janeajones' jangle of books

A happy, prosperous and book-filled New Year to all!



2014 BOOKS READ

1. Roseanne Montillo, The Lady and Her Monsters: A Tale of Dissections, Real-Life Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece, non-fiction: 1/2
2. ReRead: William Blake, The Songs of Innocence and Experience, poetry:
3. ReRead: William Blake, The Book of Thel and Visions of the Daughters of Albion, narrative poetry:
4. ReRead: William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, poetic prophecy:
5. Richard Holmes, The Age of Wonder, cultural history, scientific biography:
6. Maria Edgeworth, "The Irish Incognito"
Sir Walter Scott, "Wandering Willie's Tale
Jane Austen, "Love and Freindship", short stories: from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th edition
7. James C. Clark, ed. Pineapple Anthology of Florida Writers, Volume 1, anthology:
8. Elizabeth Gaskell, "The Old Nurse's Story," short story, from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th edition
9. H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds, science fiction:
10. Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Gothic novella: from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th edition
11. Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Speckled Band"
Rudyard Kipling, "The Man Who Would Be King," short stories: from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th edition
12. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray, novel:
13. Victoria Benedictsson, Pengar -- Money, trans. Sarah Death, novel:
14. Reread: Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, novel: 1/2
15. T.S. Eliot, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, poetry:
16. Ransom Riggs, Hollow City, fantasy novel:
17. Paula Byrne, Perdita: The Literary, Theatrical, Scandalous Life of Mary Robinson: biography: 1/2
18. Amy Tan, The Valley of Amazement, novel: 1/2
19. Jim Crace, The Gift of Stones, novel: 1/2
20. Jay Griffiths, Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape, nonfiction: 1/2
21. Carolyn Burke, Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy, biography:
22. Margaret Drabble, The Seven Sisters, novel:
23. Willa Cather, The Song of the Lark, novel:
24. Alice Walker, The Third Life of Grange Copeland, novel: 1/2
25. Selma Lagerlof, The Treasure; or, Herr Arne's Hoard, novel:
26. Violet Trefusis, Hunt the Slipper, novel: 1/2
27. Martin Walker, The Caves of Perigord, mystery, historical novel:
28. Iris Murdoch, The Italian Girl, novel: 1/2
29. Archibald MacLeish, Conquistador, narrative poem:
30. Bruce Holsinger, A Burnable Book, mystery, historical novel:
31. Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland, novel:
32. Marina Warner, Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale, literary criticism: 1/2
33. Jane Harris, Gillespie and I, novel:
34. Margaret Atwood, Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda, children's book:

Happy New Year, Jane! Got you starred.

Thanks, Deb!

2013 was an odd reading year for me, but my top 5 books were (chronologically in order read):

Toni Morrison's Home
Kim Thuy's Ru, A Novel
Peter Hoeg's The Quiet Girl
Hillary Mantel's Wolf Hall
John Gardner's The Life and Times of Chaucer

Longing for more time to read in 2014.

Short but intriguing list! Hope you have more time to read too!

Jane, have you read or are you planning to read Bring Up the Bodies? I'll be teaching it in my Seminar on Historical Fiction next semester. I have to admit that I thought Wolf Hall was a tiny bit better, but I caved in to the confusion many people expressed about Mantel's use of pronouns. I figured if anyone would be confused, it would be my students--plus the second installment is a bit racier, and I can show clips from 'The Tudors.'

I loved both Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. I had heard it was to be a trilogy, so wonder when the next will be published. I have A Place of Greater Safety on my shelf, and really want to get to that one this year.

Glad you liked the Hoeg, it made my list also. I have his new one somewhere, might get to that this year.

Thanks all for stopping by.

Rebecca -- me too!

Deb -- I have read Bring up the Bodies -- it made my 4 * list, but I missed the complexity of Wolf Hall.

Colleen -- A Place of Greater Safety looks really intriguing, but I probably won't get to it any time soon.

Lois -- I loved the Hoeg -- it was so different -- all that wonderful sound imagery.

Wishing you lots of reading time.

Wondering if I should try Ru. I have had it in mind since your review.

1. The Lady and Her Monsters by Roseanne Montillo

The subtitle of this book explains its contents: A Tale of Dissections, Real Life Dr. Frankensteins, and the Creation of Mary Shelley's Masterpiece. The strength of Montillo's book is her investigation into the scientific activity of early experimenters with galvanism (basically the science of electricity, especially as to how it affects animal bodies and animation) and a detailed account of the grisly activity of body snatchers who tried to satisfy the appetites and needs of anatomists for bodies to dissect and lecture upon in the early years of the 19th century, and how these activities probably influenced Mary Shelley's writing of Frankenstein.

Montillo details the work of Luigi Galvan, his follower Giovanni Aldini, and Humphrey Davy, in particular and how their experiments in trying to reanimate the dead fascinated the young poet, Percy Shelley, and in turn, his beloved Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, who would later become his wife. She is also fascinated with the dark history of body snatchers and their shady history with scientists and medical researchers (taking it so far as into very recent history when detectives discovered the supposedly cremated remains of Alistair Cooke had been "doctored" and his bones removed for sale to laboratories and hospitals).

The personal details of the Shelleys' lives, their relationships with Byron, Claire Clairmont and other of the Romantic circle that are woven into the story are well-known and not very deep. As is the story of the creation and writing of Frankenstein.

The book could be an interesting introduction to Mary Shelley for those who don't know much about her and for those who are interested in the scientific background of the tale. I gave it 3 1/2 stars.

>12 janeajones:, Hmmm... The science aspects of that book sound excellent, but your overall rating makes me chary. Perhaps this is one for the library....

Funny, I was watching something about this very subject on TV last night before I fell asleep. Might have been based on this very book. The part I saw was on how Mary would have read about the experiments of Galvani, some of which were then re-enacted, included shooting electric current through the body of a hanged corpse.

Thanks for your excellent review of The lady and her Monsters, a book I might have been tempted to pick up. I need not bother now.

Nice review of The Lady and Her Monsters, Jane. I'm mildly interested in the story of these experimenters, but I probably won't read this.

Sounds like an interesting book, but probably not for me, so I was glad to read your review instead!

Thanks all for stopping by -- I'm teaching the Romantics and Frankenstein this semester, so I thought this book might be a complement. I learned a couple of things about early 19th c. science and body-snatching, but not much else.

>18 janeajones: It is an interesting combination - Romantics and Frankenstein...

Too bad that Montillo's book did not amount to much though... I had been looking at it for a while and sounds like I will be skipping it.

Our English teacher told us a bit about Mary Shelley & the background of her book when he assigned us Frankenstein. It doesn't sound like there's much new here. Both my kids had to read Frankenstein for school; they both (even the non-reader) loved it.

I must be I a weird place because I found the review fascinating. Body snatching for science brought I it classic fiction in the form of...I want to know more.

It's sometimes disconcerting following Dan's comments.

I think my phone got the best of me. I don't remember what I meant to type when I posted, "Body snatching for science brought I it classic fiction in the form of...", but it wasn't that.

LOL! I was wondering what you meant by that post.

Me, too. I wondered if "Body Snatching I" was a science course . . .

I probably should be worried about myself after that post, but I find it very entertaining I did that. Apologies Jane

>25 Cariola: LOL! Taking Body Snatching I and passing it successfully, by, um, snatching a body, would have been a prerequisite course for the Anatomy course that first year medical students in 19th century England and other countries would have had to take.

>27 kidzdoc:,

Body snatching predates the 19th century. I do not know when the practice originated - probably in the mists of antiquity, but natural philosophers as scientists of the late 16th and early 17th century were called, were snatching bodies for their research.

Wasn't Michaelangelo a body snatcher as well?

I think so.

Jane, have you read Richard Holmes' The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science? I really enjoyed it when I read it a few years ago. It might fit in well with your class.

>28 urania1: I was joking a wee bit, but in the first half of the 19th century body snatchers routinely sold illegally obtained cadavers to medical schools throughout the US and UK, until laws were passed in the 1830s to permit the use of donated bodies as subjects for anatomy courses. And, if I remember correctly, some medical students were required to obtain their own cadavers, either from a body snatcher or by digging one up themselves, in order to take anatomy class. Wikipedia's page on body snatching has more information about this, although I read about it years ago in The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr, and Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine by Roy Porter, the brilliant British medical historian.

Delightful conversation! cabegley -- I must find The Age of Wonder -- thanks for the tip.

Death, Dissection and the Destitute is a good history of what happened to bodies of paupers and the hanged, as well as giving a bit of background in grave robbing. Not nearly as dreary as it sounds. I would have been tempted by The Lady and her Monsters had I seen it, so thanks for saving me from myself.

Thanks Sassy -- I think I'll probably skip Death, Dissection and the Destitute as what I'm really interested in is the influence of science on the Romantics.

