Bookish Quotes #47

 “When you read a great book, you don’t escape from life, you plunge deeper into it. There may be a superficial escape – into different countries, mores, speech patterns – but what you are essentially doing is furthering your understanding of life’s subtleties, paradoxes, joys, pains and truths. Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic.”
    ~  Julian Barnes, A Life with Books

“I collect books just as others store grain,
And bitterly complain I don’t have enough granaries.
In order to make space for a myriad ancient men,
I end up building three more rooms.
The books then ask the man who stores them:
“When will you have time to read us, sir?”

~	Yuan Mei (1716–1797), Book Storage, tr. J.D.Schmidt

Housekeeping: Marilynne Robinson

   Housekeeping is on the Guardian Unlimited list of the 100 greatest novels of all time.  Time magazine also included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.  After reading it, I understand why.  I only wonder what took me so long to discover it.  The novel is like a intricately faceted jewel and Robinson's poetic language sets the mood for the beautifully haunting story about three generations of women.
     Ruth narrates the story of how she and her younger sister Lucille are raised by a succession of relatives in the fictional town of Fingerbone, Idaho.  First, they are under the care of their maternal grandmother, Sylvia.  When she dies, they fall into the care of Syvia's two bungling sister-in-laws.  They are spinsters who have no practice in or desire for caring for children.  Eventually the girls' aunt Sylvie, their mother's sister, comes to take care of them. Sylvie is a free spirit who has been living as a transient, floating through life.  Sylvie's stability as a caregiver is always in question because of her tendency to dream and wander rather than to engage the practical realities of day-to-day life.
     The novel treats the subject of housekeeping, not only in the domestic sense of cleaning, but in the larger sense of keeping a spiritual home for one's self and family in the face of loss, as the girls experience a series of abandonments as they come of age.  Ruth comes to accept this as an inevitable occurrence:   

Then there is the matter of my mother's abandonment of me. Again, this is the common experience. They walk ahead of us, and walk too fast, and forget us, they are so lost in thoughts of their own, and soon or late they disappear. The only mystery is that we expect it to be otherwise.

     But as Ruth says:   Families will not be broken. Curse and expel them, send their children wandering, drown them in floods and fires, and old women will make songs of all these sorrows and sit on the porch and sing them on mild evenings.
      
     The novel addresses the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.  Life for Ruth and Lucille was a constant shifting.  Nothing could be counted on; nothing was stable.  Ruth speaks of this limbo:  

I hated waiting. If I had one particular complaint, it was that my life seemed composed entirely of expectation. I expected — an arrival, an explanation, an apology. There had never been one, a fact I could have accepted, were it not true that, just when I had got used to the limits and dimensions of one moment, I was expelled into the next and made to wonder again if any shapes hit in its shadows.
     
      The small town of Fingerbone is set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck, and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a remote little town in which one is aware that the "whole of human history had occurred elsewhere."  The Fosters had always been a thorn in the side of Fingerbone:   

We had been assured by our elders that intelligence was a family trait. All my kin and forebears were people of substantial or remarkable intellect, thought somehow none of them had prospered in the world. Too bookish, my grandmother said with tart pride, and Lucille and I read constantly to forestall criticism, anticipating failure. If my family were not as intelligent as we were pleased to pretend, this was an innocent deception, for it was a matter of indifference to everybody whether we were intelligent or not. People always interpreted our slightly formal manner and our quiet tastes as a sign that we wished to stay a little apart. This was a matter of indifference, also, and we had our wish.
      
     Initially, Syvie and the girls become a close knit group, but as Lucille grows up she comes to dislike their eccentric lifestyle and she moves out.  When town reacts and Ruth's well-being is being questioned by the courts, Sylvie returns to living on the road and takes Ruth with her.
     But the past always haunts us and moving on isn't easy or maybe even possible.  Ruth tells the story years later and ends it wondering about Lucille who she hasn't seen since leaving Fingerbone.  Another loss in a long list, another memory:   

There is so little to remember of anyone - an anecdote, a conversation at a table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness not having meant to keep us waiting long.

