frumiousb

illustration from my edition (Spencer Press-- World's Greatest Literature series)

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I have read most of the big Hemingway novels-- For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises (my favorite), The Old Man and the Sea. I had limited exposure to the short stories, having only read "The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber" and "The Snows of Kilimanjaro". Honestly, I didn't like those two very much-- they seemed to distill the elements of Hemingway's prose of which I am least fond. I decided to buy this book since I have been spending more time lately on the structure of the short story-- and Hemingway is a master of prose.

I am actually glad that I read the whole collection. It is a pretty big pill to swallow, and there were moments when I got a little bit tired of it. But to read all of his short stories gives a much more nuanced sense of his approach to topics like blood sports, war, and masculinity then you get from just reading the handful of famous stories. I liked him and his narrative voice much better for reading the whole thing. My favorites were some of the smaller pieces midway through the volume: "The Killers" and "A Day's Wait" were personal favorites, for example.

If you have an interest in Hemingway and would like to read further in his work than just the major novels, then I would certainly recommend the collection.

I read An American Tragedy many years ago. I do not remember very much about it. I remember that it moved me, but that I forgot it quickly. Sister Carrie is my second book by Dreiser.

I was dreading the book, at least a little bit. It seems to be universally damned with faint praise. I have heard readers describe the prose as awkward and overblown. I remember a Salon column snarking about it some years ago. I have heard that Dreiser's prose improved with the other novels, and have been told that it was possible to skip Carrie. And so on.

I loved it. That's a little bit lacking in nuance-- there *were* places that I got the criticism. At times I might have wished for other pacing. It has little flaws in the execution, and I suspect that you have to be able to swallow Dreiser's overall style. He's not lithe and little and zippy. His writing is sort of like a hoop skirt-- elegant from some angles, ponderous from others, not really very practical all around.

This said, I have rarely read a novel that treats so very well with character in time and place. Caroline Meeber is the kind of woman I find utterly unsympathetic. Her literary heirs generally fill me with irritation and vague revulsion, no matter how sympathetically portrayed. You know what I mean-- the lovely young animal, the woman who wants but doesn't think, the actress. Dreiser does a remarkable thing. He doesn't really make her sympathetic, exactly, but he makes her understandable. He makes a type of person who rarely seems human very human indeed. And a product of her time. The book is as much about the fragility of success in the early industrial era as it is about the individuals involved. Carrie comes through the mill unhappy but unscathed. George Hurstwood breaks himself in the traps of the time, forgetting that by serving the wealthy he does not actually become invincible. Terrible and true.

I believe that the strength with character in the text outweighs any flaws in the prose style. Perhaps I will be less impressed with a later reading, but right now, I would recommend it.

(Sister Carrie has an odd publishing background, by the way. There are several published versions of the book. I read the Penguin Classics unexpurgated version, and it seems to make a real difference if you get the earlier published versions which Dreiser self-censored in order to get the book printed. If in doubt, take a quick look--not enough to spoil your ending!-- at the last few pages. If it ends with Carrie, you've got a bowdlerized edition. If it ends with Hurstwood, you've got one of the unexpurgated or repaired editions. I found the foreword of my edition by Alfred Kazin helpful in understanding the publishing history.)

No, I haven't forgotten. The cough sent me spinning into another zone, but I'm back now, and Brick is still with me. Through thick and thin, in spite of that dismal excursion into the past, but how to stop the mind from charging off wherever it wants to go? The mind has a mind of its own. Who said that? Someone, or else I just thought of it myself, not that it makes any difference. Coining phrases in the middle of the night, making up stories in the middle of the night-- we're moving on, my little darlings, and agonizing as this mess can be, there's poetry in it, too, as long as you can find the words to express it, assuming those words exist. Yes, Miriam, life is disappointing. But I also want you to be happy.
pg. 87

The weird world rolls on, Miriam.
pg. 180

I liked Man in the Dark a fair bit more than many of the critics seemed to like it. Still, far from being my favorite Auster. I was very interested in Brill as a character, but found myself often impatient with the alternative world scenario. And if there's a joke in here about the stories that we tell versus the stories that we want to tell, then perhaps there's another joke on the reader about the stories that we read versus the stories that we want to read. Who knows?

