Fairies. Fairy tales. Stories. The Tim Burton movie Alice in Wonderland opens this week. I am usually a “wait til the DVD comes out” kind of gal, but I can hardly wait to see this movie!
I read Alice when I was eight years old and have used it as a reference guide my entire life. The alternate world created by Lewis Carroll has served me well as a sort of handbook to explain the vicissitudes of life.
I have always been able to relate to this picture
When I am dealing with difficult or incomprehensible situations, I think to myself. “I have simply fallen down another rabbit hole” or “uh oh, I have wandered through the looking glass” and I look for the clues that will lead me out again. I can’t even list the number of times I have stood with a frozen smile on my face listening to someone who seems to be speaking jabberwocky.
Life, it turns out, is populated with red queens.
Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen. We all know this person, don't we?
They all seem to wield enormous egos and having read Alice in Wonderland at such a tender age, I have always approached these individuals with a cheerful sort of cunning and my inner, instinctive reverse psychology that can be learned between the pages of Lewis Carroll’s funny, twisted, wickedly insightful books.
A.S. Byatt (who is completely brilliant and who is my writing hero and who I don’t even TRY to emulate) says it best in this article which is also a wonderful resource guide for young parents on the brink of guiding their children into a reading life. Her assessment of Alice also seems to suggest that this is a guidebook for life:
Pilgrims - An illustration for an old children's book
I love Thanksgiving. I love stuffing the turkey, making the pies, deciding how to prepare the sweet potatoes…I have a couple of recipes one old, one new. My daughter was born the night before Thanksgiving and her birthday falls every so often on this best of family holidays, in fact her birthday is today! I have so much to be thankful for… My husband, my darling, beautiful daughter, the life of my mother, my sisters, my gorgeous nieces, nephews, beloved first cousins a surviving uncle and his dear wife, the wonderful men I work for… I know there are more who should be on the list… like… my friends, near and far. What an amazing country we live in…
I hate to read stories about school districts and municipalities which are suppressing the traditional story of Thanksgiving such as this one. Making construction paper pilgrim hats, or drawing turkey feathers by tracing my little girl hands provide an especially strong memory of my little girl grade school years. The religiosity of Thanksgiving is part of our heritage, the relationship with the Indians, the Native Americans the Pilgrims encountered and were assisted by, can and should be told romantically. I am weary of political correctness. Let’s retain SOME of our traditions.
One of my favorite books from my girlhood was “Constance, A story of Early Plymouth by Patricia Clapp.“ I think I read it in fourth grade, but it gave me a firm foundation in understanding the Pilgrim story and the challenges they faced their first hard winter here in the New World. Naturally, it was written to appeal to a young, romantic reader such as myself. There was a a wonderful mix of romance and the hard realities of life experienced by those early Pilgrim souls. For years after reading the book, I wanted to name my child Damaris – the name of Constance’s younger sister. I checked “Constance” out of my public library in Naperville, Illinois in 1969 or so. Later, when Amazon came around, I ordered a used copy, so I would always have it, to share with my grandchildren someday. I think it is out of print, which is a shame…
Apparently, the author is a descendant of the real Constance, who left the Pilgrim colony with her family to farm independently. The book is written as a diary and it is compelling reading, even if you are all grown up.
I love biographies. I especially love biographies about writers. Interestingly, the more biographies you read about writers the more you learn how the skeletons of their novels are drawn from real bits of their lives. Being something of a writer myself, I am fascinated by this since I also draw on my own past or observances of others as a starting point for characters or situations. (I stress starting point.)
Reading biographies of literary figures may intrigue me because rooting about in a writer’s personal history feels something like conducting an archeological dig. I love discovering the real history or inspiration behind some of my favorite novels. The Guardian has a review today of a new book by Paula Byrne, Mad World, about the real life family who influenced Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.
Apparently, Sebastian Flyte, Waugh’s teddy bear dependent friend who tragically descends into alcoholism was based on his real life friend Hugh Lygon. The beauty of fiction is exemplified in Waugh’s ability to transform the ‘dull dog’ Hughie into the heart achingly tragic Sebastian.
“Evelyn had been at Oxford with Hugh Lygon, the middle son, with whom, according to one not wholly reliable source, he had conducted an affair. Certainly, he had been bewitched by gentle, charming Hughie, many of whose characteristics – girlish beauty, floppy blond locks, the ubiquitous teddy bear – famously reappear in the portrayal of Sebastian, with whom Charles Ryder is so infatuated in the novel. Yet for all his charm, Hughie was rather a dull dog, and hopelessly alcoholic, and it was with Hugh’s sisters that Waugh formed a far more fruitful friendship, especially with Lady Mary and Lady Dorothy, or Maimie and Coote as they were more informally known. His letters to the girls – comic, tender, playfully obscene – are some of the most delightful he ever wrote.”