2. The Songs of Innocence and Experience by William Blake
3. The Book of Thel and The Visions of Daughters of Albion by William Blake
4. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake

These were rereads for my English Lit class. I adore Blake. My youthful enthusiasm and delight in Blake has never faded. His wondrous depictions of the states on innocence, experience, and transcendent imagination have fueled my journey through life. Most every reader is familiar with some of the poems in The Songs of Innocence and Experience -- certainly "The Lamb" and "The Tiger" and probably the two heart-rending "Chimney Sweep" poems.

Less well known are Blake's narrative and prophetic poems. The Book of Thel and Visions of Daughters of Albion are two early narrative poems that depict the plights of young women stuck respectively in the worlds of naive innocence and captive experience. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Blake satirizes and challenges established governments, churches, ethical systems, Milton's Paradise Lost, Swedenborg and all other "mind-forged manacles" that imprison the human imagination.

And presents his own book of the Proverbs of Hell

In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no clock can measure.

All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body, revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloke of knavery.
Shame is Prides cloke.

~

Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the
destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
The selfish smiling fool, & the sullen frowning fool, shall be both thought wise, that
they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once, only imagin'd.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit: watch the roots; the lion, the tyger, the horse,
the elephant, watch the fruits.
The cistern contains; the fountain overflows.
One thought, fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time, as when he submitted to learn of the crow.

~

The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
He who has suffer'd you to impose on him knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Listen to the fools reproach! it is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow, nor the lion, the horse,
how he shall take his prey.
The thankful reciever bears a plentiful harvest.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight, can never be defil'd.
When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius, lift up thy head!
As the catterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest
lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn, braces: Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!

~

The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands &
feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird of the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl, that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads, but the crooked roads without Improvement,
are roads of Genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
Enough! or Too much!

- See more at: http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/19361#sthash.EKYjDAbV.dpuf

Lovely :-)

I love Blake - his plates with illustrations are so beautiful. I studied quite a bit of his work in my Romantics classes, but not The Book of Thel. Next time I'm in the mood for poetry I will give it a read.

When I looked at your post on Blake my first thought was "I'm not going to read all that!" But after sampling a few lines, then more, I wished it had been longer. I'll be pulling out my unread copy of his works as soon as I can find it.

Most appetising post on Blake! I've been meaning to take a good look at him for a long time now, you really made me want to get to it ASAP. Totally sounds like my kind of dude.

You've made a convert to Blake whom I thought I disliked for some unknown reason probably due to some religious bias. thank you for the lovely post.

Great to read that excerpt from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell contradictory, ironical, perhaps a little insane but altogether wonderful.

Wow! A little late in catching up with this, but echoing what everyone else has said.

A humorous anecdote about Blake. One day as he and his friend Leigh Hunt were taking a stroll by the Thames, Blake raised his hat in greeting to someone. Hunt looked around and saw no one. "Who was that?" Hunt asked. Blake replied, "No one, just St. Paul flying past."

Jane,

Vis a vis post 12 and cadavers, this from Antal Szerb: "The young Comte de Coigny was so keen on his anatomical studies that he kept a cadaver in his luggage to dissect even when traveling." Those eighteenth-century French aristocrats ...

Thanks all for stopping by -- do read Blake if you haven't -- just don't start with his massive prophetic Jerusalem, or you'll be totally lost. He's a mythmaker on the scale of Yeats (whom I also love) at his most obscure.

44> Well, I guess if he saw angels in trees, he could see St. Paul flying down the Thames.

45> Creepy....

I'm still stuck on body snatchers. So glad we have donor programs now! Go sign up everyone! ;)

Thanks for all this Blake. A great nudge to read him.

Eminent Men of Science Living in 1807-1808

That's a cool picture -- can't read the names, though.

Reading The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes -- review to come soon, I hope.

Looking forward to your comments. I have been meaning to read this.

Me too on both counts.

And the eminent women :-)

5. The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes

First of all -- many thanks to Chris (cabegley -- see message 31) for recommending this book.

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I was pretty fascinated with science. I thought about being pre-med. I got my highest SAT score in Chemistry. Then I was hit in the face with higher mathematics which made absolutely no sense to me and included intensively long calculations and logarithmic tables and slide rules -- this was a few years before students actually were encouraged, and then required to buy calculators. That was it -- I did my math/science requirements in college by taking botany, psychology and physical science for liberal arts majors. Botany was somewhat interesting, but I could never really see through a microscope; the psychology professor was a sadist who insisted on all kinds of statistical analysis (thank god I had a boyfriend who was a psych major and got me through the labs); and phys sci was a bore. Obviously, I became an English major and never took another science course again. Had there been a course offered in the history of science and had Richard Holmes' splendid book, The Age of Wonder been one of the textbooks, I might have been inspired to complement my literary studies with some scientific studies.

Holmes presents the unfolding of the experimental world of applied science in England contemporary with the outpouring of Romantic literature from the 1780s to the 1830s. The Age of Wonder is wonderful cultural history combined with scientific biography. The biographical focuses of the book are William Herschel, the astronomer and microscope builder, who discovered the planet Uranus and the moons of Saturn; Humphrey Davy, whose experiments and discoveries in electricity and chemistry revolutionized the scientific world; and Sir Joseph Banks, who as a young man sailed around the world with Captain Cook, wrote an anthropological study of the Tahitians, and returned to England to become the longtime President of the Royal Society, encouraging and sponsoring a variety of scientific ventures (and literary ones -- he sponsored lecture series by Coleridge).

It's an age of the popularization of science with Davy and others giving wildly popular public demonstrations of their experiments and books being written for a general readership and even children about the new scientific principles being discovered. Man flies for the first time in hot air and hydrogen balloons -- the earth is seen from above and meteorology is born. Clouds become the focus for scientists as well as poets. William Herschel's sister Caroline uses her own telescope to discover comets and meteors and is paid by the crown to assist her brother in his sky-sweeping. Earth, air, fire and water are no longer the basic components of the universe -- it is discovered that water is made up of hydrogen and oxygen; air has various elemental gases; the earth is wildly complex, and fire is not an element at all, but a means of transforming one form of matter into another. One of the burning philosophical and scientific issues is the nature of life itself -- can it be captured in some sort of essential form -- what role does electricity play in the vital force of life??

Holmes' earlier books are biographies of Enlightenment and Romantic literary figures -- Dr. Johnson, Shelley, and Coleridge. He integrates his wide range of knowledge about the Romantic authors and their interest in science, as well as their incorporation of scientific ideas and discoveries into their literary works, into The Age of Wonder. This is a fascinating and revelatory work about the culture of early 19th c. England and Europe.

Enjoyed your thoughts on The age of wonder, especially the personal elements.

55 What a wonderful review and story! The book sounds fascinating. And isn't it interesting to look back now and think of how school and different subjects were presented compared to today. How might our lives have been different if we had some of the opportunities available to women today. Thanks for that review.

ETA: Going to post it on book page?

Terrific review of The Age of Wonder. I'm so glad you liked it!

Thanks for recommending it.

fanny and Merrikay thanks for stopping by -- it is curious to think about long-ago choices and made and roads taken, but on the whole, I've been pretty satisfied with my career choices (though I could do with a few less really awful sophomore essays and many fewer politicians meddling in educational policy).

I have added The age of Wonder to my books to read when I get to the enlightenment.

Barry -- it really fits better with the Romantic period, but the Enlightenment will do too.

The Age of Wonder is now on my wishlist as well.

I've added The Age of Wonder to my wish list. One of my favorite classes was history of science, although I majored in philosophy.

Sounds very interesting, and since I probably will never read it I am especially grateful for your review (and Chris's earlier one).

6. stories: Maria Edgeworth, "The Irish Incognito"
Sir Walter Scott, "Wandering Willie's Tale"
Jane Austen, Love and Freindship: A Novel in a Series of Letters, (sic) from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th edition

These three short stories from the Romantic period are wildly different, but each is representative of the period in its own way.

Edgeworth tells the tale of young Irishman "by profession a stocah,, or walking gentleman; that is, a person who is too proud to earn his bread, and too poor to have bread without earning it." As he speaks perfect English with nary an Irish brogue, he decides to travel to England to snare himself a rich wife. His brother bets him that he won't last 4 days without being found out at least 8 times. The unfolding of the story gently plays with cultural stereotypes and class pretensions, but ultimately reveals the protagonist to be a humane, reasonable fellow.

Scott's tale, from his novel Redgauntlet, is told in a broad Scottish dialect that my students resisted but which adds marvelous color to the story. Mixing fiction and folklore, "Wandering Willie" tells the story of his grandfather Steenie's quest to obtain a receipt from Sir Robert Redgauntlet who died just as he had received the payment in silver. The silver has gone missing and Steenie must prove to Sir Robert's heir that he paid the rent or be displaced from his cottage. He travels into the netherworld to once again meet Sir Robert.

