Short Story Short Challenge - Reading List

Great response on the Short Story Short Challenge! As promised, I compiled a list of all the recommended short stories. Lots of new names and titles to explore.

Thanks to the participants: NOVAREN, CLIFF BURNS, SNACKY WOMBAT, TAI, SUSAN (at A LITERARY RESPITE), WISHY THE WRITER, THE TRAVELLER, JADE PARK, COURTNEY, DARK ORPHEUS, BHADD, EDDIE, LITLOVE , ISABELLA, SFP, D CHEDWICK, KATE S., HENK, BLOGLILY, AMANDA A., VERBIFORE, and ANDI.

Please e-mail me your reactions to the short story you committed to reading: writerlylife at yahoo dot com. And stay tuned for an upcoming Horror Story Short Challenge in October.

Short Story Short Challenge List
The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter
Call My Name, Aimee Bender
Civilwarland in Bad Decline, George Saunders
Dirty Wedding, Denis Johnson
Disentangling, Peter Rock
Floating Bridge, Alice Munro
The Hotel Capital, Olga Tokarczuk
Planetisimal, Keri Hulme
The Toughest Indian in the World, Sherman Alexie
White Angel, Michael Cunningham
Hunger, Lan Samantha Chang
Rock Springs, Richard Ford

Miss Gentibelle, Charles Beaumont
It's a GOOD Life, Jerome Bixby
Roses, Rhododendron, Alice Adams
A Christmas Memory, Truman Capote
Sonny's Blues, James Baldwin
Love, William Maxwell
Pale Horse, Pale Rider, Katherine Anne Porter
In Dreams Begin Responsibilities, Delmore Schwartz
Love Day, William Styron
The Shawl, Cynthia Ozick
Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville
On Seeing England for the First Time, Jamaica Kincaid
Death of a Pig, E.B. White
The Long Loneliness, Loren Eisley
Chatwin Revisited, Paul Theroux
Good Country People, Flannery O’Connor
White Angel, Michael Cunningham
Fiesta 1980, Junot Diaz
In the Gloaming, Alice Elliott Dark
Hunger, Lan Samantha Chang
The Bear Went Over the Mountain, Alice Munro
Floating Bridge, Alice Munro
Bullet in the Brain, Tobias Wolff
He’s At the Office, Allan Gurganus
Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx
Penance, Matthew Crain
A Temporary Matter, Jhumpa Lahiri

Dance in America, Lorrie Moore

Pie Dance, Molly Giles

Home Sweet Home, Hannah Tinti
Mirrors, Carol Shield

My Grandmother’s Tale of How Crab-o Lost His Head, Robert Antoni

Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle, Ellen Gilchrist

Leaf Season, John Updike

The Birds for Christmas, Mark Richard

The Man to Send Rain Clouds, Leslie Marmon Silko
The Horse Dealer's Daughter, D.H. Lawrence
Blue Tigers, Jorge Luis Borges
The Way We Live Now, Susan Sontag
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, Joyce Carol Oates
Babylon Revisited, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Winter Dreams, F. Scott Fitzgerald
Love is Not a Pie, Amy Bloom
Silver Water, Amy Bloom

Meiosis, Italo Calvino

The Johnson Girls, Toni Cade Bambara
The Marquise von O., Heinrich von Kleist
For Esme with Love and Squalor, JD Salinger
Making Love While the Kettle Boils, Kate Sutherland
La plage (The beach), Alain Robbe-Grillet
Cousin Lewis, Jean Stubbs
The Book Club, Ali Smith

The Schartz-Metterklume Method, Saki
The Overcoat, Nikolai Gogol

Also, please support your fellow blogger and writer, Kate Sutherland, by preordering her new collection of short stories, All in Together Girls. Personally, I can't wait to read them!

As for me, I commit to reading the Italo Calvino story (sure it will be way over my head, but I've never read this author's works) and the Jean Stubbs piece (had to get the collection, don't you know). And that's just for starters...

Short Story Short Challenge!

I just had a scathingly brilliant idea.

The Short Story Short Challenge!

Here's how it works: See my post below on Ten Favorite Short Stories.

1. Pick one story from the list you haven't read, that you vow to read.

2. List in the comment to this post which story you selected, PLUS a favorite story of yours that you want others to read.

I will compile a new list from all of the comments, and I will make my own selection of new short stories to read.

Ten favorite short stories

I've been wanting to make this list for a while. It is tough to put together. How do you not include Chekhov, Munro or Fitzgerald? Which story do you include from the works of Hemingway or O'Connor?

I have so many more short stories to read from the hundreds of truly excellent stories out there. And lots of great stories and authors didn't make this cut!

Why did these chosen few make the list? First of all, these were ones that I recalled even without a reference guide -- I remembered them because they literally stuck with me. Each one hit me in the gut, not only on the first reading but on multiple readings. They made me think, feel, ponder, wonder.


1. A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor

2. The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

3. The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Leo Tolstoy

4. The Dead, James Joyce

5. Cathedral, Raymond Carver

6. Barn Burning, William Faulkner

7. Greenleaf, Flannery O'Connor

8. The Babysitter, Robert Coover

9. Sea Oak, George Saunders

10. A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, Ernest Hemingway

Want to learn about more short story titles? The Danforth Review asked various authors and teachers for a list of stories the would teach in an introductory course. Please list your favorite short stories in the comments, or I "tag" you to post your own top 10 on your personal blog.

Friday Buzz - Who's afraid of Virginia Tech?

The recent shooting at Virginia Tech has sparked some debate about creative writing professors and the position they are in to judge a student's mental state.

Writers tackle disturbing subject matter all the time. NPR asks how to you tell troubled subject matter and a troubled individual?

Richard Blair in the Louisville Courier Journal furthers that line of thinking, asking "if Edgar Allan Poe would have been sent for counseling by a university for some of the works he published, had he submitted them in a college creative writing class. What is the difference that makes a man like Poe a literary genius and Cho Seung-Hui a mass murderer?"

In Cho's case, it seems obvious that his creative writing professors, poet Nikki Giovanni and novelist Lucinda Roy, were able to separate fact (in this case, troubled behavior) from fiction.

(Petty aside: Speaking as one of the many who suffered through an MFA program and all of its competitive fallout, how the hell did this clearly crappy writer get the opportunity to study with such stellars as Giovanni and Roy???)

From the few snippets I've seen of Cho's writing, I would say the prose differs immensely from Poe's in that the latter is lucid and empathic. And, from my admittedly safe and comfortably far vantage point, I venture to say that it seems those professors recognized Cho's instability and rang as many alarms as they dared, short of robbing Cho of his basic civil liberties.

(Not-so-petty aside #2: Where are the parents and families in these cases? I am thinking also of the Columbine shooting. Clearly, all three of the young men involved in these shootings displayed bizarre and anti-social behavior. Yet, the parents just let their sons loose in the world, with apparently little oversight and guidance.)

Could Virginia Tech's isolated case of literal psycho-babble lead to a kind of witch hunt with creative writing students? Gordon, in his impassioned After the MFA blog post on the subject, says: "...imagine what damage can happen to socially marginalized students — who pose no danger to themselves or others — when they feel like they will no longer be able to express themselves in the so-called safe environment of the writing workshop."

Sadly (and cynically, I suppose), I think this all will blow over with the next Anna Nicole Smith paternity hearing or some other headline-grabbing story, with little lasting effect on creative writing programs. But, two issues interest me that I haven't seen addressed as of yet:

1. Cho clearly could barely articulate verbally and had a severe identity problem. Yet, he was studying creative writing. Was he attempting, through writing, to work out his identity issues, or was he merely using writing as a stage for (or mirror of) his own grandiose ideals? Was he always interested in writing as child? Did he write in other genres other than screenwriting? (Screenwriting suggests to me that he may have been projecting himself into Hollywood fame, more indication of histrionic/grandiose thinking, or maybe he wasn't effective in prose because he was so inarticulate.)
2. What is the role of creative writing and self-expression in a larger sense? If channeled effectively, can it prevent an individual from expressing hostility through violence? If so, maybe the question about Edgar Allan Poe isn't so far-fetched. But, what happens if one isn't talented in writing -- do you have to be "talented" or "recognized" for writing to be therapeutic?

No clear answers, but many intriguing questions. Any thoughts, readers?

