Currently physically on my bedtable: Diana Preston, A
First-Rate Tragedy: Robert Falcon Scott and the Race to the South Pole
Worsley portrays his whole party sympathetically, and
each of them deserves respect. My reading of A First Rate Tragedy, in
contrast, is primed with the knowledge Robert Falcon Scott was not the first
to the pole. Therefore my consciously and larterly learned desire to recognize
accomplishment whether or not said deed is of greatest possible magnitude (thank
you Tock) will struggle against
my early conditioning, the ingrained capitalist tendency that only the most
first or costliest of anything is the best. So my Castor and Pollux will duel:
"Well, he wasn't first to the pole, and that's all" vs. "But
he was brave and determined
and whatever he did or did not do, others' perception of him as a doer
helped them to progress and achieve."
I have just finished it. I disliked its question marks, which were only x-height.
But it had great hyphens, slanted from southwest to northeast. Little details
of printing that affect the reading experience. I really liked that it
hasn't been USAnized and retains
all its Britishisms. Britishisms of spelling of course, but also of idiom, like
rumbustious instead of rambunctious, and not just the 90-year-old idioms of
the men on the expedition but also the quaintly and freshly alien (to me) idioms
of a British author.
One of Preston's threads was the idea of Being So Very British: the stiff upper
lip, the visceral blow that was the death of Victoria, the loyalty unto death
to the flag, the hatred of foreigners for the sin of not being British. This
attitude contributed to Scott's inflexibility in his planning, when any change
might be seen as his attempt to emulate the rival Amundsen; to the perception
of Amundsen as an unsporting interloper (the Pole belonging properly to England);
to Evans's not owning up to the injury that would impede the terrible flight
away from the lost Pole; and to numerous other details that either contributed
to the tragedy or to the perception of the dead as heroes rather than failures.
For Preston's writing to retain all the vigor of British English upholds the
British ideals that her book, without irony, projects.
The world as Anglocentric hinterland is promoted in two of Preston's figures
of speech. It's possible she, who is not a direct eyewitness, repeated the explorers'
own similes for what they encountered, but I don't think so because she uses
quotation marks wherever she cites someone directly. So I think these are hers:
crevasses in the ice as wide as Regent Street and abysses that would accommodate
St. Paul's Cathedral. England, by which all the world is properly measured.
Overall, Preston presented the expedition and its background evenhandedly, giving
perspectives that enable the contemporary reader to sympathize again with Scott
instead of to condemn him as a bumbling amateur, as the zeitgeist has lately
tended. These same explanations given now might, in 1913, have been interpreted
as excuses. An England humbled by the Titanic was an England ready to grasp
at the stoic self-sacrifice of Scott and his party. I wonder, if Scott had made
it to the Pole first and still died, whether would he have been memorialized
so to the point of martyrdom; or if he had survived the trek as the second party,
whether he'd've been as lionized .
Three points particularly strike me, none immediately connected to Scott's polar
trek:
981231
Ruthann Robson, a/k/a
When I chose this and the Skibell from the list above from the new book displays at the library, I took the latter because I assumed, from the title, it would be some goddess/womyn thing, and the former because I assumed, from the title, that it would be a treatment of name and identity. In Toni Morrison, particularly in Song of Solomon, naming is critical. In Moby-Dick, the protagonist opens by saying, "Call me Ishmael," but the name he was given is never stated. The Biblical metaphor of Ishmael as the cast-out son of Abraham is important. Anyway, the two women each have several names for several reasons. The name of another woman, who brings them together, flakes gradually from her office door's nameplate. All of this could imply many interesting things, but unfortunately, Robson goes nowhere with the possibilities she sets up. It's a love story.
F. A. Worsley, Shackleton's
Boat Journey
While waiting for The Endurance : Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition,
I took out this, which is as primary source fails to compel like another primary
source, Into Thin Air. I hope I enjoy the tertiary Endurance more.
But perhaps I am being unfair. I admire their perserverance (which word has
most effect if you stress the second, not the third, syllable) but perhaps I
didn't find the work as enriching as I might or ought because I feel guilty
for knowing I would be unable to survive such hardship or to demonstrate such
courage.
Antonia Fraser, Warrior
Queens
Good stuff. Boadica, whom any anglophile should love, particularly if said anglophile calls William the Conqueror by his pre-1066 epithet, the Bastard(as I do). Cleopatra, whose portrait Freud must have spent hours holding up with one hand. Other powerful woman whom I, with my Eurocentric education and tendencies, knew shamefully little about.
