The 50 semifinalists in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest have been announced and can be downloaded at www.amazon.com/abna
As I expected, only one of the novels that I reviewed made the list. I believe that it is good enough to win but we'll see.
With my role in the Amazon contest over and a lull in manuscripts from Publishers Weekly, I've been sampling some of the books I gave my wife for Christmas and her birthday in January. It's not exactly kosher. She's about 12 months behind in her reading, and I'm enjoying her presents before she does. But, she's a good sport.
I stayed up late recently to finish The Girl who Played with Fire, the second in the late Stieg Larsson's "Lisbeth Salander" trilogy. Usually between April and October, I stop reading at 9:00 p.m. for ESPN's "Baseball Tonight." Last night, I read right through "Baseball Tonight." And, the local news. It's that good.
Larsson, a Swedish journalist who died in 2004, isn't a gifted stylist. But, he's a superb storyteller. He reminds me of the early Tom Clancy in that way. Not only does Larsson tell a compelling story but he has created one of the most intriguing characters in modern fiction in Lisbeth Salander.
Lisbeth defies easy description. I guess one could say that she's an anti-hero. Psychologically damaged, she lives on the margins—or perhaps in the shadows—of society. She's pierced and her wardrobe is recent Goth. She's a world-class computer hacker. She is uneducated but likely a genius. She distrusts authority and takes no prisoners. But, she'll capture your imagination and your heart.
I read the first of Larsson's trilogy, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, last year and enjoyed it. In it Larsson introduces Salander and crusading Swedish journalist Mikael Blomkvist. Together, this unlikely pair solves a decades-old missing-person mystery. Along the way, we learn much about Lisbeth and Mikael, but the focus is on the mystery.
The Girl Who Played with Fire begins several months after the conclusion of the first book. This time, though, Lisbeth is the mystery. Accused of three murders, she goes into hiding while she tries to unravel the mystery. Lisbeth and Mikael's relationship has soured—for reasons unknown to Mikael—but he begins a parallel investigation to clear Lisbeth. Meanwhile, the cops are trying to find her. So is a private investigator who once employed her. And, perhaps most ominously, so are the real bad guys. As it turns out, the solution lies at the nexus between a journalist's investigation into the international sex trade and Lisbeth's rocky past.
The conclusion answers some questions but leaves others—including Lisbeth's well-being—in doubt. I usually don't buy hardback books, but I have pre-ordered the third title in the series (The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest) from Amazon. Publication date is May 25. Guess what I'll be doing over Memorial Day Weekend?
A Swedish screen adaptation (with English subtitles) of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will be out on DVD on July 6. Swedish actress Noomi Rapace plays Lisbeth. Check out the reviews at www.metacritic.com
American director David Fincher (Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) is now working on an English-language version of the book and plans are to film the entire trilogy. Early reports hinted that Fincher wanted Carey Mulligan for the role of Lisbeth. Me? I'm thinking Natalie Portman. Or, Kristin Stewart. Or, a long shot admittedly, Keira Knightley.
QUOTABLE
"There were not so many physical threats that could not be countered with a decent hammer."
"Salander felt like a bag of bananas that had been left too long in the sun."
"It proved once again that no security system is a match for a stupid employee."
"'You look like s__t. Like a f__king whore. But you've got my eyes."—Lisbeth's father upon seeing her after 10 years
"'Ronald doesn't have sex with girls. He's not a fairy. He just doesn't have sex.'"
**************************************************
On a more literary note, I also recently finished Janice Y.K. Lee's excellent debut novel The Piano Teacher. It's a love story—actually two love stories—set in Hong Kong. The stories are set respectively in 1941-2 during the Japanese occupation and in 1952 and unfold in alternating narratives.
The protagonists include British expatriate Will Truesdale and his two (serial) lovers: wealthy local heiress Trudy Liang and Claire Pendleton, the wife of an English civil servant posted to Hong Kong. Truesdale's love affair with Liang does not survive the war. Neither does Liang. The question is whether Claire's extramarital affair with Truesdale can survive his guilt over his failed relationship with Liang.
This is a bittersweet—more bitter than sweet—story of love, courage, survival, and guilt. It's also a vivid portrait of pre-war, wartime, and postwar Hong Kong.
QUOTABLE
"'Wealth can make a woman beautiful.'"
