Happily Ever After

According to Jeffrey Eugenides' character, Madeleine Hanna, "the marriage plot" began with Jane Austen, and is a story involving  courting rituals, proposals and misunderstandings, and ultimately ending in marriage.  The plot then progressed through Henry James and Leo Tolstoy, to the point where the marriage is not a happy ending, but only the beginning of a relationship where the woman is hopelessly trapped.  By the beginning of the twentieth century, the marriage plot had died out.  In 2011, Eugenides brought it back, with a modern twist.

The Marriage Plot, as written by Eugenides, is set in the early 1980s on a college campus, and involving three key characters who are about to graduate.  The first is Madeleine, who is writing her thesis on the marriage plot, and hopes to become "a Victorianist." Madeleine romantically uses fictional characters as her role models, starting first with Ludwig Bemelmans' character with whom she shares a name.  Madeleine is in awe of Leonard, who grew up in Oregon, but now attends Brown with Maddy, and is very popular with the ladies.  Mitchell is another Brown student, who happens to be in love with Maddy, and wants to pursue a study of divinity.  Like Eugenides, Mitchell comes from Grosse Pointe, MI.  Eugenides' brings the marriage plot into the semi-modern day by playing the love triangle out in an era where women had opportunities to establish careers, live as successful single women, and when need be, divorce without social stigma.

Another twentieth century aspect of The Marriage Plot is that Leonard has been diagnosed with manic depression.  Maddy fell in love with him during a manic period, but he didn't realize his love for her until the depression took hold.  While all of Maddy's friends and family members warn her against trying to save Leonard, Maddy just can't help trying to rescue him from his illness.  Eugenides does a great job of showing the manic depression through its highs and lows, and the reader can sympathize with both Maddy and Leonard, and understand the challenges that their relationship will face.

It was a bit of a cop out for Eudenides to set his book about love after the women's movement in the eighties, even though it was published in 2011.  In the intervening years between the eighties and now, I would like to think that relationships and opportunities for women have changed.  On the other hand, maybe he is deliberately leaving the door open for him or another author to write the twenty-first century marriage plot. 

The Marriage Plot was a NYT Notable for 2011.  I'm counting this book for the Rewind, Audiobook, and I Love Library Books challenges.

Next up on CD:  The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

Still Reading:  American Woman by Susan Choi

The Alchemy Test

For years, I had heard about The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, but I really didn't know what to expect from the book.  The first surprise was its size.  My copy is only 167 pages, and that is with the words spaced out and wide margins.  The second surprise was how profound a story it is.

Santiago, a shepherd boy in Spain, has a recurring dream about the pyramids in Egypt.  He soon finds himself sitting next to a stranger claiming to be a king, who advises him that he needs to follow his dream, and pursue his Personal Legend.  Capital P, capital L.  A person's Personal Legend is the thing that he or she is really meant to do, and the universe will conspire to help that person achieve the goal.  There will be omens that must be followed.  If the omens are ignored for too long, the universe will stop talking to the dreamer, and ultimately, the Personal Legend will be lost.

Like most dreamers, Santiago has lots of reasons not to listen to the omens.  First and foremost, it is hard.  It is easier to find a job, get good at that job, and stay at that job forever, than to leave a profitable job in pursuit of a goal one may not reach.  Also, there is love.  Falling in love might lead the dreamer to believe that his Personal Legend isn't worth it if following it means losing his soul mate.  Soon after meeting the woman who he loves, Santiago meets the Alchemist.  The Alchemist tells him  "You must understand that love never keeps a man from pursuing his Personal Legend.  If he abandons that pursuit, it's because it wasn't true love."

The Alchemist has elements of the Muslim faith, Judaism, and Christianity.  It is clearly a story of faith, without claiming that one religion is superior to the others.  Additionally, in the story, Santiago is not following God's word, but is following the voice of the universe. 

The Alchemist is a book that everyone should read.  Whether they love it or hate it, I don't care.  I just think it should touch everyone's life.  The Alchemist is on my son's 11th grade summer reading list, along with several other titles.  The kids get to select which books they read, but they have to read a certain number.  I'm excited that probably 90% of the 11th graders from my son's school will read it, simply because it is shorter than any other choices. 

If The Alchemist is not on reading lists in your area, it would make a great graduation or even wedding gift.  Although it doesn't rhyme or have illustrations like Oh! The Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss, the message is the similar, and it will look a little more dignified on a dorm room book shelf.

My one criticism is that The Alchemist could be read to be sexist.  There aren't any meaningful female characters other than the gypsy at the beginning.  The Alchemist says that Santiago's love, Fatima's, Personal Legend is to find him.  It's demeaning to Fatima that her greatest goal should be to find a husband.  I choose to believe that a woman could fit into Santiago's role just as easily as a man could fit into Fatima's, and that the lessons should be read to apply to all.

I listened to The Alchemist on CD.  It was read by Jeremy Irons, who had a great voice for the story.  I also checked the CDs out of my library, so I am counting this for 3 challenges - The Rewind Challenge, The Audiobook Challenge, and The I Love Audiobooks Challenge.