On a lighter note, Dickens as theme park? Sounds like fun, I must say. Just think of the literary possibilities for future amusements: Bronteland, where you can run across the misty moors looking for Heathcliff or Rochester, or Dorothy PARKer, for the utmost fun in insults?

Thoughts for Thursday

Okay, this doesn't have to do with anything literary, but I just had to get this off my chest:

Americans and the American media are rightly in mourning over 33 deaths in Virginia, yet 127+ deaths and woundings in Iraq (the day after the VT incident) are barely noticed. The President said of the Virginia Tech shooting: "It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they're gone -- and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation." Couldn't the same be said of innocent Iraqi citizens? Where is the compassion for them?

I don't understand how we can express outrage over the killings of Americans, yet keep an administration in office that wrongly attacked another country and insists on perpetuating a pointless war. I don't understand how we can express shock over a shooting rampage when our culture -- from the president to the NRA to the defense and entertainment industries -- glorifies violence. I don't understand how we can put a premium on our own lives and so little on the lives of others.

It makes me ashamed.


Sort of related News
Great tribute to the late Kurt Vonnegut in the New York Observer: "The idea of Vonnegut Day is simple: Wearing Kurt Vonnegut mustaches and wigs, we will try, for one day, to live by the principles he espoused in his beautiful books: honesty, outrage, righteous grumpiness, kindness, and the incantation, in plain speech, of certain truths normally considered too naïve to even speak aloud, much less to live by."

About writing

1. You must have something to say.

2. You must be desperate to say it.

The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

Of course, finishing this book now, as opposed to my undergrad days when I should have read this, is rather embarrassing, but all I can say is: Wow! This novel ranks as one of my all-time favorites!

About one-third of the way into the novel, I was sucked into it and literally could not put it down. I imagine I will reread and the subsequent readings will only deepen and broaden my understanding of the novel.

I have much to say and research about Portrait, but one completely uninformed observation I wanted to comment on is the character development of Isabel Archer.

In the beginning third of the novel or so, the reader learns about Isabel through comments by the omnisicent narrator or through the other characters (usually dialogue. James, I noticed, likes to reveal characters by having other characters talk about them. A neat trick.). I was a little put off by this, because I was being told about Isabel rather than seeing her in action.

As I read on, I realized that James was allowing me to develop my own ideas about Isabel through these revelations. When it came time for Isabel to act on her own, the impact was powerful: All of the insights I took on as a reader came to fore and added depth and poignancy to the action.

At least, that was my impression.

I'd like to hear about this from others who have read this novel or James.

Thoughts for Thursday

I had an insight about why I am buying and hoarding books like a squirrel with its acorns before a lean winter: I think I am searching for inspiration on my own novel.

On a very subliminal level, I know what I want to do. And, every once in a while, the fog clears, the clouds part, and I can see into that subliminal level (sort of looks like the bargain basement at Filene's), and my rational mind can pick out the gem of insight from amongst the clutter. And everything comes together, purposes seem clear, the tunnel-end opens into illumination.

But, in general, my unconscious works in its own mysterious, murky and fascinating way. Which means my greedy, ever-grasping, impetuous mind has to wait and let the intuitive part work in its own fashion, in its own good time. Which makes for a schizoid-feeling LK.

This waiting and percolating part really bugs the Conscious Me. There is always that niggling fear of "I'll never write again." But, as the years have taught me, there is nothing to do but be patient.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

This is very sad news: Novelist Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84

Certainly, he was one of the great lights of contemporary American literature.

Some quotes from Vonnegut:

I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Life happens too fast for you ever to think about it. If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist on amassing information.

New Edith Wharton biography

Everyone get in line to order the latest bio on one of America's major female authoresses. Check out what John Updike has to say in The New Yorker:

Lee is at her best with Wharton’s books. Her close and ingenious explications reveal formal patterns of design and persuasive, sometimes subtle connections with Wharton’s experiences; as with most authors, her life was her ultimate subject, whether she was projecting her imprisoning marriage and thwarted romance into the rural misery of “Ethan Frome” or using her own broad experience of authorship in the wide-ranging satire of “Hudson River Bracketed.” Lee gives the later, critically shunned novels respectful readings, and is keen enough on the short stories to rouse guilt in a susceptible breast over their less than canonical status.

Other reviews: UK Guardian, London Times

Hermione Lee on Edith Wharton short stories

Edith Wharton In the News

What I'm reading

As I am in the midst of reading several interesting books (and far away from finishing them), thought I'd share what is in the NBR (now-being-read) pile.

Portrait of a Lady. I'm about a third of the way through. The story and characterizations are fully engrossing. Based on this and Turn of the Screw, I note that one device James employs is the repetition of words or phrases. I don't know if that is conscious or not, but I suspect on some level it is. For example, in this book, I am underlining the words "lady" or "young lady," and they appear every other chapter at least. In Turn of the Screw, the catch-phrase was "innocent." I believe James is examining (or, at least, presenting) the various meanings such words or phrases can hold, and then letting the layers build. Another observation: James is not the most mellifluous of prose writers, is he? His sentences often are murky, convoluted and awkward. Despite this, his characters deepen and his plots thicken.

Ghost Hunters. Oh, yes, something light! And still in the Victorian age -- and related to the James family! This is about the movement, led by Henry James's brother William, to study psychic phenomena at a time when religion and science were polarized into two camps. These folk were trying to bridge the gap and at least open the dialogue between what is known and what is taken on faith.

Making of Victorian Values. Not too deep yet into this book, but it all relates quite nicely with Portrait and Ghost Hunters. Something happened during the Victorian Age that I believe is parallel to a sea-change that is happening now: A questioning in how we look at morality and ethics, and how religion and science fit into that.

Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant. A slim book, and a bit difficult to find. I'm about two-thirds of the way through. It is an odd little book, because Oliphant took her whole life to write it. She wrote a bit, then put the book away for many years, then picked it up again, put it away for years, etc. But it's very touching. In the first part of the book, she deals with absolutely devastating personal events (namely, the death of her only daughter and namesake and of her son. All except one of her six children, I believe, predeceased her.) honestly and nakedly; reading the account is as painful as looking at a raw wound. In the last third of the book, she writes in an objectified, distant way -- "then this happened," "then that happened." Both styles are legitimate and effective; it's just sort of unusual to have them jammed together in the same book. (The explanation is that the book was published posthumously; the author obviously didn't shape the narrative.)

I did manage to finish one novel: And Then We Came to an End. This is a smart and funny examination of the corporate culture in America. I really enjoyed how the author used the corporate "we" as a narrator for most of the book. Highly recommended!

Friday Buzz - Becoming Jane

I hate the thought of Anne Hathaway starring as Jane Austen in a movie about Jane Austen. Hathaway was too insipid even for the intrinsic insipidness of The Devil Wears Prada. I can't even imagine that she'll do justice to the Empire-waist fashion, much less the great authoress herself.

And now I suppose we'll see Hathaway's doe eyes and pouty lips on all future editions of Jane Austen novels. Publishers apparently are already touching up images of Austen, tarting poor old Jane up like the media whore they want her to be.

Verlyn Klinkenborg (with a name like that, she had to be a writer! Go, Veryln!) poses the sensible question in a New York Times op-ed piece: Why should we care what Jane Austen looked like? As Verlyn says, "No amount of biography — no grasp of the details of the life as it was lived — ever accounts for the transfiguration that takes place in the work itself. You can search all you want in the life, but you will never find the ghostly separateness, the act of imagination, in which the work emerges." Maybe it's a good thing few letters and no diaries of Austen's survive; her work truly must stand on its own, independent of a possible dumpy physique or bad temper or unfortunate habit like nail-biting.

I liked what Verlyn had to say about reading, too:

One of the great pleasures of a reading life is picking up an old, familiar novel thinking that rereading it will mean a kind of reminding, when, in fact, the novel makes itself new all over again. It is as if the novel holds itself apart, waiting for real life to erase enough in us to make us suitable readers once more.

I think that's exactly why I have a hard time letting go of my books.

Thoughts for Thursday - Kerouac haunts

Here are some places in North Beach, San Francisco, where Jack and the Beats hung out (and where I hung out on my anti-birthday)...

City Lights Bookstore on Columbus (and Jack Kerouac Alley)

Inside Vesuvio's, where the Beats got drunk.

The new Beat Museum, across the street from Vesuvio's and City Lights. (Cool stuff: A check to a liquor store signed by Jack Kerouac and the original shirt worn by Neal Cassady when he drove Ken Kesey's bus Furthur.)

