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Georgia

Georgia:  A Novel of Georgia O’Keefe

by Dawn Tripp

Published 2016

Read Jan 2, 2017

Dawn Tripp became intrigued by Georgia O’Keefe after attending a show of her abstractions held at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2009.  She researched her life extensively and was able to read a large collection of letters between O’Keefe and Stieglitz, initially her mentor, then her lover, then her manager and eventually her husband, while writing this book.  Tripp is clear about what she offers us—a novel inspired by the life of O’Keefe, imagining dialogue between O’Keefe and Stieglitz as well as O’Keefe’s internal dialogue.  I appreciate her honesty about what she’s written and the extensive research she did to prepare.  I did, however, have difficulty with the imagining of dialogue and, especially, the internal thoughts regarding their passion and details of their sexual relationship.

The book did help me substantially expand my understanding of O’Keefe’s life and art and her relationship with Stieglitz, about whom I had no knowledge beyond that he and O’Keefe were lovers and their careers were linked.   Tripp wants us to better understand both the positive and negative impact he had on O’Keefe’s career.

Stieglitz enabled her to leave an unsatisfying teaching career and to fully focus on her art—she didn’t have to worry about working to support herself.  One can say that the money came from sale of her art, which was true eventually but not initially.  His promotion of O’Keefe was essential for the public to know anything of her art.   She completely put her art in his hands from a business standpoint. I found it interesting that the first show he included her work in was done without her even knowing it.  Because he has an understanding of what will sell, she gets some input on what to paint and not—some of which she follows but most of which she does not, although (I think) the art exhibited was chosen by him.   Only once while Stieglitz is alive does she enter a business relationship or exhibition without his support—the commission to paint a permanent mural on the ladies room of the Radio City Music Hall.  He does influence the contract eventually after much discussion between them.  The project fails and she has a mental breakdown and requires hospitalization. It’s not fully clear what led to the breakdown—the failure of the project or his warning not to take the contract. Her apparent distance from the business aspects of her life and work are exemplified by the fact that following his death, 27 years pass before another major NYC show of her work.

The first major show of O’Keefe’s work that Stieglitz produced in 1923 included not only her work but a number of his photographs of her, many being nudes.  This was a rare public showing of his own work; he had focused more on promoting and enabling other artists for some time.  The co-exhibition permanently linked together O’Keefe and Stieglitz as more than a producer/artist.   This show also established O’Keefe as a major woman artist and set up the critical view that followed her throughout her career—focused on her gender.  O’Keefe rejected this interpretation of her work.  She wanted her art to be considered through a genderless perspective and she wanted to be known as the greatest living artist—not the greatest living woman artist.  Her focus remained on creating art and she profoundly limits interactions critics and others.     She actively distances herself from feminism and the feminist leaders of her time, including Gloria Stienem who tried to visit her but was rebuffed.  Such was her desire to not be seen through a gender or feminist perspective.  Even in the reviews of 1946 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (which Stieglitz arranged) which he shares with her she only partly appreciates.  From James Thrall Soby:  “She is the greatest of living women painters….Hers is a world of bones and flowers, hills and the city….She created this world; it was not there before and there is nothing like it anywhere.”  Stieglitz hears the aspect of creating a unique world but she is offended by the reference to her as a women painter.  O’Keefe believed she was a great artist period and rejects the “woman artist” reference because it limited the public’s view of her.

Stieglitz make O’Keefe possible—brings her to the public eye and finds financial support for her (eventually from the sale of her work) so that she can fully devote herself to her art.   But Stieglitz also hurts O’Keefe.  Stieglitz clearly loves O’Keefe but also enjoys adoration from young women, O’Keefe being one of these early in their own relationship.  O’Keefe never forgives Stieglitz’s affairs, especially the one with Mrs. Norman who becomes an administrative assistant for Stieglitz and the studio and whom O’Keefe dismisses after Stieglitz’s death.  Stieglitz denies O’Keefe a child, possibly because he understands, although she doesn’t at the time, that O’Keefe does and always would place art first and foremost in her life.   There was space for Stieglitz in that obsession with art at least initially as O’Keefe’s obsession with art and with Stieglitz were blurred together for some time.  They remain married and business partners through Stieglitz’s affairs but they spend less and less time together, especially once O’Keefe discovers the west and her love for it.  She slowly disengages from Stieglitz as she spends increasingly more time in New Mexico.  Tripp notes that O’Keefe can pinpoint a moment that her life became wholly hers “more mine than it ever was before because I will never again let it be anything less”.