Next Up on CD:  I'm already two discs into Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood.

Still Reading:  Night Film by Marisha Pessl

The Prequel

In January, when I read The Odyssey by Homer, I was left wanting more.  Luckily,  I had Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller on my TBR list, and The Iliad sitting in my nightstand.  I read Song of Achilles first, and liked it, and now I have just finished The Iliad.

The Iliad seems to be a book by which people define themselves.  Sometimes when I am reading reviews, the reviewer will say something like, "yeah, but I'm also one of those people who likes The Iliad better than The Odyssey, so take that for what it's worth", implying that most people, or normal people at least, prefer The Odyssey.  For a change, I think that I am in the "normal" camp, in that I preferred The Odyssey too, which I didn't expect.

After reading Helen of Troy by Margaret George, I was excited to read The Iliad, since I expected it to cover all of the same material:  Helen's engagement to Menelaus through the fall of Troy.  I was surprised when Homer started his story after the war over Helen had already begun.  In fact, although the version that I read covers 594 pages, The Iliad takes place over just a few weeks during the last year of the Trojan War.  We actually end  before we hear about the Trojan horse.  Homer's works are only two of the eight books of The Epic Cycle, including four that cover the period from when The Iliad ends until The Odyssey begins. Homer's version also differs from George's in the extent to which the gods are involved.  Homer treats the mortals as pieces in the gods' chess game, while George involves the gods only when the humans need an excuse.

While I really shouldn't question Homer's writing style, given that we are still reading him centuries later, I have to say that large portions of The Iliad read more like a census report than a poem.  Countless times, Homer mentioned a character for the first time only to tell us who his father was and how the character was killed.  For example, we have "Aphareus, son of Kaletor, Aineas hit his throat as he turned toward him and cut it with his sharp spearpoint . . . " and ". . . Teukros shot Glaukos, powerful son of Hippolokhos, with an arrow . . . "

So yes, check the box, I read The Iliad, and you probably should too.  But if you'd like a more interesting version of the same story, you should try either Helen of Troy by Margaret George, or Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller first.  This brings me one step closer to completing the Off The Shelf Challenge.

Next Up On CD:  The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

Still Reading:  Upload by Mark McClellend

Doing What Dad Did

For years, Amazon and GoodReads have been recommending that I read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe.  At first, I thought that it was a newly released book.  Then, I noticed it in the "classics corners" of used book sales. Finally, I had seen it enough times, and I had to pick it up.

Things Fall Apart is the story of Okonkwo, who is an honored man within his village.  Okonkwo has a few wives and many children.  He lives in his fathers' village and worships his fathers' gods.  I didn't misplace my apostrophe.  In Okonkwo's world, the man always lives in his father's village, and his father lived in his father's village, and so forth, so that many generations of men before Okonkwo were living where he lives in very much the same way that he is living.  Okonkwo's time is different from that of his fathers though, because villagers are beginning to see white men.  At first, the white men are thought to be albinos, or possibly even lepers.  All too soon it becomes clear that these white men are not just people from a nearby village with a disease or a skin condition.  They are people from another country, intent on converting Okonkwo's people to Christianity.

While reading Things Fall Apart, I was never sure of when the story was supposed to have been taking place, or where it was set.  Most obviously, Okonkwo's village was called "Umofia", and I could tell by the tone of the story, the names that were used, and the fables of the villagers that Umofia was in Africa.  I knew that the book was published in 1958, but because of how the villagers referred to the passage of time, it was not clear what decade they were living in.  According to Wikipedia, it was set in the 1890s, which I probably would have realized if I knew more about the colonizing of Africa.  Wiki also says that Umofia was supposed to be in Nigeria.

I thought a lot about what, exactly, makes Things Fall Apart a "classic".  Judging by the standard of whether it was published before my parents graduated from high school (check) and whether it is likely to appear on my son's high school required reading list (check), then it is a classic.  I've complained about my son's required reading lists to my son, saying that he should be reading more modern works.  While he likes contemporary fiction, he doesn't feel that anything new is likely to ever qualify as a classic.  It's tough to think of anything, even books that I love, that are going to be discussed and relevant in another 20 or 50 years.  As much as I would like for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer to become a classic, it may not translate well to people who weren't alive on 9/11.  Some of the other books that I've loved that are set in a less specific period and may remain relevant longer, like The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen or Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin are simply too long for required reading lists.  Black Swan Green by David Mitchell is a solid candidate that has been suggested by others with voices louder than mine, and I have noticed that my son will be seeing some Barbara Kingsolver on his lists in his junior and senior years.  But what makes a classic?

As I was reading Things Fall Apart, I was sort of thinking of it in comparison to Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.  Both stories are set in a time in the past, and paint vivid portraits a certain  community during that period.  A person in Africa reading Grapes of Wrath and thinking that they have a good understanding of America in 2013 would be just as misled as a person in America reading Things and thinking that they understand the modern tribes of Africa.  There are great books set in Africa that could give a reader a better grasp of what it is like now (or at least during my lifetime), including The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and What is the What by Dave Eggers.  However, like those books mentioned above, these are also a little long for reading during a high school trimester.  Things' short length, at only 209 pages, may be what has kept it on the reading lists, which is sort of sad.  Maybe spending a longer amount of time on a longer book, rather than trying to fit a set number of books into the trimester would allow our kids to stop the cycle of reading the books that their fathers read, for the sake of reading what their fathers read.