It was disjointed. But I suspect that this was part of the point. And actually it wasn't any lack of smoothness or integrity that put me off as much as the second storyline itself. Just not so interesting.

But then it was almost often made up for by Brill and his memories and his family. I like the softer streak that has been appearing in his books of late-- as though once convinced of the strange world, he allows himself more sentiment in his literary voice. A strange little book. Glad that I read it.

(the original owner of the book-- I picked this up at a thrift store in Wisconsin.)

Now that I finally have all my books out, I realize that this is the 21st book that I own by Mary Jane Holmes. For those of you who don't know her-- and why should you? Mary Jane Holmes was a prolific and popular romance novelist from the latter part of the 19th century. She also happened to live in the same small town as where I grew up and was my grandmother's favorite author as a girl. Most of my collection comes from my grandmother. The rest I've accumulated on my own over the years. If you haunt old bookstores, then you've probably at least seen books written by her.

Her books generally follow a familiar pattern. There is usually a family with good blood but no money. They usually become entangled in some way with a very wealthy family who feels that their wealth has elevated them above other people. In this sense, her narratives are essentially American-- Holmes insists on the basic equality of all honest men, whether quaint in their habits or not. This insistence generally plays out by contrasting two young women-- one frivolous and vain (ruined by her family), the other poor but handsome.

Family Pride is actually quite complex for one of Holmes' books. The story begins with two sisters, one of whom has been allowed to live a bit above her means by a weak and foolish mother. This slip allows her to come into the orbit of a rich and elegant bachelor (Wilfred) who is determined to marry her despite her poor family. So far, so good. Her lover is no hero, however, but calms his (and his mother's) family pride by strictly controlling his young bride and cutting her off from her family. In the meantime, one of his friends is falling for the other sister nearly because of her humble strengths.

There's a lot more to it than that. Mixed into the narrative is a man who has always loved the pretty sister from a distance, tragic deaths, the ethics of divorce and the Civil War. Although the war between the states plays a role in quite a few of Holmes' works, this was the first book in which I felt that it was a major plot point instead of background.

The character of Wilfred is chilling, and extremely strong. One of the risks of being so prolific is that Holmes had a tendency to cut her characters from the same mold-- none of her male bad guys came anywhere near his capacity for evil.

I'd still probably recommend that someone new to Holmes start with something a little more characteristic-- The English Orphans, perhaps. But this may actually be one of her best.

This is the second book that I have read by Busch. The first was Girls, and that was a while ago. (I'm actually a little curious to reread it now, since I have the feeling that the plot would speak to me more strongly these days.)

Don't Tell Anyone reminded me, in a way, of A Multitude of Sins, by Richard Ford. The thematic connection between the stories in Busch's book are not so obvious, but it still had the feeling for me of a meditation on a theme.

My trouble is that I'm not exactly sure what the theme is-- something about love and missed connections. Something about the things that you see and don't see in family members. There is something specific about parents and their children and the way the madness and guilt eat into the relationships, although that makes it sound more overt than it actually is written. There is a lot about infidelity and alienation of affection, although this mostly seems to be the result of missed connections and broken moments than the subject as such.

Busch writes a mean short story. Personally, I got much more out of the stories than I did from the novella at the end ("A Handbook for Spies"). I don't think that this is because the novella is particularly weak, more that I had the feeling that his strengths as a writer are most vividly highlighted in the shorter works. "Joy of Cooking" was probably my favorite, for reasons that I certainly subjective. For me, Busch's main strength is the ability to strike a glancing blow on very big topics. He doesn't go after his subjects with an elephant gun, knowing that a needle will do more than well enough.

Any suggestions as to where I should read next in his body of work?

(Yes, my first Sunday Salon post in several months. I am distractable.)