According to Tripp, O’Keefe wonders about what her art would have become if she had not met him and the obsession between them had not begun.  In particular she wonders what direction she would have gone with her early abstract forms which she generally chose not to exhibit to avoid their interpretation through a gender view.   In the opening chapter of the book O’Keefe recalls that even while a poor school teacher she was “driven only by a singular, relentless passion for my art”.

Tripp introduces us to O’Keefe and Stieglitz, the results of their mutual obsession, the importance of O’Keefe in art history, the range of her work beyond the well-known flower paintings (only about 10% of her portfolio) and opens the question of what might have been in the absence of the meeting of O’Keefe and Stieglitz and subsequent mutual obsession.   I appreciate that Tripp has enabled me to know more about O’Keefe than I would have otherwise.  To do it, however, required a willingness to accept Tripp’s imaginings of dialog and internal thinking which remains somewhat problematic for this reader.

Family Ties

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

By Anne Tyler

Published 1982

Read September 2017

I selected this book for a book discussion with the assignment “any book with food in the title”.  I struggled finding one and settled on something I hope close enough—you eat food in a restaurant….  I also selected this book because I read two of her novels in the distant past and thought this would be a great time to revisit this author.

As with most of Tyler’s work this book focuses on a particular family and relationships within it.  The reader is first introduced to Pearl Tull as she is dying with son, Ezra, at her side.   The reader learns that Pearl was surprised she wanted “extra children” after she had her first son, Cody, late in life (in 1931).  She was married (to the surprise of many including herself) at age 30 to Beck Tull, age 24 and a travelling salesman.  Pearl and Buck had three children and moved frequently from town to town as Beck had “invites” to new sales territories for the Tanner Corporation.  “One Sunday night in 1944, he said he didn’t want to stay married.  They were sending him to Norfolk, he said; but he thought it best if he went alone. ….”We’ll sleep on it,” she told him.    But he said, “It’s tonight I’m going.” And he was gone.  We learn that Pearl stays in the rented row house in Baltimore with the three children, Cody (14), Ezra (11) and Jenny (9).   She never tells them their father has left (he travelled frequently for weeks at a time) and they never asked her about him even after they realize he’s been gone for a very long time and may not return.  She takes a job as a cashier to provide for them as Beck sends only a small amount of money monthly.   Chapter 1 gives a short glimpse of Pearl’s perspective on their family and life and ends as she “was borne away to the beach, where three small children ran toward her, laughing, across the sunlit sand.”  Chapters 2-9 explore the three children and their perspectives on events in their lives and on their fellow family members.  Pearl’s voice shows up during these chapters as well.  The final chapter draws us back to Pearl’s death, the gathering of Cody and Jenny and their families from their homes back to Baltimore, and Ezra’s attempt to have a family dinner after the funeral.

Tyler told an interviewer that her work is all about the characters; plot is secondary.  That approach is evident here.  The first and last chapters serve as bookends to the exploration of mother Pearl and her children Cody, Ezra, and Jenny.  The family has little interaction with others.  Pearl and Buck moved frequently and friendships were never pursued.  Pearl focused on making the rental safe, secure, and extremely orderly. (Note “homey” is not part of the description).  Stair repair, gutter cleaning, clean clothing neatly arranged in the cardboard dressers and closets—that was her focus.  This focus doesn’t change after she takes a job where she serves the public daily but never engages with it.  Interestingly, oldest son Cody, who is extremely focused on “beating” favorite son, Ezra, becomes an efficiency engineer who travels the country bringing order and efficiency to various companies’ operations sites.  His continuous travel makes it easy for him to avoid building friendships with others but he is adamant that his wife and son always travel with him as he goes site to site.  Jenny, the youngest child, becomes a successful pediatrician who is too busy to interact with those outside the family. She has severe challenges developing meaningful relationships with any of her family including mother, siblings, husbands, and her own children. Ezra, who Pearl acknowledges is her favorite, is the only child to stay in Baltimore, and in fact remains in the row house with his mother and cares for her as she loses sight and health.  He does develop external relationships, becoming like a second son to the owner of the restaurant at which he begins working in high school. He visits her in a very devoted manner while she slowly dies and even develops a relationship with a foreign family who visits their dying family member in the same facility.  Despite his mother’s plans for him to be a teacher, he eventually becomes partner in and then owner of the restaurant.  As it becomes soley his, he fervently evolves its nature in a somewhat chaotic manner to a format focused on cooking “what people felt homesick for”.   He alone pursues a relationship with and among his family by repeatedly trying to provide a family dinner that brings the family together for a whole meal.