Next Up on CD:  Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

STILL Reading:  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon.  I have no excuse as to why this book is taking me so long to read!  I am really liking it, and even considered whether it could be considered a modern classic.  But if it is taking me this long, how long would it take a distracted high school student?

Strike Two, I'm Out

Last year, I read Emma by Jane Austen, and recommended the movie, "Clueless" instead.  My sister insisted that Jane Austen was a great author, and that I shouldn't give up on her.  Obviously, the majority of readers in the world agree.  So, I decided to try Pride and Prejudice.  According to my sister, my problem is that I didn't realize that Jane Austen is funny.  She is convinced that if I had read Emma as a comedy, I would have liked it.  OK, fine. 

I did everything different with Pride and Prejudice.  I listened to the audio version instead of reading.  I tried to remember that it was funny (really - should I have to "remember" that it's funny??).  But still, I felt nothing of the love of Austen that most everyone else seems to feel.

When I picked the audio version, I had two choices.  One that was 9 discs, and about 11 hours long, and the other which was 11 discs, and about 13.5 hours long.  Yes, the readers were reading the same book.  It's just that some audio book readers read the book faster than others, and some try to read in a leisurely, dramatic way.  I picked the 9 disc version because I expected a faster reader to have better comedic timing, and of course, I would be done with it sooner if I hated it. 

After I had listened to about half of the discs, my sister came into town, and asked me how I was liking Pride.  I asked her what the funny part was.  Ba-dum-dum.  That's my rimshot, in case you missed it.  She said that it is a "comedy of manners", meaning that it satirizes social classes and includes stereotypical characters.  So, I thought that maybe I like Austen just fine, but that I don't like those types of comedies.  But, when I looked at the Wiki page for "comedy of manners", the examples that they gave included some Oscar Wilde stories that I liked.  I'm not familiar with the 20th century examples of comedies of manners that  Wiki listed, but I would suggest that A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, which I liked, and the TV show, "The Office," which I loved, were both more modern comedies of manners.

Coincidentally, in this week's NYT book review, Jess Walters reviewed The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. by Adelle Waldman, and described it as a modern day comedy of manners, involving the Brooklyn literary set.  Given that I love both Jess Walters and the Brooklyn literary scene, this one is going on my TBR list for sure.  So here's the test.  If I love Nathaniel P., then that means that it's not comedies of manners that I dislike, but just Jane Austen.

Sorry Mr. Darcy, you just didn't do it for me.  But you seemed like a nice enough guy.

That's number 13 for the Off the Shelf Challenge. 

Next up on CD:  Fall of Giants by Ken Follett

Still Reading:  The Last Life by Claire Messud

Americans Abroad

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James is a story of bright futures and committed friendships.  It's also a story of regrettable choices and duplicity.  Isabel Archer is a young American woman who has recently lost her parents.  In an act of kindness, that is implied to be somehow self serving, her aunt, Lydia Touchett, brings her to England.  There Isabel charms her cousin, Ralph, and his father, Mr. Touchett, who is expected to die shortly.  In a last minute change to his will, Mr. Touchett decides to make Isabel a wealthy woman.  Isabel is shocked by her good fortune.  Lucky for her, she has her new friend, Madame Merle, to guide her life as a rich bachelorette.

This was the first Henry James book that I have read, and I read it (or actually listened to it) just because I hadn't read him before.  I have to say that I liked him better than Jane Austen.  His characters faced true conflicts, there was good and evil, and there was a little more action than I found in Emma.  The characters' decisions are also more relevant to the modern day reader.  We can relate to the idea of people using one another for their wealth, or of an unfortunate marriage that the parties are still reluctant to leave, even though James was writing in the 1880s.  In fairness, Austen could have been James' grandmother, and her works were from the early 1800s, so they should be expected to be less like the modern day.  I think that Austen's fans would say that this is part of the charm.

A strange thing about The Portrait of a Lady is that all of the major players are US ex-pats living in Europe.  The Touchetts, Isabel, her friends Henrietta and Casper, Gilbert Osmond, and Edward Rosier are all main characters who are originally from the US.  I was trying to figure out why Portrait should be the story of Americans living abroad, as opposed to the story of Europeans living in Europe, or of Americans in America.  I decided that it must have had to do with creating a limited circle of acquaintance, so that there would be reasons for the characters to keep running into each other.  This also served to isolate the characters, so that those who have been in Europe for less time have fewer true friends who they can rely on for advice.