"'Everything to do with women seems counterintuitive.'"
"It's surprising how true personalities shine through after a few weeks of hardship. The missionaries are the worst. They steal food, don't pull their weight with the chores, and complain all the time."
"'Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to. We can't all live in perfect harmony with our integrity.'"
"'People have always expected me to be bad and thoughtless and shallow, and I do my best to accommodate their expectations.'"
"Brute force trumps all in the end."
*****************************************************
Finally—though first in order of reading—I read the delightfully ironic A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick. In frozen northern Wisconsin right after the turn of the (20th) century, wealthy businessman Ralph Truitt advertises in the Chicago papers for a reliable wife. Soon enough, Catherine Land, who represents herself as a missionary's daughter, arrives to marry Truitt.
Nothing is as it seems though. Land is actually a prostitute and takes Truitt's offer in order to slowly poison him. Truitt, however, knows about Land's past, if not her future plans, and doesn't care. He recruits her to help him bring home his prodigal son.
There are more twists and turns here than the Pacific Coast Highway. Hold on tight for a breathtaking ride.
QUOTABLE
"They made love as if someone were watching."
"[Nothing would] restore to him what he had lost, because what he had lost was time and what he had left was rage."
"She realized that her body was her bank; it was all the money she had. It was all she would ever need."
"Living takes time."
**************************************************
Next time: a report on the final chapter in the Lisbeth Salander saga!
Monday, May 10, 2010
Monday, April 12, 2010
April Showers (of Books)
My role in the annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest is over. I rated my last manuscript and submitted the review on April 1. Most of what I saw was so-so. About what one would expect from first-time novelists. Promising but not-yet-ready-for primetime. One manuscript was just plain bad. No-hope bad. What-were-they-thinking bad. One was knock-your-socks-off good. It should easily be a Semifinalist. I believe that it deserves to be a Finalist. But, we'll see.
Here's what happens next: On or about April 27, 2010, the top 100 Semifinalists will be announced at www.amazon.com/abna. Editors at Penguin Books, which will publish the winning novels in each category, will then select three Finalists in each category. These will be displayed on the Amazon website on May 25 and Amazon customers will select a winner.
********************************************************
Before the Amazon contest manuscripts arrived and between my regular reviewing duties for Publishers Weekly, I read a couple of critically acclaimed novels just for fun: David Ebershoff's The Danish Girl and Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin.
The Danish Girl, a NY Times Notable Book, is based loosely on the story of Danish artist Einar Wegener, who in Dresden, Germany, in 1930 underwent the world's first sex change operation.
Einar Wegener's gradual and painful transformation comes as a shock but not a surprise. He appears to have been sexually confused as a child and his devoted artist wife—renamed Greta in Ebershoff's fictionalized account—describes him as physically fragile and pretty. Not handsome. Pretty. It is Greta, in fact, who first coaxes Einar's female alter ego, Lily, into existence when she asks him to sit in for a model who doesn't show up for an appointment. Of course, Einar has to cross-dress for the sitting, and finds that he likes it. Very much. Maybe too much. In time, he becomes convinced that Lily is real and is trapped inside Einar's body.
After she starts painting Lily, Greta's career takes off, and she rather encourages Einar's dual identity. Even when her husband chooses Lily over Einar, Greta supports his decision even though it means the end of their marriage.
This can be read as an intense, if unusual, love story. But, at its core, it's a compelling study of identity—a topic that we all grapple with.
(For more on Einar and Gerta Wegener, including pictures and paintings, check out the author's website: http://www.ebershoff.com/)
QUOTABLE
"'There are still times when I see you, and I think to myself, Not so long ago we were married. You and me, we were married and we lived in that small dark space between two people where a marriage exists.'"
********************************************************
Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin won the National Book Award for 2009 and charmed lots of critics and readers. Jonathan Mahler in the NY Times called it "An emotional tour de force," "profound," and "deeply affecting." Others called it "brilliant," "stunning," "Joycean," "masterly," "lyrical," and "elegiac." Some of which is true.