Cathleen Schine, The
Love Letter
I wrote to CLH:
I have begun another Cathleen Schine. Both The
Evolution of Jane and The Love Letter are set in fictional Connecticut
coastal towns, Barlow in the former and Pequot in the latter. I like that, and
I particularly like how bravely Schine messes with geography. Naturally my
novel also is set in Connecticut but if I took such liberties with my towns
(named "Old Lyme" and "Storrs"), I would feel like I was lying. It's called
fiction, lisa. I recently read some biographical material on Laura Ingalls
Wilder that said during The
Long Winter, another couple and their baby son lived with them.
I believed the biographer so my reaction was that of betrayal, that she had
lied to me. No, lisa, it's called fiction.
Anyway, in Pequot, there is a cliff on the beach; there's a prestigious small
college, Kathleen Hollyhock, amongst the quaintness; and there's a library founded
by the town founders, the Scattergoods. Hollyhock and Scattergoods sound Dickensian,
don't they? And the protagonist's bookshop is pink on the outside. A small liberal
arts school that only recently accepted men would Conn College, and Pequot also
sounds New Londonish. A cliff on a beach? Maybe Branford has a rocky coast,
but there's nary a cliff on the Connecticut coast. That pissed me off in The
Fountainhead, too, before all of Ayn Rand pissed me off: building a
house on a cliff over the Sound in Connecticut? A library founded by the town's
first family? Well, I'll allow the Griswolds and Noyeses to be telescoped for
poetic license. Pink bookshop though can be only the Remarkable Bookshop in
Westport. Damn it. Lying. No, lisa, fiction. On the other hand Wally Lamb's
Fisherman's Cove (Groton) in She's Come Undone and Three Rivers in I
Know This Much is True don't annoy me, maybe because his protagonists
and style aren't like my own.
Anyway, because they're both small literary novels starring women about my age,
I choose to believe that Schine writes slightly autobiographically. Therefore
it amuses me greatly that Schine is able to imbue her characters with flaws.
Besides a) a total lack of imagination, which leaves me with autobiography and
b) a writing style that tells, not shows (verboten because boring),
the greatest impediment to my novel is c) my refusal to imbue my protagonist
with any flaw, because she is obviously me, and I don't want anyone reading
me or my work to know that I'm not perfect. Jane misfiles things. Helen, in
The Love Letter, is arrogant and self-centered: more hitting the nail
of lisa on the head. Anyway, in Jane Schine is able to
indulge her literary side because Jane reads Darwin and other naturalists to
prepare for her Galapagos journey, and this excuses Schine's references. In
The Love Letter, Schine gives herself even more license because Helen
runs a bookstore and therefore has boundless cause to allude to this and that.
She is trying to discover if someone is an adulterer and recommends Anna
Karenina and Madame Bovary, to see if by his reaction he'll give
himself away. Stuff like that, only more subtle; of course I can remember only
the easy obvious stuff.
981201
Zilpha Keatley Snyder, The
Trespassers, Gib
Rides Home, Song
of the Gargoyle
Snyder's The
Egypt Game shaped my childhood. Out of loyalty to it, I continued to
seek out her books and at 24 found The Changeling, too late for it to
shape my childhood but well in time to evoke that era and to offer other perspectives
upon it. The Changeling stands out as the only book by a childhood favorite's
author that I came to as an adult and preferred to the childhood favorite. But
those two are entirely different. Anyway, with loyalty newly bolstered, I read
more Snyder. The
Gypsy Game, sequel to The Egypt Game, published in the past few
years, disappointed. The Egypt Game had two white kids, two black, and
two yellow (I use the terms advisedly) and Snyder handled it adroitly, neither
shirking nor exaggerating the issue. No more in The Gypsy Game.
And again she is weak in these three books, also recent. Is it because I am
older and more discriminating or because older authors lose their touch, their
finger on the pulse of childhood?
The
Trespassers (981126) was weakest. She brought up plot points without
explanation or context and dropped them. The protagonist's relationship with
her sensitive younger brother is realistically drawn, at least. Her name is
Cornelia and she is called Neely--shades of A
Tree Grows in Brooklyn, anyone? Although the two characters are otherwise
unalike. An unreliable lazy man is named William Logan, a little too close to
Willy
Loman for me. A ten-year-old reader wouldn't pick up these details, perhaps?
But to use "Arabian" to designate the Arabic culture instead
of a horse? Poor editing does no favors for a child whose vocabulary and general
knowledge grow with every book she reads.
Gib
Rides Home (981127) was stronger and felt realler, and this is because
Snyder drew it from her own father's stories and her feelings for him. The time
frame stretches too much for Gib to remain ignorant of key points for so long.
Characters have present-day sensibilities about orphans and orphanages too make
them more sympathetic to present-day readers, but since otherwise Snyder presented
a realistic setting, the anachronistic sympathy is jarring.
