Catching Up

One might think, based on the rate at which I post new blogs, that my reading life is waning. Not so. Between harvesting the garden, working, hiking in gorgeous Rocky Mt. National Park, making salsa and tomato sauce for the winter, figuring out how to do a photo directory for our church and then doing it, and generally being a parent, the blogging part of my reading life has taken a hit.

To make amends, here's a snapshot of what I've been reading.

I basically have two mysteries series going. Nevada Barr's series on Park Ranger Anna Pigeon and Donna Leon's series on Venice Commissario Guido Brunetti. I recently got my Leon fix with A Sea of Troubles, which was actually quite different from most of the other books in the series that I've read so far in that Brunetti personally had a stake in this one. Mostly taking place on the island of Pellestrina, south of the Lido on the Venetian lagoon, Signorina Elettra, staff secretary and researcher, beomes an integral part of the story and Brunetti's concern for her safety and jealousy of her relationship with other men in the story force him to acknowledge that his feelings for her transcend that of mere work colleagues.

I found the premise, that of a small society (i.e., a fishing village) closing ranks against the outside world, interesting, and I learned a lot about the fishing industry in the Adriatic and nuances of Venetian society, both of which are bonuses on top of another first rate murder mystery yarn from Leon.

This was #11 in the series, and in looking at a list on Amazon listing them in order, I appear to be reading them out of order. I think the next one I'll read is Blood from a Stone, which is #14.

I also recently finished Coming Home, by Rosamunde Pilcher. I loved both The Shell Seekers and September when I read them years ago. I've also read a book of romantic short stories as well as Winter Solstice, which I liked okay. A friend sent it to me as a thank you for a favor, and so I shoved aside all the other books on my TBR shelf and dove into Coming Home. It was wonderful--everything I like about Pilcher captured in this ~1000 pages paperback. The timeframe: 1936-1945; the setting: mostly Cornwall with a bit of London and bit of wartime Ceylon (Sri Lanka); the premise: family drama, with a strong female heroine on her own, growing up, and doing a good job of it.

I've been reading a fair amount of WWII non-fiction lately, so this was a real treat to indulge in a meaty, detail-rich novel with lots of interesting characters. A book to escape into definitely.

In looking for the book image, I found that there was a 2-part video done of the book in 1998, and it's on NetFlix. I know what I'll be watching when I'm done with Larkrise to Candleford.

I also recently finished rereading Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell. It is the book's 75th anniversary, and I enjoyed Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood when I read it earlier this year. It was a nostalgic read, definitely, but troubling. Much as I admire Mitchell's writing and storytelling abilities, I can't recommend the book because of its racism. My contention that GWTW is a book about the south of the 1930s not the south of the 1860s holds on this rereading.

I'm also working on finishing up London, by Edward Rutherford, John Adams, by David McCullough, and Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott. I've promised myself I won't start anything new until I finish at least one of these. They are all marvelous. I'm liking Little Women so much more than I expected to. Wish I'd read it as a teenager!

Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey...

Yesterday, June 30, marked the 75th anniversary of the publication of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. Timed to coincide with the milestone was the publication of Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood, by Ellen Brown and John Wiley, Jr.

When I heard of the Brown/Wiley book, I immediately knew that I had to read it and wanted to blog about it on June 30. Alas, a business trip and teenage kid issues conspired to prevent me from finishing it in time to blog on it yesterday, but I'm happy to report that I finished it this morning and so am only a day off my original schedule.

Like millions of other readers, I first read GWTW as a teenager after seeing the movie and becoming completely enthralled by the story of Scarlett O'Hara, Rhett Butler, Mammy, and the rest of the cast. I credit multiple rereadings of GWTW with my lifelong interest in the Civil War. I have defended Scarlett on numerous occasions, and my original paperback version literally fell to pieces years ago and I replaced it with a hardbound reproduction of the original publication.

And then I grew up. I learned that it was unfashionable to like GWTW, in fact I was afraid of being labeled a racist if I admitted to liking the book. So I stopped rereading it and let my pristine hardbound copy gather dust on my bookshelf while I read elsewhere.

Last year, my interest in GWTW was rekindled when I read Erin Blakemore's The Heroine's Bookshelf. Blakemore's essay on GWTW and Scarlett was titled "Fight," and it is an excellent expression of what I learned from Scarlett as a teenager. I also admired the fact that Blakemore was unapologetic in her continuing admiration for Scarlett and GWTW.

Then the 75th anniversary hoopla came along, and I got to read all about GWTW in Brown and Wiley's excellent book. I give a hearty thumbs up to Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey. I really enjoyed reading about Margaret Mitchell, and my admiration for her grew enormously as I read about her life, her work on the novel, her integrity to remain true to her principles and not to cave in to crass commercialism, and her style, grace, and vitality. I read a bio of her quite awhile ago that was much more negative and was focused on her failed first marriage and the influence it might have had on her development of the character of Rhett Butler. In retrospect, this bio is a lot like Becoming Jane Austen, by Jon Spence, long on speculation and short on fact...but I digress.

Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey is a true tour de force when it comes to separating fact from speculation, relying on primary documents, and putting words and actions in context. As someone who is seriously in love with books, this book was a fascinating look behind the scenes, albeit 75 years ago, of the publication of one of the world's all time best sellers. It's safe to say that more people in the U.S. and even the western world have read this book than virtually any other, with the exception of the Harry Potter books. What is remarkable about the publication of GWTW is that it was published with remarkable little editing, whether this is a testament to Mitchell's writing or Macmillan's chaotic schedule, I'm not clear, but I can't imagine that happening today with an unproven author.

I really enjoyed reading about Macmillan's marketing strategy for all of the various editions of the books over the years, and how they capitalized on the movie and its multiple re-releases in order to sell more copies. I also read with respect how Mitchell and her husband, John Marsh, managed the book and the copyrights associated with it. No wonder Mitchell never got around to seriously consider writing another book--managing GWTW was more than a full time job in and of itself.

Frankly, my dears, the only part of this story that wore thin was the endless wrangling over international copyright issues and infringements. I'm not saying that managing these weren't important, but my eyes glazed over a bit during these sections. Thankfully the authors threw me a bone in the form of movie making gossip for relief after these sections.

What I found so interesting is that Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey is a biography of a book, and it explored the various players whose lives affected and were affected by the book, from the author herself, to her brother and husband, to the editors, publishers, agents, critics, movie moguls, book store owners, publicists, and sequel wannabe authors. Speaking of which, I never did read Alexandra Ripley sequel nor did I watch the made-for-TV movie, neither of which held any appeal for me, but I am seriously considering reading Rhett Butler's People by Donald McCaig, although the Amazon reviews are really mixed on this one.

I think the best quote in the book was when Mitchell found about an article that was being written about her by a former college roommate who insisted that Mitchell was "closer to being Scarlett than anyone who ever lived." Mitchell was able to read a draft of the article and was able to stop its publication, saying in a letter to the magazine's publisher that Scarlett was not an admirable person:

About the only good qualities Scarlett had were courage and a refusal to admit defeat. But on the other side she was selfish, vain, almost illiterate, a bungler in her dealings with other people, a person with shoddy tastes and a fondness for cheap companions. She neglected her children and she was the ruination of every man who loved her. She stopped at nothing in her grasping determination to make money, including cheating, swindling, and cruel abuse of the helpless convicts she hired. She committed murder, she stole her sister's sweetheart with a lie, and she offered her body for sale at a price. (p 193)

Mitchell's frank assessment of her heroine's manifold shortcomings somehow gave me license to admit to loving GWTW again. GWTW is not a trivial book. It is a reflection of the world in which Margaret Mitchell grew up and lived and achieved a startling if not burdersome success. Like it or not, GWTW is one of the greatest American novels ever written and its story is definitely worth reading...and rereading. How on earth am I going to make time this summer to reread GWTW? I already promised myself that I would make Little Women my big summer read! Oh well, I can't think about that now, I'll think about that tomorrow.

Thoughts on Vanity Fair

Ah! Vanitas Vanitatum! which of us is happy in this world? Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?--come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out.

I finished this 1847 masterpiece today and now am motivated to read about the book. I listened to an audio version, and so promptly pulled my paperback copy off my shelf and read the introduction and learned that Thackeray had illustrated it himself. The drawings are simply marvelous and I had completely forgotten about them.

Here's a particularly good one from the collection at the Victorian Web, which was scanned by Gerald Ajam, with the caption by Tiaw Kay Siang and Sabrina Lim.



I also learned that Thackeray's handwritten manuscript of Vanity Fair is owned by the Morgan Library in New York City...yes, the same one that is now offering the Jane Austen exhibition. Since I am Twitter friends with the Morgan, I asked whether Vanity Fair is currently on display. I am planning to visit the Austen exhibit later this month and thought I might get to see Vanity Fair as well. Alas, no, the tweet came back, it is not on display at this time. That would have just been too serendipitous.

Now on to the thoughts...be forewarned, here lurk spoilers for both VF and Gone With the Wind.

Vanity Fair may be subtitled A Novel Without a Hero, but no one disputes the fact that Becky Sharp is the main character by sheer force of personality, despite being out of the action for chapters on end while the other characters' stories are told. As I was listening to the VF, I kept on thinking how much like Scarlett O'Hara Becky is, from her green eyes to her charm and wiles and single-minded ruthlessness to her relationship with Melanie/Amelia to her relationship to Rawdon Crawley. I figured I couldn't be alone in this observation, so I Googled and discovered that Margaret Mitchell vehemently denied having modeled Scarlett on Becky and denied having even read Vanity Fair before writing Gone With the Wind. Methinks she doth protest too much. Back in the day when I was GWTW obsessed, I read a bio of Mitchell and I recall the impression that she was defensive about a lot of things. I probably read about the Becky/Scarlett brouhaha then and just forgot about it until now.

However, I did find some other connections between VF and GWTW, some more significant than others.