     Housekeeping is worth reading for the language alone, but the story rich and engaging, as well.  An excellent read!

~ Frances

Ex Libris: This Book Belongs To...

    

     I have always been intrigued by bookplates.  There's something slightly thrilling about opening a book and finding a bookplate pasted inside the cover. I love browsing in used bookstores and coming across these small prints that give a glimpse of the previous owner and add history to the book.You don't often see them used these days and with the rise of e-books, they may well die out completely.  A bookplate, or Ex Libris, is a small print for pasting inside the cover of a book to express ownership.  Ex-Libris means "from the library of" and was frequently inscribed on bookplates which were printed on heavy paper and glued into books by the purchaser.
     Between the late 15th and 19th centuries, books were expensive, prestigious, luxury items.  Most were bound in leather, and printed in gilt. To own a book was to hold status in society.  Those wealthy enough to have books wanted something to identify them as the owner of a particular book.  So, they commissioned bookplates, a print they could paste inside the front cover. That way, anyone who read their book would know exactly who it belonged to.  The first bookplates usually incorporated the decorative coats of arms of the fabulously wealthy. By the late nineteenth century, bookplates had developed into a highly imaginative form of the engraver’s and printmaker’s art in miniature.
      Bookplates are highly collectible (either loose or attached to books).  Many collectors concentrate on specialized themes,  those designed by famous artists, or those owned by notable people, like this one belonging to Ernest Hemingway:

There are a number of organizations devoted to bookplate collecting, such as American Society of Bookplate Collectors & Designers and The Bookplate Society (UK).  They are very often of high value, exceeding that of the book in which they are placed.
     After reading more about them and seeing so many beautiful examples of vintage bookplates, I'm thinking of purchasing some and placing them in all the books in my personal library.  What do you think?  Do bookplates have a place in the increasingly paperless world?
     Here are some of my favorite from designs that I've come across on the internet:

Italo Calvino: Why Read the Classics?

Italo Calvino’s 14 Definitions of What Makes a Classic

1. The classics are those books about which you usually hear people saying: ‘I’m rereading…’, never ‘I’m reading….’
2. The Classics are those books which constitute a treasured experience for those who have read and loved them; but they remain just as rich an experience for those who reserve the chance to read them for when they are in the best condition to enjoy them.
3. The classics are books which exercise a particular influence, both when they imprint themselves on our imagination as unforgettable, and when they hide in the layers of memory disguised as the individual’s or the collective unconscious.
4. A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading.
5. A classic is a book which even when we read it for the first time gives the sense of rereading something we have read before.
6. A classic is a book which has never exhausted all it has to say to its readers.
7. The classics are those books which come to us bearing the aura of previous interpretations, and trailing behind them the traces they have left in the culture or cultures (or just in the languages and customs) through which they have passed.
8. A classic is a work which constantly generates a pulviscular cloud of critical discourse around it, but which always shakes the particles off.
9. Classics are books which, the more we think we know them through hearsay, the more original, unexpected, and innovative we find them when we actually read them.
10. A classic is the term given to any book which comes to represent the whole universe, a book on a par with ancient talismans.
11. ‘Your’ classic is a book to which you cannot remain indifferent, and which helps you define yourself in relation or even in opposition to it.
12. A classic is a work that comes before other classics; but those who have read other classics first immediately recognize its place in the genealogy of classic works.
13. A classic is a work which relegates the noise of the present to a background hum, which at the same time the classics cannot exist without.
14. A classic is a work which persists as a background noise even when a present that is totally incompatible with it holds sway.