Song
of the Gargoyle (981128) offended least, writing-wise. The protagonist's
voice is described early as having recently gained its adult tones and later
as still having a boy's high pitch. Everything in the plot does get wrapped
up, but the framing story motivating the protagonist usually fades to wallpaper
as other concerns vie to the fore. Having made up country names that never occurred
in Europe, Snyder keeps her characters reciting Christian prayers. That half-and-half-ness
bothers me but my botheration doesn't necessarily mark a flaw.
Antonia Fraser, The
Wives of Henry VIII
I wanted a new copy of Mary, Queen of Scots to finish in New
Orleans since my pulpy copy dates back some ten dusty-shelved years, and in
the bookstore the day before I left I didn't find Mary but did find this,
nestled up against Alison "I don't use footnotes for direct quotations"
Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII. The difference in their intended
audience is evident from the one-word difference in the title. Fraser's audience
has enough history to know already how many wives he had and wishes to know
their histories; Weir's goes for the scandal--"Six wives! That's
worse than the current family."
Apparently I became perhaps too involved in this book. When I was reading toward
the end, RDC turned off my light and closed the book for me. I was talking in
my sleep (not unusual) and he asked whom I was talking to. I told him "Catherine
Parr--the sixth wife of Henry VIII [as I said, I was nearly at the end]."
"Catherine Park?" he asked, not quite hearing. "NO!" I flared,
insistent even in my sleep. "Catherine Parr."
981125
Antonia Fraser, Mary,
Queen of Scots
Again, a foray into non-fiction in the form of a biography. However, a biography
in the study of a life rather than a personality, of an age rather than an ego.
Besides her diary, d'you know Anne Frank also wrote precis of European history,
included family trees? I want those. I want those right now. As I've
said before, I love family trees. I can still
recite the monarchs of Britian in order from William the Bastard to now, and
I can generally tell you who reigned in France or over the Hapsburgs during
major crises, but oof. I don't even know where Navarre was.
I always thought this was a favorite of CLH's but she denies ever reading it.
I want to see the movie starring Kate as Mary Stuart, and I'll pro'ly see the
new movie "Elizabeth" eventually. England in the 16th century is one of my favorite
periods.
981115
Rebecca Wells, Divine
Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
I don't remember when I first heard about this and I usually thought
of it in the same breath as How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents,
which I haven't read yet. The elusive nature of mother-daughter relationships
compels me, repulses me. I am enchanted.
"I climb to the attic and discover my mother. She is a mixed gift pack" [of a small, obsolete, door-to-door beauty line]. (p. 139)
But.
The flashbacks read well, portrayed credible characters with a reasonable prose
style. The contemporary frame story, though. Oof. Subject-verb-object subject-verb-object.
Not only a simple but a monotonous style, and the convenient cabin and the wonderful
friends and the adoring dog and the fairy-tale man and show me the maternal
conflict again? I am going to read Little Altars Everywhere though.
981030
Toni Morrison, Jazz
One blurb on the back is from John Leonard: "She is the best writer
in America. Jazz, yes. But also Mozart." I can add nothing to Morrison
or Leonard.
981025
Cathleen Schine, The
Evolution of Jane
I first read about this in The New York Times Book Review and I wanted to read it because of a lost friend. The protagonist loses a friend of eight years at 15 and no one pays any attention; she divorces after six months and everyone is awash with sympathy. I know how that feels, the sympathy when you don't need it but none when you do. And she grew up in Barlow, Connecticut, a town on the shore but that wasn't a summer town. Hmm.
I began to read it on the walk back from the library:
"Zen shopping," I once explained to my brother Andrew.
"You have far too much stray information," he said.
I told someone I had found a book passages of which I should staple to my forehead as an explanation of lisa. He asked, "Was it written from a padded room somewhere?"
In my biography period, I read an illustrated account of the voyage of the H.M.S. Beagle, which marked the beginning of my fascination with Charles Darwin. What I remember most vividly from that book was, first, that Darwin was seasick for the entire five years of his voyage on the Beagle, and, second, that he had to be so very tidy on shipboard. There were pictures of the cabinets used to store specimens, pictures of rows of little bottles and jars and wooden boxes, each labeled in an old-fashioned hand. Life on board ship seemed miniature, like a playhouse full of neatly organized treasures. I'm sure there were pictures in the book of other things as well--birds and volcanoes and ferns--but what I remember most were the boxes and drawers and their orderly tags.
...