I appreciate the book’s deep appreciation for the remarkable but not uncommon outcome that children experience vastly different childhoods while living with the same family members, under the same roof, eating the same food, and attending the same family outings.  I appreciate that the book presents four complex characters for whom you feel empathy even while you can’t understand them.  They are characters not caricatures.  They are not simple and they are not grotesque.  They are real people.  Pearl and each of her children “make it” in that they are financially self-sufficient, have respectable occupations, and are not obviously outside the mainstream of society.  But all face significant challenges in figuring out how to deal with situations they can’t control, how to deal with family they don’t understand and how to interact with the greater society with which they feel limited connection and with which they have limited understanding.    The author doesn’t tell us why this is so; she leaves us to consider that for ourselves.  Thus I recommend this as a straightforward, unassuming read that packs a whallop.

Reading About Wine –Impact of a Book Club

Summer in a Glass:  The Coming of Age of Winemaking in the Finger Lakes

By Evan Dawson

Published 2011

Read Sept 2017

The beauty of book discussion groups!  A local library’s approach to book discussions is to set a theme and have each participant share a book within that theme.  I wasn’t sure how this would work but now I know:  IT DOES!

The theme of my first foray with this group was “Wine” — about wine or wine in the title.

A book shared at that meeting with a “thumbs up” recommendation:  Summer in a Glass by Evan Dawson.

I now provide a “thumbs up” and recommend you to read as well.

I live in the Finger Lakes in the summer and I listen to Evan Dawson’s daily show on Rochester’s NPR affiliate WXXI so this seemed a natural book for me to try.  I read it in only a very few sittings and was sorry to see it end.   Evan’s articulate and crisp voice comes through as he describes with clear joy and appreciation his encounters with some of the best winemakers/wineries in the area.  He provides some of their personal history in getting to their place in the story of Finger Lakes winemaking.    I was pleased to learn that collaboration and knowledge sharing is rampant in the Finger Lakes.  These wineries want to make world-class wines and they want the world to understand this.  They believe–and walk the talk—that success of any individual winery can raise the profile of the region and engage more people to visit and enjoy them all—now over 100 in number.

I knew pieces of the stories of some of these wineries—which I’ve visited with frequency.  Others I knew less about and now I know why—some of these winery owners are very private.  I’m glad to have learned more about them and will appreciate their wine and facility even more during future visits.

Evan’s writing is brisk, concise, and engaging.  He’s packed 12 stories with index and acknowledgements into 266 pages.  He’s revealed a little, but not too much, about himself as he’s not the focus of the work.  But his desire to understand the region and tell others about it required a dedicated journey so it’s appropriate to learn about specific days and encounters.  He starts and ends with the story of a young winemaker from Germany, his strong desire to stay in the Finger Lakes, and the immigration challenges he has faced.  The reader wants him to stay too as we learn about the great wine he’s made and especially as we learn about his desire and efforts to help make all Finger Lakes wineries great.   By the end of the book word from the Labor Department about his final appeal hadn’t been obtained so it ends with a cliff hanger as well as a toast to this winemaker for the positive impact he’s made on a number of wineries.

The book was published in 2011 so I hoped that I could learn the outcome of Johannes’s wait and that it would be positive.  I was delighted to learn that it was and he and his wife are making wine not too far from where I live.  Yeah!

In summary—a pretty fast and very enjoyable read to learn about the NY Finger Lakes Wine Region and the people who are enabling it to be considered one of the world’s great wine regions.

 

In Cold Blood

In Cold Blood

by Truman Capote

Published 1966

Read Aug 2017

The assigned topic for a book discussion group of which I’m a member was “True Crime”.  That’s not a genre I read, but of course the purpose of the book discussion group is to introduce new reading possibilities so I decided to join in.

I decided on “In Cold Blood” for two reasons:  1)  Capote’s book is one of the largest selling “true crime” books of all times and is a “classic” in this category; 2)  I attribute this book to the reason I locked my parents out of our rural home multiple times in the early 1970’s after reading this book at age 12.  I really wanted to see how I would respond to the book when reading it several decades later.

Bottom line:  the book is so well written I again read it in very few very long sittings. 

In the first section “The Last to See Them Alive” we meet the community of Holcomb and each member of the Cutter family, and learn what family members were doing on November 15, 1959, their last day alive.  His writing allows us to see vividly the landscape of the area, how ordinary the day was for the community, and how each family member was connected to the small community.  We are introduced to the killers’ activities that day.  We experience the shock of Nancy’s friends when they discover the families’ bodies and that of the community as they deal with the initial duties following the crime.