Hemingway's Boat - Paul Hendrickson

     Those who follow this blog know that I'm a Hemingway fan.  Countless biographies of "Papa" have been written over the years but the most recent one looks at Hemingway's life from a new angle.  Paul Hendrickson's Hemingway's Boat:  Everything He Loved In Life And Lost, 1934-1961 covers the final 27 years of the writer's life and focuses on his beloved boat, Pilar, the one constant during this period.
     Pilar, purchased after the publication of The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms, became the writer's sanctuary.  It was a place to escape from literary criticism, the pain of failed marriages, and the stings of failed friendships.  Aboard the Pilar he entertained celebrities, relaxed with his children, caught prize fish, and, of course, drank heavily.  In following Hemingway through the years spent on Pilar, Hendrickson's biography also includes the other lives that weave in and out as well which serves to make "Papa" more human.  The portrait that emerges is much more sympathetic that many of the past biographies.

"In my opinion, too many previous Hemingway biographers and scholars have gleefully wished to point out so many of the toxic things that Hemingway did," Hendrickson said. "But one of the points I try to make is that, yes, without question he could be appalling to other people but ... there was this other side of him, this decent side that could come out instantly."

I found it thoroughly engaging and hard to put down.  If you're a Hemingway fan, you must read it; if you're not, this read might change your mind.


     On a related topic, a Hemingway Look-Alike Contest is held every year at Sloppy Joe's Bar in Key West.  This year, the request of a three-time competitor has captured the attention of The Guardian.  Read about it here.

Best Books of the 2012 (So Far)

We're halfway through the year, so it's time to look back on 2012's reads so far and list favorites:

The End of the Affair - Graham Greene:  Loved this!  Set in London during and just after World War II, the novel examines the obsessions, jealousy and discernments within the relationships between three central characters: writer Maurice Bendrix; Sarah Miles; and her husband, civil servant Henry Miles.





The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje:  Again, set during World War II.  The story deals with the gradually revealed histories of a critically burned English accented Hungarian man, his Canadian nurse, a Canadian-Italian thief, and an Indian sapper in the British Army as they live out the end of World War II in an Italian villa.



  

The Painted Veil - W. Somerset Maugham:  Maugham is one of my favorite writers.  This is set in England and Hong Kong in the 1920s and is the story of the beautiful but shallow young Kitty Fane. When her husband discovers her adulterous affair, he forces her to accompany him to a remote region of China ravaged by a cholera epidemic.





 
Consequences of the Heart - Peter Cunningham:  Wonderfully engaging.  A love story, a war story, a thriller, and a generational story of two Irish families.








Old School - Tobias Wolff:  Prep school, literary contests, famous writers - this is a book for book lovers and would-be writers!  Set in the early 1960s and narrated by the unnamed protagonist from the vantage point of adulthood, a scholarship boy at a New England prep school grapples with literary ambition and insecurity.








The Traveler - Antal Szerb: More Hungarian authors! I loved the two Dezso Kosztolanyi novels I read last year, but The Traveler tops them both. What's not to like? A honeymoon in Italy, a secret past, a missing childhood friend - I could not stop reading and cannot wait to find a copy of Szerb's Journey by Moonlight.





 
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins: My first Wilkie Collins and, so far, my favorite. This is a perfect mystery!









Lorna Doone - R. D. Blackmore: I finally read this novel after watching the 2001 film dozens of times. It's enormous and thankfully so. Blackmore managed to draw out the drama of Lorna Doone's life without once losing my interest.








The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde: It's hard to believe, but I had not read Dorian Gray before this year. That was my loss, really. I love this story (I have seen the 1945 film - featuring this painting - many, many times), and the end will never cease to surprise and shock me.







Piccadilly Jim - P. G. Wodehouse: I have previously read a few Jeeves and Wooster tales and Leave It to Psmith, but Piccadilly Jim is currently my favorite Wodehouse novel. There is Wodehouse's typical mistaken/false identity surrounding the character of Jimmy Crocker and convoluted plots for revenge. It is filled with witty scenes and a brilliant character in Ann Chester.

Frenchman's Creek - Daphne du Maurier

     There are some books that I return to again and again.  Frenchman's Creek is one of the books I re-read often.  Recently, it began to call to me once more and for the umpteenth time I was happily lost in its magic.
     First, it is wonderfully written as are all of du Maurier's novels.  She begins by drawing the reader into the atmosphere of the Cornish coast with vivid description and beautiful prose:

When the east wind blows up Helford River the shining waters become troubled and disturbed and the little waves beat angrily upon the sandy shores.  The short seas break above the bar at ebb-tide, and the waders fly inland to the mud-flats, their wings skimming the surface, and calling to one another as they go.  Only the gulls remain, wheeling and crying above the foam, diving now and again in search of food, their grey feathers glistening with the salt spray.

It has a rich cinematic quality to it (in fact, it has been adapted for the screen twice) and the sea and the countryside are "characters" in the novel as much as Dona and her Frenchman.
     A few months short of her thirtieth birthday, Lady Dona St. Columb is bored with her bumbling husband, stifled by the restrictions of seventeenth century London, and exasperated with the frivolity of her life.  She takes her two children and flees to Navron, the house where her husband grew up, in order to find peace.  But when she arrives, she finds the house inhabited by a lone servant, William, and the coast plagued by a marauding crew of pirates.  William quickly and accurately appraises Dona and tells her she is "a fugitive from your London self and Navron is your sanctuary."  A deep understanding and friendship develops between them with William supporting and assisting her in her escape from her former life.  But William, a memorable and loveable character, turns out to be in league with the pirates.
     Dona stumbles upon the pirate ship, La Mouette, anchored in the creek on Navron land and is brought aboard.  The Frenchman, Jean Benoit Aubery, is not what she expects.  He is much more of a gentleman than a savage and spends his time drawing birds and reading poetry.  As he explains:

There are no dark problems about it. I have no grudge against society, no bitter hatred of my fellow-men. It just happens that the problems of piracy interest me, suit my particular bent of thought.

She finds in him a kindred spirit and a fellow escapee from the restraints of conventional society.  He sees her as more than just the Lady St. Columb and, unlike her husband, understands her.  Of course, she falls in love with him. But this is not a bodice-ripping pirate romance novel.  Written in 1941, the physical side of their love in mostly hinted at and their relationship is revealed mainly in the witty, clever, sexy dialog they banter back and forth.
     Disguised as a cabin-boy, Dona joins the Frenchman in one of his escapes and finds herself involved in piracy against her neighbors.  She sails away with Jean Benoit and his crew for a wonderfully liberating week and returns to find that her husband has come to Navron to help capture the pirate.  Her collaboration with the pirate is soon disrupted when he is caught and she must scheme to free him.
     Frenchman's Creek is above all a story of self-discovery.  Dona must learn the distinction between happiness and contentment.  The Frenchman is aware of the difference and explains it to Dona.  Happiness, he says, is "elusive, coming maybe once in a lifetime", and not a continuous thing. Happiness has degrees, however, and for a man "happiness tends to come from things achieved". Contentment, on the other hand, is "a state of mind and body when the two work in harmony, and there is no friction. The mind is at peace and the body is also."
     The difficulty for Dona, as William explains to her, is that the Frenchman's ship is his castle; that he comes and goes as he pleases, and dislikes a lifestyle that leads to habits and customs - fearful that it will kill all spontaneity; "he is without ties, without man-mad principles;" he is truly free. Dona, who initially wishes for the very same thing becomes aware that the options for a woman are very different than those for a man.  The Frenchman feels the strong pull of the sea but Dona, as a mother, feels the pull of her children just as strongly.  After experiencing true happiness, she must make a difficult choice.
     But, above all,  Frenchman's Creek is about the desire to escape and the perfect novel to lose yourself in when you want to get away from it all.  Pirates...Frenchmen...Swashbuckling...Breathtaking Romance - curl up and lose yourself on the Cornish coast!

Old School - Tobias Wolff

     Don't you love it when you stumble across a book that you know nothing about and fall in love with it?  That's what happened to me with Tobias Wolff's Old School.  I was attracted to the cover, saw that it was a Pen/Faulkner finalist, and decided to give it a try.  I was not disappointed.

     The novel is set in a boys' New England prep school in the early 1960's where life revolves around literature.  Each year the school hosts visiting writers and the boys are allowed to compete for a private audience with the writer by composing a poem or story.  The entries are judged in advanced by the visiting writer, making the selection of the winner an even greater honor.  Inevitably, the competitions are fiercely competitive and the boys calculating and conniving in their pursuit of the coveted prize.

     The narrator, a boy from a less prominent background hiding his Jewish ancestry, wants to become a writer and desperately desires to win an audience with one of the visiting writers.  After failing to win an audience with Robert Frost and Ayn Rand, he is determined to win the chance to meet his hero, Ernest Hemingway.  The dean of the school is thought to be a friend of Hemingway's from World War I and the writer's visit is anxiously anticipated.  As the boy struggles to compose the winning story, he is faced with writer's block.  He finally finds his "voice" and his inspiration through imitation.  When his story is selected by Hemingway, the honor is short-lived.  He finds himself disgraced and his life is changed forever.  Only years later learns of another's fall from grace at the same time.

     The book is an homage to literature and the literary life.  It's a concise little treasure of a novel that carries weighty themes of honesty, identity, friendship, shame, and redemption.  It is definitely a book for book-lovers, would-be writers, and those who see writing as an essential part of who we are as humans.

~ Frances

Rules of Civility - Amor Towles

     I hesitated before beginning this book.  The setting was right:  1930's New York.  The plot seemed good:  the story of a watershed year in the life of a twenty-five year old woman whose intellect, wit, and nerve lead her from a secretarial pool on Wall Street, to a position in the executive suites of Conde-Nast publishers and into the upper echelons of New York society.  My problem: her name - Katey Kontent.  Does some little something ever turn you away from a novel?  Well, I'm glad I ignored her name and dove into Rules of Civility.  It's a journey I'm glad I didn't miss.
     When the novel opens, it is 1966.  Katey is attending the opening of Many Are Called, an exposition of Walker Evans photographs taken in the late 1930s on a New York subway with a hidden camera, when she spots a familiar face.  Behind the scruffy, work-worn exterior she sees the face of Tinker Gray and she is transported back to New Year's eve, 1937.
     That night, Katey and her roommate Eve meet Tinker Grey at nightclub and the most memorable year of her life is set in motion.  Tinker is a handsome, enigmatic banker with royal blue eyes who is clearly upper class.  Of course they both fall for him.  But things go awry when Tinker crashes his car with both girls in it and Eve is seriously wounded.  Tinker, who lives his life according to George Washington's Rules of Civility, takes her recovery in his hands and, as she heals, they become a pair - in spite of the fact that Katey knows she is the one he cares for. 
     The memory of Tinker is always with her as she grasp at every tidbit of news of him and Eve,  When the two of them separate, Tinker appears in Katey's life again but she learns he is not all he lead her to believe.  Just as she has him again, she finds out he apparently never got around to reading the last of Washington's Rules of Civililty:  "Labour to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire called conscience."  A shocking development reveals that not only has Tinker deceived her but that from the moment she met him someone else entirely is deciding all of their fates.
     Katey is a strong, spunky girl who is swept up into the New York of the 1930s:  jazz music, martinis, and jet-set parties.  She makes her way in a world where everyone is aiming to move to the top - inventing and reinventing themselves as they go along.  In that memorable year of 1938, fortunes are made and lost, lifestyles rise and fall, and meetings and choices made in a moment change lives forever.
     Amor Towles has written an engaging tale that brings the 1930s to life with vivid period detail.

~ Frances

The Children - Edith Wharton

      Edith Wharton's The Children concerns the lives of expatriate Americans in the 1920s.  Martin Boyne is bachelor of 46 who is traveling to Europe to meet an old flame who is now widowed.  As his ship sets out, he ponders his unexciting life and his lack of adventure.  He travels often but never meets any interesting people and never falls in love.  His situation, however, is about to change drastically.

     As he leans over the railing, his eyes are drawn to a face:

Men of forty-six do not gasp as frequently at the sight of a charming face as they did at twenty; but it hits harder.  Boyne had not been looking for a pretty face but for interesting ones, and it rather disturbed him to be put off his quest by anything so out of his present way as excessive youth and a rather pathetic grace.

     As he soon learns, the face belongs to the fifteen year old daughter of a former Harvard schoolmate and a woman for whom he had once felt a romantic attraction.  The girl, Judith, is traveling to Venice with the entire Wheater entourage of seven children, a governess, Mrs. Scopes, and a nanny.  The parents, Cliffe and Joyce Wheater (whom the children refer to by their first names or more often simply as "The Wheaters") are to meet them there.

     The children are a mish-mash of offspring resulting from their parents marriages and divorces.  Judith and a set of twins were born in the early days of the Wheater's marriage.  Then, they divorced and Joyce married an Italian prince who already had two children from a prior marriage to a circus performer.  When they in turn divorced, Joyce took the two children.  In the meantime, Cliffe married a movie star, had an daughter, divorced, and got custody of the girl.  Finally, the Wheaters remarried and had another son, now just a baby.  The seven children have been shuttled about the world and are now all together and plan to stay that way.  They've sworn an oath on the book that has seen them through all their trials - Mrs. Scopes' "Cyclpedia of Nursery Remedies'.

     Martin is first captivated by Judith, who mothers all the other children, and then falls under the spell of the whole assorted bunch and they adore him.  When the parental Wheaters arrive, he is coaxed into procuring a tutor for one of the twins. He spends all his time with them before he moves on to meet Rose.  

     Once he arrives, however, he is again ensnared in their ongoing drama.  The Wheaters are divorcing again - Joyce has fallen for the tutor Boyne obtained for the son - and the children are to be split up once more.  Judith flees to Boyne with all the children and their caretakers to plea for his help in keeping them together.  Boyne can't refuse her.  He's confused over his feelings for her and feels for the children who are continually subject to their parent's carelessness and irresponsibility.

     When he goes to see the Wheaters to convince them to say together for the sake of the children, the discussions are attended by numerous parental relations and their current romantic attachments.  Boyne sees that "in the Wheater set they could deal with things only collectively; alone, they became helpless and inarticulate.  They lived so perpetually in the lime-light they required an audience - an audience made up of their own kind.  Before each other they shouted and struck attitudes; again like savages.  But the chief point was that nobody could stay angry - not however much they tried.  It was too much trouble, and might involve too many inconveniences, interfere with too many social arrangements.  When all was said and done, all they asked was not to be bothered - and it was by gambling on that arrangement that he finally gained his point."

     The outcome of the talks is not what he expected - he is made temporary guardian of all seven children.  Boyne takes it on magnanimously but Rose is skeptical.  However, confused Boyne is over his feelings for Judith, Rose soon sees it for what it is and steps out of the picture.  Left with the children, Boyne realizes that any moment they can be snapped up again by the wayward parents and he will be left alone.  Just as he comes to grips with his feeling for Judith, the inevitable happens and Joyce Wheater wants to collect offspring - steps and all.

     The story is wonderful and the characters equally so.  Wharton gives all seven children unique, engaging personalities which is no small task when creating fictional children.  Judith is a warm, loving, mothering hen often much older than her years.  Terry longs for an education and his twin, Blanca is obsessed with fashion.  The two Italians cling to each other and have stormy, emotional Continental personalities.  Zinnie, whose mother is a movie star, is always expecting presents from everybody and Chip, the baby, is boisterous and cheerful in spite of the unsettled lifestyle he is subjected too.

     The rollercoaster lives of Joyce and Cliffe Wheater make me think of The Great Gatsby and the havoc that would have ensued if Daisy and Tom Buchanan had seven children!  The novel explores the effect on the lives of children of the denial of guilt, the avoidance of responsibility, and the pursuit of happiness at all costs that predominated in the years after the first world war.

     I was unfamiliar with The Children and I am so glad I came across it.  It was a wonderful read.

~ Frances