Portrait is told in third person omniscient style, meaning that it is narrated by an unidentified third person who is able to tell us the characters' thoughts.  There were a couple of times where I thought that it was hinted that the narrator was really Henrietta Stackpole.  Henrietta is Isabel's brash friend from the US who is a newspaper correspondent, and who is constantly on the verge of publishing too much about our characters.  I like the idea that the novel could be the culmination of Henrietta's work that she has written but not submitted to the newspapers out of deference to her friendship with Isabel.  I also think that it is clever that this character shares the name of the author, using the feminine variation.

Portrait was a long book, at 656 pages.  Although I enjoyed listening to it on MP3, I think that I would have gotten bored at certain points if I had been reading.  But probably not as bored as I got reading Austen.  Portrait is another book off the list for the Off the Shelf Challenge.

WINNER ANNOUNCED:  The winner of the Glow giveaway is Mary B!  Mary contacted me via email, so I have her contact information and she will be hearing from me shortly.

Next up on CD:  Ines of my Soul by Isabel Allende

Still Reading:  What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty

Same Old Story

My son's 9th grade English class is reading The Odyssey by Homer.  So, since it was already on my list of books to read this year, I thought I would move it to the top of the list so that I could quiz him on it and get him ready for his tests.  He was thrilled!  That's a total lie.  But as an over-involved-borderline-helicopter parent, how could I resist?

The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus, and his 10 year journey to return to his home of Ithica, after fighting for another 10 years in the Trojan war.  Homer is credited with writing the Odyssey, but there is some question as to whether he actually wrote the story, or if he composed it for relaying orally.  It is also not clear when Homer lived, with some historians saying that he lived as recently as the 7th century BC, and some as long ago as the 12th century BC. 

I didn't read The Odyssey when I was in high school, even though I went to the same school that my son now attends.  I guess that I am glad that the curriculum has changed within the last 25 years, but I have to wonder if it isn't due for some more updating.  This year, my son  will read To Kill a Mockingbird, The Odyssey, Romeo and Juliet, and A Raisin in the Sun.  The newest of these, Mockingbird, was published in 1960, when my parents were sophomores in high school.  Is there really nothing that 9th graders should be reading that has been published in the last 50 years?

A somewhat recent article in Slate that you can read by clicking here argues that students should read Black Swan Green by David Mitchell instead of Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.  I re-read Catcher a couple of years ago, and was actually surprised that it has maintained its relevance as well as it has, given  that it was published in 1951.  I agree that kids should read Black Swan Green, but maybe they should read both, and compare the styles and themes, rather than reading one or the other.  Black Swan  features a 13 year old, which might make it less attractive to high school students than Catcher, where Holden is a more street smart 17 year old.  Black Swan is also set in England, and uses a lot of British terms, which might be challenging for freshmen, but certainly no more challenging than The Odyssey.

The Odyssey is worth reading, if you haven't.  In the story, Odysseus tells portions of the story of the Trojan war, as well as the stories of his epic struggle to make it to his home.  Helen, Menelaus, and Agamemnon, who starred in Helen of Troy by Margaret George, all make appearances.  Although the story was told by Homer, we would not be reading it without the aid of translators.  The version that I read was D.C.H. Rieu's revision of his father, E.V. Rieu's translation, which was first available in the 1940s.  It was interesting to hear the son complain of the errors he thinks his father made, and see the corrections throughout the text.  One important difference is that the son tries to remain true to the original text by including references to anonymous gods.  For instance, a character might say "some god must have made me forget."  In the father's translation, he felt that this was silly, and deleted all references to unidentified gods.  So his character would have just said "I must have forgotten".  The blaming of the gods as being the reason behind any wrong thing that a character does seems more consistent with George's version of the story, and really seems more in keeping with the thinking of the time.  There I go again, citing historical fiction in support of my historical facts. 

This is the first book that I have finished for the Off the Shelf Challenge this year!  14 more to go.

Next Up:  LARP:  The Battle for Verona by Justin Calderone

Still Listening to:  A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

Starting at the End

March by Geraldine Brooks was sitting in my nightstand for over a year before I decided to read it.  The reason that it climbed to the top of my pile is that my library has been doing a series on Civil War books, and it included March as  a discussion book.  I had picked March up only because I had read People of the Book by Brooks and loved it, and hadn't realized that March was a Civil War book.  So I dove right in, knowing only that.

And I was confused.  March is a civil war book, in the same sense that a book about the Holocaust could be considered a World War II book.  It is focused on abolitionism, and not so much on war.  March reminded me a lot of Beloved by Toni Morrison, in telling the story of the mistreatment of the slaves.  I thought that it was strange that  a book that won the Pulitzer in 2006 would be so cutesy as to give the main character the last name "March", and then have him have four girls, named for the four March girls in Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.  Then it seemed a little too coincidental that the main character was friends with Henry Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne.  The whole book just felt a little too contrived for me, and certainly too hokey for an award winning novel.  Why was the main character a vegetarian?  Were there even Civil War era vegetarians? 

Then I got to the end, and read the section titled  "Afterward".  There Brooks explains that the character in March did not name his daughters after the girls in Little Women, but that his girls were the girls in Little Women.  March  is intended to be the story of the father in Little Women, who is not fully developed in the original novel.  The dad is off to war, and then said to be close to death in a Washington hospital, but that's really it.  In March, in order to make the character of Mr. March more complete, Brooks models him after Alcott's true father, Amos Bronson Alcott.