In the second section “Persons Unknown” we meet the crime investigators and feel their commitment to their task and the frustration they feel as the killers’ left little with which to trace them.  We begin more in-depth interactions with the killers as they start their post-crime “travels”.  We begin to see how damaged Perry Smith is and wonder at Dick Hickock’s capacity for compartmentalization of his actions.

The third section “Answer”, the investigators get a break and learn the identities of the killers through a cell-mate of Dick Hickock.  But it takes time to actually apprehend the killers and during this time the community continues to suffer.  We learn more of Perry and Dick’s story of their travels post-crime as well as their pasts. We learn the peculiarities of small-town jails and how the killers are kept separated during their incarceration before and during their eventual trial. Perry Smith’s correspondence is provided us and gives us an increasingly deep view of his past.   We experience with the investigators their surprise that the killers will and do confess to their crimes.   Perry’s confession finally provides us the simple specific details of the crime.

The fourth section, ”The Corner”, details the post-trial period.  Frankly the depth of details about the other death-row inmates felt unnecessary but this is Capote being consistent about providing the whole story of the killers’ background and experiences.  Apparently Capote provided the killers some help during their appeal process although his involvement is not discussed in the book.  Aspects of the appeals and conclusions drawn by various appeal boards are provided.

Capote’s writing enables us to learn much about the killers.  I use the term “killers” throughout this piece because that’s what they were as a result of this event.  They weren’t killers before but somehow they became killers and we never really know why.  Perry’s life was clearly horrendous and he is left a substantially damaged individual as a result.  Dick’s life was much more normal and he entered into criminal acts initially to simply pay his bills.  But something happens that tips the balance.  We don’t ever understand what causes that and likely neither did he.  The senselessness of the killings is remarkable and it’s not surprising that the members of Holcomb lost some of their sense of security.  Some moved from the empty countryside and some never fulfilled their dreams of building a home in that empty countryside.

Capote’s book remains “a classic” not because it’s a “what happened and who did it and keep you on the edge of your seat” kind of book.  It’s a classic because readers of this book will be left with sorrow that something so terrible could happen to such nice people; that individuals can become killers and we and they really don’t know why; that there are such damaged people in our society and that their damage is caused by other deeply damaged people; that there are people that grow up in good families that can take such a horrible path.  That there is nothing obvious we can do to prevent further incidents or prevent becoming victims ourselves.  We’re only left with locking our doors at night even when it seems we shouldn’t need to do that.

Cranford and Everyman’s Library

Cranford

by Mrs. (Elizabeth Cleghorn) Gaskell

Published in serial form Dec 1851-May 1853 in Household Words (edited by Charles Dickens)

Published in book form 1853

Read Aug 2017

Elilzabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (1810-1865) (generally referred to as Mrs. Gaskell) wrote a number of novels and short stories about life in various strata of Victorian society.  She wrote a series of sketches about the inhabitants of Cranford, a small town fashioned after the Cheshire one of her childhood (where she lived with her aunt following her mother’s death).  The series was originally published in Household Words, edited by Charles Dickens between Dec 1851 and May 1853 and was then published  in book form in 1853.  The series was written while she was writing a three-volume novel Ruth which considers the story of a “fallen woman” and the concepts of sin, illegitimacy, and the question of whether the sinful can be reintegrated into society.  It’s quite interesting that she was simultaneously writing this series of sketches which focuses on the society of Cranford’s inhabitants who are primarily mature or aging women, either never married or widowed and managing to continue to conduct their lives “appropriately” despite rather small incomes.

The story is told us by Mary Smith (whose name is not provided us until very late in the book), a former resident of Cranford who now lives in a larger town with her father.  She is a frequent guest of Miss Deborah Jenkyns, who dies early in the novel, and Miss Matty, her loving sister who defers all decisions to Deborah or to “what Deborah would think” after Deborah dies.  Through the collection of sketches we learn about Miss Matty’s brother Peter, who disappeared many years ago, Miss Matty’s former admirer, Thomas Holbrook who never married after her rejection and dies after a trip he takes shortly after entertaining Miss Matty, Mary Smith and Miss Pole, another Cranford “mature” spinster, and about various customs and protocols of importance to this part of society.  We see Cranford deal with the arrival of the Honourable Mrs. Jamieson’s (essentially “top-dog” of Cranford’s society) widowed sister-in-law Lady Glenmire (“shall we use her title or not, etc”) who eventually marries Cranford’s surgeon to the initial dismay of everyone, since he is considered to be in a separate social strata from the ladies’.   Crisis comes to Miss Matty when the bank in which her small fortune is invested fails and her income is essentially eliminated.  Mary Smith helps her find a path forward, which the townfolks’ significant support is not known to her and includes Miss Matty becoming “an agent of the tea company” (she sells tea from her home).  Mary’s attempt to hail Peter back to his sister is eventually successful and Miss Matty’s life takes a turn back towards but not complete “normalcy”.