The English are the master of nicknames, aren’t the? This ability for nicknames is demonstrated by another family, the Mitfords,who translate poignantly from fact to fiction. I would highly recommend reading Nancy Mitford’s books The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate and then follow up by reading Nancy Lovell’s wonderfully moving biography The Mitford Sisters. The quote in the picture of the Lygon family inserted above may be my favorite quote in all of literature. If you do nothing else, read the first page of The Pursuit of Happiness. It is my favorite beginning of all time. These books are a wonderful glimpse into a vanished way of life.
The Mitford brood... an endlessly fascinating family.
“What’s in a name?” asks Juliet. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Yet, in this 60th anniversary year of Nineteen Eighty-Four (a brilliant title), you can only wonder about the fate of Orwell’s masterpiece if it had been published under its working title of “The Last Man in Europe”. And what about Portnoy’s Complaint (“A Jewish Patient Begins his Analysis”) or The Waste Land (“He do the Police in Different Voices”) or Gone With the Wind (“Baa! Baa! Black Sheep”)?
Would you have read Trimalchio in West Egg? How about The High Bouncing Lover? No? Then you would have missed reading The Great Gatsby. As far as I am concerned, The Last Man in Europe is the best of the bunch…
A new online, digital archive of original manuscripts will soon be available for viewing. The scribblings, crossouts and letters of many literary giants from Charlotte Bronte to Oscar Wilde wil be accesssible to all the scholars and novices (like me) who would die to see source material we would never previously have had a chance of seeing. The collection includes”handwritten versions of Blake’s The Four Zoas, Emily Brontë’s Gondal poems, and complete drafts of Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield and Oliver Twist.”
I think a truly great book is one you can re-read and enjoy as much the second time as you did the first. I don’t re-read many books because there are so many new books to read. I feel I should spend my reading time reading new novels and biographies. Sometimes, it seems there is a dearth of new material and I flop around, fish out of water like, wanting a book that gave me the same expereince as such and such a book. It was during one of these unsettled in-between-a-good-book times I re-read ‘Possession’ by A.S. Byatt. It was every bit as satisfying as if reading it for the first time.
Byatt’s novels can be very challenging. I have to admit, I have not read all of them. I was stumped in ‘The Virgin in the Garden’ by the brilliant boy, Marcus, who sees what I can only assume is geometry, “He saw intersecting cones, stretching to infinity … he saw that he was at the, or a, point of intersection, and that if it could not pass through it would shatter the fragile frame to make a way.” Being able to see math or geometry in my head is certainly one of my deficiencies. I can barely add and subtract mentally and when I do, it never turns out well. When I was reading the passages concerning Marcus, my eyes crossed trying to imagine what this child was experiencing and because I was working on a masters at the time, I decided I would have to save the Frederica books for another summer, winter, whatever…
But I have read Byatt’s short stories and the two novellas in ‘Angels and Insects’ and I must say …ooo … they are very interesting and enjoyable in a voyeuristic, sometimes creepy kind of way. Those crazy Victorians! Imagine what they would do with the Internet! ‘Possession’ remains my favorite Byatt book.
She has written a new book and it sounds like she has returned to the novelistic form more similar to Possession than her more recent books. The reviews about ‘The Children’s Book’ appeal to my rampant Anglophilia. It takes as it’s subject the latter decades during the Victorian period leading up to World War I. This stretch of British history is the decisive period where many of our ideas concerning idyllic childhood came from. It was also the time when fairy tales became required childhood reading. It is a romantic time, but like so much of life, it had a seamy underbelly. I am torn between loving the romance and tradition it created and being enlightened and horrified by the untold secrets people kept. It is reminiscent of my love of fashion plates. The engravings are idealized renderings of the fashions of the time. The reality was actually muddy hems, ruined shoes and little variety in the average woman’s wardrobe. The women portrayed by the fashion plates were a minuscule percentage of the female population. I know this and while I am comforted by the ideal, intellectually I am fascinated by the reality.
The bottom line is – I must have this book! It will not be released in the U.S. until OCTOBER! I can’t wait that long, so I am ordering from Amazon UK today, here is a link if you would like to read it now as well. This is shaping up to be a great reading summer. So many books! So little time.
“It was as if, in her very private life, the writers and personalities of the period became her surrogate friends.”