Austen wrote "Love and Freindship" (sic) when she was 14 as a hyperbolic satire on the pretensions of young people who slavishly follow the cliches of novelistic sentimentalism to their own destruction:

" A sensibility too temblingly alive to every affliction of my friends, my acquaintance, and particularly to every affliction of my own, was my only fault, if a fault it could be called."

"My Father seduced by the false glare of fortune and the deluding pomp of title, insisted on my giving my hand to Lady Dorothea. No, never, exclaimed I. Lady Dorothea is lovely and engaging: I prefer no woman to her; but know sir, that I scorn to marry her in compliance with your wishes. No! Never shall it be said that I obliged my father. -- We all admired the noble manliness of his reply."

"They said he was sensible, well-informed, and agreeable; we did not pretend to judge of such trifles, but, as we were convinced he had no soul, that he had never read 'The Sorrows of Werter,' and that his hair bore not the slightest resemblance to auburn, we were certain that Janetta could feel no affection for him, or at least that she ought to feel none."

It's hysterical, yet the reader can see the seeds of Austen's creation of Marianne Dashwood and others in this youthful piece.

Scott's tale, from his novel Redgauntlet, is told in a broad Scottish dialect

You'd think that the dialect might have offered a clue. It always annoys me when editors include writers like Scott in books titled something like the Anthology of English literature. Perhaps they could say UK Literature, or Literature in English. They do it to Irish and Welsh writers as well. Funny that they would include Edgeworth's story about cultural stereotypes having made that error.

All that aside, and none of it anything you had anything to do with, I enjoyed your post and the Austen was funny, yet as you say, you can see the seeds.

I also really enjoyed your Age of Wonder review (for some reason the touchstone wants Dumas). The development of science in its cultural setting is always fascinating.

The Norton Anthologies really should be titled Literature in English -- though that would be confusing as the English Lit ones don't include any American lit -- though they do include Irish, Scots, Welsh, Canadian, African and Indian -- I don't suppose Literature from the British Empire is politically correct.

Catching up, Jane. Love the review and subsequent body snatching conversation. Also enjoyed the review of The Age of Wonder. If you wish to drift a bit from the Romantics, I'd suggest One Day the Ice Will Reveal Its Dead by Claire Dudman, it's fiction, but one gets a great science buzz from it.

Lois, I bought One Day the Ice Will Reveal Its Dead after you reviewed it both because of your review and because I couldn't resist the title -- but I haven't read it yet.

Jane,

Have you read any other Austen juvenilia? Her History of England hysterically funny.

Mary -- I've not -- will have to hunt that one down.

You will love it.

7. Pineapple Anthology of Florida Writers, Volume 1

An entertaining collection of 21 fiction and non-fiction pieces and 3 poems mostly from writers who spent time in Florida as tourists or snowbirds. Only 3 were actually raised in Florida -- James Weldon Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston and Carl Hiassen. While the selections give some interesting peeks into Florida from the 1830s to the end of the 20th century, there doesn't seem to be any controlling theme or particular purpose for the selection. I have no idea what the editor's purpose was in putting together the collection, the first of a proposed 3 volumes. The introduction is very brief and unilluminating. Good for sampling some Florida writers, but a much better introduction to Florida literature is the 1991 volume The Florida Reader: Visions of Paradise from 1530 to the Present edited by Maurice O'Sullivan and Jack Lane.

8. "The Old Nurse's Story" by Elizabeth Gaskell -- from from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, 9th edition

This is a ghost story originally published in the Christmas 1852 number of Dickens' journal Household Worlds . It reminded me somewhat of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw on the writing of which it may have had some influence. Both tales are narrated as a memoir by a governess who was in charge of a young girl in an isolated country house where strange deaths had taken place that no one wants to talk about. James's story is more multi-layered with psychological twists and turns (screws, if you will) than Gaskell's tale, but Gaskell convincingly builds suspense and a kind of horror in her story through a tale of pride and horrible revenge. I haven't read much Gaskell, but I am sufficiently impressed by her skill at character and plot development that I shall probably venture on to her novels.

Traditionally the Victorians told ghost stories on Christmas eve: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/dec/23/ghost-stories-victorians-spookily-g...

Gaskell's story is available online at: http://lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/EG-Nurse.html

Oh, Jane, you make me want to run to my anthologies (particularly those Norton ones), but alas, they are packed away....

Interesting notes on the Florida anthology. Thanks for the warning. I'll take heed of your recommendation for Florida lit should I feel inclined to explore.

How terrible of me to ask for a review of age of wonder and then never make it back here to read it. And it is a terrific review. Enjoyed your story.

And you have me thinking about looking into a norton anthology. My wife just asked me for birthday present ideas...

And the Florida Reader is now on my wishlist.

And how terrific are those Austin quotes. Fascinated that she was so clever at that age.

Anyway am glad I finally caught up here again.

Have to love something called "The Pineapple Anthology"!

I have only read North and South by Gaskell, but I thought it was excellent.

Lois -- soon you can unpack. I wish you a splendid library in your new house!

Dan -- the Norton Anthologies are splendid, and Norton is an exemplary publishing house. It is wholly owned by its employees, and its textbooks (including the anthologies) are the most reasonably priced of any publishers, and they are updated on a regular basis. Fabulous editors, great introductions and explanatory notes. The Norton Critical editions of single texts are also wonderful if you're interested in the background and critical receptions of the texts.

Rebecca -- well, it is published by Pineapple Press ;-}

Barry -- will get to it one day in retirement (counting down the weeks).

stories: "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson
"The Speckled Band" by Arthur Conan Doyle
"The Man Who Would Be King" by Rudyard Kipling from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Ninth Edition, Volume E

We've been reading Victorian fiction in my English Lit class, and these were the stories we discussed today. This is the first year I've taught from the 9th edition which has different selections than the earlier ones, so I'm reading selections I've not read before like the Stevenson and the Kipling. Everyone, of course, knows all about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but I'd never read the original story, nor "The Man Who Would Be King," though I think I saw the film.

At any rate, some of the topics that came up in class today:

The use of 1st person narration -- While the circumstances of Stevenson's story is told by a 3rd person narrator, the actual accounts of Jekyll's shape-shifting are told in letters written by Dr. Lanyon and Jekyll himself -- so the reader moves from the curiosity of a secondary character, to the horror of an observer, and finally to the confession of the protagonist. Doyle's story, of course is narrated by Dr. Watson, Watson's admiring sidekick. Kipling's story also has two first person narrators -- the anonymous newsman and Peachy Carnahan, returned on the brink of madness from his misadventure in Kafiristan where he and his comrade, Daniel Dravot, had ruled as kings for a few misbegotten months.

The arrogance of overreaching characters -- Jekyll, Dr. Roylott, and Dravot -- that leads to their destruction.

The total masculine-orientation of the culture of the stories.

The lure of the primitive, the unrestrained, the exotic that is tangentially, or not so tangentially, equated with evil in the Victorian mind. And related to that -- pre-Freudian psychology in the late Victorian world.

All in all, a pretty good class.

Enjoyed your thoughts on those Victorian classics.

"The Speckled Band" was the Sherlock Holmes story that made the greatest impression on me when I read it at approximately age 11 or 12, and it has stayed with me to this day (I did reread it a few years ago in a collection of Conan Doyle's favorite SH stories, Favourite Sherlock Holmes Stories).

>82 janeajones: - That was fun to read

Thanks for stopping by Barry, Rebecca and Dan.

>82 janeajones: Thanks, Jane, that brings back some fond memories...

>82 janeajones: Jane, I'm echoing everyone else...thank you for that post.

>81 janeajones: Oh Jane, Jane, Jane! When you retire your time on LT may increase which will of course increase your Mt. TBR. It's a trap. But it sure is wonderful!

Sounds like a very fun class. Wish I was in it!
Thanks for the link to the Old Nurse story.

I'm guessing I'm the only one hearing Annette Funicello singing Pineapple Princess.

The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells and The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Not doing so well keeping up with reviewing. I really don't have much to say about these other than I read them as students were doing reports on select Victorian novels. Barry has a fabulous review of The War of the Worlds that I have no desire to emulate. The Picture of Dorian Gray has definite similarities to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in its exploration of multiple aspects of personality, and the publication history is fairly intriguing. I haven't read the criticism in the Norton Critical Edition, but I'm sure it's fascinating. Both books are well worth reading if you haven't done so before -- and they are relatively short and easy to read.

Money, originally Pengar in Swedish by Victoria Benedictsson, translated by Sarah Death

Benedictsson's novel chronicles the marriage and coming-of-age of its protagonist, Selma Berg. An orphan, under the guardianship of her uncle the Rector, she is virtually married off to the wealthy, much older, local Squire. As an adored young wife, she is seemingly given everything she could possibly desire -- an envied position in the community, jewels, a spirited horse that she rides when and where she will, the ability to purchase whatever she wants, freedom enough to visit her family, and an indulgent husband.