April - Read a Classic Month

Hi, everybody, I'm baaaack. Anti-birthday birthday was great: Good food, good company, good hiking and just enough drinks to keep me merry.

Many, many thanks for your good wishes!

Now, we're into April (already???!!!) Time for me to report on my essay reading for March and prepare for a month of classics.

I finished only the Woolf essay book in its entirety, but managed to read essays by a range of authors, including Berlin, Emerson (Self-Reliance) and Didion. I wish I could expound on Emerson as eloquently as Dorothy W. or Stefanie, but, alas, I simply feel to harried to think that deeply. (Even as I type this, I must hurry off to my third meeting of the day.)

Heading into the classics month, I narrowed my choices to two:

1. In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust

2. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

Holy cow, that's a lot of reading! I am looking forward to them both.

In other reading notes: Just started The Making of Victorian Values by Ben Wilson. I am going to try to fit this in with my classics reading for the month. Cross your fingers that my eyes hold out!

Thoughts for Thursday - Ti(red)

Tomorrow is my birthday -- well, anti-birthday. I refuse to have a birthday this year. Theoretically.

As birthdays do, this one got me to reflecting upon the year past. It seems to me that the American culture in general has gone into hyperspeed. I don't think I'm the only person who feels that way, either.

How it affects me is that I do not have time (or energy) to reflect and think, and that in turn affects my quality of life. (I can even see a degradation in my blog posts over the past dozen months, from lengthy and rather complex to quick and dirty.) What to do to change the dynamic...? Answer is not clear yet.

First things first: I'm taking a few days off. I'll be doing some fun things to celebrate my anti-birthday (yes, you can still celebrate, even if it's an anti-birthday) and generally slacking.

So, see you soon. Until my next post, here is a link you might enjoy perusing.

I am not a big fantasy/sci-fi buff, never have been. I figure this world has enough interesting people and plots to deal with; why add distant planets or goofy names to the mix? But, I'm trying.



I think I'll check out the Best American Fantasy 2006 for starters. (Here's a sneak peak, via Edward Champion.)


Then there's Carl V.'s Once Upon a Time Challenge (god, I love Carl's challenges!). He has listed some damned fine choices (I also think Kailana chooses some good examples of the genre.) While I cannot devote so much time to the entire challenge, I thought I'd try one or two. (I hope Kate Mosse's Labyrinth counts, since I already have that one.) I'll sleuth around and see if something, anything strikes my fancy.

It's perfectly okay to have strong reading preferences, and I certainly don't want to waste my time on crap when there are so many classics I need to read but...doesn't hurt to keep an open mind. Who knows? I might develop a taste for intergalactic romance or Hobbity type creatures. Anything's possible.

10 (+2) Books I Couldn't Live Without

I should subtitle this: "10 books that make me want to write." Because I cannot separate "books I cannot live without" from books that influence me as a writer: The two activities, for me, are irrevocably intertwined.

These are books that use language, plot and/or character in delightful and astonishing ways, that engross me even upon multiple readings, that make me gloriously happy and terribly humbled over the human capacity for language. The +2 are books that I loved as a young reader. In some way, these books touched my core and spoke some truth. I hope, too, that I have many books left to add to my list.

This is for Kailana, who asked the provocative question in the first place. (No particular order).

1. Jane Eyre

2. Pride and Prejudice

3. Swann’s Way

4. Shakespearean Sonnets (or, to really cheat, Collected Works of Shakespeare)

5. On the Road

6. Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath

7. Bleak House

8. To the Lighthouse

9. Anna Karenina

10. Crime & Punishment


+2:
Little Women
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Friday Buzz - Didion on Broadway

This is either going to be really, really bad or really, really good. Plus: Vanessa Redgrave. Minus: The theatre may have to close the balcony so people don't jump off of it.

Now, if YoMT is ever made into a TV movie starring Mary Tyler Moore -- then it will be official that Didion has sold out.

Thoughts for Thursday - Book covers

As if you really could tell a book by its cover, publishers spend a lot of thought on cover design. There is even a web site dedicated to the subject! And, of course, when a publisher can nab a movie tie-in to the cover -- In Cold Blood and Pride & Prejudice come to mind -- the sales can be phenomenal. (My God, if you can add Johnny Depp to the mix, you might just trump Donald Trump in annual earnings.)

But does a cover really sell a book?

I would like to think I am above all the crass commercialism and shameless huckstering. Buying a book strictly because of a pretty cover is like buying a McRib Sandwich because of the blinking menu sign at the drive-through. Or shopping at Wal-Mart.

Logically, I tell myself as I enter a bookstore and inhale a whiff of fresh ink and crisp paper, I seek books of compelling content, written by elite authors. As I peruse the shelves, a quirky and interesting title might inspire me to read the dustjacket and critical blurbs. Otherwise, I'm discerning. I'm in charge. I'm an informed consumer.

That's what I tell myself.

I had one experience, however, in which a cover impelled me to buy the book. It was Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated. As I moved through the portal of a reputable independent bookseller, a book with an acid-green cover and pink lettering caught my eye. In fact, a literal phalanx of these books barricaded one entire wall of the reputable independent bookstore in a dazzling burst of neon: blues and oranges and yellows. The same book, different color combinations. Could this bold marketing strategy be heralding the launch of a new literary voice? Perhaps the publisher was communicating to me: This is something "New" and EXCITING and innovative, the Next Generation's shouted mantra, an Enlightened Messenger arriving in a hallucinogenic spectrum of spilled ink. This was the prose you've been searching for since A Confederacy of Dunces. The cover told the story!

I behaved exactly like a sucker. I got into line, barely glancing at the contents, and handed over my hard-earned dollars. When I got home, I immediately opened it up and began reading.

Jesus. Another bull$hit self-conscious meta-fiction piece of crap.

Now my face was neon pink with bile-green tinges.

Would I be hustled again? Oh, yes. By titles (The Devil Wears Prada) and blurbs (The Ruins of California) and most definitely by that biggest Sucker Magnet of all, The Pre-eminent Award List. But, by George (Eliot), not by a pretty face.

Which leads me to my pointless reader poll: Do you judge a book by its cover? Have you ever bought a book for inglorious reasons? Did you ever get hooked just by a title or blurb? Tell your story and win...well, nothing. But you will feel that guilt lift from the depths of your literary soul, I promise.

Michael Chabon has a new book coming out (May). Yay.

Other cool books on the way:

Selected Letters of Philip K. Dick (June)
Flight: A Novel, Sherman Alexie (this month)
The Sea Lady, Margaret Drabble (May)
Alentejo Blue, Monica Ali (June)
The Gravedigger's Daughter, Joyce Carol Oates (May)
Up in Honey's Room, Elmore Leonard (May)
Stalin's Ghost, Martin Cruz Smith (April)
The Ministry of Special Cases, Nathan Englander (April)
Falling Man, Don DeLillo (June)

Investigating Nancy Drew

Maybe it's just because I have the TBR Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Woman Who Created Her, but take a look at what are purported to be Nancy Drew dolls from Madame Alexander (circa 1967):

Tell me: Don't they look more like a funked-up version of a Ladybird Johnson collection than our Titian-haired detective? These gals look like they couldn't find their way to a nail salon, much less solve the secret of the old clock.

Now, this is more like it:

Geez, if I only knew this existed, I would have asked Santa for one of these instead of dumb old Parcheesi.

Thoughts for Thursday - Favorite film adaptations

It's Thursday, I've the bilious type of hangover, and surely this fluorescent overhead light is bad for my reproductive system. So, it's time for a list. Nothing like a list to restore order to chaos.

Today's list: Favorite film adaptations of books. Pretty easy. I'll do my Top 5. What makes all of these films work for me is that they don't detract from my enjoyment of the novels. I can watch the movies and enjoy the film genre, and I can go back to the book without the film version interfering. Pretty nifty. Now, I "tag" you to do your own list.

1. Jane Eyre (1944). Tagline: A Love Story Every Woman Would Die a Thousand Deaths to Live! Most memorable scene: When the young Jane wakes up to find Helen Burns dead.

Come on: Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Elizabeth Taylor, Margaret O'Brien, Agnes Moorehead. You can't beat the casting. And the cinematography evokes a grim stark Bronte-ness. Add a Bernard Hermann score--magic.