During this time, like all my friends, I also read The Diary of Anne Frank and The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. But in addition to blindfolding myself and wandering around the living room to see what it was like to be blind the way we all did, and crouching in the attic with a bologna sandwich, hiding from Nazis, I used to look for fossils. I tired of being blind within a few minutes, and I tired of fossils almost as quickly, particularly because I never found any. I did, however, display and label a row of rocks from the driveway. I didn't know what they were and was too lazy to find out, so I just labeled them by color. But I still felt a proprietary bond with Darwin. Whenever I hear his name, to this day, I experience a sudden alertness, as if my own name has been spoken.
The New York Times reviewer said that Jane is self-absorbed and egocentric, which I know a thing or two about myself. Also that it's an anti-allegory: instead of Christian of Pilgrim's Progress representing mankind, evolution represents Jane, exists to explain Jane. The one consuming event in her life has been the loss of her friend Martha (no strange occurrence to me) and she obsesses on it (as do I). Jane's mother send her on a week-long trip to the Galapagos to get over the divorce. Her eco-tour guide happens to be Martha, who is pleasant but unmoved to her throughout, not much different than she is to the other passengers. Toward the end of the trip, Martha tells her,
"You're so literal-minded and fanciful at the same time."
I was, wasn't I? A black hole, sucking up the world around me to metaphorize it out of all recognizability.
Darwin was right--the habit of comparison leads to generalization....[W]e travelers stay such a short time, able to make mere sketches of what we've seen. And then we fill up the wide gaps of knowledge with inaccurate and superficial hypotheses.
Was that what Martha did as well? No. Martha told stories, but she described what she saw. Detailed observation--just what Darwin valued. The world opened up before her, inspired by her vision and her touch. She used what she found, like my father opening all those misfiled drawers. Whereas all I seemed to do was put things in drawers. I was the one who misfiled in the first place.
Here is something I read in Darwin's journal. He was amused by a theory of a contemporary philosopher, William Whewell. "Says length of days [is] adapted to duration of sleep of man!!! and not man to planets," Darwin wrote. "Instance of arrogance!!"
I pulled Gloria aside. "I got it backwards," I said. "Like Whewell."
"I'm sorry."
"The sun does not bend itself to man's needs. It's the duration of man's sleep that is the adaptation…." I had assumed that the length of the night was the result of my need for sleep. For years I had been asking myself what I could have done to Martha, an action of which I thought nothing at the time, but which cut her to the quick, something unforgivable, unforgivable even to Martha. I had come up with so many possible explanations....
But it had nothing to do with my story. It had to do with Martha, with her story, with her rotations, her travels from dawn to dusk, from horizon to horizon, whatever they were, whatever they had been, journeys beyond my sight that had nothing to do with me, the other side of the moon.
"You see, Martha is the sun…and I'm the male nipple.…I'm the whale's thumb. I was so arrogant an self-centered that I thought it must be Martha, but really it's me! I'm the vestigial organ." …
"For six days she labored to discover humility," Gloria said. "On the seventh day, she rested."
981024
Toni Morrison, Beloved
When I first read Beloved, I did so for a class in revenge in
literature. We read Medea, Macbeth, The Scarlet Letter, Great Expectations,
Fay Weldon--works whose themes pivot on revenge. Reading Beloved
with this agenda, looking for revenge, I missed a great deal. Does Beloved wish
revenge? No, she wishes life. But it was her mother's job to know what
is and to protect her best things from it.
981023
Cynthia Voigt, Tree
by Leaf
Closing this book, I said, "That certainly was better the second time,"
to which RDC responded, "A Cynthia Voigt you've only read once?"
Well, yeah. If I didn't like it much the first time, why would I read it again?
Aside from the statute in the Lisa Codex compelling me to read, reread, memorize,
and worship every book Voigt publishes. But I clearly wasn't paying attention
the first time. I remembered Clothilde not being able to leave a legacy, so
of course I hated the grown-ups in it. This time round I appreciated the balance
between Fairness, Right, and Truth more, and I appreciate Voigt not making it
a completely hemmed-in and happy ending.
981019
David Lawrence, Family Values
I figured, by the retro cover and the title, that this was going to
be a cynical (read honest) version of "The Brady Bunch." What it turned
out to be was the one of the most horrific novels I have ever read, and I have
read Dead Souls and Jude the Obscure and Live
Girls. Scarier because the time and setting are closest to my own, although
the family situation certainly isn't.
981017
Jeff Noon, Automated
Alice
This is great, full stop. The same kinds of language games Carroll played with
the faults and flexibility of English; the same sort of mathematical games,
plus computer games and even a touch of conspiracy theory.
981001
Go to previous or next season, Reading Index, Books, Words, or the Lisa Index.
Last modified 1 January 1999
Speak your mind: lisawherepenguindustdashcom
Copyright © 1998, 1999 LJH