But she is disgusted by the physical aspect of her marriage, and her husband is jealous of any attention she attracts from young, unmarried men, including her cousin, Richard, who had been her intellectual sparring partner as they grew up.

As the years pass and Selma moves from late adolescence into young womanhood, she comes more and more to recognize the emptiness of her life. During a visit to the National Art Museum in Stockholm, she happens upon a young artist couple, sketching and painting in the gallery. Immersed in their work, Selma is struck by the futility of her own position. " But she? To vegetate and die -- that was to be her life. Nothing to show for it, be it long or short. To vegetate and die -- calmly and acquiescently."

She realizes that she had not agreed to her marriage as a consenting adult, but had been lured into it as a child, and she decides to make a change. As with Nora in Ibsen's A Doll's House, we don't know the trajectory of the change. As is the play, this novel is a reflection of the restlessness and dis-ease that women felt with their expected roles in late 19th c. Scandinavia (and Europe and America).

The cover of this edition is based on a paper cutting by the author -- I think it's quite splendid. And thanks to Lois (avaland) who sent me this copy knowing my affinity for Swedish women ;-)

89> Merrikay -- glad you enjoyed the Old Nurse's Story.

Playing catch-up here . . . Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde . . . interesting comments. I did this one in a Victorian lit class with a fabulous teacher. I was a mature student (in my 40s) in a class of otherwise early-20-somethings. After Confessions of an Opium Eater, Jane Eyre (where I learned about Thing Theory-so fun!), Cranford, Bleak House, & Lady Audley's Secret, she taught Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde as a "narrative of the closet," based on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet. She didn't have much of a problem convincing the class of the hidden alcoholism in the book, but they were much more resistant to the closeted homosexuality. By the end of that unit, I completely got it, but a lot of the students were completely resistant to it. I experience that again with a CanLit course when we did Me and My House. Both really good university experiences!

Last week my husband and I watched "Mary Reilly" which I enjoyed very much. It's dark and Julia Roberts didn't flash her dazzling smile, which I thought was great. John Malkovitch played a character similar to the one he played in "Dangerous Liaisons" (or, he played different characters the same way). No narrative of the closet in that movie though. It's interesting what a clever person can do with a literary text (or classic).

Jane and 93>A few years ago I taught a class in which we read classic novels and modern takes on them. One pair was Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, paired with Mary Reilly. It was really fun and interesting. (We also did Mrs. Dalloway and The Hours.)

Deborah - I would have loved to take that class!

It's mid-May and I've not posted anything since March. April was all about finishing up the semester, but I have been reading the last few weeks.


The Hollow City by Ransom Riggs

This is the second book in a YA horror/fantasy series, Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children about a group of adolescents with strange powers. Most of it is set during the Blitz of London in WWII which gives it an interesting angle. My major reason for reading it is that the author went to school with my son. It's entertaining and well written with interesting characters and monsters, if that's your cuppa tea. It was a fun escape from research essays and final exams.

Mary Robinson as Perdita by Gainsborough

Mary Robinson by Joshua Reynolds

Mary Robinson by George Romney

and
Perdita: The Literary, Theatrical and Scandalous of Mary Robinson by Paula Byrne
and The Valley of Amazement by Amy Tan

reviews to come in the morning.

I have Perdita in the TBR stacks and have been considering the new Amy Tan, so I will be looking forward to those reviews. One of my colleagues wrote her dissertation on Mary Robinson; I remember her not thinking too much of the book.

I've seen that first portrait in person and have a post card of it on my bulletin board at work. It's quite lovely.

Paula Byrne's Perdita and Amy Tan's The Valley of Amazement have a number of commonalities: each deal with a tri-generational female family focusing primarily on the women of the second generation; each of the major protagonists earns her reputation as a beautiful and accomplished courtesan; both books examine the cult of celebrity and fashion in their respective societies; and each finally affirms the crucial importance of love and support between mother and daughter. That said, the two works are vastly different.

Byrne's Perdita: The Literary, Theatrical, Scandalous Life of Mary Robinson is a thoroughly researched, carefully constructed biography of the late 18th century Mary Darby Robinson (1757-1800) who many declared was the most beautiful woman of her time and whom Coleridge described as "a woman of undoubted genius." Mary's parents convinced her to marry Thomas Robinson, a law student and son of a Welsh landowner, when she was only 15 years old. Her mother thought Robinson would provide financial security for her daughter, and her father was determined to keep her off the London stage. But Robinson proved to be an unfaithful wastrel, cut-off from the family's fortunes; and the couple soon ended in debtor's prison with their infant daughter. While there, Mary began writing poetry, publishing two volumes, the second of which was dedicated to Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire, who became her patron and life-long friend.

When Tom Robinson was finally discharged from the Fleet, Mary decided to take their financial future into her own hands, renewed her friendship with theatrical producer David Garrick, and made her stage debut. Her beauty and stage presence quickly made her a celebrity and the object of adoration of a circle of young noblemen. When the 17-year old Prince George saw her play Perdita in A Winter's Tale, he was smitten. Her tangled relationship with the Prince led to her retirement from the theatre and immersion into the high-society world of the bon ton. While her relationship with the Prince inevitably dwindled away, she remained at the center of London's fashionable and intellectual world until she suffered a bout of rheumatic fever which left her disabled. She turned to writing for financial support, publishing seven novels, two plays, and four more volumes of poetry along with political tracts supporting the French Revolution and women's rights before she died at the age of 42.

Byrne's research ranges widely from the original manuscript of Robinson's own memoir and other writings to the gossip and reports of her life and reviews of her work in contemporary newspapers and journals, letters written to and from her, lives and letters of notable contemporaries who knew her, and social and political histories of the period. Byrne offers measured literary criticism of Robinson's writing and includes many of her poems and a few selections from the novels and other writings. I particularly found fascinating the workings of the late 18th century theatre as Sheridan rose to prominence and the Tory/Whig political rivalry in which Robinson exercised her influence. Fluently written and lively, Perdita is a thoroughly satisfying portrait of a fascinating character and a colorful era.

I wish I could say as much for Amy Tan's The Valley of Amazement.
Although I love Amy Tan's writing, and this novel is a fast-paced read, it's about 200 pages too long. It needed a strong editorial hand to shape it. The sprawling narrative form reminded me a bit of Stephen King's novels that go on and on and on. There is at least one entire episode of Violet's life that could be easily excised from the novel.

Set in late 19th c. San Francisco and early 20th c. Shanghai, the novel primarily focuses on Violet Minturn, the daughter of Lucia Minturn and a Chinese artist, Lu Shin, whom Lucia has followed to Shanghai. Rejected by his family, Lucia, in partnership with a Chinese woman, Golden Dove, set up a series of bars culminating in a first-class courtesan house/ gentlemen's club where Western and Asian businessmen mingled to set up mutually beneficial business deals. When the Ching dynasty was overturned, and Shanghai became dangerous for Westerners, Lucia decided to return to San Francisco. Swindled and tricked by a lover, she was separated from Violet, then 14, who was kidnapped and sold as a "virgin courtesan." In her training to be a first-class courtesan, we learn much about that particular society and how Shanghai culture was adapting to the 20th c. Despite my formal reservations about the novel, I enjoyed it, and I'm sure others who like Amy Tan and are interested in the era and in troubled mother-daughter relationships will also enjoy it. It's just not my favorite of her works.

>100 janeajones: I have at least one Amy Tan on my bookshelves, but I've never read any of them. What is your favorite? Have you ever read anything by Lisa See? I wonder how they compare. I read Dreams of Joy, and enjoyed that one.

Perdita sounds quite good.

>100 janeajones: Although I generally like Amy Tan's work, for some reason, I haven't had much interest in this one. Think I will skip it.

>101 NanaCC: I will be interested to see what Jane recommends and what she has to say about Lisa See. For me, without a doubt, The Joy Luck Club isAmy Tan's best. I also enjoyed The Kitchen God's Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, and The Bonesetter's Daughter; Saving Fish from Drowning, not so much.

Colleen -- I agree with Deborah that The Joy Luck Club is probably Tan's best though I loved The Hundred Secret Senses which I listened to on audiobook. I did like Saving Fish from Drowning which I found very funny. I haven't read any Lisa See, though Tan does mention in her introduction that See was in China with her when she was doing research.

Deborah -- I think you'd like Perdita. What were your colleague's objections?

103> Janes, I'm not really sure . . . I suspect maybe it was just jealousy/sour grapes since she was seeking a publisher for her own book at the time. I remember some grumbling about it not being well-researched (which you've debunked) and aimed at a popular readership (which I have no problem with).

Colleen, I tried Snow Flower and the Secret Fan but didn't finish it. It seemed rather contrived and based on a lot of clichés about about women's lives in China. I remember thinking, while reading it, that she was borrowing a lot of her plot from Amy Tan's novels.