Cranford was extremely successful when published as a serial and as a book.  It was included as book number 83 in J.M. Dent’s Everyman’s Library in 1906.  It’s been adapted for television by the BBC three times (1951, 1972, 2007).  Judi Dench played Miss Matty in the 2007 version.

A few notes on the Everyman’s Library:  J. M. Dent founded the publishing firm of J.M Dent and Company in 1888 (it became J.M. Dent and Sons in 1909).  He planned, in 1904, publication of 1000 works of literature that would be affordable to all.  Per the book cover of the copy I read of Cranford:  “What Grose wrote in the Sunday Times in 1928 is even more true now that it was then:  ‘A cosmic convulsion might utterly destroy all the other printed works in the world, and still if a complete set of Everyman’s Library floated upon the waters enough would be preserved to carry on the unbroken tradition of literature.’  Raymond  Mortimer in the Sunday Times.”

By 1910 there were 500 books in the Everyman’s Library.  The title of the series was suggested by the initital head editor of the series, Ernest Rhys.  The quotation from a medival play “Everyman” was included in all Everyman Library books.  The character of Knowledge says to Everyman “Everyman, I will go with thee, and by thy guide, In thy most need to go by thy side”.  The 1000th title in the series was added in 1956 and the last title was added to the original series in the early 1970’s when it was suffering substantial competition from the new “paperback book” phenomenon.  It was relaunched in 1991 via Random House and Alfred A Knauf.  Interestingly, a goal of the new series is to provide a high quality hardbound edition of the series contents.

 The Everyman’s Library edition I read was printed in 1969 and included an Introduction by Frank Swinnerton from the 1954 edition as well as the original Forward by J.M. Dent from the 1906 Everyman’s Library edition.  It also includes the Everyman quote noted above. The photo accompanying this piece shows the cover of the edition I read and enjoyed.   Interestingly, Mrs Gaskin is no longer represented in the current Everyman Library catalog.    

Historical Fiction in the Middle East

Dreamers of the Day

By Mary Doria Russell

Published 2008

Read July 2017

I saw this book on display in my local library.  I previously had read Russell’s first two novels,  The Sparrow and Children of God so picked this up to see what it was about.  She has an engaging starting line “My little story has become your history.  You won’t really understand your times until you understand mine.” As I have been doing a little studying of Churchill this summer and since understanding a bit about the origins of the modern political geography, I checked out this historical fiction book to see what it would reveal.

The story is told by a spinster schoolteacher from Ohio.  She loses to the Great Influenza of 1919 her entire family, including sister and brother-in-law who had done missionary work in Cario, Egypt, and long-widowed and domineering mother who left her a small inheritance.   Agnes decides to these funds to book passage to Egypt in 1921 and walk where her sister and brother-in-law had walked.  She booked a room at the Semiramis Hotel in Cairo, conveniently at the same time the “Cairo Conference” was to be held at that hotel.  While being denied her reservation there as they would not accept her pet dachshund as a guest she begins her encounters with Winston Churchill, T.E. Lawrence, Gertrude Bell, who were important figures at this Middle East Conference called by young Churchill to discuss the Middle East problems of the time, as well as a fictional German spy who befriends Agnes and takes care of her dog while she enjoys her interesting times with the historical figures he’s interested it tracking a bit.

Russell does a nice job of balancing the historical figures and fictional characters.   Agnes’ sister’s connections get Agnes into various actual scenes with the historical figures including Winston Churchill’s painting the pyramids and the demonstration that met Churchill and the delegation when it arrived in Jerusalem, which  T.E . Lawrence quells.  Russell has done her homework on the conference well and gives some information about the outcome of the conference, which set into motion creation of Iraq, the eventual creation of a Jewish state, and lots of turmoil that continues until today.  There is enough information about this to whet the appetite for more reading of the history.   Russell maintains nice focus on her fictional character, Agnes, and the story of her journey to become her own woman, no longer under the domineering influence of her mother and pulls off this story in an interesting and reasonably believable manner.