Some years ago, I burned myself out on Auster. I read one book, Moon Palace and then I started reading his work compulsively-- ripping through everything that I could find. It was sort of like eating nothing but peanut butter sandwiches for three months. Very satisfying, but quite difficult to look at the jar after that. And then I left him alone. I ignored newly released books. I wanted nothing more to do with the man.

Then two years ago, someone gave me The Brooklyn Follies right after it came out. I sighed, but read it. I liked it a lot more than most of the critics and fans. I was back on the slippery slope.

Then this year I picked up and read a copy of his collected prose. And I was doomed. I've started reading everything that I can get my hands on. And re-reading.

The New York Trilogy was one of the first things that I read by Auster, and one of the most dearly beloved. Rereading City of Glass was an interesting experience. I wondered whether I would find the same things moving, whether I would still like it as much. I knew that my reading experience would be affected by Auster discussing why he had written the book in his collected prose.

In the end, I found that my own experience of grief/tragedy deepened my connection with Quinn. His need to find threads in the seemingly random is something that I understand better now-- it added some holdfasts to the text that I had lacked before.

It remains a great book.

hy read it if you haven't already? Detectives, writers, identities, loss, intrigue, mistakes, death, sex and consequences. (Putting these things in a line gives the wrong impression, but read it all the same.)

I'm curious whether I'll burn myself out again on Auster a second time.

Any writers who you read in waves? What happened to you when and if you went back a second time?

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She was not so young any more. It almost happened that she would be not sad not tired not depressed but just not so young any more.
pg. 61

I first read Ida in college, when I had just started on what would be my life-long love affair with Gertrude Stein. While I've reread other works, I haven't revisited this one since then.

I always find it quite difficult to review Stein. I love her work, but as much for the poetry in it as for anything else. I find myself continually surprised and delighted by her wordplay and I have a hard time understanding why it seems to be pretty generally thought that she was difficult on purpose. As always, I don't find the text particularly difficult and I found myself coming away with a smile on my face from the fun and wordplay-- sensual love of the text. I'm willing to concede that maybe I'm just not genius enough to appreciate the really inaccessible bits, but then I don't really miss them.

Ida is an ordinary woman, with parts of her life extraordinary-- much like the lives of everybody. She has a twin (real or imaginary), dogs, husbands, ideas. And what happens is what happens to us all-- she lives her life.

I'd recommend it, but then I know that I really love Stein's work.

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I have to confess that Stafford was a writer who I only knew of because of her famously stormy relationship with Robert Lowell. When I saw one of her books available second-hand, I was delighted to finally have the chance to read some of her work.

Boston Adventure is the story of Sonie Marburg, a young girl who grows up on the seaside longing for the calm and cool lights of Boston. Where most young girls want love and adventure, Sonie only wants to be a prim old maid just like her idol, Miss Pride of Boston. Miss Pride is a regular summer guest at the hotel where Sonie's mother works, and Sonie longs to belong to her, go home with her, be part of her family. Her own family is not what it should be. Her mother is a mad Russian who lives in a constant state of resentment against men and her life in America. Her father is a German cobbler, weak and eventually ultimately absent. Nothing about her own life, her parents' passion and beauty, appeals to her.

Eventually Sonie gets what she wants (or thinks that she wants). She goes to Boston with Miss Pride as her Ward and companion. As you expect, what she finds there is not exactly as she imagined. The major themes in the story: class and identity, the American notion that talent/intelligence can lift you above your born station, immigration, madness, the different kinds of desire. If there's a one sentence point that I could distill, it would be something like a meditation on how every choice has a price.

I am really interested, now, to read the short stories by Stafford. I really loved this book, but it wasn't perfect. There's something a little bit odd about the pacing-- particularly in the Boston section. It is almost as though having gotten Sonie to Boston, Stafford had a difficult time with her life there. As a reader, there was a long dangerous becalmed section that was very nearly frustrating. I've seen this kind of pacing issue before in the novels of short story writers, and it makes me rather more anxious to read her short work.

She's a very good writer. I really loved her long looping sentences and the strong visual nature of her descriptions. Really delicious prose.