What McCann does is certainly interesting. Employing a sort of "six degrees of separation" premise, the author uses an extraordinary real-life event—Frenchman Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center on August 4, 1974—to link the lives of a dozen fictional characters from very different backgrounds. They include an Irish monk who works with the prostitutes and druggies in the Bronx slums, a hippie couple living their own version of Walden Pond in Upstate New York, the wife of a wealthy judge from Park Avenue trying to cope with her son's death in Vietnam, and Tillie Henderson, one of three generations of prostitutes. How the author ties all these disparate lives together through a single remarkable feat of daring is shrewd and memorable.
After reading the novel, you might want to rent Man on Wire, a delightful documentary on Petit's walk.
QUOTABLE
"Hope is nothing more or less than what you can see with your own bare eyes."
"'Pain is what you give, not what you get.'"
"The overexamined life [is] not worth living."
"The only thing you need to know about war, son, is: Don't go."
"There's only one thing that moves at the speed of light and that's cold hard cash."
"At the end of the world they're gonna have cockroaches and Barry Manilow records."
"Harry had worked his way through the American Dream and come to the conclusion that it was composed of a good lunch and a deep red wine that could soar."
*************************************************************
Back in January, I wrote about Joyce Carol Oates' novel Blonde—a haunting re-imagining of the short, sad life of Marilyn Monroe. If you missed it, you can find it here: http://www.flyover-culture.blogspot.com/
Recently I came across an Oates' essay--"Going Home Again"—in the March 2010 Smithsonian (74-89). It's a delightful piece of nostalgia at its best.
QUOTABLE
"In America, history never dies—it's reborn as tourism."
"Pride is the lifeblood of family, recompense for hardship, endurance, loss."
Here's what happens next: On or about April 27, 2010, the top 100 Semifinalists will be announced at www.amazon.com/abna. Editors at Penguin Books, which will publish the winning novels in each category, will then select three Finalists in each category. These will be displayed on the Amazon website on May 25 and Amazon customers will select a winner.
********************************************************
Before the Amazon contest manuscripts arrived and between my regular reviewing duties for Publishers Weekly, I read a couple of critically acclaimed novels just for fun: David Ebershoff's The Danish Girl and Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin.
The Danish Girl, a NY Times Notable Book, is based loosely on the story of Danish artist Einar Wegener, who in Dresden, Germany, in 1930 underwent the world's first sex change operation.
Einar Wegener's gradual and painful transformation comes as a shock but not a surprise. He appears to have been sexually confused as a child and his devoted artist wife—renamed Greta in Ebershoff's fictionalized account—describes him as physically fragile and pretty. Not handsome. Pretty. It is Greta, in fact, who first coaxes Einar's female alter ego, Lily, into existence when she asks him to sit in for a model who doesn't show up for an appointment. Of course, Einar has to cross-dress for the sitting, and finds that he likes it. Very much. Maybe too much. In time, he becomes convinced that Lily is real and is trapped inside Einar's body.
After she starts painting Lily, Greta's career takes off, and she rather encourages Einar's dual identity. Even when her husband chooses Lily over Einar, Greta supports his decision even though it means the end of their marriage.
This can be read as an intense, if unusual, love story. But, at its core, it's a compelling study of identity—a topic that we all grapple with.
(For more on Einar and Gerta Wegener, including pictures and paintings, check out the author's website: http://www.ebershoff.com/)
QUOTABLE
"'There are still times when I see you, and I think to myself, Not so long ago we were married. You and me, we were married and we lived in that small dark space between two people where a marriage exists.'"
********************************************************
Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin won the National Book Award for 2009 and charmed lots of critics and readers. Jonathan Mahler in the NY Times called it "An emotional tour de force," "profound," and "deeply affecting." Others called it "brilliant," "stunning," "Joycean," "masterly," "lyrical," and "elegiac." Some of which is true.
What McCann does is certainly interesting. Employing a sort of "six degrees of separation" premise, the author uses an extraordinary real-life event—Frenchman Philippe Petit's tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center on August 4, 1974—to link the lives of a dozen fictional characters from very different backgrounds. They include an Irish monk who works with the prostitutes and druggies in the Bronx slums, a hippie couple living their own version of Walden Pond in Upstate New York, the wife of a wealthy judge from Park Avenue trying to cope with her son's death in Vietnam, and Tillie Henderson, one of three generations of prostitutes. How the author ties all these disparate lives together through a single remarkable feat of daring is shrewd and memorable.
After reading the novel, you might want to rent Man on Wire, a delightful documentary on Petit's walk.
QUOTABLE
"Hope is nothing more or less than what you can see with your own bare eyes."
"'Pain is what you give, not what you get.'"
"The overexamined life [is] not worth living."
"The only thing you need to know about war, son, is: Don't go."
"There's only one thing that moves at the speed of light and that's cold hard cash."
"At the end of the world they're gonna have cockroaches and Barry Manilow records."
"Harry had worked his way through the American Dream and come to the conclusion that it was composed of a good lunch and a deep red wine that could soar."
*************************************************************
Back in January, I wrote about Joyce Carol Oates' novel Blonde—a haunting re-imagining of the short, sad life of Marilyn Monroe. If you missed it, you can find it here: http://www.flyover-culture.blogspot.com/
Recently I came across an Oates' essay--"Going Home Again"—in the March 2010 Smithsonian (74-89). It's a delightful piece of nostalgia at its best.
QUOTABLE
"In America, history never dies—it's reborn as tourism."
"Pride is the lifeblood of family, recompense for hardship, endurance, loss."
Monday, March 1, 2010
Rugged Individualism, Deadly Sex, and Sweet Love
Despite Mother Nature's best efforts to frustrate us—what with below average temps, copious snow, and lots of overcast days—we've managed to negotiate another winter here in Hog Heaven without kicking the dog or beating the wife. Of course, we don't have a dog and the wife hits back. And, alas, winter likely isn't over. Only meteorological winter (Dec. 1 thru March 1). But, let's not put too fine a point on things. The worst of winter is surely behind us, and we can choose to be optimistic.
As depressing as the depths of winter can be, it does offer a ready excuse to stay inside and read by the fire. And, read we did. Besides the stuff required by our editor at Publishers Weekly, we also found time for another overlooked (by us) classic, a mystery set in Seoul's notorious red-light district as the Vietnam War was winding down, and a psychological novel set in post-World War II Jerusalem.
The classic, although lots of literary scholars and high-brow critics wouldn't agree with that assessment, is Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Lots of my contemporaries were reading this—and Rand's masterpiece Atlas Shrugged—when I was an undergraduate, but I wasn't tempted. I wouldn't have liked it then anyway. I wasn't ready.
Published in 1943 to mixed reviews, The Fountainhead is the story of architect-hero Howard Roark who steadfastly refuses to compromise either his sense of self or his architectural principles—essentially that form follows function—in order to please others. An early reflection of Rand's philosophical principles, the novel celebrates individualism, self-reliance, and reason.
Ignored by literary scholars, the novel spread through word-of-mouth and eventually became an international best-seller and spawned a 1949 film version. Rand's books, which also endorse laissez-faire capitalism and limited government, continue to sell some 800,000 copies annually, and Atlas Shrugged topped a 1999 Modern Library readers' poll of 100 Best Novels. The Fountainhead also made the list.
QUOTABLE
"'A house can have integrity, just like a person and just as seldom.'"
"'The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line—it's a middle man.'"
"It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea."
"'I don't work with collectives. I don't consult, I don't cooperate, I don't collaborate.'"
"'There is no substitute for competence.'"
"'Every form of happiness is private.'"
"A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends."
******************************************************************
The mystery is Jade Lady Burning, a first novel by retired career soldier Martin Limon. Limon's heroes are a couple of cynical Army investigators, Ernie Bascom and George Sueno, assigned to the U.S. 8th Army Headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. When a local prostitute is found dead, suspicion falls on her GI boyfriend. The boyfriend is soon arrested, and despite the absence of evidence against him, Eighth Army and the South Korean police are quick to close the case. Not so Bascom and Sueno who risk life and limb to find out what really happened to the "Jade Lady."
I can't remember now why I read this one, but it does feature a couple of engaging anti-heroes in Bascom and Sueno.
QUOTABLE
"A woman just didn't have all that much appeal to him if he couldn't lather her down and chase her around the latrine."
"[Lieutenant Leibowitz was] your typical infantry officer. All spit and polish. No brains."
"It's [fast dancing] intended to make men look ridiculous."
"'Every girl in this country [South Korea] has been sexually abused.'"
"A GI with a clipboard can do no wrong.'"
***********************************************************
The psychological character study is Olivia Manning's School for Love. I read this one while waiting for New York Review of Books Classics to bring out a new edition of Manning's better known Balkan Trilogy.
Set in chaotic Jerusalem at the end of World War II, School for Love examines the interplay among a menagerie of misplaced Europeans: Ethel Bohun, who runs a local boarding house; her tenants (Felix, a teenage orphan waiting to return to England; the penurious Mr. Jewel; and Mrs. Ellis, a pretty young war widow); and her cook (Frau Leszno, a Polish widower).
As the story unfolds, several threads emerge: Miss Bohun, hypocrite, petty tyrant, and founding member of the apocalyptic "Ever-Ready Group of Wise Virgins," schemes for secular advantage while waiting for the Second Coming; young Felix, adrift following the sudden death of his beloved mother, develops a school boy crush on the pregnant widow, Mrs. Ellis; and Frau Leszno, whose deceased husband first owned the boarding house, is unceremoniously disenfranchised by Miss Bohun.
The characters share a house, but they also share a sense of being adrift in a cruel world. What they need is an anchor. And what makes a better anchor than love? Of course, they're looking for love in all the wrong places. And, that's something we can relate to.
QUOTABLE
"'Women aren't made to get on together.'"
"'I don't know as love always goes to the most deserving.'"
***********************************************************
This month (March), I'll be reading lots of manuscripts as one of the judges for Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award Contest. See here for details: http://www.amazon.com/b?node=332264011
This is my third time around, and I'm looking forward to some interesting fictional debuts. I'm also expecting some late nights and bleary eyes too.
As depressing as the depths of winter can be, it does offer a ready excuse to stay inside and read by the fire. And, read we did. Besides the stuff required by our editor at Publishers Weekly, we also found time for another overlooked (by us) classic, a mystery set in Seoul's notorious red-light district as the Vietnam War was winding down, and a psychological novel set in post-World War II Jerusalem.
The classic, although lots of literary scholars and high-brow critics wouldn't agree with that assessment, is Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. Lots of my contemporaries were reading this—and Rand's masterpiece Atlas Shrugged—when I was an undergraduate, but I wasn't tempted. I wouldn't have liked it then anyway. I wasn't ready.
Published in 1943 to mixed reviews, The Fountainhead is the story of architect-hero Howard Roark who steadfastly refuses to compromise either his sense of self or his architectural principles—essentially that form follows function—in order to please others. An early reflection of Rand's philosophical principles, the novel celebrates individualism, self-reliance, and reason.
Ignored by literary scholars, the novel spread through word-of-mouth and eventually became an international best-seller and spawned a 1949 film version. Rand's books, which also endorse laissez-faire capitalism and limited government, continue to sell some 800,000 copies annually, and Atlas Shrugged topped a 1999 Modern Library readers' poll of 100 Best Novels. The Fountainhead also made the list.
QUOTABLE
"'A house can have integrity, just like a person and just as seldom.'"
"'The shortest distance between two points is not a straight line—it's a middle man.'"
"It's so much easier to pass judgment on a man than on an idea."
"'I don't work with collectives. I don't consult, I don't cooperate, I don't collaborate.'"
"'There is no substitute for competence.'"
"'Every form of happiness is private.'"
"A leash is only a rope with a noose at both ends."
******************************************************************
The mystery is Jade Lady Burning, a first novel by retired career soldier Martin Limon. Limon's heroes are a couple of cynical Army investigators, Ernie Bascom and George Sueno, assigned to the U.S. 8th Army Headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. When a local prostitute is found dead, suspicion falls on her GI boyfriend. The boyfriend is soon arrested, and despite the absence of evidence against him, Eighth Army and the South Korean police are quick to close the case. Not so Bascom and Sueno who risk life and limb to find out what really happened to the "Jade Lady."
I can't remember now why I read this one, but it does feature a couple of engaging anti-heroes in Bascom and Sueno.
QUOTABLE
"A woman just didn't have all that much appeal to him if he couldn't lather her down and chase her around the latrine."
"[Lieutenant Leibowitz was] your typical infantry officer. All spit and polish. No brains."
"It's [fast dancing] intended to make men look ridiculous."
"'Every girl in this country [South Korea] has been sexually abused.'"
"A GI with a clipboard can do no wrong.'"
***********************************************************
The psychological character study is Olivia Manning's School for Love. I read this one while waiting for New York Review of Books Classics to bring out a new edition of Manning's better known Balkan Trilogy.
Set in chaotic Jerusalem at the end of World War II, School for Love examines the interplay among a menagerie of misplaced Europeans: Ethel Bohun, who runs a local boarding house; her tenants (Felix, a teenage orphan waiting to return to England; the penurious Mr. Jewel; and Mrs. Ellis, a pretty young war widow); and her cook (Frau Leszno, a Polish widower).
As the story unfolds, several threads emerge: Miss Bohun, hypocrite, petty tyrant, and founding member of the apocalyptic "Ever-Ready Group of Wise Virgins," schemes for secular advantage while waiting for the Second Coming; young Felix, adrift following the sudden death of his beloved mother, develops a school boy crush on the pregnant widow, Mrs. Ellis; and Frau Leszno, whose deceased husband first owned the boarding house, is unceremoniously disenfranchised by Miss Bohun.
The characters share a house, but they also share a sense of being adrift in a cruel world. What they need is an anchor. And what makes a better anchor than love? Of course, they're looking for love in all the wrong places. And, that's something we can relate to.
QUOTABLE
"'Women aren't made to get on together.'"
"'I don't know as love always goes to the most deserving.'"
***********************************************************
This month (March), I'll be reading lots of manuscripts as one of the judges for Amazon's Breakthrough Novel Award Contest. See here for details: http://www.amazon.com/b?node=332264011
This is my third time around, and I'm looking forward to some interesting fictional debuts. I'm also expecting some late nights and bleary eyes too.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Auld Lang Syne
Auld Lang Syne
Despite the ongoing recession at home, dangerous foreign challenges--Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Yemen, Somalia--and a budget deficit that threatens to devour our freedom, I intend to have a great 2010. How exactly do I expect to accomplish this? Lots and lots of Valium. Just kidding. Truthfully, lots of hiking, reading, and positive thinking. What else can you do?
Lately, I've been hiking less (the culprits responsible: hernia surgery and wickedly cold weather here in Hog Heaven), but that's left more time for reading. I've used the time to explore two more authors that I've avoided in the past and another that I discovered just last year. The latter is my new all-time favorite American author, Willa Cather, and the former are British mystery writer Daphne du Maurier and prolific American novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist Joyce Carol Oates.
I can't explain why I never read Du Maurier's classic Rebecca. Mystery is one of my favorite literary genres, and I'm a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock and his Academy Award-winning film adaptation of du Maurier's novel.
For an updated review of Hitchcock's 1940 production, look here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/jun/30/alfredhitchcock.thriller
For Washington Post critic Jonathan Yardley's review of the novel see here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61821-2004Mar15.html
One of the engaging things about the book is that Rebecca, the title character and a major presence throughout, is already dead when the tale opens: the apparent victim of a boating accident. She's also the seemingly much-beloved first wife of Max de Winter, the wealthy proprietor of Manderley, an estate on the Cornish coast.
Mr. de Winter, seemingly overcome with grief, flees Manderley for Monte Carlo where he meets and marries the second Mrs. de Winter, who is seemingly nothing like the first Mrs. de Winter. The original appears to have been smart, fashionable, and universally admired while the replacement is ill-educated, naive, and inept.
The couple returns to Manderley following their honeymoon, but the second Mrs. de Winter is uncomfortable from the first. Treated with disdain by the head of the household staff, the sinister Mrs. Danvers, the new bride fears that she will never measure up to her sainted predecessor.
This is a mystery, of course, and many things are not what they seem. Du Maurier lets the suspense slowly build before revealing the unseemly secrets of Manderley's residents in a fiery climax.
QUOTABLE
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."
"I wondered if it was the same in every home, this feeling of exuberance when visitors had gone."
"'Men are simpler than you imagine, my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.'"
"I felt very much the same as I did the morning I was married. The same stifled feeling that I had gone too far now to turn back."
***************************************************
A confession: I began a novel by Joyce Carol Oates three decades ago but abandoned it unfinished. I don't recall what I didn't like about it, but I avoided Oates thereafter.
Happily, I finally gave the much-celebrated writer another try recently when I stumbled on a copy of Blonde, her brilliant psychological re-imagining of the life of Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe.
There's no mystery here. We know how this story ends: badly. What many readers might not know is that it also begins badly and gets worse. The mystery is that Oates' is able to keep us from turning away from such unrelieved suffering.
Norma Jeane Baker, aka Marilyn Monroe, was the child of an unknown father and an unstable and abusive mother. After her mother was institutionalized, the young Norma Jeane spent years in foster care. Is it any wonder that she grew up desperate for affection? Or, given her physical attributes, that predatory men were quick to exploit her longing?
Almost all of the men who figured prominently in Monroe's short life fare poorly in Oates' rendering: the studio bosses who raped and degraded her; jealous and controlling second husband Joe DiMaggio who beat her; and President John Kennedy who cynically used her before passing her along to his cronies.
Oates is quick to insist that readers approach Blonde as a novelization of Monroe's life, not a biography. Sometimes, though, the novelist's tools yield the greater insight. That certainly seems to be the case here.
QUOTABLE
"[I]n movie logic, aesthetics has the authority of ethics: to be less than beautiful is sad, but to be willfully less than beautiful is immoral."
"'Crying never helps. If it did, we'd all be better off by now.'"
"Any actor is a kind of female."
"'You got the right bone structure, anybody can act.'"
"'Know what celebrity is kid? Being paid to bullshit the rest of your natural life.'"
"'Of course they're deluded, but happiness dwells in delusion.'"
***********************************************************
I celebrated the arrival of the New Year with Willa Cather's novella, A Lost Lady. It's the story of another second wife, in this case Marian Forrester, the young bride of a well-to-do railroad man in Sweet Water, Nebraska at the end of the pioneer era.
Cather reveals Mrs. Forrester through the eyes of Niel Herbert, a local boy with a romantic bent. When the story begins, Niel is a young boy and Mrs. Forrester is newly-arrived in Sweet Water. To an impressional boy, Mrs. Forrester is exotic and larger-than-life.
But, over the years, Niel discovers that his heroine is not what he thought. By the time he's all grown up and leaving Sweet Water permanently, his earlier reverence has turned to contempt.
A Lost Lady is about perception, misperception, and change. It also represents for Cather a return to her most powerful theme: the pioneers who settled the American frontier. Cather's most important work, the novels O Pioneers and My Antonia celebrate the pioneer spirit that conquered a wilderness and defined the American character at least until the mid-twentieth century. See my earlier assessment of Cather here: http://flyover-culture.blogspot.com/2009/09/willa-cathers-america.html
A Lost Lady marks the end of an era: "the sunset of the pioneer." It is a passing that Cather clearly regrets. "The Old West had been settled by dreamers," she has Niel note, "who could conquer but cound not hold. Now all the vast territory they had won was to be at the mercy of men like Ivy Peters, who had never dared anything, never risked anything."
QUOTABLE
"Mrs. Ogden was almost unpardonably homely."
"It was already gone, that [pioneer] age; nothing could ever bring it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men had seen in the air and followed."
Despite the ongoing recession at home, dangerous foreign challenges--Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Yemen, Somalia--and a budget deficit that threatens to devour our freedom, I intend to have a great 2010. How exactly do I expect to accomplish this? Lots and lots of Valium. Just kidding. Truthfully, lots of hiking, reading, and positive thinking. What else can you do?
Lately, I've been hiking less (the culprits responsible: hernia surgery and wickedly cold weather here in Hog Heaven), but that's left more time for reading. I've used the time to explore two more authors that I've avoided in the past and another that I discovered just last year. The latter is my new all-time favorite American author, Willa Cather, and the former are British mystery writer Daphne du Maurier and prolific American novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist Joyce Carol Oates.
I can't explain why I never read Du Maurier's classic Rebecca. Mystery is one of my favorite literary genres, and I'm a huge fan of Alfred Hitchcock and his Academy Award-winning film adaptation of du Maurier's novel.
For an updated review of Hitchcock's 1940 production, look here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2006/jun/30/alfredhitchcock.thriller
For Washington Post critic Jonathan Yardley's review of the novel see here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61821-2004Mar15.html
One of the engaging things about the book is that Rebecca, the title character and a major presence throughout, is already dead when the tale opens: the apparent victim of a boating accident. She's also the seemingly much-beloved first wife of Max de Winter, the wealthy proprietor of Manderley, an estate on the Cornish coast.
Mr. de Winter, seemingly overcome with grief, flees Manderley for Monte Carlo where he meets and marries the second Mrs. de Winter, who is seemingly nothing like the first Mrs. de Winter. The original appears to have been smart, fashionable, and universally admired while the replacement is ill-educated, naive, and inept.
The couple returns to Manderley following their honeymoon, but the second Mrs. de Winter is uncomfortable from the first. Treated with disdain by the head of the household staff, the sinister Mrs. Danvers, the new bride fears that she will never measure up to her sainted predecessor.
This is a mystery, of course, and many things are not what they seem. Du Maurier lets the suspense slowly build before revealing the unseemly secrets of Manderley's residents in a fiery climax.
QUOTABLE
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."
"I wondered if it was the same in every home, this feeling of exuberance when visitors had gone."
"'Men are simpler than you imagine, my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.'"
"I felt very much the same as I did the morning I was married. The same stifled feeling that I had gone too far now to turn back."
***************************************************
A confession: I began a novel by Joyce Carol Oates three decades ago but abandoned it unfinished. I don't recall what I didn't like about it, but I avoided Oates thereafter.
Happily, I finally gave the much-celebrated writer another try recently when I stumbled on a copy of Blonde, her brilliant psychological re-imagining of the life of Hollywood icon Marilyn Monroe.
There's no mystery here. We know how this story ends: badly. What many readers might not know is that it also begins badly and gets worse. The mystery is that Oates' is able to keep us from turning away from such unrelieved suffering.
Norma Jeane Baker, aka Marilyn Monroe, was the child of an unknown father and an unstable and abusive mother. After her mother was institutionalized, the young Norma Jeane spent years in foster care. Is it any wonder that she grew up desperate for affection? Or, given her physical attributes, that predatory men were quick to exploit her longing?
Almost all of the men who figured prominently in Monroe's short life fare poorly in Oates' rendering: the studio bosses who raped and degraded her; jealous and controlling second husband Joe DiMaggio who beat her; and President John Kennedy who cynically used her before passing her along to his cronies.
Oates is quick to insist that readers approach Blonde as a novelization of Monroe's life, not a biography. Sometimes, though, the novelist's tools yield the greater insight. That certainly seems to be the case here.
QUOTABLE
"[I]n movie logic, aesthetics has the authority of ethics: to be less than beautiful is sad, but to be willfully less than beautiful is immoral."
"'Crying never helps. If it did, we'd all be better off by now.'"
"Any actor is a kind of female."
"'You got the right bone structure, anybody can act.'"
"'Know what celebrity is kid? Being paid to bullshit the rest of your natural life.'"
"'Of course they're deluded, but happiness dwells in delusion.'"
***********************************************************
I celebrated the arrival of the New Year with Willa Cather's novella, A Lost Lady. It's the story of another second wife, in this case Marian Forrester, the young bride of a well-to-do railroad man in Sweet Water, Nebraska at the end of the pioneer era.
Cather reveals Mrs. Forrester through the eyes of Niel Herbert, a local boy with a romantic bent. When the story begins, Niel is a young boy and Mrs. Forrester is newly-arrived in Sweet Water. To an impressional boy, Mrs. Forrester is exotic and larger-than-life.
But, over the years, Niel discovers that his heroine is not what he thought. By the time he's all grown up and leaving Sweet Water permanently, his earlier reverence has turned to contempt.
A Lost Lady is about perception, misperception, and change. It also represents for Cather a return to her most powerful theme: the pioneers who settled the American frontier. Cather's most important work, the novels O Pioneers and My Antonia celebrate the pioneer spirit that conquered a wilderness and defined the American character at least until the mid-twentieth century. See my earlier assessment of Cather here: http://flyover-culture.blogspot.com/2009/09/willa-cathers-america.html
A Lost Lady marks the end of an era: "the sunset of the pioneer." It is a passing that Cather clearly regrets. "The Old West had been settled by dreamers," she has Niel note, "who could conquer but cound not hold. Now all the vast territory they had won was to be at the mercy of men like Ivy Peters, who had never dared anything, never risked anything."
QUOTABLE
"Mrs. Ogden was almost unpardonably homely."
"It was already gone, that [pioneer] age; nothing could ever bring it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men had seen in the air and followed."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