Jane & Deborah, thank you for the suggestions. I have The Kitchen God's Wife, and thought I had The Joy Luck Club but LT says I don't. I will have to give The Kitchen God's Wife a try. My daughter-in-law is an Amy Tan fan, and she is having trouble finishing The Valley of Amazement. Her hectic schedule with work, kids / school and kids / sports may have something to do with that, rather than a problem with the book.

ETA: Deborah, we were posting at the same time. I haven't tried Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, although I think I have it. I will have to read a couple of Tan's books to see if I feel the same way. Dreams of Joy takes place in 1957 during China's "Great Leap Forward", a time period that I knew nothing about, so I enjoyed the historical aspect.

Deborah -- it is aimed at a popular readership -- one of the reasons I liked it. There's lots about fashion and gossip amidst the more serious social and literary stuff. I certainly wouldn't consider it a literary biography, but I think Byrne deals well with the biographical aspects of some her works and doesn't puff the less accomplished pieces of Robinson's works.

Enjoyed your excellent review of Perdita: the literary, theatrical, scandalous life of Mary Robinson. I will add it to my wish list.

I enjoyed your review of Perdita too, but probably won't read it (on the "too many books, too little time" principle) so was especially glad to learn something about her life and work. Liked the pictures too. It's a long long time since I read The Joy Luck Club, and it never inspired me to read more Amy Tan.

Jane - am so enjoying your tour through the Norton Anthologies. This is an inspiring thread!

The Gift of Stones by Jim Crace

After reading Joyce's (Nickelini's) review of Jim Crace's Harvest, a book and author I knew nothing about, I idly "library-thinged" my book collection and discovered I actually owned a book by Jim Crace. As the librarian in my soul arranges books by genre and then alphabetizes them by author, I quickly laid my hands on his novel The Gift of Stones.

My best description of The Gift of Stones, set in the period when the Stone Age is giving way to the Age of Bronze, is lush-spare. The language and imagery are lush, the plot rather spare; the play of imagination is lush, the landscapes of stone and heath are spare. This is a novel about a storyteller (or rather, two storytellers as the tale is told by his daughter) and nature and power of storytelling.

I've always been fascinated by this kind of metafiction -- Mario Vargas Llosa's The Storyteller and Alan Sillitoe's The Storyteller immediately spring to mind. But search LT's site for "storyteller," and nearly 1000 books pop up -- others must share my fascination.

The storyteller in The Gift of Stones comes upon his gift almost by accident. As a child he had lost his arm and so was fairly useless in his community of hard-working stone-knappers. Idly wandering by the sea one day, he catches sight of a ship and decides to follow it. Racing down the shore, he inevitably loses it, but returns home to tell his embellished tale to an audience enthralled by the adventure. He had found his niche in the community.

'The sea seen from the clifftop is a world that's upside down,' I began. I stood and spread my long arm and my short to demonstrate the view I had. I pointed down.

'The gulls have backs. You're looking down on wind. The shallows, from above, are flat and patterned, green with arcs of white where the water runs to phlegm. My ship threw up an arc of its own phlegm as it dipped and bounced before the wind. I bounced and dipped myself. We were a pair.'

This is my moment of betrayal, both of the woman and the truth. Hear how it comes to life. See my cousins, sitting there, their chins aglow with grease, their eyes on fire, their expectations high, their dreams and nightmares on display.

'I caught the ship,' I said. 'It came ashore.'

That sounds like a good one. On to the wishlist it goes.

I have only read one Jim Crace, but thought it was excellent, full of interesting ideas and all a little off centre in an interesting way. I have just remembered which one it was : Being Dead. It would seem that different perspectives on storytelling is a theme that he explores in his books.

Joyce and Barry -- I would definitely read more of Crace as time goes on.

Your comment about storytellers strikes a chord. I too am fascinated by the storytelling process. Just read about a book that might interest you. Vladimir Propp did a study of Russian folktales in an attempt to dig below the surface and see what made them tick. It's called Morphology of the Folk Tale. If interested, the Wikipedia article on Propp is fascinating.

I have read some Propp years ago -- as I recall, he was pretty dry -- very formalistic and statistical. But it's been a long time, so my memory may be faulty.

>110 janeajones: Jane, I loved your description of Crace's writing as lush-spare. It captures his style perfectly. I have read and enjoyed many of his novels, but was not familiar with The Gift of Stones. It is now on my list to watch for.

It's been a crazy long time since I posted here. Enjoyed learning about Mary Robinson, and terrific review of The Gift of Stones and the lush and spare.

Kith: The Riddle of the Childscape by Jay Griffiths

This is a wildly romantic book, both in its literary references and its attitudes toward childhood, but it provides another important corrective to the overly controlled, enclosed and consumerized pattern of child-rearing that has emerged in modern Western cultures, particularly those of Northern Europe and America.

The title of the book "Kith" invokes the phrase "kith and kin" -- kin, of course being one's extended family, and kith, being one's surroundings -- perhaps the square mile around one's home in which children intimately immerse themselves with nature, friends and the larger society.

First my reservations about the book. It is, as I stated above, wildly Romantic -- both in the large "R" movement sense and her small "r" sensibility. Don't get me wrong, I have a rather a rather romantic sensibility myself, but in her near total rejection of the contemporary world, Griffiths seems to be on a rather quixotic quest. The question at the heart of her book is why are Euro-American children so much unhappier than children in traditional societies? Rather than confronting the complexity of contemporary society, she idealizes traditional child-rearing in certain Native American, African, Aboriginal and other tribal societies. Obviously, travelling those pathways is not going to lead to workable child-rearing practices in everyday situations. Also, although she seems to be highly involved with her nieces, nephews and godchildren, she has no children of her own, so lacks the day-to-day challenges of raising children. She has spent her adult life travelling the world and its wildernesses -- her previous book was Wild: An Elemental Journey.

Reservations, aside, I loved this book and raced through it. Griffiths explores and examines the deep importance of nature, animals, the world of the imagination, the desire to roam unfettered, the need for a "tribe," and the connection to the world of, for want of a better word, "faery" to the process of children maturing into self-reliant and self-confident adults. I'm sure many of us remember long, lazy days of summer when we were shooed outside to play in the morning and didn't have to return except for mealtimes (if we didn't pack a lunch to take with us). Adults were not supervising our play or overseeing our every move. We explored parks or woods, rode our bicycles through towns, created our own packs of friends, and lived in the world of childhood. Much of that seems unattainable today. I even cringe at times at the freedom I allowed my 8-14 year old children in the 1970s and 1980s to roam the neighborhood and for which I was the object of disapproval from some of their friends' (especially the girls') parents. We have become so attuned to "stranger-danger" that our children turn far too often to consumer products for entertainment rather than to their own landscapes.

In addition to the previously mentioned somewhat anthropological authorities that Griffiths invokes, she ranges widely through the literature of the Romantics, childhood classics such as The Secret Garden, Swallows and Amazons and Huckleberry Finn, progressive educational systems such as those set up by Tolstoy, Rabindinrath Tagore, and the villages of Reggio Emilia to find inspiration for alternative childhood experiences. She totally rejects the authoritarianism of regimented education which she condemns as a product of punishment-oriented Puritanism and a voracious need for capitalist labor. One of my favorite of her quotes is from Einstein, who when asked by a mother how to encourage her child to become a scientist, said, "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales."

This is a rich and provocative book. I'd recommend it to anyone who has children, grandchildren, any children in their lives or is interested in children's education.

I'm sure many of us remember long, lazy days of summer when we were shooed outside to play in the morning and didn't have to return except for mealtimes (if we didn't pack a lunch to take with us). Adults were not supervising our play or overseeing our every move. We explored parks or woods, rode our bicycles through towns, created our own packs of friends, and lived in the world of childhood. Much of that seems unattainable today.

Is this because parents are overly protective these days or do we live in more dangerous times. I am not so sure it is the latter. Yes I was one of those kids that was allowed out to play in the streets on my fourth birthday (in London) and I think I learned a lot without coming to any great harm.

Linda and Dan -- thanks for stopping by and your kind words.

Barry -- I think it has lots to do with media encouraging overprotective parents. The simple idea of endangering a child is terrifying to most of us.

Barry, I've thought about this a lot, especially having children that I would like encourage to be independent and self-reliant. The problem is that if I let them out into the world in the way children could be out in the world in the past, they would be the only ones out there. Thinking back to my own childhood, we were out in the woods or around the neighborhood, but there were always other children out there, too, and teenagers and adults who could see if anything was happening.

Currently, we're in a place where children ten and up are allowed to go places on their own and use public transport. My kids are loving the freedom to head off on their bikes or rollerblades for an hour or two. They are even happy to run errands for me, because they love the freedom and responsibility. Now, when we return to the US, where that is not the cultural norm, there will be an adjustment.