 

 

 

 

Twain and The Eclipse

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

By Mark Twain

Published 1889

Read September 2016

Since we’ve just (Aug 2017) experienced a dramatic eclipse of the sun by the moon, I thought it was time to write a brief post about Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”.  Please enjoy the image provided by a friend which shows the eclipse as we saw it locally with the help of leaves to cast multiple images of it on a deck surface.

When my book club decided to read this book, I was frankly not really looking forward to the experience.  I was familiar with the premise (although I realized not the whole story) and immediately recalled the eclipse segment from the Warner Brother’s “A Connecticut Rabbit in King Arthur’s Court”.  Why was this “a classic” and why were we reading it?

However, to my delight, I enjoyed listening to this book so much I listened again immediately after finishing it the first time.   The part with which I was familiar—Hank, a Connecticut Yankee in Twain’s time of the 1880’s, wakes up after a nap to find himself on the outskirts of Camelot.  He avoids being hanged as an intruder by conjuring up an eclipse of the sun (having remembered the date/time of a conveniently timed eclipse) and, after being proclaimed “The Boss” by the King, sets out to modernize Camelot with various technologies from the future.   An aspect I learned from listening— Twain totally skewers the romantic notion of Camelot and associated chivalry in a wonderfully ironic manner.  It’s well worth listening to this book as the language used by the Camelot dwellers is fabulously done and extremely entertaining when read aloud.  Hank’s wonder at the craziness of dress and customs is also quite amusing.  A favorite scene of mine recounts Hank’s incredulity that knights leave for a quest taking no food with them.  (But of course, there are no pockets in the armor that could hold even a sandwich and he even has to carry his smoking tobacco in his helmet.)  Also, a fair number of critters can get into the armor when you sleep on the ground and it’s not so easy to get them to leave….

A second aspect I learned from listening was the inability of Hank to really move the people into a more modern way of thinking and being—it would take literally centuries to get past some really awful practices (including prisoners in the dudgeon passing on to the new owner and no one remembering why they were even imprisoned).   Twain clearly had no love for the Catholic Church and shows its ability to block progress when they shut Hank down through The Interdict and associated crusade against Hank and his 54 brave soldiers.

I now fully advocate that this book is definitely “a classic”.  It remains relevant when read over a hundred years after its publication.  It is extremely humorous in a biting kind of way.   Very importantly, regardless of the age, it reminds us that technology alone is insufficient for mankind’s forward movement towards a truly just and harmonious civilization.

In this book, the eclipse enabled Hank to take a leadership role in trying to move the people of Camelot forward.   Fortunately the eclipse we experienced yesterday helped bring together the people of the US for at least a short time.  Wouldn’t it be great the eclipse can mark a new time of cooperation that can last more than a short 2 minutes?…..

 

 

Miss Jean

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

By Muriel Spark

Published serially in The New Yorker 1961

Published in book form 1961

Read August 2017

I am likely not alone in immediately thinking of Maggie Smith and Rod McKuen’s Oscar-nominated song “Jean” when I hear the title “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” despite having never read the book nor seen the 1969 movie until this summer (2017).  I have now corrected both lapses and can report that both the book and movie are worthy of individual or paired consideration.

The short novel makes extensive use of flash-forward as well as some flash-back.  Through these devices we learn the story of the “Brodie set” as they become called, starting in 1931 at age ten and having their first year of Junior School with Miss Jean Brodie, their subsequent years as they progress through the Marcia Blaine School, a conservative girls’ school in Edinburgh, Scotland, while continuing a close special relationship with Miss Brodie through their tenure, and for some of the characters, a bit about their lives after school.  The story also traces the story of Miss Jean Brodie—her unorthodox teaching approach, her fight with Miss Macky, the headmistress, to stay there vs leaving for a more “appropriate” school for Miss Brodie’s method, the renunciation of her love for Mr. Lloyd, the married art teacher (and his love for her), her love affair with Mr. Lowther, the singing master, and her eventual betrayal and dismissal from Marcia Blaine for her fascist views.

Narration, giving us only the girls’ perspectives, alternates with occasional dialog providing the reader’s only opportunity to hear Miss Brodie’s voice.  As such, we only know Miss Jean Brodie through her comments to her girls.  She is quite insistent she is “in her prime” and that she is totally committed to “her girls”.  She loves the art teacher and even shares a kiss but avoids more interactions because he is married.  She carries on a love affair with the singing master seemingly to heal her heart.   She also has some views, desires, and takes some actions that are less easy to understand—her appreciation of fascist rulers, her clear desire that Rose be her proxy as lover of Mr. Lloyd, and her strong suggestions to a new student that she run away to fight for Franco in Spain.  We can’t know what propels her to have fascist leanings or why she would find a love affair between Rose and Mr. Lloyd something for which to wish.  We do, however, learn that her effect on Sandy was far from what she intended.  Not only is Sandy the Brodie set member with whom Mr. Lloyd has an affair, Sandy also chooses to put a stop to Miss Brodie.