This was an emotionally difficult book in some ways for me. I wasn't escaping from the same kind of madness as Sonie, for sure, but I experienced my life and my decision to go to Bryn Mawr as a very similar kind of conscious escape. I wanted to find the cool and gracious people of the world. The folks who didn't have rotting bathrooms or cousins with ten children. It's sort of usual to say that you discover that those people don't exist, but as Sonie finds out-- that isn't true. It's more complicated than that. They *do* exist and you *can* live like that-- sort of. But there's a price for everything, sometimes too high of a price. I wish that I could have read the invisible other book-- what happened to Sonie once she finally outgrows Miss Price. If she does.

Anyhow, I would recommend the book. The introduction by Anita Brookner is good, but more useful after you have finished the novel.

Several questions:

There seem to be two or three different biographies of Stafford available. Can anyone recommend one in particular?

Has anyone read other work by Stafford that they can recommend to read next?

Many of you probably already know Dorothy Canfield Fisher, even if you don't know why. Her book Understood Betsy (1916) remains a childhood classic. Most people don't realize that Canfield Fisher was an educational reformer, and that Understood Betsy actually was part of her effort to bring Montessori education to the United States. There's no trace of the didact in the story of orphaned Betsy and her Vermont cousins, and its central message about responsibility, learning and family is still quite resonant today.

Even the people who know that she wrote children's books, aren't aware that she wrote adult novels. Her larger body of work has unfortunately slipped into obscurity today. She was quite famous in her day-- Eleanor Roosevelt named her one of the ten most influential women in America.

There are probably reasons for her general critical neglect. Her books tend to focus on stories of everyday life. Common themes for her include the role of women in married life, the importance of family and personal roots, the small efforts that one can make in the face of strife and war, children and child-rearing and the fabric of rural and urban life in the US of her day. She wasn't a writer for broad experimental technique or for violent plotting.

( possibly not very hip-- more about the novel itself )

This book holds a special place in my life because it is the first book that I ever read by Louisa May Alcott. I suspect that I stole it from my grandmother's library. As the first, it was my favorite for a long long time-- particularly since it didn't make me cry buckets the way that Little Women did (does). It left me with an enduring love for idea of little gifts from foreign lands-- one of the things that happened to Rose that just seemed to me so very wonderful.

Over time, this book has been a little bit eclipsed for me by the other Alcott works. Although I still enjoy reading Eight Cousins I have to admit to the occasional sigh of annoyance at how didactic Dr. Alec manages to be. It seems clear to me that Alcott was using this book to work out a lot of her notions about how to raise a child-- a common enough theme in fiction of that time. Although this is more or less an issue in everything that she wrote, it is perhaps a little stronger here than the plot can manage?

None of this, however, should dissuade the reader-- particularly not the younger reader. The usual lovely Alcott moments are all here to be unwrapped. I'm going to see if I can get my hands on a copy of Rose in Bloom because I realize now that I remember it much more vaguely than I do Eight Cousins.

As is usual for me, after reading this book I took a look at some of the reviews. Certain words come back again and again: "gentle", "touching", "poignant", "restrained", "understated". In that sense, I don't have very much to add besides yes. yes, yes, yes and yes again.

I guess that it could be argued that the book is a little bit slight, but at the time of reading it was a very emotional experience for me. Maxwell details the intense claustrophobic relationship between mother and children in a real and painful way. Saying that it was moving isn't quite enough for me, but I'm going to have to let it suffice.

I read They Came Like Swallows based on a recommendation. I won't hesitate to read other works by Maxwell. Any suggestions?

I'm really a long way behind with book reviews this year. Probably do a bit of posting this weekend in an effort to catch up.

Why does anybody write? I think I write because as Saul Bellow once said, "I'm a reader moved to emulation." It's as though you hear someone sing and you want to sing, like a mockingbird. I read this book of Cheever's and suddenly this world opened up to me and all I wanted to do was write. The unknowable interested me, not the knowable—the knowable being how fast the ball rolls at the bottom of the ramp, which tells you how far I got in mechanical engineering. It was a romantic rather than a practical decision to try to be a writer;

--Ethan Canin from a conversation with Barbara Lane.

( disappointing )