Interesting about the dilemma of letting your children out when they would be the only children out there. Some authorities claim that when there is a lot of children about, whatever remote risk of danger there might be decreases to an even lower level. If children were allowed to walk to and from school once more in groups as they used to, the problem could disappear.

I agree that there are cultural norms at work here. Children outside North America still manage well on their own. North Americans never seem to realize that the greatest danger to children is from people they know. They also don't realize the cost in keeping children coddled, so that they are unable to do things for themselves. As you say your children are even happy to run errands for me, because they love the freedom and responsibility they can have in their current environment.

>121 RidgewayGirl:

Shame, isn't it. I think it has something to do with city layout and urban density. I find it hard to believe Americans are somehow more freaky than everyone else.

When I was three, someone tried to kidnap me on the street in Cyprus, btw.

I find it hard to believe Americans are somehow more freaky than everyone else.

I have no trouble believing that.

Cynic!

What would be your explanation?

I would add into the mix is that a lot of people in the US live in suburban areas (and even some cities are more suburban than urban), and they are so used to going places in their cars that they don't even conceive of their children walking to places. That's one of the advantages of living in a real city. I am very glad I grew up in the city, and also that in summers I had the opportunity to explore the woods, and that I had parents who wanted to encourage us to be self-reliant and make our own mistakes so we could learn from them.

Rebecca, that's how I grew up in suburbia -- where we returned home when we got hungry. In the US, that does not exist any longer. It was reasonably safe because there were other children and teenagers out doing the same thing.

Lola, from what I have seen having alternately lived in the US and Europe for my adult life, there is a culture of fear in the US that seems absent in Europe, although there is some of it creeping into the UK. The media here reports news and the media in the US is stuck in a pattern of luring viewers with graphic crime stories and reasons to be anxious. On turning on the news in Germany, I'm faced with a color piece on how to inseminate an elephant (long gloves) and in the US, I was faced with increasingly lurid enticements to stay tuned to find out about When Escalators Kill (I did not stay tuned). Media goes with what gets people to watch and they can't look away from these stories. I don't know why they don't occur here outside of the tabloids. That's my theory, although I remember Canada as having been less fearful that the US, despite getting the American media. So maybe I'm wrong.

>127 RidgewayGirl:

Oh, fear, yes. Interesting remarks about the media... I'm still straddling two worlds, sort of, but I don't get such prolonged immersive experience in Europe as you do. Hey, have you thought of blogging about things like these? While you are there and it's all fresh?

>126 rebeccanyc:

Very true--it seems that, with the exception of some really big cities, there just aren't any people on American streets, or if there are, it tends to be a homogeneous crowd--people working downtown on lunch hour, tourists.

It becomes apparent if you try walking around. San Diego, Houston, New Orleans (outside the Quarter, and that's touristy), not small towns by any means, all struck me as weirdly empty and deserted. And no kids in sight anywhere! (Kids in the streets was another thing I didn't realise I was used to until suddenly they weren't in the landscape.)

>126 rebeccanyc: First, I grew up in Texas. Second, I have lived in DFW, Houston, and a Chicago suburb. Third, I'm trying hard not to take issue with your "real city" remark. Lack of walking options don't immediately negate "city" or "real city" status. Have you noticed the difference in size between the state of Texas (or California, or Georgia) and oh, the whole Northeastern seaboard? Cities like Philadelphia, DC, Boston, New York, they didn't have the room to sprawl like Houston, or Dallas, or San Antonio. I'm sure, if they did have the room, they would have. I find it fascinating that there's this weird insistence that East Coast city life is THE only way a city should exist. I love New York and Chicago about as much as I love San Antonio and Houston; but I don't consider any of them lesser or greater because of their walkability and/or mass transit.

That's my theory, although I remember Canada as having been less fearful that the US, despite getting the American media.

I think in general Canadians view our streets as safer than the US. (For one thing, we like our gun control laws.) But there are differences within communities. My daughters' friends who go to public school have much more freedom than their friends who go to Catholic school. Some of the paranoia of some the Catholic school parents is just mind boggling. I also see friends with parents who were not born in Canada as much more protective than friends with parents who grew up here--which has a certain logic to it.

>129 lesmel: I guess I think of a city as based on population density, not the size of the population. I recognize that there are cities in terms of population that are very spread out and that they are cities. Perhaps I shouldn't have used the term "real" to refer to a densely populated city, but my impression of spread-out cities (and I have relatives who live in them) is that they aren't the kind of places I would want to live because it's important to me to be able to walk around to places I want to go (I walk several miles a day just in the course of my daily activities -- pretty cheap exercise) and to not have to drive to get to the store, my job, etc. I guess it's not that I don't recognize that they're cities, it's just that I wouldn't want to live in them, and I'm sorry I struck a nerve with you.

And there is sprawl around the eastern seaboard cities -- we call them suburbs; they're the metropolitan area, not the city itself. Another reason eastern seaboard cities could stay compact is because they early on invested in public transportation, especially trains and subways.

Great review of Kith, Jane. I see that it isn't available in the US yet, so I'll look for it later this week.

Sorry to bring down the tone of the conversation, but 'long gloves' made me giggle...

Putting Perdita and Gift of Stones on my TBR list. I shall read them to my goats who are complaining of lack of cultural opportunities. And this after Beloved just finished installing antique Art Deco chandeliers in all the goat barns (I kid you not). Having acquired two chickens, we are currently designing the chicken mansion.

Visiting family the last week of May and first week of June, just now getting back into the routine.

Enjoyed the discussion about kids and streets. I think where I live (sort of the suburban sprawl just outside the city limits of Sarasota), older kids (10+) roam the neighborhood and go to the malls, but everyone is either bused to school or driven by parents -- partly because of the distance and dearth of sidewalks in the county. Don 't see too many kids in downtown Sarasota (a very touristy town) except around the movie theatre, but they are on the beaches and in the playgrounds -- mostly with parents.

134> I'm sure the goats would be enlightened, Mary. Surely they need to rise to their elegant surroundings ;-)

Literary stops on the travels:

1. Connemara, Flat Rock, NC -- home of Carl Sandburg

His library of over 8000 books is in the house, but we weren't allowed to take pictures inside.

Mary -- Sandburg's wife raised goats too, and they still have a going concern at Connemara.

2. Roger Tory Peterson Institute, Jamestown, NY

Web address: https://literarysojourns.shutterfly.com

Dadists in Paris, 1921, photo by Man Ray

I went to Connemara many years ago--a lovely experience, and I remember the little black-faced goats very well! Sounds like you had a fairly wide-ranging and lovely trip.

Nice photo!

I will be in Asheville in a few weeks and might have a chance to visit Connemara. Any chance you have Carl Sandburg recommendations?

138> We did, Deb -- and saw lots of family.

139> Just finished a bio of Mina Loy -- review to come soon.

140> Dan, Connemara's not too far from Asheville and a lovely drive through the Blue Ridge. I picked up The People, Yes and Rootabaga Stories at the gift shop, but I haven't had a chance to read them yet. My husband is enjoying The People, Yes.

Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy by Carolyn Burke

I found Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy an utterly absorbing biography not only of a fascinating woman but also of the emergence and evolution of the Modern in the first half of the 20th Century. Although not well known today, Loy was at the center of Modernism's experimentation and social life as a painter, poet, Futurist, Dadaist, and designer.

Born Mina Gertrude Löwry in London in 1882 to a Hungarian Jewish tailor and a Methodist "English Rose," Mina was, even as a child, at odds with her bourgeois, religious mother. At 17, she began her art studies in Munich and London, eventually moving to Paris where she met her first husband, Stephen Haweis. It was a disastrous marriage, probably only embarked upon because Mina was pregnant, and her father would supply the married couple with a living allowance. The couple moved to Florence where living was cheaper and where Mina became involved with the Futurists having an affair with Marinetti, proclaimer of The Futurist Manifesto. In response to Marinetti's and the Futurists' general misogyny, Loy drafted her Feminist Manifesto: http://literarymovementsmanifesto.wordpress.com/text-2/mina-loy-feminist-manifes...

Migrating from Paris to Florence to New York and back to Paris, Loy became friends with Gertrude Stein, Djuna Barnes, Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Duchamp, Carl Van Vechten, Mabel Dodge, Luhan, Man Ray and the other luminaries of the teens and twenties. She was accepted into the Salon d'Automne, acted with Williams at the Provincetown Players, was published in the little magazines of the period, and participated in the bohemian life as a great beauty and wit. She became the lover of Arthur Cravan aka Fabian Lloyd, a boxer-poet and nephew of Oscar Wilde. When she became pregnant in 1918, the couple fled to Mexico as Cravan was avoiding the draft. He was drowned in a sailing accident, and their daughter was born in 1919.