In real life, Bronson Alcott was a vegetarian.  He was also an abolitionist, who was friends with Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne.  Amazingly, they all lived in Concord, Massachusetts, at the same time, making Concord in Civil War times the literary equivalent of Brooklyn today.  Alcott was a person who didn't believe in hurting people or animals, which explains some of March's more strange decisions in the novel.

Looking back on March with the realization that it is intended to be an expansion on Little Women, but with true semi-biographical information added, makes it much more interesting to me, and I wish that I had known it from the beginning.  So a word to the wise:  Read the Afterward first.  Or, at least read the back cover of the book, which I also somehow failed to do.  It's been years since I read Little Women, and actually I'm not even sure that I ever finished it.  For now, I think I'll add it to the pile of books that I want to read to my daughter.  After reading March, I am sure that I will have a new perspective on the story.

One more done for the Off the Shelf Challenge!  16 to go.

Next up:  Moby Duck by Donovan Hohn

Still Listening to:  Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin

Everlasting Emma

Finally, I have finished Emma by Jane Austen.  It seemed so strange to me that I could not remember ever reading a Jane Austen book, that I bought Emma when I saw it at a used book sale.  Then, since I could get it for free for my Kindle, it rushed to the top of my reading list.  Hint:  if it is free for your Kindle, that is because no one wants to read it.

Emma was a fine story of 20 or so people living in the English countryside, with nothing to do but visit each other.  I will credit Austen with beautifully recreating the monotony that must have prevailed in those days.  But who wants to read a monotonous book?  Austen has legions of fans, but I can't count myself among them.

If you are ever feeling the urge to read some Austen, save yourself some time and rent Clueless.  As I mentioned earlier, Clueless captures the full story in Emma, but also manages to make it interesting.

One more down for the Off the Shelf Challenge!

Next up:  Stone Arabia  by Dana Spiotta

Still Listening to:  Helen of Troy by Margaret George.  I'm on disc 20!  Only another week(ish) and I'll be done.

All Tortoise, No Hare

Well, I wasn't expecting to have to give a "half time report" about Emma by Jane Austen, but the reading is going so slowly that I feel the need!  Emma is only about 400 pages, but it is taking me forever.  Right before I started reading, I was at my friend, Kim's house, trying to have a conversation with her.  It wasn't going so well because I couldn't take my eyes off of her TV.  Clueless, starring Alicia Silverstone was on, and I couldn't help but watch it, even though I had seen it several times before.  Kim mentioned that she had heard that Clueless was based on Emma. 

Every once in a while a movie comes out that is supposed to be a modern day adaptation of a classic, and usually, it is hard to identify which classic they are trying to mimic.  In the case of Clueless, however, the adaptation is spot on.  As I read about Emma and Harriett, I am picturing Alicia Silverstone and Brittany Murphy.  In a clever jab at lawyers, Clueless replaces Emma's feeble and nervous father with Cher's distracted litigator dad.  Both daughters think that their dads are helpless without them, and so far at least in the book, they are right.  I just hit the 52% complete mark on my Kindle last night, so I still have a lot of story to cover.

I'm not exactly plowing through Helen of Troy by Margaret George, either.  When I checked it out of the library on CD, I knew that it was 30 hours of story of 25 CDs, but I wasn't expecting it to take quite so long.  I'm only on the 14th disc now, and I started listening almost a month ago.  Right now, the Greeks are just beginning to attack the Trojans.  In this story, which most modern scholars think is only a myth, a 25 year old woman falls in love and runs off with a 16 year old man.  If we adapted this story to modern times, Helen would be a teacher and Paris would be her student.  Instead of leading to war, the "love" would lead to jail  for the woman.  You would think that the story of Helen would be enough to remind young teachers that their enticing students are just not worth it.

In Other News:   Here is a great article about Jonathan Safran Foer turning 35.   It is framed in the form of questions, in honor of his recently released Haggadah.  The article is more personal than others that I have read, and explores his relationships with his parents and grandparents, most specifically in regard to his first book, Everything is Illuminated.  My favorite part of the article is toward the end, where the author, Aleksandar Hemon is discussing JSF's special attention to Hemon's 4 year old daughter after Hemon and his wife lost their 1 year old child in 2010.  "[Ella] has a huge plush shark which he sent to her around that time, which she calls Jonathan, and sleeps with the shark."  How could I not think of JSF's wife's book, Great House?  In that book, which was published in 2010, a character writes a story about people sleeping, and being attached by electrodes to a shark in a tank.  The shark absorbs all of their nightmares and things that are too difficult to bear, so that they can sleep in peace.  Sweet dreams, Ella.

The Typical Book Group Report - 2

The Typical Book Group found Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray to be a very tough book.  Only 6 hearty souls were brave enough to attend book group last night to discuss it, and of them, only 3 had finished the book.  We discussed the story for very little time, and our discussion focused mainly on the differences between the book and the movie that came out a few years ago, with Reese Witherspoon as Rebecca.

