love this book.

I hate it.

Why? Get a clue, readers! The tree is female, the child male. She "gives" him everything until she is just a stump, and finally, old and worn out, he comes back and sits on her for comfort. Perhaps Silverstein didn't realize the political implications of his abusive message, but I do: enable your man, Tammy!

Ugh.

If Silverstein had written the book so the child was female and the tree male, the moral would not be "be selfless" but, "stop being selfish, bossy!" "You should be nicer!" "Share!" "Stop defacing that defenseless tree!" All good lessons for children (male and female) to learn, granted, but certainly in our culture gendered. How do you get a boy to like you? Be like the tree! Do everything for him, make him feel good, overlook your needs for his, and rely on the fact that, deep down, he loves you... no matter if he takes your apples, cuts off your branches, and turns your trunk into a boat so he can SAIL AWAY FROM YOU!!!!!! and all his other responsibilities.

You should certainly help him all you can with that. And be glad he comes back. Later. Old and useless. Without gratitude or a gift. Or an apology. Oh, yeah: let's model THAT behavior. Gak: the message for girls is dangerous and stupid.

The message for boys, equally so. It's all "take, take, take," use the people who love you without respect or apology, avoid unhappiness by running away, but there will always be someone waiting for you--without you earning that right. This is not only destructive (talk about entitlement!) but suggests men remain children who need to be handled. That they are incapable of deeper emotions, commitment, and generosity. That there is no price to pay for unremitting selfishness.

Too much?

Okay, it is also an anti-green message. Take, take, take from the environment because it is all here to support man (in this case, Human-Man) and will always be there... no matter what...

Uh, not so, sport. Start paying back, stop abusing, and water that tree. And you will have shade, food, and a companion for life, you lazy mook. Or just keep cutting everything away until there isn't anything but a stump. Your choice.

For me, this book was a lesson in looking at the bigger picture, the message behind the pretty shiny love duet being sung in front of the curtain. What, exactly are the political implications of this book as a gender message, or an evironmental message, or even a social message? Who do you want to be, the child or the tree? Why?

And every Tree needs a Sassy Gay Friend (and this one leads to a reference to one of my favorite books!)

November's books

Damn,  three-fer.

#21 The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
#22, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions by Gloria Steinem
#23, Writing s Woman's Life by Carolyn Heilbrun

The Prince is a fascinating, cynical, eyes-wide-open look at politics and the people who use them. I read it in a comparative literature class,and found it both practical and disturbing... like The Art of War by Sun Tzu. Machiavelli wrote it during the rule of the Medici family in Florence.

Oops.
One of the objections to The Prince is that Machiavelli advocates immoral actions; in fact, he advises princes who would succeed to be ruthless and to be practical rather than good (one of the things I always admired about Louis XIV in my study of him). The work is not based, however, on political theory or the "should" school of action, it comes from Machiavelli's direct observation and experience of successful rulers. He is obviously aware of classical works on the subject, like Aristotle's Politics, but suggests those classical treatises do not apply to the modern Renaissance world.

One can certainly disagree with Machiavelli about the "proper" actions to be taken by a prince who wants to be "succesful," and even the definition of successful. What cannot be disputed is that Machiavelli is, sadly, on target in most of his thinking.

Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions was one of the first nonfiction books I read that could be called feminist. I was working and living in NYC. Why did it take so long? Good questions, because it was immediately clear that I am a  feminist. Still and despite the bad press for using that word in this modern 21st century world.

"Knowledge that is not accessible is not helpful": this is Steinem on academic jargon. I want to have a t-shirt with this emblazoned on it!

Steinem is one of the most intelligent and far-seeing of the feminists who changed the way we think about women (a little). Her book is personal but profound using everyday prose to detail the ways in which she observed misogyny and anti-women actions in the 1970s and 1980s. As a young woman, I found it profoundly eye-opening about the realities of my life, the daily interactions going on around and to me.

Steinem never shows off. She simply speaks in a straightforward style that anyone can understand, even if you do not agree with what she says. There is no hiding, no colonizing, no appropriation of resources. Which of course makes her dangerous, not only to misogynists but to the feminists who wish to control the argument, rather than include all women, all men, all persons in the movement toward true gender equity.