It was interesting to view the movie to see how the structure of the novel would be handled.  The story is told in a more “straight-line” approach.  The “Brodie set” is reduced in number by blending some of their stories together.  Sandy remains a distinct and pivotal character.  The betrayal is handled differently and Miss Brodie actually interacts with her betrayer providing a useful climax for the movie.

I think this would be a great book for a book discussion—there are so many unanswered questions about the characters and the setting of the story—1930’s Edinburgh—enabling many rich discussions.

Tess the Pure

Tess of the d’Urbervilles:  A Pure Woman Faithfully presented by Thomas Hardy

Published 1891 (serialized in The Graphic); 1892 (book form)

Read:  Sept 2016; May 2017

This book shows up as # 26 on the Big Read, a survey conducted by the BBC in 2003 to identify the nation’s 200 best loved novels of all times.  It has certainly captured a place in my heart as a best loved novel.  I’ve read it twice and anticipate I will again sometime in the future.   Why this reaction?

Caution—spoiler alert—I will reveal aspects of the plot you may not wish to learn here but which do help me describe my loving view of this book.

Tess is an absolutely marvelous character. She survives one blow after another with unrelenting courage and grace.  She is sent by her family to seek favor from rich Mrs d’Urberville, whom her lazy father learns is a distant relative. Her mother dresses her up for the journey in a way to attract the attention of Alec, Mrs. d’Urberville’s son.   Attracted he is to Tess.  She fend off his unwanted attention for several months but he seduces/rapes Tess with no offer of marriage.  She returns to her village after making clear to him she does not care for him, was blinded by him and realizes how wicked he is.  She bears his child and baptizes him herself just before he dies as an infant.  Tess chooses to leave the family to start anew at a dairy farm some distance from her home.  She meets Clare, a son of a rector and who is learning the dairy trade, and comes to love him deeply but chastely. She puts off marriage proposals from him repeatedly because of her past but eventually gives into his pleas to be his wife.   Her new husband rejects her ferociously during dinner on the night of their wedding because she tells him of the situation with Alec –just after he admits he is not a virgin himself.  Rejected by Clare, who takes off for Brazil, and again all alone, she takes a series of farm positions to support herself and eventually returns home to take care directly of her family when she learns her mother is ill and her father abruptly dies instead.  She repeatedly rejects Alec over the course of the novel as she encounters him, telling him she does not love him and loves another. She eventually decides Clare will never return to her and gives into to Alec’s offer to take care of her and her family only when her mother and siblings are literally out on the street with no means to acquire a roof over their head.  Of course Clare finally comes to his senses, too late, and finds Tess, unfortunately living as Alec’s mistress.  Tess’s one act of vengeance against Alec provides Tess and Clare a few weeks of bliss until she is captured by authorities to stand trial for her crime and we all lose Tess.

We so want Tess to find happiness so due her.  I anticipate I’m not alone in reading the novel for the second time hoping this during the second read even though I know it won’t happen.  I also anticipate I’ll read the book again with this same hope.

But is this just another romantic novel?  Why such devotion to it from myself and others?  I suggest there are a number of reasons

First, Hardy clearly loves Tess.  Hardy describes her as a Pure Woman which is a very apt description.  She stays Pure of heart throughout.  She rises above the models her parents provide her and continually seeks to live purely with limited wants for herself.  She seeks to repair damage to her family’s income by going to the cousins  d’Urberville, after an accident that happens while she is trying to literally feed the family  (while her parents lay home in bed with hang-overs) results in loss of their horse, a key component of her father’s meager haggling trade.  She doesn’t take the path suggested by her mother to trick Alec into marriage nor to keep quiet about her past to Clare.  She repeatedly reject’s Alec’s pursuit of her, even after he learns she bore his son, because she does not love him and believes him a bad person.  She remains true to Clare and never asks for anything from her parents or his parent despite her increasingly desperate position as she is eking out a living as a farm hand versus using Clare’s money he gives her when he leaves.    She in fact sends a sizable fraction of Clare’s money to her family to pay for a new roof for their rented house.  She continuously did the right thing.  Only when she has exhausted all efforts to find shelter for her mother and siblings and she has lost all hope of seeing Clare again does she acquiesce to Alec’s pursuit.  Her only act of vengeance is to clear the barrier to Clare—the fact that her “husband” Alec remains living.