2. Gone with the Wind (1939). Tagline: The most magnificent picture ever! Most memorable scene: Scarlett entering the hospital ward in Atlanta, as the camera pans to show the hundreds of wounded men.

This is a no-brainer. Okay, after nearly 70 years, the film is starting to become dated, and, yes, with all of our newfound racial sensitivity, the treatment of blacks in this film makes one cringe. And, as for Clark Gable...frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. But Scarlett is still a compelling, flawed heroine, and Vivien Leigh does the mythic role justice.

(By the way, you notice I did not include another great film from 1939, Wizard of Oz. That's because I never read the book!)

3. A Christmas Carol (1938). Tagline: Greater than "David Copperfield" ! Most memorable scene: The skeletal finger of The Ghost of Christmas Past pointing to Scrooge's tombstone as Scrooge cringes on his knees.

You know, Dickens would have made a great screenwriter. There are myriad versions of this novella -- which just begs to be filmed -- but this one is my favorite. You can't beat its evocation of Victorian London. Sure, I would rather have seen Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge (he was originally cast, then I believe broke a foot). But Reginald Own fills the bill nicely. Look for a young June Lockhart among Bob Cratchett's brood.

4. Persuasion (1995). No tagline. Most memorable scene: The girl falling and clonking her head on the waterfront.

I actually saw the film before I read the novel -- which I normally avoid. But, the film did not detract from my discovery of the novel, yet it was also a very credible interpretation. No frills, no mainstream actors. Just a good, sensible, brooding rendering. Sort of like the book in the Austen canon.

5. A Room with a View (1986). No tagline. Most memorable scene: Lucy fainting in George Emerson's arms.

It's tough to live up to the book, but this film version does. Helena Bonham Carter perfectly captures Lucy Honeychurch's blend of snobbish affectedness and rebellious honesty, and Maggie Smith as Charlotte Bartlett is priceless. Daniel Day-Lewis (what the hell ever happened to him?) steals the show as Cecil. And the soundtrack is to die for. One of those movie experiences that leaves me sighing and reaching for a Baedeker.

...............

And, just to jerk your train of thought around like a carnival ride, I like this, from James Hynes. (Weird, 'cos just yesterday I ordered his book on a whim from Amazon.com.:::Play Twilight Zone theme here.)

I had an epiphany one soporific mid-morning when I stood up in my cubicle to stretch myself awake. Turning slowly in place, I scanned a complete 360 of the cube horizon. The scene was slightly underlit, and while I could hear all sorts of human activity—talking, phones ringing, keyboards clattering—I couldn’t see another living person. I felt as if I was working in a room full of ghosts. The alienation of cube life was suddenly revealed to me as something gothic, a variation on the creeping dread of a Poe character. I could be walled up alive inside my cubicle and no one would even notice—the Cube of Amontillado. Immediately I dropped to my seat and jotted down a paragraph that appears almost without revision in my new book, Kings of Infinite Space.

I hate everything I write

I hate everything I write.
I hate everything I wrote
that I'm currently rereading.

That's a sign of one of two things:

Either I am going to make a breakthrough, a leap forward in development, progress.

................Or...............

I am going to quit.

The moment every writer half-dreads,
half-anticipates and half-prays will happen
at some point.

Obviously, I've always gone down Route 1.

Is it time now for the road-less-travelled?

The only thing now to do is wait. To find out.

Thinking blogger -- who, me?

How cool is this? I was nominated for a "Thinking Blogger Award" by Stefanie and Courtney! (Thanks, guys!) My head is swelling so to such outlandish proportions, I had to stretch out my thinking cap (which is, by the way, a shocking shade of pink, encrusted with rhinestones.)

Now I'm supposed to nominate 5 other bloggers for the honor. But, I simply cannot choose! (This might be a good time to share that, although I may be The Literate Kitten, I have much more in common with The Cowardly Lion.) I will say that I regularly read all of those bloggers on my Blogroll -- a group I tend to keep selective to make sure I can enjoy all of the collective wit and wisdom. I nominate all of them.

And, here's some news you all might enjoy: Annie Dillard has a new novel coming out in a few months, called The Maytrees. Here's the description from HarperCollins:

Set in the wild sand dunes of post-war Provincetown, Massachusetts, The Maytrees is the story of Toby Maytree, a free-thinking poet, and Lou, a quiet summer resident who reminds people of Ingrid Bergman. After his service in the war, Toby Maytree returns to Provincetown where a community of artists and writers has settled at land's end. It's the town he grew up in, and where he and Lou have now started a family. They share a simple life and a circle of close friends, and when their son Peter is born, it is their friend Deary who helps to care for him. But years later it is Deary who suddenly comes between them, creating a fault line in their marriage and forever changing the course of their lives.

Happy Birthday, Jack Kerouac

"The American Haiku is not exactly the Japanese Haiku. The Japanese Haiku is strictly disciplined to seventeen syllables but since the language structure is different. I don't think AmericanHaikus (short three-line poems intended to becompletely packed with Void of Whole) should worry about syllables because American speech is something again...bursting to pop. Above all, a Haiku must be very simple and free of all poetic trickery and make a little picture and yet be as airy and graceful as a Vivaldi Pastorella."

Jack Kerouac

(partial Haiku, Jack Kerouac)

Early morning yellow flowers,

thinking about

the drunkards of Mexico.

No telegram today

only more leaves fell.

Nightfall,boy smashing dandelions

with a stick.

Holding up my

purring cat to the moon

I sighed.

Friday Buzz - History + Fiction

I was visiting my local indie bookstore the other day, and standing before the rack of recently released paperback fiction, I noticed an inordinate number of titles related to historical personages. Here is a sampling of such--mind you, a sampling:

Dreamlife of Sukhanov
Memoirs of Helen of Troy
Anxious Pleasures (A Life After Kafka)
The Mercuy Visions of Louis Daguerre
I, Mona Lisa
Rasputin's Daughter
Secret Memoirs of Jackie Kennedy Onassis
Great Lady: The Notorious Gorgeous Life of Emma Lady Hamilton

Okay, I can accept some of this as a wave in the cyclic nature of publishing trends; after successes like The Other Boleyn Girl or The Dante Club, naturally publishers chase after more of the same and glut the market.

But why is the reading public hungering for fictional accounts of people who really lived? (Honestly, I don't get it. To me, the facts are infinitely more interesting. How could any author improve on the story of Marie Antoinette, for example? Wouldn't you rather know about the real Jackie O. versus some stranger's made-up account of her? And why would readers buy into a contemporary writer's interpretation of the memoirs of a famous historical personage?)

This is saying something about our society and culture, though I'm not quite sure what. I simply don't have enough pieces of the puzzle. To me, there is some sort of intersecting between the fictionalized personage trend and the recent spat of "dramatized" memoirs. Real life crossing over with fiction, that sort of thing. For some reason, we are not prone to distinguishing between "fact" and "fiction," "truth" and "theory": We are willing, maybe even eager, to blur the lines. Why?

On another tangent, could the fictionalizing of historical person's memoirs be a reaction to our own (recent) lack of tangible, permanent records of our days and thoughts and history? Think about it: We soon will have no more letters or lengthy correspondence and few written diaries to document the processes, personal musings, daily accounts of our great thinkers. No more Samuel Pepys or Viriginia Woolf diaries. No more letters between Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. (Yeah, I can just imagine how helpful Blackberry messages will be: RUwriting? :) )

Just some random, rambling thoughts. Something about this nags at me, though: Somehow, it's telling us something we must pay attention to. That's the feeling I get.

I'd like to hear some of your thoughts on the subject.

Thoughts for Thursday - Thinks & Links

"I usually steal a line from Yeats and it goes, 'Read what gives you pleasure, write what you must.' I think that’s pretty good advice. Read, read, read, and then explore your obsessions because I think that’s where the energy comes from. Especially when you want to do a novel because to sustain yourself through a longish project you really have to be, not just committed, but you have to be really interested in it. There’s nothing worse than starting something and then getting bored with it when you’re halfway through. "

- Vikram Chandra advises fledgling writers, in a long, unpretentious interview with Tony DuShane at Bookslut.

(Beryl Bainbridge, meanwhile, reprises the old 'write what you know' principle: "I don't think you should ever try to make things up. We all lead such strange lives that there is no need to. Use your own experiences and then twist it a bit.") (all of the above via Prufrock's Page)

**********

"Writing is rewriting. A writer must learn to deepen characters, trim writing, intensify scenes. To fall in love with the first draft to the point where one cannot change it is to greatly enhance the prospects of never publishing." Richard North Patterson (via Sarah's Writing Journal)


**********

International Women's Day Pioneering Women Writers Quiz (Cool, but not that easy.)