A First Edition of Sense and Sensibility
I can understand this approach to collecting. I love battered books as well. I love old book stores. I love opening the cover and reading, “To Helen from Aunt Mary, Christmas 1942…” I imagine Helen. I imagine Aunt Mary. What happened? How did this book end up becoming separated from Helen?Paula Peyraud loved her books. Imagine – a first edition of Sense and Sensibility…
One of the things I love best about reading blogs is the ability to click links. It is like going on an intellectual treasure hunt. Usually, the links to news stories send you to something which has recently appeared in a periodical or website. The power of Google, however, gives us news stories going back into the 19th century! What fun!
One of my dreams is to finally visit the Bronte Parsonage at Haworth someday. Naturally, I fantasize about wandering around by myself, like the characters in the Justine Picardie novel “Daphne,” I realize this is a fantastic delusion, I know the reality will be that my visit, when it occurs, will take place in a group of fellow pilgrims, looking at the hallowed dining room table in a carefully controlled tourist environment.
You can view Charlotte's wedding clothes and, according to Ms. Picardie, a lock of Emily's hair! OOOO - lovely!
So, imagine my delight when I found this story written for the Telegraph of London by Justine Picardie about a seance of sort which was conducted at the Parsonage in 2006! OOOO! This is a delicious article about the souls of the Bronte’s lingering in their beloved home. Two psychics were invited to wander the parsonage and see if they could pick up any vibes. One, the article relates, was Henrietta Llewelyn Davies, the granddaughter of one of the Llewelyn Davies brothers – one of, “the Lost Boys upon whom JM Barrie based Peter Pan.” Like the Emily Dickinson properties the possibility of a ghostly presence sends shivers up the spine.
I can’t dismiss the the cosmic link between the Brontes and the Lost Boys, as the name Llewelyn Davies continues to pop up in my readings….it is lovely to be shivery.
I recently finished reading Justine Picardie’s novel Daphne. I hesitated before ordering it with the gigantic Barnes and Noble gift certificate I get for Christmas from my work buddies each year ($500!!!!) because I hate it when I order a book that disappoints. That’s why I usually save my certificate for purchasing sure things like hard backs of books I have already read and want to add to my permanent library. How stupid is that?
Anyway – I took the plunge, entered my gift cert number and hit the button … I then foolishly began perusing Amazon reviews and started to doubt myself. So, when the book actually arrived, I didn’t dive in, I glanced at it out of the corner of my eye as it sat next to my bed for two weeks. Then, I moved it around with me wherever I went, leaving it on my mother’s writing desk where I read in the mornings for two days and the coffee table which is piled with books for another week.
I decided to read two warm up books, The Seance (good) and The Ghost Writer (creepy good) both by John Harwood. During all if this, I was still working away on biographies of Emily Dickinson, Emma Hamilton and Georgiana, The Duchess of Devonshire. I am almost finished with Emily, 3/4’s finished with Emma and 1/4 with Georgiana.
So, I finally started Daphne on a dark and rainy evening. I LOVED IT. I read it while stirring sauce, running bath water, letting the dog out. It was completely gift certificate worthy. It is basically a a fictionalized account based during the time Daphne DuMaurier was writing her biography about Branwell Bronte in the late 1950’s. The story shifts back and forth from Daphne, her correspondence with a disgraced former Bronte curator, Alex Symington and a fictional character who is contemporary.Therefore it qualifies as my favorite kind of book: a back-n-forth book. For informational purposes and clarity, both DuMaurier and Symington were actual people. The plot concerning the fictional modern character cleverly mimics Daphne’s greatest novel, Rebecca. This young woman is researching Daphne for a Phd thesis and comes across the correspondence between Daphne and Mr. Symington. She is slightly obsessed with Daphne, but you don’t feel as if she is round the bend. It really is atmospheric and well written and if you like a good literary mystery, while the mystery part is fairly low key, this is a good read. I read it during a rainy week, so that was even better.
Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
Some caveats: I may have loved this so much because I knew a lot about Daphne. But don’t let that stop you. You can do some fun research. I understood the back story which is kind of alluded to in the novel but not really clarified to for purposes of brevity, I am sure. I have read almost all Daphne Du Maurier’s novels ( not the Branwell Bio – which I plan to add to my stack) and I have read the definitive Biography about her by Margaret Forster. This biography, if you like biographies, is excellent. Also, another very helpful thing to know is the gist of the story surrounding J.M.Barrie (Peter Pan)and the children who were his models for The Lost Boys. Actually, it is one of the saddest tales of family tragedy. As it happens, Peter Pan was Daphne DuMaurier’s first cousin. Being someone who has close cousinly relationships, I was very sympathetic to Daphne’s relationship with Peter. I was propelled into research about J.M. Barrie after watching Finding Never-land. This excellent website will give you heaps of background information and if you don’t feel incredibly sad after looking at all of the pictures, you aren’t well and I would suggest you stop taking your anti-depressants.
Paraphernalia 