Writing a Woman's Life is a non-fiction book by Carolyn Heilbrun, and it was probably the first book I read in a feminist grad class. A small book, it rocked my world as a writer, a future academic, and a woman. Heilbrun addresses the myth of women, specifically women writers who actually lived, by interrogating the ways in which male biographers and female autobiographers construct those lives.

In other words, how they turn fact into fiction/myth that suits the general stereotypes about women as artists, writers, creators (outside of maternity), and individual actors of their own reality. It is not a pretty book, and like most feminist writers of the 1980s, Heilbrun (like Steinem) sees the room for vast change and the need for it now. Both women wanted to educate a generation of women--mine--about how to be truthful about their own, life experiences even if those life experiences did not conform to social mores.

So... three writers who do a bit of "Emperor's New Clothes" revelating. No wonder I am interested in them, then and again now.

November's books

#19, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's (Sorcerer's) Stone byJ.K.Rowling and #20, The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

You might have noticed by days are slipping by too quickly!

I actually include Harry Potter #1 in lieu of the entire series, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Okay, maybe except for the last book, because I completely thought D*#@&%*!e was actually alive and would return. Yes, that's how certain I was: ruined the final book for me. Truthfully, my favorites in the series are #3 Prisoner of Azkaban and #4 Goblet of Fire.

This series single-handledly made kids read again. And who isn't for that? Sure a bunch of cranks and sad people, but everyone else at least was happy boys were reading (!) and girls had significant roles in the stories without being all caught up in their haircare. Good stuff! Adults and kids could read it, and yes, it got quite dark towards the end (I was simply torn up by the end of #4! Shocked, as well!).

Rowling is, simply, a great storyteller. One who cares about her plot and characters, as well as the details of the world she creates. I admire her precision, imagination, and moral vision.

Personally, I either wanted my own wand (which one would choose me?) or to run the wand shop.

The Prince of Tides by Conroy is, in my opinion, his best novel. And, again, I read them all. From The Water is Wide, to The Great Santini, to The Lords of Discipline, in my opinion Conroy is one of the great novelists of his generation and of the American landscape in the 1960s and 1970s. Underappreciated, frankly.

Perhaps it is because his novels do not break new ground in terms of style or language. Conroy simply chooses to tell a compelling story with fascinating (if not always likable) characters. This novel moved me terribly, because it is about confronting the past, no matter what, in order to live. The movie stinks, turned into a vehicle for Barbra Streisand's ego. Ugh. The novel is lyrical, gorgeous, and naked.

November's books

#17, Aftermath by Frederick Downs and #18, Inferno by Dante Aligheri

Well, an interesting combination.

Aftermath by Frederick Downs was one of the last books I worked on in my old life as a publicity specialist/book publishing, long, long ago. Fred was an Indiana farm boy who enlisted for Vietnam at 18, went to war, and returned some time later with medals (lots of medals! including the Silver Star) and multiple scars/wounds from stepping on a land mine. When I met him, he was 38 or 40 and one of the most dynamic, interesting, charismatic people I have ever had the privilege to meet. The Killing Zone is the first part of the story, and takes him up to the moment where he steps on the landmine; Aftermath is the "after" part, where he wakes in the hospital, weans himself off pain meds, and begins a slow recovery of mind and body. He then returns home at the height of the protests about Vietnam, to be greeted cruelly at the airport with shouts of "Baby Killer," etc.

Reading this book and meeting Fred was a mind-blowing experience. I was, of course, anti-war (still am!) and grew up in a place where that was taken for granted. I remember Huntley and Brinkley and the nightly count of dead on the TV screen. I lived in a house where my parents slowly came to change their minds about Vietnam, Nixon, and "the truth," which they never hid from us kids. But Fred came from a different tradition and mindset: he felt (and still feels, I am certain) that is it an honor and a duty to serve your country--two words that have little meaning any more, to too many who use them--and has never been ashamed of his service. He was also clear: at 18 with little education in central Indiana, the Army offered him something he wouldn't otherwise get, an education and a future.