Burke's biography of Loy draws on thousands of letters and works, published and unpublished, from the period as well as many interviews with surviving Dadaists (Burke's research went on for years, and the book was published in 1996). She is sympathetic to, but objectively balanced in her portrait of Loy, who was a complex, rather narcissitic, highly creative artist. Her reputation was eclipsed with the rise of the Modern formalists and the New Critics in the 30s and 40s, but many have championed her work including Ezra Pound; the Black Mountain poets, Kenneth Rexroth; her son-in-law, Julien Levy; and the poet Jonathan Williams, who interviewed her in Aspen in 1965 shortly before her death. An edition of her poetry The Lost Lunar Baedeker edited by Roger Conover is still in print as are some other collections of her writings.

I had run across Loy's name here and there in my readings of the Moderns, but knew nothing about her until I encountered some of her poems and "The Feminist Manifesto" in the latest edition of the Norton Anthology of English Lit -- it was the first time she had been included. I read Burke's biography because I was curious about who she was. It led me into a whole new understanding of the Modern scene than I had encountered before. Highly recommended.

An interesting interview of Carolyn Burke about the book is here: http://jacketmagazine.com/05/mina-iv.html

>142 janeajones:

I've been seeing that book in a secondhand shop for two years now--nobody seems to remember Mina Loy! (And I'm not quick to pick up biographies...)

I'm not persuaded about her Dadaism, though. Dada didn't take root among English speakers, what little seed landed in the US was brought by Duchamp and quickly extinguished, in England there was none. Dada is Swiss, German and French. In that picture, for instance, Cocteau, Man Ray and Pound certainly don't deserve to be called Dadaists.

Thanks for linking to that manifesto. For comparison, here's Valentine de Saint-Point's (one of rare female Futurists), in response to Marinetti:

The Manifesto of Futurist Woman

Women are Furies, Amazons, Semiramis, Joans of Arc, Jeanne Hachettes, Judith and Charlotte Cordays, Cleopatras, and Messalinas: combative women who fight more ferociously than males, lovers who arouse, destroyers who break down the weakest and help select through pride or despair, despair through which the heart yields its fullest return: Let the next wars bring forth heroines like that magnificent Catherine Sforza, who, during the sack of her city, watching from the ramparts as her enemy threatened the life of her son to force her surrender, heroically pointing to her sexual organ, cried loudly: “Kill him, I still have the mold to make some more!”

This (like futurism itself) predates fascism, btw, and is pure turn-of-the-century biologistic view of the sexes, as codified by Otto Weininger.

Lola -- another lost fascinating woman -- at least to me -- I had never heard of Valentine de Saint Point. Interesting counterpoint to Loy. I'm not entirely convinced of Loy's Dadaism either, especially in her visual work which owes more to the Pre-Raphaelites, Cubist collage, and later, perhaps, the Surrealists. But she ran with some of the Dada crowd in Paris and those, like Duchamp, who ended up in Greenwich village during WWI.

I haven't read enough of her poetry to make a judgement -- I've ordered The Lost Lunar Baedeker -- there were too many fragmentary quotes in the bio, for me to make a cohesive judgement.

I always get her mixed up with Myrna Loy--haha!

>144 janeajones:

I'll want to get that too.

The biography looks a right brick but I think your review did it, next time I'll rescue the poor dust magnet.

I first came across Saint-Point in La femme futuriste (uh, wrong touchstone and no other is available--I meant the book by S. Contarini), but she seems to have been quite famous once upon a time.

>145 Cariola:

That IS an unfortunate similarity of names. Many probably assume "Mina" is misspelt and the actress meant.

I had never heard of Mina Loy but I am glad to have been introduced to her. And Valentine de Saint Point is quite fascinating too!

146> Lola -- I downloaded the bio on my Kindle -- actually it was the first book I've read on it -- so it wasn't quite so daunting -- and I read it as we travelled.

145 and 146> 0ddly or not so oddly enough, the confusion is a common one. Even Wikipedia states at the top of their entry on her -- "Not to be confused with Myrna Loy" -- there are anecdotes that the actress, born Myrna Adele Williams, actually adopted Loy as her stage name because of Mina Loy.

>142 janeajones: fascinating review and conversation

> 141 wish The People, Yes were on kindle. Most of Sandburg's works aren't.

>137 janeajones:. Don't care if they are Dadists, futurists or .........ists; it's a great photo.

Thanks for telling us about Mina Loy.

The Seven Sisters by Margaret Drabble

Candida Wilton is a woman of a certain age who finds herself divorced, distant from her three daughters, living alone in a small London flat, and somewhat at loose ends. She swims at a health club, picks up with acquaintances whom she met while taking a seminar on Dante's Inferno, and convinces them to take a trip to Sicily to visit the places mentioned by Dante.

The book is divided into four sections, each with a different viewpoint. The first and longest is Candida's diary that she has written to examine her life and situation -- it ends as she is about to embark on her Sicilian adventure:

I have just reread the whole of this diary. I am not proud of it. What a mean, self-righteous, self-pitying voice is mine. Shall I learn to speak in other tones and other tongues when I leave these shores? Do I still have it in me to find some happiness? Health, wealth, and the pursuit of happiness. The new declaration of our human rights.

Let me write this down. I am happy now. I am full of happy anticipation.

The Seven Sisters is a novel full of literary allusions and sly nods to such classics as Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook and Elizabeth von Arnim's The Enchanted April. While it's not my favorite of Drabble's later novels, it was an entirely satisfying summer read.

>151 janeajones: I have that one somewhere in the stacks.

Margaret Drabble represents one of the prominent gaps in my reading. Do you have a favorite?

I read a lot of Margaret Drabble in the 70s and 80s, but really haven't kept up with her at all. Nice to hear about one of her later works.

152> It's worth reading.

153 and 154> I read lots of her earlier books in the 70s too. Of her later ones -- which really deal with the aging process, my favorite is probably The Sea Lady though I also liked The Witch of Exmoor.

Thanks Jane, I'll look for those.

I've never read anything by Drabble, but just checked my library and they have The Red Queen and The Sea Lady. I'll have to put them on my reading list for later this year.

http://www.willacather.org/cather-tours/cather-home-tour

The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

I loved this book. I was first introduced to Willa Cather as a teenager when my mother urged me to read My Antonia. Over the years I have randomly picked up other novels by Cather -- Sapphira and the Slave Girl, O Pioneers!, Shadows on the Rock, Obscure Destinies, and the odd short story that has been anthologized in lit. textbooks. This is my favorite.

The Song of the Lark, a kunstlerroman, chronicles the adolescence and growth into artistry of Thea Kronborg, the daughter of a Methodist minister in a small northern Colorado town who becomes a renowned opera diva.

Thea, a middle child in a large Swedish family, seems destined for something larger, even as a young girl. She is noticed by the town doctor, adored by a young railway man, provided with piano lessons by her mother, and driven to hard work and accomplishment by her piano teacher. Eventually she makes her way to Chicago to study piano, and her voice is discovered.

Thea's journey is fascinating, but it is her surroundings (her kith and kin, if you will) that make the book so rich and resonant. Cather captures the life and landscape of growing up in a small Plains town vividly: the relationships among the siblings in a large family, the small town scrutiny of the preacher's daughter, the uneasy relationship between the "American" side and the "Mexican" side of the town, the central role the railroad played in the settling of the West, and most importantly the natural landscape, both of Colorado Plains and later of the Arizona cliff lands.

Cather herself grew up in Red Cloud, Nebraska, in similar circumstances, and much of Thea's childhood draws from Cather's -- down to the description of the prized bedroom which she claimed for herself in her teens. We went to Cather's childhood home in Red Cloud a couple of years ago, and the bedroom remains preserved as it is described in The Song of the Lark.

Cather's characterization of Thea is unsentimental, recognizing the hardness that one must develop in order to achieve great artistry. In many ways, this is an old-fashioned book -- full of wonderful characters and unashamed of its values.

>159 janeajones: I loved this book, too. In fact, I'm a big fan of Cather. The only one I didn't care for, which is a favorite of so many readers, was Death Comes for the Archbishop.

I tried to find her grave in Jaffrey, NH last summer, but had no luck.

Enjoyed your review of The song of the Lark. I am glad to see a picture of her bedroom rather than her grave.

Ditto to what Barry said!

I read my first Cather a couple of months ago. One of Ours. I really enjoyed it, and will definitely read more. I enjoyed your review of The Song of the Lark.

Haven't read Cather in decades, but maybe I should . . .

Been absent for awhile -- busy opening for the fall semester of my last year of teaching (ah -- retirement beckons!). So some brief reviews of the latest reads.


The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker

This is a hard, harsh book about being a sharecropper in the mid-20th century American South. Walker's first book pulls no punches about how the humiliations of the Jim Crow system twisted the humanity of black men, who then vented their rage upon their women and children. There is a breath of hope in Grange Copeland's "third life" when he rises to save his granddaughter. Not a book for the faint of heart.


The Treasure; or, Herr Arne's Hoard by Selma Lagerlof

The Treasure is a twisted fairy-tale, ghost story that begins with a grisly robbery-murder scene at a parsonage. The only survivor is the young orphan, Elsalill, foster-sister to parson's murdered niece. Elsalill soon faces a desperate choice -- to save her foster-sister from wandering restless through the world or to run away with a dashing Prince Charming, who may be her foster-sister's murderer. Lagerlof's tale is fairytale and allegory, steeped in Swedish folklore and tinged with feminist sentiment. A short, but highly satisfying read.


Hunt the Slipper by Violet Trefusis

I found this a somewhat amusing book about vapid members of upperclass English society in the 1930s. In her Introduction, Lorna Sage describes the book as "a splendidly malicious commentary on England, and the on the aristocratic English society that she (Trefusis) had escaped...." If that's your thing -- enjoy.


The Caves of Perigord by Martin Walker

This novel is a tripartite narration. It begins in the present with a sort of romantic mystery about a stolen piece of Paleolithic art. Then there is the story of those who created the art at Lascaux and other caves in the Perigord. Finally we have the tale of how the piece of art was taken from a Perigord cave by a WWII Resistance fighter when he and others attempted to sabotage the Nazi war effort as the Allies were about to launch their D-Day attack on Normandy. The contemporary mystery/romance is a bit lame. The Paleolithic tale is somewhat intriguing but ends in a rather cliche fashion. It is obvious that the author is most interested in the exploits of the Resistance in the face on the Allied invasion -- and his after-notes indicate that the characters are based on the exploits of Andre Malraux, Francois Mitterand, Baron Phillipe de Gunzbourg, Jacques Poirier and George Hiller -- all vital to the Perigord Resistance.

I'm looking forward to catching up with all of you again -- but it will probably be a slow process.

Grange Copeland sounds intense. Welcome back. Hope you semester is off to a good start.

Thanks, Dan -- it's off to a start -- some good, some not so good -- basically my courses are good, the academic politics not so much, but I'm trying to avoid the morass (not my usual stance, but it's not my fight any longer).

Alice Walker was the youngest of 8 children raised in this 4 room house in Eatonton, GA. Her father was a share-cropper, and her mother worked as a maid. Her parents were dedicated to the education of their children. When we visited the site this summer, the house had become a farm store with a room dedicated to the history of the Walker family -- put together by Walker's sister, Dr. Mamie Lee Walker. The proprietor of the store was quite admiring of Dr. Walker, not so much of Alice.

http://deepsouthmag.com/2013/08/from-place-to-page/

Academic politics is a national disaster. Sorry you have deal with that side of it.

>168 janeajones: neat to see that.

Welcome back! Nice to catch up with you, and I enjoyed The Treasure too. It might have been you who introduced me to Selma Lagerlof.

Jane, not much longer, eh?

The Walker home, though a little primitive, looks quite lovely.

I've heard that Alice can be a bit of a prima donna. But she sure can write.

Deb -- honestly, I can't blame her. I'm the oldest of 8 kids, and I can't imagine growing up in a house with 4 rooms -- we had an upstairs with 4 bedrooms and a bath, and a downstairs with a huge kitchen, dining room, huge living room and a bath -- and it was often chaos. The proprietor of the store was just a tad patronizing.

Interesting photo of the Walker house. I don't get a sense of how big it is. 4 rooms suggests it's small, but it depends o the room size. We were 8 people in 5 rooms, not including the one bath.

Speaking of small homes, my local public radio station has a program called Radio Rookies which involves getting teenagers to interview people important to them and talk about their lives, with support from professionals at the radio station. Yesterday I heard an episode in which the teenager lived with eight other family members in a one-bedroom apartment!!! http://www.wnyc.org/story/cost-being-poor-teen-investigates-his-own-family/

174 -- it wasn't very big, and there was no bath.

175 -- interesting program -- sounds like a great school they've graduated from.

The Italian Girl by Iris Murdoch

Lovely writing, silly plot, complicated family, interesting philosophical musings. Overall, I enjoyed the book.

Conquistador by Archibald MacLeish

In 1933 Archibald MacLeish won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry for his narrative poem Conquistador. The poem is based on the memoir of Bernal Diaz del Castillo -- The True History of the Conquest of New Spain. Diaz was a conquistador in the company of Fernando Cortez during the conquest of Mexico. His memoir, written over 30 years after the conquest, partially in response to the historian Gomara's accounts of the conquest and partially to seek reward from the King of Spain, emphasizes the important contributions of the ordinary soldiers in the Spanish conquest.

MacLeish had followed the path of Cortez and his soldiers through Mexico and used his knowledge of the topography of the Mexican landscape and Diaz's account in his poetic re-imagining.

The narrator is Diaz, at the end of this life, recounting his story of the conquest and wondering at its effects:

"The tedious veteran jealous of his fame!"
What is my fame or the fame of these my companions?
Their tombs are the bellies of Indians: theirs are the shameful

Graves in the wild earth: in the Godless sand:
None know the place of their bones: as for mine
Strangers will dig my grave in a stony land:

Even my sons have the strangeness of dark kind in them:
Indian dogs will bark at dusk by my sepulchre:
What is my fame!

Interesting. I know nothing about MacLeish, but just read a selection of his letters featured in an old Paris review from 1982.

Hate to ask the silly question, but did you like Conquistador?

I did -- on a historical level mostly. It didn't take me anywhere emotionally. It worked as literature -- good, but not great.

Nice to see you back, Jane!

I have been lurking -- just not really ambitious about writing reviews and definitely behind in my reading.

A Burnable Book by Bruce Holsinger.

I found this to be a thoroughly entertaining, well researched medieval mystery set in the 14th c. London, Westminster and Southwark of Chaucer and his literary friend John Gower. Holsinger is a medieval literary scholar and has obviously delighted himself by delving into the intersecting milieus of court intrigue, legalistic bureaucracies, foreign intrigue and the stews of Southwark's underbelly. The characters are memorable, and the mystery is a bit of a wild wide. Highly recommended for those who enjoy this genre.

I might give A burnable book a try.

Never heard of Archibald MacLeish (1892–1982), and very interesting to find here and read more on Wikipedia. Is there any particular reason you read Conquistador? I would be interested to read some of his non-fiction or other poetry, for example his World War I poetry or later works.

I'll keep A Burnable Book in mind for when I'm in the mood for something fun and historical.

Barry and Alison -- I think you'd enjoy A Burnable Book.

Edwin -- I have my Intro to Poetry students each read a different long narrative poem to do a report on, and they can choose what they'd like to read (from a list I've prepared). One of my students chose this one, and since I hadn't read it previously, I obviously needed to. MacLeish is probably best known in American literary circles as the author of the play J.B.. I've not read much more of his poetry, I'm afraid, except that that is anthologized in collections and texts.

Amazon keeps recommending A Burnable Book, but I am not too into the historical mysteries.

Busy holidays what with visiting a new granddaughter in MD over Thanksgiving, finishing up my penultimate academic semester, babysitting and cookie baking with 2 1/2 year old grandson, decorating and wrapping, cooking and eating. So very bnef reviews of the last books of the year:


31. The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri

A quiet, lyrical, anti-romantic novel, evoking the landscapes, smells, atmospheres of both Calcutta and Providence, RI, tells the story of the diverging lives of two brothers, Udayan and Subhash Mitra. During the late 1960s, Udayan becomes involved in the left-wing Naxalite movement while Subhash moves to Rhode Island for graduate studies. Highly recommended.


32. Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tales by Marina Warner

Warner's book is exactly what the title says it is. While I didn't find anything revelatory in it as I have read pretty widely about fairy tales, it's chock full of information about both the tales and the critical approaches in studying fairy tales. It has a great bibliography. For anyone new to fairy tale lit. crit. this is a great introduction. For someone who wants to delve a bit deeper, I recommend Warner's From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and their Tellers.



33. Gillespie and I by Jane Harris

I read this one on my Kindle over Thanksgiving. While it was entertaining, I was not nearly so taken with Gillespie and I as were many other reviewers. I found the unreliable narrator and the split time frames a bit slick; I didn't much like any of the characters, and the plot was finally pretty thin.



34. Bashful Bob and Doleful Dorinda by Margaret Atwood

I read this one because I had never read a children's book by Atwood, one of my favorite authors. With rollicking alliteration Atwood tells the story of the meeting and partnership of Bashful Bob, forgotten by his mother outside a beauty shop and subsequently raised by a trio of dogs, and Doleful Dorinda, living a Cinderella-existence with distant relatives. The plot is silly and the wordplay delightful: I found it amusing, but I'd be careful about the familial background of any child I'd read or recommend it to.

I added A Burnable Book to my wishlist.

And spending time with grandchildren does tend to cut into reading time, but I never seem to mind it. :)

Nor do I, Colleen.