Both contain the idiom that someone "wouldn't say boo to a goose" several times. I remember thinking when I read that phrase in GWTW how odd it was--not an expression that I've ever heard anyone actually use--so it jumped off the page when I encountered it twice in VF. If Becky had said "God's nightgown!" there would have been no question from whence Mitchell got that expression of Scarlett's.

I also thought it was really interesting how Dobbin ultimately left Amelia, saying that his constant devotion, unrequited for so long, had finally burned out his love for her and that he wasn't willing to hang around anymore. This is precisely what Rhett Butler tells Scarlett when he leaves her after Melanie dies. Of course, we get to see Dobbin return to Amelia's side, and GWTW ends with Rhett walking out on Scarlett, but the parallel is there.



Further, Becky seeks to marry Amelia's brother, Jos Sedley, and definitely makes him infatuated with her and ultimately ruins him. Scarlett charms the socks off Melanie's brother, Charles Hamilton, and marries him, though he dies of illness at the start of the Civil War before she can make his life a living hell.

The one critical area that is missing from the Scarlett-is-Becky scenario is that of the "long-suffering" Ashley Wilkes. There is no parallel in VF for this part of the GWTW story. We never see Becky in love, ever. In this regard, she brings to mind someone who might be her model, Austen's Lady Susan. I know Thackeray read Austen's novels. I wonder whether he read this epistolary novella as well. Got to look up when it finally made it to print.

Enough with GWTW.

I also thought a lot about the narrator. Considering a couple of other masterpieces also published in 1847, namely Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, I was very aware of how dated Thackeray's obtrusive narrator felt. More like a Fielding narrator, than a Bronte first-person, framed story narrator who is striving for realism, Thackeray's narrator continually reminds the reader that this a is made-up story with dolls and puppets enacting the morality play, except near the end when he inserts himself into the story by saying he was at a dinner party where he heard Becky's and Amelia's histories recounted. I sort of wish he hadn't done that, actually. I liked him better as puppeteer.

I blush to say that I learned more about the Battle of Waterloo from reading this book than I ever learned in school and I'm eager to find out what Brussels was really like on the eve of the battle. Anyone have a book to recommend?

Richard Gilmore from the TV show The Gilmore Girls once quoted someone who said that all great books should be read at least three times. I'm happy to have at least one more reading of Vanity Fair in my future.



Now it's off to start disc 2 of the Andrew Davies mini-series of Vanity Fair. I am loving it, btw. Spot on!

The Grand Sophy: Merchant of Venice meets Oliver Twist meets Gone With the Wind

I jumped on the Georgette Heyer bandwagon that is sweeping the blogosphere and read The Grand Sophy during a quickie weekend trip to Cleveland to visit the great and glorious Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

I was happily rolling along, laughing at Sophy's antics as she dealt with cousin Cecelia and her gormless poet, Augustus Fawnhope, cousin Charles and his humorless fiancée, Eugenia Wraxton, and her various other relatives, suitors, and lovers. Then, Sophy decided to help cousin Hubert and that involved a trip to Goldhangar, the moneylender. I was appalled that Heyer included such a blatantly anti-semitic character in this romp in Regencyland. Goldhangar was Fagin and Shylock and every other Jewish moneylender that has disgraced literature for centuries. I can forgive Shakespeare because there is sufficient ambiguity in his words to allow actors over the ages to portray Shylock in a completely sympathetic way without changing a word of the play. Dickens, one can argue, still lived in the dark ages but I don't like him enough to try to excuse his prejudices. Heyer,however, should've be taught better or know better, especially since The Grand Sophy was written in 1950 (aka post-WWII).

At one point, Sophy brags that her father says that she was "born without any nerves at all...and almost no sensibility." It seems to me that her creator demonstrates almost no sensitivity in her portrayal of Goldhangar. I sort of feel the way I did when I studied the Civil War after reading Gone With the Wind a bazillion times. Like Margaret Mitchell, Heyer can tell a good story, but is it an honest story? This reminds me of a conversation I had with my kids when we recently went to see a stage production of To Kill a Mockingbird - the point I was trying to make is that being fiction doesn't mean a story isn't true, and all great literature should be true.

To Kill a Mockingbird is much more true than The Grand Sophy--I don't think anyone's going to argue that point--nor is anyone going to argue whether or not The Grand Sophy is great literature. In GWTW, Mammy tells Scarlett that Rhett is no good, even though he has lots of money--"he come of good stock and he all slicked up lak a race hawse, but he a mule in hawse harness."

It seems to me that GWTW and The Grand Sophy are mighty appealing, they're all slicked up like race horses, but they're lies...just mules in horse harnesses. Lots of people are reading and enjoying Heyer these days, but the poison in a portrayal of a stock character that should have left our culture centuries ago is that it doesn't taste like the poison it is. And that's what makes it dangerous. It is poison, and we shouldn't just swallow it just because it tastes good.

Is this the only instance of Heyer being racist? I haven't read enough of her to know. Maybe I'll read a bio of her next to know whereof she comes before I read more of her novels.