Fred lost an arm, and suffered massive injuries. And when I met him he drove fast cars, boats, and acted as an extra in films. Now he is the Chief Procurement Officer and Clinical Logistics Officer for the VHA. In our conversations, he never pushed a pro- or anti-war agenda, only a pro-veteran one, simply by being himself. So many of us think we know what should or should not happen, given war. I believe we should not have gone into Iraq, and I deplore the senseless deaths and crippling of Americans and Iraquis. That crippling is not only physical but emotional and mental, and those soldiers will suffer for a long time. So will their families. And for what?  But that is vastly different than being on the ground, in the zone, and making decisions, surviving and keeping your comrades alive. That is completely different than politics, strategy, long-term goals, and global economics: that is what Fred writes about.

Before you talk to a vet about what happened, read this. When I was in grad school, a friend who had been in Vietnam introduced me to a lot of vets. I was glad I had met Fred and read his books before she did.

I still cannot believe that I never read this in college or graduate school. And I was took courses in Italian and Comparative Literature, as well as majoring in English as an undergrad. I found the series of translations by Robert and Jean Hollander, and never looked back (on Paradiso, now). The series offers a side-by-side translation, with Dante's original Italian on the left and the Hollanders' English on the right; not only am I loving the series but reawakening my Italian skills, which had sorely lapsed.

Inferno is beautiful: Dante's storytelling skills are fantastic and the Italian is simply gorgeous. Dante wrote this as Italian was emerging as a written langauge (in 1300 c.e.), and this is a model for poetry and Italian and narrative all in one. Simply amazing!

The Hollanders are a formidable team, but the end result is accessible and moves quickly. The images evoked of the narrator's stroll down into Hell are powerful. Dante draws on Biblical and Christian ideas, but also on classical literature and his own sense of justice.

Christian or not, believer or not, one hould read Dante's epic poems for the beauty of the work and the imagination of a brilliant mind. And of course because Dante, like all good artists, challenges authority and the reader's expectations, forcing one to grow and change. Like all good books.

November's book

#14, The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West

I read this novel in college, for a different class.

A complicated look at Hollywood and the burgeoning of 20th, now 21st century culture. The story focuses on a group of people with aspirations in Hollywood,and the failure of most of them to make it on any level, including interpersonal relationships.

It is a bleak, fearsome novel about desire, gratification, superficiality, and desperation. I remember being strongly affected by it, esepcially because I have always loved movies from the 1030s and 1940s, where West sets his story. But the pretty images are just that: pretty images.

November's books

#13, The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander (1965)

This book along with The Legends of King Arthur were the first books I ever bought wiht my own money, at a book sale at the Unitarian Church we attended (where I learned to make macaroni pictures and do magic tricks!). I still have both.

This is part two of a five-part series (note the Macbeth-y witches on my cover!). As a kid, I never got that it was part of a series. It is a "Lord of the Ring" type medieval/fantasy saga that includes knights, magic, and quests. I don't think I ever read more than one or two of the rest of the series, but I loved the spookiness and size of this story, the magic and fantasy. It took me a while to get thru it--I was five when I bought it--but I guess I see where I got my love of this type of epic saga. Oh, and with King Arthur tales...

November's books

#12, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle (1962)

What can I say? A book that combines science fiction with magical realism.

I bought this again last year to re-read (haven't done so since I was 12, maybe), but it is still on the pile. I think I hope it is as good as I remember, that it stands up to time, and I am not sure if being "grown-up" will ruin such good memories.

It is a science book about a girl who has adventures, here. What's not to like for my nerdy/geeky 12-uear-old awkward self?

November's books

#11, Night Without End by Alistair MacLean (1959)

Yes, this one might seem off a bit, but in keeping with the theme of childhood books, somehow (?) I got hooked on this writer's action-espionage series when I found them in our library, while in sixth grade. Apparently, it sparked a life-long love affair with action-adventure, espionage, and well-written thrillers.

MacLean's books sparked a host of movies in the 1960s but this one and a couple of others I really liked never made it to the screen. This particular novel is about a passenger planeload of people who crash near the ice cap in Greenland. Ouch. Great fare for an imaginative child.

This series of books started my trend for reading everything by one author in a huge gulp. I love it.

The twists and turns of his plots, especially in these early books, are marvelous. How the hero and friends survive the weather and the baddies among them is masterful. See, the cover says so: "Master Storyteller." The fact is that we too often dismiss "popular" books and don't take the time to see why they're popular, or how they reach beyond genre or "pulp" to demonstrate real skill and technique. My students and I argued about the Twilight series and the Harry Potter series--they prefer the second, as do I--but Twilight is ragingly popular. Why? I don't know, but as aspiring writers perhaps they'd better take a look, at least, at the market, the audience, and different forms of "successful" or "good" writing, in order to make an informed choice about their own future path.

I never said they'd all be masterpieces!

November's books

#10, The Secret Garden by Francis Hodson Burnett (1911)

This book is another that was most important to me when I was young. It was given to me in a group of books by my first-grade teacher, Miss Collier. All I remember about her was that she was Danish, a very good teacher, and very attractive, in a grown-up way. At the end of my year in her class, my family moved from upstate NY to downstate Connecticut: as a going away gift, Miss Collier gave me six childhood books, including this one. They had been her books, in her family, and it still touches me that she gave them to me.

I read it in pieces, less impressed with Mary's terrible attitude than her adventures in the secret garden itself. I did like that she was crabby and ungrateful--unlike most purer than milk child heroines--and that she was outspoken. The story unfolds without moralizing, but leaves the reader with a definite sense of Mary's journey from sickly, spoiled, wilfull, crabby, abandoned child to healthy, thoughtful, involved, generous, happy child... now with a new family.

I should also say that I read this aloud to my new second grade peers, every afternoon for about two weeks. Maybe more. My second grade teacher, not so great as Miss Collier, set this up--probably for some desperately needed alone time during the day! Of course, I was a complete geek--being able to read this book aloud, clearly and more or less articulately in second grade? Raging geek! and it is also completely Hermoine Granger, which is what I was. To say I was unpopular is mild. But I disliked my new colleagues as well, heartily, and, like Mary herself, found pleasure in other places... like books.

I've never seen a movie of this, but I know they exist. Probably "cleansed" for kids' sakes, and Mary is all sweet and treacly.

I should add that about 20 years ago, I gave it in turn to the daughter of one of my professors in grad school. She was very young and her parents had a messy divorce. I liked her a lot, and thought it would be appropriate to pass on this tradition and this book.

November's books

#9, Heidi by Johanna Spyri (1880)

Here I do not mean the actual novel--which I did read when I was slightly older as well as saw infinite versions of the films as a young girl--but the simplified storybook I had when I was four or five. I actually learned to read with this book, which means I read this book and had the "aha!" moment when one realizes that the marks on the page represent specific words that you say. When the letters and words took on unique and individual meanings.

I had a Heidi storybook and also a recording of Heidi on vinyl (y'know, those big black things with grooves...). The "aha!" moment came when I realized that the storybook and the record had the same story--down to the punctuation--and I could follow the book outloud and thus connect the words with the sounds.  Aha!

Later, when I saw The Miracle Worker, I always thought that well scene where Helen Keller had the "aha!" moment probably had that same feeling for me in that original flash of understanding. Something that people had been telling you and that you cannot put together suddenly becomes manifest as a very real thing or action or process. The stuff in your hand is "w-a-t-e-r" and the gestures in your hand are "w-a-t-e-r" too. The sounds on the record are words and the black marks on the pages in front of you are the same words, only in writing, not sound. But writing represents/equals specific sounds and those marks/sounds stand for something real... Put all three together, and you're reading. Easy, right?

So why didn't it work that way with calculus?

November's books

#7, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1860) and #8, House of Mirth by Edith Wharton (1905)

A two-fer. That's what happens when you (meaning me) miss a day!

Great Expectations is my favorite Dickens novel. I don't think people read Dickens much anymore, although it used to be like the Bible in a way--everyone had their favorite Dickens, their favorite character. But those are "old school" days even I didn't live in, more like Louisa May Alcott (maybe that's where I get it from!).

However: the story of Pip and his expectations is my favorite. I first read it in, yes, a college English class in my freshman year. And again in my senior year. Like Scout Finch, Pip's narration of events matures as he does: his view of people around him, morality, life, and the complexities of th human heart becomes more adult, although Pip remains judgmental, quick to impulse, and foolish. How could I not love him?

It is a complex book about love, revenge, loyalty, friendship, debts, and guilt. The love story--if there is one--between Pip and Estella is al-most a sidetrip, although Dickens finally chose to have it be the destination of the book (not his original plan). I read it again a few years ago, and enjoyed the novel as much as I did when I was 18, and 21... which was a while ago.