Second, Hardy reveals the impact of then current standards on women.  Although Clare isn’t Pure, his wife must be.  It’s not clear whether Tess’s impure relations with Alec continued after the initial seduction or not.  Members of my book club were divided in their interpretations of Hardy’s ambiguous narration on this point.  Was Clare’s rejection of Tess purely because of a single rape resulting in a born son or was it because she remained “married” to Alec—she indicates she remained “dazed” by him for a little while (three weeks passed between the seduction of which we’re made aware and her departure from the farm)– so she could never marry another?  Regardless, it was clear that their marriage could not be consummated nor continued and they were both doomed to never marry again after taking their own vows.  Clare even toys with the idea of taking one of the other milk maids, from the dairy at which he met Tess, as a mistress for his farm in Brazil.  He rejects the notion when the girl indicates it would be impossible for her own great love of Clare to surpass the love Tess felt for him.

Third, Hardy paints us a picture of rural England at the time.  The dairy farm at which Tess and Clare meet is idyllic – beautiful pastures, milk maids finding their assigned cows in the pasture to milk them, lovely starry nights and misty mornings during which Tess and Clare find each other.  The situation is far less glamourous at the rougher farm Tess eventually stays for the contracted period when hired by the farm owner so she could afford shelter during the winter.  Tess’s hard work at this dreadful place includes feeding a dangerous threshing machine which demands to be fed through the night so that it can move on to the next farm as quickly as possible.  Hardy gives the impression both that manual farm work was difficult and provided a fairly desperate living for those bound to a farmer from season to season, and as well an impression that automation was going to disrupt the idyllic pastoral life of the English countryside.  This theme remains relevant today.  We view food production as a noble vocation and mourn the loss of the family farm while the reality of unreliable and small income from farms combined with the hard physical labor of farming, unattractive to US citizens, has led to an increasing fraction of farm labor being conducted by immigrants from Latin America.  (And the cows are no longer grazing in the fields with milk-maids coming to them or bringing them in for their milking , but rather standing in barn stalls round the clock.)

So through the tragic story of a Pure Woman who we love as much as Hardy does, Hardy provides us a picture of England at the beginning of much change brought by the industrial revolution impacting both how livings are made and how lives are led.   We see that life wasn’t simple and easy then and realize that it probably never was nor will be.  However, it’s possible to live a Pure life amidst this difficulty and remain above the fray.

 

 

 

A Dark Reality from Atwood

The Heart Goes Last

By Margaret Atwood

Published 2015

Read 6/20/2017

This speculative fiction offering from Margaret Atwood was more difficult for me to stay with compared with other books she’s written.  The premise wasn’t the troubling part.  Stan and Charmaine lose their jobs (like pretty much everyone else) as the economy of the US shifts to the west coast and the economy and society collapse generally.  They are reduced to living in their car and are constantly worried about being robbed, raped, and killed by roving gangs.  This is a scenario that doesn’t seem unrealistic or surprising, unfortunately.  They learn about the Positron Project and quite readily sign on board.  They are in a cycle whereby they spend one month working in the town of Consilience and living in a nice townhouse.  The next month they spend in prison, working in jobs there while living separated by gender, but safe.   Then they cycle back to their townhouse and “town” jobs.   The couple settles into this situation for a while and generally feels safe and satisfied.  Premise established; not what?

Charmaine finds herself in a sexual affair with the man who occupies their house during Stan and Charmaine’s prison month and then Stan starts his own sexual fantasies about the woman who shares their house.   The book then follows the various twists and turns of their situation and a number of unsavory and twisted people they encounter along including characters who have been subjected to some of the experiments of the bad-guy owners of the Positron Project.  The plot feels forced (“what am I going to do with these bland, boring characters”) and is very heavily focused on various sexual fantasies and actions happening around the couple.

I made it to the end of the novel and was mildly pleased with how Stan and Charmaine are treated in the end.  Some reviewers describe the book as a dark madcap comedy.  Although I have regularly felt Atwood’s dark humor in her other books, this one was disappointing and I just wanted it to be over.   I would, however, strongly recommend Atwood’s “The Year of the Flood” for a better example of her brilliance in taking the reader for a look at the possible not too distant future and keeping the reader willingly thinking and reading until the very end.