The book grouper who watched the Vanity Fair movie (and also read the whole book) was on Team Rebecca.  The other two groupers who finished the book were on Team Amelia.  It seems as though the movie made Rebecca appear more innocent, and Rawdon Crawley appear less worthy, than the book.

All told, a book that takes 300 pages to get interesting is probably not a great book group pick.  On the other hand, we all felt that we could now check the box and say that we had read Vanity Fair, which gave us a tiny sense of accomplishment.

Next up:  The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova

Still Reading:  Contested Will  by James Shapiro

Still Listening to:  Lord of Misrule by Jaimy Gordon

Frankly, Rebecca

As I mentioned in the last post, once I realized how similar Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray was to Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, I liked it much better.  After I blogged, I googled a little and found that other people had also seen the similarities.  My favorite was a poster who said that Vanity Fair "must have been Margaret Mitchell's very favorite book."  I think that's a great way to phrase it.  Mitchell clearly didn't steal the story from Thackeray, but some of the characters share traits, and the story has a similar tone.  I laughed out loud in chapter 37 when Rebecca said "fiddlededee!", reminding me of Scarlett.

One difference in the writing of Vanity Fair and Gone with the Wind is that Thackeray relies heavily on a narrator who carries the story along.  This narrator is so interwoven in the story, that at first I was comparing him to Burl Ives in "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer".  Once I stopped thinking of the narrator as a kindly but intrusive old man, and started thinking of him as my sassy gay friend, I felt more comfortable with him.  Specifically, I imagined Cam from "Modern Family" as the narrator, and then spent a great deal of time debating whether Gloria or Claire should be Rebecca.  Ultimately, I decided Claire.

Vanity Fair is the story of the Sedley Family, the Crawley Family, William Dobbins and Rebecca Sharp, and their trials and tribulations from roughly 1814 through 1840.  It details Rebecca's social climbing, and the decline of old families, as their patriarchs make questionable decisions and the money passes through generations.  It is a story of loving the memory of a person, even when the person in life was not all that lovable, with an overarching theme of the preservation of honor and family ties. 

Vanity Fair is a great story.  I think that what I liked best about it is that it ended as it should have, with no shocking surprises.  It was just a nice, satisfying ending.  Amelia showed a touch of strength when it was really needed, and likewise, Rebecca showed a touch of kindness, even if it was self serving.  Thackeray declares Vanity Fair to be "A Novel Without a Hero" in its subtitle.  I have to disagree with him here.  Although the acts of heroism were not action packed,  a couple of the characters showed themselves to be heros in the end.

All told, if you loved Gone with the Wind, Vanity Fair just might become your new very favorite book.

Next up:  The Fig Eater by Jody Shields

Next up on CD:  The Tale of Halcyon Crane by Wendy Webb

Half Time Report

It is taking me forever to read Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, even though I am both reading, and listening to it in my car on CD.  Right now I am about at the half way mark.  The first 200 pages were painfully slow.  Then, around page 300, in chapter 27, the story really picked up.

In chapter 27, Amelia, who is married to George Osborn, and an old friend of Rececca Crawley, moves to join her husband and his regiment in Belgium, as they prepare to battle Napoleon's army.  Apparently this was quite common, and the British soldiers had their wives, servants, and household belongings with them.  Soon the battles begin, and our narrator apologizes that he is not a military reporter, so our story will remain with the civilians.  This should have been my first clue that something good was coming.

As I kept reading, the story of the civilians who didn't go to war, but who could hear the battle near them, reminded me of another all time favorite book, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell.  In Vanity Fair, Amelia's role is very similar to Melanie's in GWTW, as both women are delicate, well liked, married, and pregnant, as the battle approaches.  Rebecca plays the role of Scarlett, as she uses the war as an opportunity for social advancement and flirting with married men.  Unlike Scarlett, but somewhat like Rhett, Rebecca also manages to make financial gains by selling what she has at inflated prices.

At chapter 33, the story returned to the Crawley family's inheritance watch, as they wait for their aunt to die, and it seems to have slowed down again.  This afternoon, I will resume reading with chapter 36, which is titled "How to Live Well on Nothing a Year".  That could be the title of a current best seller!

Cousin Carton

Last year when I was trying to read books set in Paris to get ready for my trip, someone mentioned that I should read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  I was surprised, because I had always thought that A Tale of Two Cities was about the two classes of English society, and not actually about two separate cities.  I had read Sybil, or the Two Nations by Benjamin Disraeli, and thought that it was a later and more politicized version of Dickens' work.  Instead, Sybil, which really does tell the story of different classes within England, came out 14 years before A Tale of Two Cities, and may have been part of Dickens' inspiration. 

In reading Two Cities, I was also reminded of Parrot and Olivier in America  by Peter Carey.  Parrot, likeTwo Cities, is set in the time of the French Revolution, and involves a French aristocrat who leaves France, the English working class, secrets hidden in chimneys, and a strong French wife whose importance increases as the story continues.