The House of Mirth was Edith Wharton's breakthrough novel. Writing it, having it published opned a door into the next, and greatest, stage of her life. This novel was the basis also for the first full-length play I ever wrote, because reading this book and then researching Wharton's life were powerful forces in my own development as a writer and as a woman.

It is also a journey novel, and like Great Expectations, picaresque in structure. The second novel is the story of Lily Bart a beautiful but poor girl with ambitions to marry well. Unfortunately, early in the nvoel her unconscious morality is awakened, slightly, by her encounter with Lawerence Selden, a poor lawyer living on the fringes of the "super-rich" society in turn-of-the-century New York City.

I don't know that anyone reads this any more, but it is a true feminist novel, not interested in waving a screaming banner but in exposing the double standards, the falsehood, the complicity, and the careless cruelty of our patriarchal society, wherein money equals power. The searing honesty of Wharton's view comes of course from her life within this very society and possibly from the freedom her inherited money provided. Sigh. And, hurrah!

She went on to leave her husband, write many more novels, and live in France for the rest of her life, among artists and friends. During WWI she worked for the refugees and the displaced, staying in France during the entire war. I admire her, but this book defnitely changed me, at a cellular level the way all great art should. it is a fearless book that must have cost her friends and acquaintances, must have made her change her life. I believe it made me change mine-for the better.

November's books

#6, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925)

This, too, was a book in my Modern Novel class (what a class!) but I had read it before in high school. Like many high school novels, however, I ignored the quality and whined about the assignment. Truthfully, I wasn't old enough to understand how flat out brilliant this story is.

Like The Sun Also Rises, this is a story written in the first person, this time by the narrator Nick Carraway, who is an observer and not a participant in the main story of the novel. It is also about the lost generation of post-WWI, but the one that stayed home, or came home, after the war ended.
It is a real modern tragedy--the story of a man, Gatsby, who falls and loses everything because he is a modern man, stuck between his truth and the identity he can create over post-war wealth. To realize his complete Horatio Alger/American dream, he must reclaim his lost love. Daisy, the dream, is a false dream that betrays Gatsby. Disaster strikes, and balance returns to the Modern World.

Unlike most of what are called tragedies in the modern world, this is so, in that it evokes in the reader a sense of pity and fear--Aristotle's catharsis--because of the twists of fate, the failures of the human heart, and the desperate desire of Gatsby to make all his boyhood dreams of wealth and love and acceptance come true. Simply gorgeous writing, Fitzgerald at his young best, confident and compassionate and bold.

(And terrible movies: don't bother!!!)

November's books

#5, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway (1926)

Just talked about this novel here, but it too was a product of that Modern Novel course. I had never read Hemingway before and fell in love with his elegant, clean prose style.

It is a book about expatriates, of course, and Paris, but also Spain and fishing and friendship and a lost world. Without being explicitly or whiningly about any of those things. Once I read it, I wanted to read more Hemingway and so worked my way through his short stories, which are simply brilliant.

The novel captures a period in negative ways, too. It displays misogyny, anti-semitism, homophobia, and racial prejudice, common to the era. I would argue that the author is aware of his (and his characters') prejudices and their casual privilege, even in a world of chaos; that he serves them up for the reader's eye as clearly and nakedly as he serves up their poignant emotions. It is, in the end, only the young bullfighter who is "authentic," and Hemingway lets us know it, even when he writes in the first person.

The best last line of a novel: "Yes," I said. Isn't it pretty to think so."

November's books

#4, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (1939)

I spent the summer when I was 14 reading Steinbeck. Until I got near the end and couldn't read any more. I still have never read Travels with Charley.

But this book, of all of them, was the best. Left me simply flat out limp with the size and scope, the humanity and compassion of Steinbeck's vision and skill. It seemed to me just as accurate a view of the Depression and the way it revealed America to itself as To Kill A Mockingbird, while looking at other problems, other areas of the country, other realities. For someone whose parents lived through the Depression and who herself has only experienced it in books, plays, and film, this is a great doorway into the non-academic reality of those times and those people. I wish we had a writer with this vision about our times, about the failures, the losses, the foreclosures, the banks, the rich vs. poor cruelty, the government, and the anger, hope, and perseverance of people now.