Salon's take on Oprah and The Secret (Shh, here's The Secret: Keep envisioning Oprah's show cancelled!)

Big thoughts: Evolution and religion (Could GW's God who told him to go to war be merely an evolutional byproduct?)

Bookaholic Step 4: Making an inventory

As an admitted Bookaholic, I decided to take a little inventory and post a few titles that are currently awaiting my attention on my TBR shelves. Maybe surveying the gluttony, like standing nude before a full-length mirror after a two-month couch vacation, will shame me into submission. Maybe I'm hoping I'll be able to skip back to Step 2 and believe that the Greater Power of Eyestrain will restore me to sanity.

Or maybe it will merely whet my appetite for more...

I keep finding that one book leads to another which of course begs me to investigate yet another that naturally refers to several others...I'm like a damned hunting hound on the scent of a pack of foxes.

But, just in case you're secretly wondering "which does LK have that I don't?" or "I could use a book on how to make time for writing myself," here are some of the good, the bad and the ugly from my current TBR list:

The Autobiography of Margaret Oliphant / Hester by Margaret Oliphant. Naturally, you can't read a writer's autobiography without reading some of her work. What intrigues me about Margaret Oliphant is that she suffered much but still wrote, against all odds. Born in 1828, she truly was burdened in the manner of 19th century women: nursing sick relatives, bearing six children (and losing 3 in infancy), being widowed and supporting her family with her incredibly prolific writing. The novel Hester is about an older woman who risks her own personal fortune to lead her family's banking business to safety. Will I ever get to these two books?

Twenty-eight artists and two saints by Joan Acocella. Somewhere I ran across this title and thought it would be a great addition to my Essays Month. I don't know, there's something maddeningly cool about portraits of Bob Fosse, Dorothy Parker and Mary Magdalene residing in the pages of the same book.

The Other House and The Outcry by Henry James. What can I say? NYRB had a sale. Two books by James that I'd never heard of. One a comedy of manners, one depicting uncontrollable passions lying beneath the veneer of civilized life. Tell me, truly: what would you have done?

The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist: A Book for Writers, Teachers, Publishers, and Anyone Else Devoted to Fiction by Thomas McCormack. This guy's the CEO of St. Martin's Press. I want to write, teach and publish. Not necessarily in that order. What else is a Kitten to do to avoid writing, teaching and publishing -- but buy a book about those endeavors? To further aid in my paralysis and guilt, I have A Writer's Time: Making Time to Write (a tip of the hat to Kate from Kate's Book Blog, who always posts tantalizing quotes from tantalizing tomes).

This is just a tip of the bookish iceberg, my friends. I pass along these titles to you in hopes that you might find a gem or two to pick up yourself in time...Now, off I go to enroll in an Evelyn Wood Speed Reading course.

New TBR: American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever

Oh, dearest God in heaven, another book for the TBR pile:

Susan Cheever's latest work, however, brings new life to the well-known literary personages who produced such cherished works as "The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Walden," and "Little Women." Rendering in full color the tumultuous, often scandalous lives of these volatile and vulnerable geniuses, Cheever's dynamic narrative reminds us that, while these literary heroes now seem secure of their spots in the canon, they were once considered avant-garde, bohemian types, at odds with the establishment.

I have no willpower, I must have it!

You know, I figured out why I've been so compulsive about book buying the past few months (and I mean a true bookaholic, like when you get into debt from book buying binges or get a hangover from too much reading over the weekends): I am avoiding writing.

Yes, just when you thought all forms of writer's block have been discovered and cataloged, yours truly comes up with another, potentially lethal (at least in the bank account) form.

In other news, if you live in the Bay Area, by all means see the Berkeley Repertory Theater's production of To the Lighthouse. It's a top-notch production and amazingly true to Woolf's novel.

Upon seeing it, I immediately rushed home to reread my copy. And I've started Julia Briggs' Virginia Woolf: An Inner Life (amazing) and found in a used bookstore a text called Virginia Woolf and the Real World.

I think I need to start a 12-step program just for bookaholics. Step one: Admit you are powerless over the power of the written word!

Thoughts for Thursday - March Essays

Yeah, it's World Book Day, whatever the hell that is: I'm sure you'll find other bloggers celebrating away, shredding pages of old books into confetti and urging readers into bookstores with little tin horns.

Not here. (Oh, no, I'm not against the World or Books or even Days. I am just being cranky, pure and simple, about invented celebrations.)

Today is March 1, and that ushers in my Month of Essays. And do I have some beauties!

The London Scene: Six Essays by Virginia Woolf (doubles as a travel guide, too!)

First and the Last by Isaiah Berlin (includes his final essay, My Intellectual Path)

Why Do I Love These People: Understanding, Surviving and Creating Your Own Family by Po Bronson (as I rarely mention my family, you must get an inkling of why this book appeals)

Hundred White Daffodils by Jane Kenyon (I've been inspired by all of the Kenyon poetry bloggers posted in the past year, plus she discusses her battles with depression)

... among essays I intend to read by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Joan Didion and whoever else strikes my fancy.

AND I am expecting delivery this month of a new book of essays on Sylvia Plath.

Not sure I'll make it through the entire list, but that's what I like about essays: You can dip and delve into them, one by one, versus having to devour volumes whole, as novels require.

Rules for writing

This is from BikeProf, who is a credible source because he actually finished a book draft!

The Hobgoblin's Rules for Writing

Write every day. At the worst, your typing will improve to the point that you can write more quickly than ever before. More to the point, though, writing every day will help in two ways: 1) you will nurture the sense that you are making progress; and 2) you will eventually generate a large stack of pages.

Do not revise. I cannot state this strongly enough. Do not look at what you have written until you have finished a draft. Trying to revise in the middle of things will send you to that circle of hell where you are paralyzed and cannot write a second sentence until the first is so perfectly written, so immaculately phrased, that writing all over the world will instantly become meaningless and superfluous in comparison.

Have fun. You are all big readers; you love to read. So writing is the production of joy. The production of joy should have some element of joy in it, or you're just not doing it right.

Daydream. For me, writing was nothing more than imagining an entertaining scene, seeing it play out in my head, and then describing what I saw. Daydreaming is fun and does not seem like work, and soon, writing a little every day did not seem like work either.

Don't think about your audience. This goes against something I usually teach my freshmen composition students, and, to a certain extent, it is not advice to be followed closely. However, when writing fiction, if you think about every reaction of the readers, and if you worry how your mom will react to the character who swears, then you will wrap yourself up in a sheet of neurosis so completely that you will not be able to write at all.

Write truthfully. Genres don't matter. Labels are for bookstores and not authors. If you really want to write erotic sword and sorcery fantasy novels, then write the best, most truthful erotic sword and sorcery fantasy you can.

Write who you are. This goes along with writing truthfully, but is more personal. You have a voice, so use it. Don't try to write in a voice that will not work for you. Those who try to be Hemingway ventriloquists usually end up sounding more stupid than Hemingway-esque, after all.

Trilby by George du Maurier

This is a book of its time and place, fin-de-siecle Europe. What interested me most about this book was the fact that it was the sensation of its time, selling more than 200,000 in Britain and America, spawning a successful play and leaving a permanent mark on the English language by popularizing two terms that endure today: "Svengali" and the "Trilby hat".

What was it about this book that caused such a fuss?

Not the prose, certainly. Syntax is awkward, prose purple, and characters are of the Victorian stripe -- described in sentimental superlatives such as "most ravishing," "transparent as crystal," or "most unclean." There are numerous references to fashion, literature and other cultural phenomena of the day. (I won't get into the anti-Semitism displayed here, but it is unpleasant. And it helps to speak French, as there are lots and lots of untranslated passages in that language.) Here's a taste (one of the better passages, I think, capturing some of the wit that occasionally bubbles up), an elaboration of the narrator's musings about literature:

Feydeau, or Flaubert, let us say -- or for those who don't know French and cultivate an innocent mind, Miss Austen (for to be dead and buried is almost as good to be French and immoral!) -- and Sebasitan Bach, and Sandro Botticelli -- that all the arts should be represented.

I'll agree in part with the introduction to the Penguin Classics version, authored by Daniel Pick, that says: Trilby"seems to occupy several key crossroads of its time. It hesitates between elitism and egalitarianism; amateurism and professionalism; between enthusiasm and horror of the marketplace in general and the merchandizing of talents in particular..." I think, too, what he's getting at in a polite way is that the writing is very uneven; some passages are fine and ironic, while others are confusing rather than merely ambiguous.

I would speculate that Trilby hit a chord with people who were still coming to terms with Darwin's new theories on evolution and survival of the fittest, mysticism versus scientific fact, industrialization and dehumanization. Hence, the character of Svengali, who mesmerized his protege to the point of total control, literally mesmerized the reading public as a kind of elaborate conceit of these issues.

Svengali is in fact the most memorable character in the book -- and he takes up suprisingly little real estate within the pages! For me, the novel fell flat when old Svengali wasn't up to his tricks; everyone else was so "noble," "brave," "naive," or otherwise brimming over in Victorian virtues that I welcomed a character with some less than sterling qualities -- especially one who was so successful at something that is portrayed as unethical at best, evil at worst. He's more human because he's complex. Maybe that's why the term has still stuck around.

I wish I could stomach reading this again to try to hit on the nuanaces Daniel Pick outlines in the introduction. But this is a rather obscure, outdated novel. I'd say it's worth the read for anyone interested in late-Victorian literature. But I don't think I can read it again.

Monday mish-mash

There's so much reading-related activity happening lately at Planet Kitten, I thought I'd just do one of those catchall posts.

1. Finished Trilby. An odd book, surely, dated and very late-Victorian in tone and topic. But I'm very glad I stumbled upon it and managed to read it. (A long analytical post to come, I promise. I need to digest it a bit.) I'm thrilled that I managed to finish 3 books during my Month of Romance Reads!

2. Memoirs of a Muse by Laura Vapynar. About halfway through this one, and I am really enjoying it. I think the subject matter (a girl obsessed with Dostoevsky and his muse, who aspires to be a muse herself) is compelling to me, and the author's prose is clean and sure. A future post on this, absolutely. With any luck, I will finish in time to add a fourth romantic read for February (and all that in a short month!). I don't recall how or where I heard about this book, but if it came from a fellow blogger, many thanks.

3. Book-buying binges. Well, I've maxed my credit cards on Amazon.com and the QPB site, and my new bookshelves already are bulging at the seams. Check out my (partial!) TBR list on Library Thing, if you don't believe me. And what did I do this weekend? I stopped by a sidewalk sale on my way home from the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park and, for $2, picked up: Alias Grace and Bluebeard's Egg (short stories) by Margaret Atwood and If I Told You Once by Judy Budnitz. Isn't it fortunate that I happened across the two Atwood books, just after finishing Cat's Eye -- and being determined to read more of her? I am planning to delve into the short stories during my evening bus commute. But, with all of these books waiting impatiently for me, covers closed and silent and begging to be exposed to light and sight, I am so overwhelmed, I don't know where to start! There are too too many good books in the world for one poor little reader.

Lucky for me, the monthly list of reading seems to help me focus. And, so far, feels doable and satisfying. I'm gearing up for essay reading in March -- a nice change of pace from novels, with room built in for whatever else strikes my fancy.

How are your reading adventures going lately?

Friday Buzz - War & P has Tolstoy rolling in grave

Oh, for God’s sake: Just when you thought publishing couldn’t get any sillier with the scrotum controversy and crasser with O.J. Simpson and Judith Regan, HarperCollins decides to trim down War & Peace and add a happy ending.

All in the name of reaching the “masses:”

A spokesman for HarperCollins predicted it would have mass appeal. "The new version is of course aimed at students of Tolstoy," she said. "But we are sure it will also prove fascinating to the general reader."

Bullsh*t. They don’t give a damn about reaching students or otherwise enriching the minds of “the general reader,” as the spokesperson so condescendingly puts it.

And how about this for advertising-cum-propaganda?

HarperCollins…describes the novel's brevity as "something to celebrate" while in Russia, the book is already being marketed as "half as long and twice as interesting" — despite the new book still running to a challenging 1,000 pages.

Any schools, any readers who allow HarperCollins to make one dime off this stunt are worse than fools. They are contributing further to our cultural demise. Maybe they'll PhotoShop Tolsty's photo, too, to make his looks more appealing to the masses. Give him a nose job and haircut and get rid of some of those wrinkles.

Hey, folks, it’s just another new frontier in the Land of Commodification. Why not ruin a piece of literature to make more money? Religion, wildlife -- hell, people sell their own psyches for a buck. Go out and make it a great day!!!

Other (happier) news

Call for papers for “Celebrating the Golden Age of Science Fiction.”


Sign up for Paul Cohelo’s newsletter, “Warrior of the Light Online.”

Thoughts for Thursday - A request for help and a poem

Hi, everyone! I am here to ask for help: I have decided to make a transition from the corporate world to teaching. I know a lot of you out there are teachers, and I thought you might have some advice, sources or other sagacious insights to impart.

Here's my situation: I've got an MFA in Creative Writing. I've taught a copyediting class at a prestigious adult education facility. I've gotten a number of stories published, won some awards -- but nothing earthshaking.

I'd like to teach at the college level, but I am concerned that a PhD is almost a requisite (unless one has a published book).

Any and all information about how to make the transition would be much appreciated.

As promised, here's a poem from Gerard Manley Hopkins:


The Candle Indoors

SOME candle clear burns somewhere I come by.
I muse at how its being puts blissful back
With yellowy moisture mild night’s blear-all black,
Or to-fro tender trambeams truckle at the eye.
By that window what task what fingers ply,
I plod wondering, a-wanting, just for lack
Of answer the eagerer a-wanting Jessy or Jack
There God to aggrándise, God to glorify.—

Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire
Mend first and vital candle in close heart’s vault:
You there are master, do your own desire;
What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault
In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar
And, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?

2 books to change your life

Okay, now that it's all over, I can confess: The last few weeks have been pretty horrendous. I will spare you the details.

I will say, however, that if you are -- or even if you don't think you are -- in the market for some life-changing books, here are my latest picks:

1) Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire by Morris Berman

Depressing? Yes. Disturbing? Indeed. Why read it? We all must face reality in order to change it, that's why. This book lays out how and why America is going wrong (and includes some very interesting titles as source references, which I plan to cite in a future post). I am sure the jingoistic Horatio-Alger types among Americans will snort derisively at such tales of woe -- as then turn off their TV, plug in their cell phones and jump in their SUVs for a two-hour straight-highway commute. This book is not for the feint of heart; everyone, even the most aware souls among us, will find themselves faced with the fact that we've been sucked, in spite of our best efforts, into the consumer culture. If we can take the medicine, we might be ready to begin the cure.

2) What Should I Do With My Life? by Po Bronson

This one has been around a while, I grant you. And it's not a self-help book, true enough. It kind of defies any easy literary category, which I find strangely endearing. What I like about this book is that Bronson doesn't present any easy solutions or sure-fire steps to solve your career or add meaning to work. Call me idiosyncratic, but I find his un-pander-y approach rather refreshing. I find the stories interesting and thought-provoking, and I find comfort in the fact that others are grasping with the same soul-searching as I am. It makes me feel less alone.

Love in Excess by Eliza Haywood

Romance to the nth degree is what you get with this novel.

What initially intrigued me is that this book was as popular in its time as another tome you may have heard of: Robinson Crusoe. And its author was a woman -- possibly the author of the first novel in the English language.

Why, then, I wondered, had I not heard of Eliza Haywood or this novel?

The explanation may lie in the book's major theme: society's disapproval of women who declare their love for men. From this book through Pride & Prejudice and on through The Thorn Birds, women protagonists have been punished for actively pursuing men. The prose, while not altogether overtly sexual, is sexually charged enough (termed "amatory," e.g., a bit more elevated than a bodice-ripper or romance but not quite literary fiction) which must have been quite scandalous at the time. (I can't help but wonder who its main readers were: women or men? Were women made to feel shamed for reading it?) Could a book centered around women with sexual desires have fallen out of favor with the arrival of the Victorian Age?

Another reason why this book may not be as well known as Robinson Crusoe is that the characters are archetypal. This is a plot-heavy book, with a case to make about desire. Character development takes a back seat.

The hero of the book actually is a mimbo (male bimbo), Count d'Elmont. This guy would put Brad Pitt to shame; apparently, no woman could resist his charms. The book's plot centers around all of the women who fall for him (lust or love or a combination thereof). And there are quite a few of 'em.

The book is truly well-crafted. I won't spoil the fun for potential readers, but trust me: You'll need a GPS to navigate the numerous plot lines! Despite the lack of rounded characters, I enjoyed this novel immensely.

Another novel of Haywood's, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, is considered to have heralded an important change in the 18 century English novel, focusing on marriage versus courtship. (Chalk one up for another TBR!)

Ultimately, however, Eliza Haywood may be much more tantalizing than her own characters.

Apparently, she was quite prolific, supporting herself and her two children (there is no record of a husband, interestingly) through writing and acting, translating and publishing. (How busy must she have been!) Her writing drew fire from some of the heavies of her day: Pope and Swift, among others. Beyond that, not many details are known about Haywood's life ... we can only hope some enterprising biographer will choose to go excavating and dig up some dirt. She seems to have been quite the enterprising, energetic woman.

Thoughts for Thursday - Robert Frost

Here's an excerpt from The Notebooks of Robert Frost (ran across this on a web site -- sounds like a great book, but dig the price tag! Ouch.):

Adventurous is not experimental. Experiment belongs to the laboratory. Adventure to life. Much of recent art has been merely experimental. It tries poetry with first one element then another omitted. It leaves out the head. Then it is too emotional. It leaves out the heart. Then it is too intellectual. It leaves out the feet. Then it is free verse. Adventure ends in the poorhouse. Experiment in the madhouse.

Surely, this could apply to prose as well as poetry.

But what is Frost getting at here? I agree that "experimental" prose and poetry that I've read strikes me as contrived, overly conscious and overanalytical. Head games.

However, maybe a little experimentation is in order to pave the way to a true adventure.

I am not a huge fan of experimental fiction; I like a little story with my reading, thank you very much. But I also feel I need to be more open to it, to take what it gives in terms of pushing the boundaries so the heart can follow the head into the next enlightenment.

What do you think about so-called "experimental" work? What types of experimental fiction have you read, that you would recommend to one who does not prefer to be working in the laboratory?

Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day

Current Romantic Reads

Persuasion, Jane Austen

Love in Excess, Eliza Haywood

Trilby, George duMaurier

A book for the unread

A book about how to talk about books you've never read? (Written by a man who is a judge for The Booker Prize? Ah, you are saying, it's all becoming clear how Black Swan Green made the Booker Prize longlist...)

This book is a bestseller in airports where, presumably, busy travellers must frantically find conversation starters before arriving at their next destination. ("Whatcha know about Proust, dude? Wasn't that Madeleine gal a real hoot?")

But a book about talking about books you've never read? I thought that's what Cliff's Notes were all about.

The Friday Buzz: Horror will thrill in '07

Could it be a shock to anyone that The UK Independent hails horror writing as "one of the coolest literary trends of 2007?"

Horror even has a subgenre to replace chick lit: Called Para Porn (catchy, in a perverted sort of way), these "paranormal romances" are being marketed by publishers such as Piatkus, Headline, Orion and Time Warner. (Might any of you horror-savvy readers out there give me a few titles in this genre?)

Why the surge in horror/fantasy/sci-fi? LitLove has been exploring the topic -- with great subtlety and perception, as usual. The Indpendent speculates that "what meaning 21st-century readers are seeking in the new horror is disputed:"

(Publisher) Gollancz's (editor) Jo Fletcher is convinced that the prevailing culture of fear created by the "war on terror" and rising crime has helped create a market for books in which fear is contained, even though unknown "others" haunt the page. "When things are going well in the world people are less interested in horror," she claims. "When times are dark, then horror becomes more popular."

Gee, what insight. Good to know we have erudite editors manning the helm of the next literary trend.

Anyway, here are some upcoming titles for those who like their lit dark and mysterious:
Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (Stephen King's son) (Gollancz, March)
The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall (Canongate, March)
Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert (Bantam, April)

Thoughts for Thursday: The reading confluence

I had a weird, wonderful confluence between writing & reading, a strange happenstance of disparate books coming together, that broke through a sort of block I'd been having in my fiction writing. Hard to explain, but I'll try:

Three of my current and completely random reads underwent this synergistic explosion in my brain: Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood (which I just finished), Trilby by George du Maurier (found on a dollar cart last week) and Hester by Margaret Oliphant (found in search for Victorian novels).

Cat's Eye and Trilby both have sight and vision as a major motif. Du Maurier, as it happens, lost vision in one eye, which terrified him, and led him to address vision in his novel.

Cat's Eye and Hester are both "realism novels," meaning the stories may not "go anywhere," and that is part of their structure. This gave me a "duh" moment (the pessimist's equivalent of Oprah's "ah-ha" moment), when I "got" what Atwood was going after with Cat's Eye: the messiness, false starts, unraveling endings and dead-ends of real life versus the tight plot and progressive narrative of a traditional novel. (Can't wait to read Hester and see how it compares to Cat's Eye...)

The Atwood insight in turn gave surge to a virtual wave of ideas, motifs, symbols etc. that I envisioned for my own fiction. As a bonus, a particular "voice" I want to achieve popped into my head....a moment of clarity.

A good feeling to see how all of my reading is "paying off," in terms of how it is acting in my subconscious. (Geez, if only I could & would actually write.)

Oh, I don't feel I have come anywhere close to explaining the complete surprise of the book-to-book dynamics and how amazingly satisfying the feeling when all the divergent streams brooked together.

But, somehow, I have a feeling many of you writers & readers out there know exactly what I'm talking about.

Let's hear it for the powers of Austen!

If you've been following the comments of my previous post, you must have seen the love affair most of us have with Jane Austen.

I dare say a reader cannot be unhappy with a Jane Austen novel; how many other authors can make that claim?

Incredibly, her entire canon consists of seven books (six published during her lifetime). Her sister, regrettably and with little foresight, burned most of Jane's correspondence, and a diary or journal has never been found.

Just for fun, I decided to get a little dialogue going over the Powers of Austen. Below are her titles. Which one is your favorite and why? Which haven't you read? Are you not as in love with Austen as most readers -- why? How has Jane influenced your reading or writing? Let's get plain about Jane!

As for me, I have yet to read 3 of her novels: Northanger Abbey (the 2007 RIP Challenge, I vow!), Mansfield Park and Lady Susan. I admit, I love, love, love Pride & Prejudice. The dialogue simply sparkles; it is witty, subtle, intelligent. How Jane could be gently sardonic (sometimes, not so gentle) without tipping into cynicism is one of those unfathomable mysteries of genius. Characters and plot sing. And her voice: Utterly original, still fresh today. Second to P&P? It's a tough call ... perhaps Sense & Sensibility. I love the relationship of the two Dashwood sisters, Elinor and Marianne, and the plot is vintage Austen.

What are your thoughts on Jane Austen?

Emma
Lady Susan
Mansfield Park
Northanger Abbey
Persuasion
Pride and Prejudice
Sense and Sensibility

Atwood, Austen and a month of romance

Okay, so this is the 3rd revision on this post. (I'm forming an "L" with my forefinger and thumb and holding it against my forehead.)

Along with Atwood’s essays on writing, I finished Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye. I enjoyed the book, but did not love it. I feel bad saying that. I feel like a jughead saying that. I don't feel particularly literate.

Don't get me wrong: The prose is exquisite. Every paragraph is a jewel, every chapter a collection. But at the end, a pattern didn’t emerge, a story wasn’t told. I was left with a handful of jewels.

The title refers to a certain kind of marble, an unordinary type, a prize that needs to be won:

The cat’s eyes are my favorites. If I win a new one I wait until I’m by myself, then take it out and examine it, turning it over and over in the light. The cat’s eyes really are like eyes, but not the eyes of cats. They’re the eyes of something that isn’t known but exists anyway; like the green eye of the radio; like the eyes of aliens from a distant planet. My favorite one is blue. I put it into my red plastic purse to keep it safe. I risk my other cat’s eyes to be shot at, but not this one.

Secrets – what is seen but not acknowledged, known but not discussed – seem to me to be at the heart of the novel; this paragraph, addressing an illegal abortion, emerged as the most sinister and deadly in a series of secrets observed or experienced by the narrator:

But what she’s done has set her apart. It belongs to the submerged landscape of the things that are never said, which lies beneath ordinary speech like hills under water. Everyone my age knows about it. Nobody discusses it. Rumors are down there, kitchen tables, money exchanged in secret; evil old women, illegal doctors, disgrace and butchery. Down there is terror.

Cat's Eye also, finally, refers to self-portrait painted by the narrator. This is just one of many references to sight and seeing -- and Shakespeare's three witches and colors and symbols and metaphors galore. Heaps of 'em. A glut.

I think I am tired, tired in a profound and ground-down sort of way. Must*recover*soon.

I’m glad I read Cat's Eye; I want to read more Atwood. But it was difficult to live with the peculiarly deadened tone and postmodern plotless plot for 461 pages.

Time to ditch heavy reading! In California, spring is in the air. Yellow daisies are blooming, some California poppies are already spreading their bright orange petals, and around twilight, a certain tree in Berkeley smells like gardenias dancing with honeysuckle. A little romance is in order.

So it was with a sort of stepping-off-the-treadmill relief that I turned to Jane Austen for my first book in a precious month of romantic reads. I initially selected Mansfield Park, but, as the introduction claimed it to be the “least popular” of Austen’s books, I immediately scuttled that in favor of Persuasion, which I finished over the weekend (along with half of a biography, Jane Austen by Claire Tomalin). These books, along with a bar of expensive chocolate and the studious ignoring of SuperBowl MXCMVI, initiated the lovefest in proper fashion.

I picked up a Victorian Oxford Classic on a bookstore dollar cart – can’t remember the title or author, but I do recall the words “violin,” “Victorian Paris,” and “affair” in the descriptor text. I think I’m in love already.

Friday Buzz - Habitual Reader web site

Here is yet another way the Internet is changing the face of books and publishing. Check out Habitual Reader, a site from Komenar Publishing.

As a marketing tool, it’s inexpensive, interactive – a good way to start buzz about your line. But one potential pitfall is that readers find the reviews and comments limiting and too actuated from self-interest.

Looks like Habitual Reader sidesteps the issue by allowing readers to review any books – including those not in Komenar’s line.

My question is: Will the site allow critical reviews of any books, particularly its own? Will the owners censor (without readers knowing what is censored and why)?

All will be revealed in time. For now, I will visit this site now and again to see how it’s faring.

Thanks to Lisa at Breaking the Fourth Wall for tipping me off on this one.

Thoughts for Thursday - Celebrate Molly

Columnist Molly Ivins died yesterday. I think Paul Harral, vice president and editorial director of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, has it right when he says: "It's a great loss to American journalism because she's such a strong voice; she stirred strong likes and dislikes in readers."

Here is a sample of Ms. Ivins' magic. This essay still is pertinent, and to me, ends on a good message for further reflection. Thank you, Molly!

Mourning in America
Molly Ivins - Creators Syndicate
11.04.04 - AUSTIN, Texas -- Do you know how to cure a chicken-killin' dog? Now, you know you cannot keep a dog that kills chickens, no matter how fine a dog it is otherwise.

Some people think you cannot break a dog that has got in the habit of killin' chickens, but my friend John Henry always claimed you could. He said the way to do it is to take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog's neck, good and strong. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog or person will even go near that poor beast. Thing'll smell so bad the dog won't be able to stand himself. You leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls off, and that dog won't kill chickens again.

The Bush administration is going to be wired around the neck of the American people for four more years, long enough for the stench to sicken everybody. It should cure the country of electing Republicans.

And at least Democrats won't have to clean up after him until it is real clear to everyone who made the mess.

In some circles, that will be seen as sour grapes. But in Texas, we've been losing elections to the demagogic triad of God, gays and guns long enough to be pretty cynical about how it works out.

I'm sure millions of Americans voted for George W. under the honest impression that he stands for moral values -- family, patriotism, faith in God. I'm sure it's the Democrats' fault that such a silly ruse is allowed to stand. What Bush actually does stand for is nicely summed up by a rather common news story that got stuck on the business pages lately.

In September, Merck & Co., the huge drug manufacturer, pulled Vioxx off the market. Vioxx was a popular pain-killing, anti-arthritis drug, but Merck said it was putting patients' safety first. A new study from the Federal Drug Administration showed high doses of Vioxx triple the risk of heart attack and sudden cardiac death.

From there, the story bifurcates -- it takes two directions. Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa revealed that the FDA had tried to silence the author of the study, Dr. David Graham, associate director of science in the Office of Drug Safety. Grassley said the FDA first sat on Graham's study and that then he was "ostracized" and "subjected to veiled threats and intimidation."

The Wall Street Journal followed the other fork, finding internal memos from Merck showing that company officials may have been aware of the dangers of Vioxx as long ago as 1996, including a memo apparently instructing its sales reps to "dodge" the question when doctors asked about the cardiac record of Vioxx.

In short, we have a toothless regulatory agency in the pocket of the industry it is supposed to patrol. We have an administration-wide contempt for science and plain facts. And the allegation against the folks at Merck is that they were making such enormous profits on a drug that killed people that when they knew or suspected it was killing people, they kept right on selling it. When the information that Merck had known for a long time about Vioxx and heart attacks became public, the company's stock fell by 9.6 percent.

That's the system George W. Bush stands for: where a corporation can knowingly kill people for profit and, when it finally comes out, everyone knows the penalties will be so light the company doesn't even lose a tenth of its worth. Hey, just a little bump in the road.

We sure don't want any of that terrible, burdensome government regulation to control that kind of behavior, do we? We sure don't want an FDA that listens to its own scientists and acts promptly, do we? We sure don't want anyone to sue these monster corporations, do we? I bet if it were possible to compare the odds of an American getting killed by a negligent regulatory agency and rapacious corporate behavior versus an American getting killed by a terrorist, it would turn out we need to be a lot more scared of rank greed and its enablers than we do of terrorists. And that's not counting what the corps. (pronounced corpse) steal and mess up.
So, fellow progressives, stop thinking about suicide or moving abroad. Want to feel better? Eat a sour grape, then do something immediately, now, today. Figure out what you can do to help rescue the country -- join something, send a little money to some group, call somewhere and offer to volunteer, find a politician you like at the local level and start helping him or her to move up.

Think about how you can lend a hand to the amazing myriad efforts that will promptly break out to help the country recover from what it has done to itself. Now is the time. Don't mourn, organize.

New Author Month - Quote from Atwood

It's the end of January, but I'm not quite finished with Cat's Eye and Negotiating with the Dead. Enjoying them immensely, however, and should finish up over the weekend. February -- and romance -- is at hand!

Until then, I thought I'd share a quote from Atwood's writing essays in Negotiating with the Dead:

What is the relationship between the two entities we lump under one name, that of "the writer"? The particular writer. By two, I mean the person who exists when no writing is going forward -- the one who walks the dog, eats bran for regularity, takes the car in to be washed, and so forth -- and that other, more shadowy and altogether more equivocal personage who shares the same body, and who, when no one is looking, takes it over and uses it to commit the actual writing.


Isn't that true? Oh, by the way: I received another piece of fan mail from someone who read several of my short stories. Very nice. Fan mail makes both my entities feel more like "writers".

Letter meme

This is a meme from BookGirl. She gave me the letter “H,” and then I post 10 things I like that begin with that letter. Here’s my take:

“Hello.” This greeting is almost always a positive. Same with “hugs,” “happiness” and “hope.”

Hummingbirds. My favorite bird. They’re like feathered hearts, flying around.

Hammett and Hellman. Writing mentors. Long-time lovers. Independent lives. My idea of a match made in heaven.

Hemingway. Forget his novels (except for The Sun Also Rises) and forget his macho shtick. His short stories and By-Lines (journalism) are marvelous.

Habeas corpus. It was nice while it lasted.

Hot fudge sundaes. Anyone who doesn’t like a hot fudge sundae probably hates puppies and butterflies, too.

Billie Holiday. One of the best vocalists, ever. If you don’t believe me, listen to “God Bless the Child.”

Halloween. Speaking of holidays, this is a fun one. I love reading gothic novels and ghost stories, watching spooky movies, eating candy and breathing in the crisp autumn air. The holiday you can't take seriously. Halloween rocks!

Hiking. My favorite “back to nature” activity.

Humor. Can’t have enough sense of it. Can't get enough of it.

Want to do this meme? Leave me a comment below and I’ll pick a letter for you.