What I liked best about Two Cities was that it was a great book that is still suspenseful and interesting, despite being 150 years old.  I constantly wanted to know what would happen next.  The characters who at first seem minor become intricate to the plot, and the characters who appear to be central are in the end less developed than the others.  In this vein, I may have run astray.  I finished the book, and felt like an idiot, because I never learned exactly how Darnay, the character who is at first on trial as a spy, and Carton, one of his attorneys, are related.  I checked Wikipedia to no avail.  I then Googled the question, and was surprised to learn that most readers believe that they are not related at all.  In fact, the few people who I found who asked the same question that was on my mind, were slammed with responses like "you're reading too much into this" or "duh, they're not.  Carton is from England and Darnay is from France."

It is not possible for me to believe anything other than that Carton and Darnay are related, but that Darnay does not know of the relationship.  To this end, I propose that Carton is the illegitimate son of Darnay's father or uncle.  There are several details that support this proposition.  First off, it is important to Dickens to convey that Darnay's father and uncle were twins.  This is stated both on page 129 and 333 of Two Cities as edited by Richard Maxwell, and is referenced several other times.  Why would Dickens stress this detail unless it is important? 

Carton first becomes important to the plot on page 76, when Darnay is facing a witness who is accusing him of being a spy, and Carton suggests that his co-counsel stand Darnay and Carton together, to get the witness to concede that they look very much alike, and by implication that Darnay may look like many other men.  After this trial, Carton insists that he and Darnay go out for dinner and drinks.  At that dinner, after several drinks, Carton asks Darnay if he thinks that he likes him. The thought that Carton disliked him had apparently not crossed Darnay's mind, but Carton answers that he doesn't think that he does like Darnay.  What may be the most important paragraph in the second book follows, as Carton says to himself:

"'Do you particularly like the man?' he muttered at his own image 'why should you particularly like a man who resembles you?. . . A good reason for taking to a man, that he shows you what you have fallen away from and what you might have been!  Change places with him and would you have been looked at by those blue eyes as he was. . .?'" 

I interpret this as Carton coming close to revealing to Darnay that he is an illegitimate cousin, but then failing to do so, while lamenting how his life would have been different if he had been the legitimate child of Darnay's uncle.  Later in the book, when the denunciation is being read, it becomes clear that Darnay's father and uncle were not above taking the wives and daughters of their tenants when it pleased them.  Carton could have been a child resulting from the rape of a servant or tenant.  I think it is more likely that Dickens intended Carton to be a child of the uncle, because that would be the reason for making the father and uncle twins, rather than just implying that Carton and Darnay look alike because they have the same father.

Dickens also drops strong hints that Carton is not really from England, but was French born.  Specifically, the wood-sawyer calls him out as being "not English" on page 324, and Carton concedes that he was a student in France.  Similarly, when Carton decides to visit the Defarges, he says that it was "not difficult for one who knew the city well" to find their store, implying that he was more familiar with the town than the average English attorney.  He then feigns in the store that he does not understand French, and doesn't know his way around the town.  I will admit that if Darnay's uncle had an illegitimate child, that person would have been of great interest to the Defarges.  But what if the woman who was raped was married so that the child appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary?  Then, when the child grew to resemble a Evremonde, the family may have fled to England to try to keep safe.  Carton speaks of his father's funeral, which could defeat my argument.  But really, wouldn't it be normal for him to refer to the man who raised him, rather than the man who provided sperm alone, as his father?

So there you are.  I have decided that Carton is the illegitimate son of Darnay's uncle, and I think the text supports that interpretation.  However, this book has been discussed over the course of 3 centuries, and very few people seem to have reached this conclusion.  Therefore, if you have stumbled on this blog while researching a paper on the book, use my ideas with caution.  But if your teacher buys it, and I get an A, be sure to let me know!

Next up on CD:  Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray.   Yep, you got it.  I am double teaming Thackeray by reading the book AND listening to the CD in my car.  I'm not very far into the book yet, and I am hoping that listening to a little bit of it every day will help me get through the slower parts.

The Story of the Monster

The story of how Frankenstein by Mary Shelley was conceived has always interested me.  Long story short, Mary Shelley who was very young and educated, but unpublished, was with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and their friend, Lord Byron, who were both poets of differing degrees of fame.  They decided to try to write scary stories, and then share them with each other in a sort of friendly contest.  Although no one expected it, one of the best known stories of all time was born of that challenge.  What those who have not read Mary Shelley's novel generally don't realize is that it is the doctor who creates the monster who is named Frankenstein, rather than the monster himself.

The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein by Peter Ackroyd was written almost two centuries later, but overlaps Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and tells the story from the perspective of history and Dr. Frankenstein.  In Casebook, true biographical events are woven into the story, such as Percy's first marriage, and the night on which the more famous Frankenstein was written.  The standard English class question of "who is the real monster?" is the primary theme of this novel, with the subtle suggestion that, at least as far as Percy's first wife was concerned, the real monster may have unwittingly been Mary Shelley. 

Casebook was a NYT Notable book for 2009, and the more thorough NYT review is here.

Next up:  Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Still listening to:  Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland

How to Read Leaves

Last year, while I was reading The Aurora County All-Stars by Deborah Wiles to my daughter, I realized that I had missed something in my education.  In All-Stars, the characters are all brought together through the book, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, and various verses are quoted.  It seemed ridiculous that I had never read Leaves of Grass, so I put it on my TBR list.

Before I started reading Leaves, I wondered if I was going about it all wrong.  If instead of reading the book cover to cover, I should keep it around and read a verse or two every day, to allow them to properly sink in.  However, when I started reading Leaves, I realized that both the way that I was actually reading it (i.e. 20 minutes to a half an hour each night) and the way that I thought I should have read it were both wrong.  I think that the way one should really read Leaves is to devote an afternoon to it, and read it all the way through in one sitting, with pen in hand for underlining.

Was it life changing?  No.  But if I see it at a used book sale, I will pick it up so that I have a copy to keep.  However, it was on my TBR list for over a year, and I was at plenty of used book sales during that time.  I think that like The Bible and The Prophet, people who own Leaves of Grass keep it.

Next up:  Great House by Nicole Krauss

Still Listening to:  The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

Go Ask Alice

Every summer, my family, like thousands of other Michigan families, would go "Up North" for a vacation. "Up North" is Michigan talk for "anywhere North of Flint", but when each family says that they are going "Up North", they are referring to a different specific city, and you would know which one they meant if you really knew that family. When my family went "Up North", we went to Charlevoix, which is at about the tip of your ring finger, if you are using your left hand to model Michigan.

I clearly remember going to the little grocery store at the end of the street that took you to our cottage in Charlevoix when I was about 8 or 9 years old, and choosing Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll from the metal rack that also housed Archie comic books. At the time, it seemed like Alice's Adventures was a solid choice. It was literature, after all, and it was written for children. As such, I should read it. And I tried. But the book that I picked was in the form of a paperback novel, with black and white line drawn illustrations, and it was boring to read on the beach when I could be splashing in the waves or building in the sand. I decided that I was probably still a little young for the book, so I took it home, where it sat on my bookshelf unread, until one day I realized that really, I was too old to read it. It probably wound up in a garage sale when my mom cleaned out my room when I was in college.

Decades later, my book group decided to read Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin, and it became important to me to read Alice's Adventures for once and for all. But now a new dilemma. There are so many versions of it! I started off with the strange idea that the circa 1975 paperback that I had discarded would be available at my local library. Not quite. The library had many versions, all with the same author, but with very different illustrators, and not a single black line drawn illustration among them. After stalking the shelves for a few weeks, I decided on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as illustrated by Michael Foreman. This was the ideal choice for me.

Both Michael Foreman and Melanie Benjamin used the picture of Alice Liddell at the top of this post as the centerpiece of their work. Alice Liddell is the real life person upon whom Charles Dodgson (the real life Lewis Carroll) based the Alice character. The picture at the top of this post was taken of Alice Liddell by Charles Dodgson about three years before the story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland was first told. The author, Benjamin, and the illustrator, Foreman, take the subject of this picture in completely different directions, and both are contrary to the image of Alice that has thrived over the past 150 years.

Michael Foreman, as you might have guessed, uses this dark, shortish haired girl as a model for his illustrations, as opposed to the long blond haired girl who is in many versions of Alice's Adventures. It does not seem to cross Foreman's mind that the photograph upon which he bases his Alice could have been entirely inappropriate for the Victorian era in which it was taken, and he may be right. Perhaps Alice's parents, Dean and Mrs. Liddell, commissioned this photo of Alice in her Halloween costume or dressed for a play. Or perhaps Benjamin is right when she implies that this photo may be an early example of high society child pornography.

Alice I Have Been starts with the proposition that Alice and Dodgson had an inappropriate relationship. From there, we watch as that one photo, and possibly a kiss, shape the future of both characters in ways that are dark and haunting. Alice is punished throughout her life for Dodgson's questionable advances, and loses some chances at love while finding others. I kept wondering how Alice could be held responsible for the way a grown man treated her when she was 7, but Benjamin writes the story in a way that makes that accountability seem unavoidable, if not reasonable. Alice herself wonders, as I am sure victims of exploitation do, if she was really the person responsible for all that came after. After what? is the question of the book.

Alice I Have Been is historical fiction, but Benjamin does the reader a great favor by revealing at the end of the story what was true, and what was created. Not much fiction was required to make this an engaging story. The Victorian notions of blame and consequence have carried forward to the twenty first century more than I might have thought. Would you want your son (or daughter) to marry a person who was featured in child pornography when they were younger? Although we feel for the victim, we also want to disassociate ourselves from her. Perhaps we even want to escape to a nicer place, where all one has to do to change is to eat from different sides of the same mushroom.

Particularly poignant for me, although this part may have been entirely Benjamin's creation, was Alice's regret at not reading the story of her adventures earlier. To that, I can relate!

Next Up: Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay