Epilogue: Women’s History Month 2010: Words By Women

Women’s History Month 2010 has come to a close, but I hope the women writers presented during this month will continue to be of interest and inspiration to all who have read these posts. For myself, I have been intrigued by the breadth of women writers I have read (or have planned to read) over the years. Who knew! This month’s writers are listed below, along with an additional work not mentioned in the original post. Explore these women! Explore yourself!

Joy Adamson - Joy Adamson's Africa
Margery Alllingham - The Crime at the Black Dudley (spoiler alert)
Harriette Arnow - Hunter's Horn
Jane Austen - Mansfield Park (spoiler alert)
Maeve Binchy - Scarlet Feather
Pearl S. Buck - Sons
Agatha Christie - The Mysterious Affair at Styles (spoiler alert)
Colette - Mitsou
Anne Fine - The Road of Bones
Noël Riley Fitch - Hemingway in Paris
Fannie Flagg - Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man
Marilyn French - Shakespeare's Division of Experience
Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar - The Madwoman in the Attic
Doris Kearns Goodwin - Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
Mollie Gregory - Triplets
Edith Hamilton - The Great Age of Greek Literature
Lorraine Hansberry - The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window
Lillian Hellman - The Autumn Garden
Katharine Hepburn - Me: Stories of My Life
P. D. James - Cover Her Face (spoiler alert)
Madeleine L'Engle - The Arm of the Starfish
Ursula K. Le Guin - Rocannon's World
Anne McCaffrey - The Chronicles of Pern: First Fall
Anaïs Nin - Under a Glass Bell
Michèle Roberts - Daughters of the House
Dorothy L. Sayers - Whose Body? (spoiler alert)
Zadie Smith - On Beauty
Gloria Steinem - The Reader's Companion to U. S. Women's History
Maria Tatar - The Annotated Brothers Grimm
Fay Weldon - Down Among the Women


Image is from the website nwhp.org

Fay Weldon – Tuesday 22 September 1931 – still living as of this post

Introduction

The first literature festival I ever attended was The London Festival of Literature 2000 and it was where I first experienced poetry as performance. However, it was Fay Weldon’s appearance on Wednesday 27 September 2000 that was the spark of the festival for me. I was familiar with Fay’s writing through her short story collection, Wicked Women. At the festival Fay talked about her novel, Rhode Island Blues. There was a book signing and Fay wrote the following in my copy of the novel – “To Adrean, with best wishes, Fay Weldon London ‘The Word' – Sept. 2000”.

Excerpt from Chapter 1 in Rhode Island Blues

“My grandmother Felicity had seldom refrained from speaking the truth out of compassion for others, but I was too tired and guilty to argue, let alone murmur that actually she was only eighty-three not eighty-five. Felicity spoke from her white clapboard house on a hillside outside Norwich, Connecticut, with its under-floor music system and giant well-stocked fridge, full of uneatable doughy products in bright ugly bags, Lite this and Lite that, and I listened to her reproaches in a cramped brick apartment in London’s Soho. Her voice echoed through an expensive, languid, graceful, lonely, spacious, carpetless house: she kept the doors unlocked and the windows undraped, squares of dark looking out into even blacker night, where for all anyone knew axe murderers lurked. My voice in reply lacked echo: here in central London the rooms were small and cluttered and the windows were barred, and thick drapes kept out the worst of the late-night surge of noise as the gay pubs below emptied out and the gay clubs began to fill. I felt safer here than I ever did when visiting Felicity on her grassy hillside. A prostitute worked on the storey below mine, sopping up any sexual fury which might feel inclined to stray up the stairs, and a graphic designer worked above me, all fastidious control and expertise, which I liked to think seeped downwards to me.

Mine was a fashionable, expensive and desirable address for London. I could walk to work, which I valued, though it meant pushing my way through crowds both celebratory and perverse: the tight butts of the sexually motivated and the spreading butts of gawking tourists an equal nonsense. Was there no way of averaging them out, turning them all into everyday non-loitering citizens? But then you might as well be living in a suburb, and for my kind of person that meant the end.”


Yesterday’s writer – Maria Tatar

Source: Weldon, Fay: Rhode Island Blues. Flamingo, 2000. ISBN 0 00 225849 8. Excerpt: pages 1-2

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Rhode Island Blues
Center: Fay Weldon from the website redmood.com
Right: Signed title page of my personal copy of Rhode Island Blues

Maria Tatar – 1945 – still living as of this post

Introduction

Remember the fairy tales of your childhood - Rumpelstiltskin, The Golden Goose, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, The Fisherman and His Wife, et. al.? Well, welcome to adulthood and the truth behind the “Once upon a time…they lived happily ever after” stories. In The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Maria Tatar provides insights to the tales, in all their variety, published by the Brothers Grimm, as well as folklore in general. Fairy tales as you never knew them. Fairy tales as they never were.

Dedication in The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales
“For Daniel & Lauren”

Excerpt from the chapter FACT And FANTASY: The Art of Reading Fairy Tales in The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales

“One of the chief sources of irritation for the interpreter of fairly tales is the nature of folklore sources. For nearly every tale, there are at least a dozen versions, in some cases hundreds of extant variants. In other words, rather than a single, stable literary text in which even the finest points of detail may function as bearers if significance, we have an infinite number of corrupt “texts,” spoken and written, each representing one version of a single tale type, and an imperfect version at that. No matter how gifted the transcriber of a tale is, he cannot fully succeed in capturing and recreating the spirit of an oral performance. Much s fairy tales invite interpretation, the facts of their origin and diffusion imply the impossibility of textually grounded interpretation. Even the anthropologist who can go straight to the source, observe the teller, study the community in which a tale flourishes, and record that tale still has nothing more than a single version, one no more and no less authoritative than other oral variants….

When we read and interpret a fairy tale, it is important to bring to it some knowledge of national and international variants of the tale. Once we realize that German female Cinderellas did not outnumber male Cinderellas until the eighteenth century, we look at the Grimms’ version of the story with different eyes. The discovery of male Cinderellas and Snow Whites in modern Turkish folklore invites further meditations and investigations. That Russian folklore has a male Sleeping Beauty reminds us that we must show caution in drawing generalizations about female developmental patterns on the basis of that plot. And we are obliged to think twice about male hero patterns when we come across a collection of tales depicting heroines who carry out tasks normally put to male heroes alone or who denounce fathers too weak to protect them from evil-minded stepmothers.”


Yesterday’s writer – Gloria Steinem
Tomorrow’s writer – Fay Weldon

Source: Tatar, Maria. The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Princeton University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-691-01487-6. Excerpts: pages 42 and 47

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales
Center: Maria Tatar from the website people.fas.harvard.edu

Happy Birthday Sharon!!!

Sharon was born on 28 March in the Twentieth century, somewhere in the land known as Canada. Sharon is ageless and artistically inclined. Over this past year we have visited several museums and I can attest to her diligence in experiencing all that they have to offer. Presented here are three visuals I photographed from two of the museums visited. So Sharon, however you and David celebrate the day of your birth, I wish you a joyous day and one full of beauty! Have much fun!




Images:
Left: LACMA gaslight sculpture. Photo is © An Adrean Darce Brent Image
Center: Neon Art Museum butterfly. Photo is © An Adrean Darce Brent Image

Right: LACMA abstract sculpture. Photo is © An Adrean Darce Brent Image

Gloria Steinem – Sunday 25 March 1934 – still living as of this post

Introduction

Don’t remember when I first heard of Gloria Steinem, this icon of the feminist movement. There was a time when I regularly read the publication she founded, Ms. Magazine, but it has been years since I’ve picked up an issue. In any case, Gloria Steinem has been involved in all aspects of feminism since the late Twentieth century and her collection of essays in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions presents the various topics associated with the second feminist wave.


Excerpt from the chapter Words and Change in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

“The nature of work has been a major area of new understanding, beginning with the word itself. Before feminism, work was largely defined as what men did or would do. Thus, a working woman was someone who labored outside the home for money, masculine-style. Though still alarmingly common, the term is being protested, especially by homemakers who work harder than any other class of worker, and are still called people who “don’t work.” Feminists have always tried to speak of work inside the home or outside the home, of salaried or unsalaried workers. Attributing a financial value to work in the home would go a long way toward making marriage an equal partnership, as the Equal Rights Amendment would also do, and toward ending the semantic slavery inherent in the phrase women who don’t work.

It would also begin to untangle the double-role problem identified in the sixties-that is, the double burden of millions of women who work both inside and outside the home-by defining human maintenance and home care as a job in itself; a job that men can and should do as well as women.

Equal pay for equal work, the concept with which we entered the sixties, fell short of helping women in the mostly female, nonunionized jobs of the pink-collar ghetto-another new term. Blue-collar workers, who are overwhelmingly male, usually earn far more than workers in mostly female jobs. What did equal pay do for the nurse, for instance, who was getting the same low salary as the woman working next to her? Equal pay for comparable work has become the new goal, and comparability studies are going forward on the many jobs done largely by men that require less education and fewer skills but still get more pay than jobs done largely by women.”

Yesterday’s writer – Zadie Smith
Tomorrow’s writer – Maria Tatar

Source: Steinem, Gloria. Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983. ISBN 0-03-063236-6. Excerpt: page 155

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

Center: Gloria Steinem from the website feminist.com

Zadie Smith – Saturday 25 October 1975 – still living as of this post

Introduction

Here’s the last author that I met at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2001. White Teeth is Zadie Smith’s first novel. And from my journal I wrote: “Zadie read three pieces – part of a letter, excerpt from her next novel, and some writing on her book tour of the States. Really liked the letter. Then the usual Q & A session.” – personal journal, Saturday 25 August 2001. Of course, Zadie signed the copy of White Teeth that I bought.


Dedication in White Teeth

“To my mother and my father And for Jimmi Rahman”

Excerpt from Teething Trouble in White Teeth

“But Archie did not pluck Clara Bowden from a vacuum. And it’s about time people told the truth about beautiful women. They do not shimmer down staircases. They do not descend, as was once supposed, from on high, attached to nothing other than wings. Clara was from somewhere. She had roots. More specifically, she was from Lambeth (via Jamaica) and she was connected, through tacit adolescent agreement, to one Ryan Topps. Because before Clara was beautiful she was ugly. And before there was Clara and Archie there was Clara and Ryan. And there is no getting away from Ryan Topps. Just as a good historian need recognize Hitler’s Napoleonic ambitions in the east in order to comprehend his reluctance to invade the British in the west, so Ryan Topps is essential to any understanding of why Clara did what she did. Ryan is indispensable. There was Clara and Ryan for eight months before Clara and Archie were drawn together from opposite ends of a staircase. And Clara might never have run into the arms of Archie Jones if she hadn’t been running quite as fast as she could away from Ryan Topps.”


Yesterday’s writer – Dorothy L. Sayers
Tomorrow’s writer – Gloria Steinem

Source: Smith, Zadie. White Teeth. Penguin, 2000. ISBN 0-140-27633-5. Excerpt: page 27

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of White Teeth
Center: Zadie Smith from the website villagevoice.com

Right: Signed title page of my personal copy of White Teeth

Dorothy L. (Leigh) Sayers – Tuesday 13 June 1893 – Tuesday 17 December 1957

Introduction

I became acquainted with the works of Dorothy L. Sayers, specifically her character Lord Peter Wimsey, through PBS (Public Broadcasting Service). Now I don’t remember if the broadcasting station was WGBH or KCET, but in any case it was an introduction to a detective with a different style in approaching crime. And that style can be seen to great effect in Busman’s Honeymoon (spoiler alert).

Dedication in Busman’s Honeymoon

“To Muriel St. Clare Byrne, Helen Simpson and Marjorie Barber”

Excerpt from Chapter II Goosefeather Bed in Busman’s Honeymoon

“Under the circumstances, Harriet made no attempt to change her dress. The room, though spacious and beautiful in its half-timbered style, was cold. She wondered whether, all things considered, Peter would not have been happier in the Hotel Gigantic somewhere-or-other on the Continent. She hoped that, after his struggles with the woodshed, he would find a good, roaring fire to greet him and be able to eat his belated meal in comfort.

Peter Wimsey rather hoped so, too. It took a long time to clear the woodshed, which contained not very much wood, but an infinite quantity of things like dilapidated mangles and wheelbarrows, together with the remains of an old pony-trap, several disused grates and a galvanized iron boiler with a hole in it. But he had his doubts about the weather, and was indisposed to allow Mrs. Merdle (the ninth Daimler of that name) to stand out all night. When he thought of his lady’s expressed preference for haystacks, he sang songs in the French language; but from time to time he stopped singing and wondered whether, after all, she might not have been happier at the Hotel Gigantic, somewhere-or-other on the Continent.”


Yesterday’s writer - Michèle Roberts
Tomorrow’s writer – Zadie Smith

Source: Sayers, Dorothy L. Busman’s Honeymoon. HarperPaperbacks, April 1995. ISBN 0-06-104351-6. Excerpt: page 55

Images
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Busman’s Honeymoon

Center: Dorothy L. Sayers from the website sayers.org.uk

Michèle Roberts – Friday 20 May 1949 – still living as of this post

Introduction

My favorite literary form is short fiction. I appreciate the skill in writing an effective piece within a limited number of pages or words. I have a number of short fiction anthologies, but few single author short fiction collections. At the 2001 Edinburgh International Festival, I bought several single-author collections of short stories, including Michèle Roberts’ Playing Sardines. She was on a panel with Elena Lappin and in my journal I wrote: “Michèle was more animated than Elena, but both were interesting women. Michèle comes to her writing from a feminist perspective and Elena from a Jewish one. They did readings from their latest works. Both of the excerpts had wit, though Michèle’s turned dark at the end. Both bring a sense of identity to their writings.” – personal journal, Friday 24 August 2001. Michèle signed my copy of Playing Sardines as follows: “dear Adrean with best wishes Michèle”.


Dedication in Playing Sardines

“In memoriam Lorna Sage”

Excerpt from Fluency in Playing Sardines

“It is odd, now that I think about it, that I have never considered Paris as a possible home. Yet I’m sure it could have been perfectly feasible. As a photographer I could have worked anywhere. My French is not as fluent as I’d like, but I speak well enough to get by. My French always improves, anyway, when I’m actually in France, surrounded by French sounds; soaked in them; saturated. Perhaps I’ve simply hung on to holiday cliché, a wornout dream of romance, wanted to keep Paris as my special Somewhere Else, my paradise, the golden city in which I experience life as intensively and ecstatically as though I were on acid. This visionary bliss is not designed to survive daily reality. If I lived in Paris then I’d have to become a tourist to somewhere else instead. London, probably.

I’ve carefully kept Paris as my place of pilgrimage by associating it with the pursuit of particular beloved artist or writer ghosts, tracking down their flats and studios and favourite cafés, or with epiphanies of various sorts: those four small Vuillards I discovered in the Musée d’Orsay last year, for example, on that June day smelling of hot dust, lime blossom and vanilla, that day when I wandered into the little gallery in the rue de Seine and met Pierre for the first time. I’ve gone to Paris with all my lovers, for doomed or magical or awkward weekends. Each different lover provided a different view of the city, different museums and art galleries for us to frequent, dawdling hand in hand or arm in arm, different cafés and bars for us to lounge in while we talked. And because I haven’t always had the courage of my convictions and desires, and so haven’t had all that many lovers, I cannot claim to know Paris very well. I need a map, a bus guide, a plan of the metro, to get me around. A few metro stations shine for ever with my lovers’ names superimposed on them, written up above the entrances to those labyrinthine underworlds in loops of stars.

I had assumed I was finished with Paris as a site of assignation. That I could return to it as just another destination and get to know it properly. No more secret passions. No more mad fantasies. I certainly never intended to fall in love again. All that was over and gone. The pain and suffering and loss – all finished. Now I would learn to love Paris as I loved London, with a modicum of calm. Now I’d visit Paris simply as a reasonable adult, as a professional photographer happily trawling the streets.”


Yesterday’s writer - Anaïs Nin
Tomorrow’s writer – Dorothy L. Sayers

Source: Roberts, Michèle, Playing Sardines. Virago, 2001. ISBN 1-86049-814-0. Excerpt: pages 61-62

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Playing Sardines
Center: Michèle Roberts from the website michèleroberts.co.uk
Right: Signed title page of my personal copy of Playing Sardines

Anaïs Nin – Saturday 21 February 1903 – Friday 14 January 1977

Introduction

A. Nin
Anon
A Nun
Non! Non!

The little bit of alliterate silliness above was written by me sometime in the early 1990s. And sometime earlier, a friend told me about the many diaries of Anaïs Nin, which I promptly began to read – starting with The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Volume One 1931-1934. People who manage to record their lives for any substantial length of time are incredible. Such discipline. I keep a journal very infrequently – the last stretch of time I wrote down was a five-day trip I took to San Francisco in December of 2008. No journal writing by me since then.


Excerpt from [Winter, 1931-1932] in The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Volume One 1931-1934

“I had a sense of preparation for a love to come. Like the extension of canopies, the unrolling of ceremonial carpets, as if I must first create a marvelous world in which to house it, in which to receive adequately this guest of honor.

It is in this mood of preparation that I pass through the house, painting a wall through which stains of humidity show, hanging a lamp where it will throw Balinese shadow plays, draping a bed, placing logs in the fireplace.

Every room is painted a different color. As if there were one room for every separate mood: lacquer red for vehemence, pale turquoise for reveries, peach color for gentleness, green for repose, grey for work at the typewriter.

Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous.

I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension.

But I am not always in what I call a state of grace. I have days of illuminations and fevers. I have days when the music in my head stops. Then I mend socks, prune trees, can fruits, polish furniture. But while I am doing this I feel I am not living.

Unlike Madame Bovary, I am not going to take poison. I am not sure that being a writer will help me escape from Louveciennes. I have finished my book D.H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study. I wrote it in sixteen days. I had to go to Paris to present it to Edward Titus for publication. It will not be published and out by tomorrow, which is what a writer would like when the book is hot out of the oven, when it is alive within one’s self. He gave it to his assistant to revise.

As soon as I go to Paris too often, my mother looks disapprovingly out of her window, and does not wave good-bye. She looks, at times, like the old women who raise their curtains to stare at me when I take Banquo for a walk. My brother Joaquin plays the piano continuously, as if he would melt the walls of the house.

I take walks along the railroad tracks on bad days. But as I have never been able to read a timetable, I never walk here at the right time and I get tired before the train comes to deliver me from the difficulties of living, and I walk back home. Does this fascination for a possible accident come from the traumatic time when I missed such a death as a child? We had a servant in Neuilly (when I was two years old, and my brother Thorvald just born). My father must have seduced her and then forgotten hear. Anyway, she sought revenge. She took my brother and me on an outing and left the carriage, and me beside it, in the middle of the railroad track. But the signal gateman saw us, and as he had seven children of his own, he took a chance on his own life and rushed out in time to kick the carriage out of the way and carry me off in his arms. The event remained in our memory. I still remember the beds covered with toys for the seven children of the man who saved our lives.”


Yesterday’s writer – Anne McCaffrey
Tomorrow’s writer - Michèle Roberts

Source: Nin, Anaïs. The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Volume One 1931-1934. Harvest Book, 1966. ISBN 0-15-626025-5. Excerpt: pages 4-6

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of The Diary of Anaïs Nin: Volume One 1931-1934

Center: Anaïs Nin from the website en.wikipedia.org

Anne McCaffrey – Thursday 1 April 1926 – still living as of this post

Introduction

I want to be a Dragonrider of a Golden queen and lead my Weyr in the fight against Thread! From the first novel, Dragonflight, I have loved the tales of Pern penned by Anne McCaffrey. They just touch something in my imagination. How wonderful it would be to ride a dragon and have such absolute connection with another living creature. Even though I prefer my science fiction located in space and with extra-terrestrial interaction, the Pern Series is a wonderful, different perspective. And Anne’s book, Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern, is a part of the Pern story.

Dedication in Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

“This book is dedicated to my daughter Georgeanne Johnson with great affection and respect for her courage”

Excerpt from Chapter I of Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

“Once the Pass was completed…In the act of pulling on a clean undertunic, Moreta paused in surprise. Why, this Pass would end in another eight Turns. No, seven if one counted this Turn a quarter gone. Moreta sternly corrected an optimistic attitude. The Turn was barely seventy days old. Eight Turns then. In eight Turns, she, Moreta, would no longer have to fly with Orlith against Thread. The Red Star would have passed too far to rain the devastating parasitic Thread over Pern’s tired continent. Dragonriders would not have to fly because no Thread would blur the sky.

Did Thread just stop, Moreta wondered as she slipped on her soft brown shoes, like a sudden summer storm? Or did it dribble off like a winter rain?

They could use some rain. Snow would be even better. Or a good hard frost. Frost was always a Weyr ally.

She slipped into the dress now, smoothing it over her rather too broad shoulders, over breasts firm rather than large, a waist that was trim, and buttocks flat from long hours of riding astride. The gown hid muscled thighs that she sometimes resented, but they, too, were the legacy of twenty Turns riding a dragon and little enough inconvenience for being a queen’s rider.”

Yesterday’s writer – Ursula K. Le Guin
Tomorrow’s writer - Anaïs Nin

UPDATE: Anne McCaffrey died on Monday 21 November 2011 in Ireland.

Source: McCaffrey, Anne. Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern. Ballantine Books, June 1989. ISBN 0-345-29873-X. Dedication: page v. Excerpt: page 4.

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern
Center: Anne McCaffrey from the website annemccaffrey.net

Ursula K. (Kroeber) Le Guin – Monday 21 October 1929 – still living as of this post

Introduction

Not sure how I came across Ursula K. Le Guin, but I first read The Left Hand of Darkness (spoiler alert) in college. Though-provoking presentation of changing gender reality. What would be the ramifications here if one could switch back and forth from one gender to the other? Self-perception?


Dedication in The Left Hand of Darkness

“For Charles, sine quo non"

Excerpt from the Introduction in The Left Hand of Darkness

“In reading a novel, any novel, we have to know perfectly well that the whole thing is nonsense, and then, while reading, believe every word of it. Finally, when we’re done with it, we may find-if it is a good novel-that we’re a bit different from what we were before we read it, that we have been changes a little, as if by having met a new face, crossed a street we never crossed before. But it’s very hard to say just what we learned, how we were changed.”

Excerpt from A Parade in Erhenrang in The Left Hand of Darkness

“I’ll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact my fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust. Facts are no more solid, coherent, round, and real than pearls are. But both are sensitive.

The story is not all mine, nor told by me alone. Indeed I am not sure whose story it is; you can judge better. But it is all one, and if at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.

It starts on the 44th diurnal of the Year 1491, which on the planet Winter in the nation Karhide was Odharhahad Tuwa or the twenty-second day of the third month of spring in the Year One. It is always the Year One here. Only the dating of every past and future year changes each New Year’s Day, as one counts backwards or forwards from the unitary Now. So it was spring of the Year One in Erhenrang, capital city of Karhide, and I was in peril of my life, and did not know it.”


Yesterday’s writer – Madeleine L’Engle
Tomorrow’s writer – Anne McCaffrey

Source: Le Guin, Ursula K. The Left Hand of Darkness. Ace Books, 1976. ISBN 0-441-47812-3. Excerpt from A Parade in Erhenrang: pages 1-2

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of The Left Hand of Darkness

Center: Ursula K. Le Guin from the website ursulakleguin.com

Madeleine L’Engle – Friday 29 November 1918 – Thursday 6 September 2007

Introduction

I don’t remember the first time I read Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, but the last time I read it was for a reading group discussion held on Thursday 6 January 2005 at The Talking Stick in Santa Monica (The Talking Stick has since moved to Venice). I so enjoyed reading A Wrinkle in Time again, that I went on and read the other three books that collectively make-up the Time Quartet – A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, and Many Waters. Time travel is one of my favorite literary devices and the idea of traveling in time just blows me away. When would you go? One of the minor characters in the book I like is Mrs. Who and her appropriate quotations sprinkled throughout the novel. One such quote is by Pascal “Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connait point.” Which is translated by Mrs. Who as “The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing.” (page 35).

Dedication in A Wrinkle in Time

“For Charles Wadsworth Camp and Wallace Collin Franklin”

Excerpt from An Introduction By The Author in A Wrinkle in Time

“In the Time novels, Meg and Polly ask some big questions. Many of us ask these questions are we’re growing up, but we tend to let them go because there’s so much else to do. I write the books I do because I’m still asking the questions. One physicist says that the big question is: Are we alone in the universe or not? I go out at night and look at the stars, hundreds of billions of stars, and think that there are surely other galaxies whose solar systems include planets with thinking life. I don’t believe that we are alone, and that brings up more questions. When I look at the night sky I’m looking at time as well as space, looking at a star seven light-years away, and a star seventy light-years away, or seven hundred or seven thousand or…”

Excerpt from The Tesseract in A Wrinkle in Time

“There was a gust of wind and a great thrust and a sharp shattering as she was shoved through-what? Then darkness; silence; nothingness. If Calvin was still holding her hand she could not feel it. But this time she was prepared for the sudden and complete dissolution of her body. When she felt the tingling coming back to her fingertips she knew that this journey was almost over and she could feel again the presence of Calvin’s hand about hers.

Without warning, coming as a complete and unexpected shock, she felt a pressure she had never imagined, as though she were being completely flattened out by an enormous steam roller. This was far worse than the nothingness had been; while she was nothing there was no need to breathe, but now her lungs were squeezed together so that although she was dying for want of air there was no way for her lungs to expand and contract, to take in the air that she must have to stay alive. This was completely different from the thinning of atmosphere when they flew up the mountain and she had had to put the flowers to her face to breathe. She tried to gasp, but a paper doll can’t gasp. She thought she was trying to think, but her flattened-out mind was as unable to function as her lungs; her thoughts were squashed along with the rest of her. Her heart tried to beat; it gave a knifelike, sidewise movement, but it could not expand.

But then she seemed to hear a voice, or if not a voice, at least words, words flattened out like printed words on paper, “Oh, no! We can’t stop here! This is a two-dimensional planet and the children can’t manage here!”

She was whizzed into nothingness again, and nothingness was wonderful. She did not mind that she could not feel Calvin’s hand, that she could not see or feel or be. The relief from the intolerable pressure was all she needed.”


Yesterday’s writer – P. D. James
Tomorrow’s writer – Ursula K. Le Guin

Source: L’Engle, Madeleine. A Wrinkle in Time. Bantam Doubleday Dell, April 1973. ISBN 0-440-49805-8. Excerpt from The Tesseract: pages 79-80

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of A Wrinkle in Time

Center: Madeleine L’Engle from the website madeleinelengle.com

Rejoice. Spring Returns!

‘Midst soft flowing grass,
Swaying golden daffodils
Rejoice. Spring returns!

Rejoice. Spring returns!
Amber sunflowers waving,
‘Neath clear morning skies.

‘Neath clear morning skies,
Many joyous children dance,
‘Midst soft flowing grass.

- Adrean Darce Brent
Saturday 20 March 2010
Spring Equinox

Images from the website upload.wikimedia.org

P. D. (Phyllis Dorothy) James – Tuesday 3 August 1920 – still living as of this post

Introduction

It was on the first day (Monday 5 March 2001) of my attendance at the Bath Literature Festival that I met P. D. James. She and Frank Delaney were the two-person panel titled “Facing the Music”. They primarily discussed their different types and modes of writing. There was a book signing afterwards and, although there were copies of her various mystery/crime novels available for purchase; I opted for a different type of book and bought P. D.’s The Children of Men, a novel with a science fiction/futuristic slant to the story. P. D. James signed and dated my copy of her book.

Dedication in The Children of Men

“Again, to my daughters Clare and Jane who helped”

Excerpt from Omega of The Children of Men

“Friday 1 January 2021

Early this morning, 1 January 2021, three minutes after midnight, the last human being to be born on earth was killed in a pub brawl in a suburb of Buenos Aires, aged twenty-five years two months and twelve days. If the first reports are to be believed, Joseph Ricardo died as he had lived. The distinction, if one can call it that, of being the last human whose birth was officially recorded, unrelated as it was to any personal virtue or talent, had always been difficult for him to handle. And now he is dead. The news was given to us here in Britain on the nine o’clock programme of the State Radio Service and I heard it fortuitously. I had settled down to begin this diary of the last half of my life when I noticed the time and thought I might as well catch the headlines to the nine o’clock bulletin. Ricardo’s death was the last item mentioned, and then only briefly, a couple of sentences delivered without emphasis in the newscaster’s carefully non-committal voice. But it seemed to me, hearing it, that it was a small additional justification for beginning the diary today; the first day of a new year and my fiftieth birthday. As a child I had always liked that distinction, despite the inconvenience of having it follow Christmas too quickly so that one present — it never seemed notably superior to the one I would in any case have received – had to do for both celebrations.”

UPDATE - P. D. James died in Oxford, England on Thursday 27 November 2014


Yesterday’s writer – Katharine Hepburn
Tomorrow’s writer – Madeleine L’Engle

Source: James, P. D. The Children of Men. Faber and Faber, 2000. ISBN 0-574-20465-1. Excerpt: page 3

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of The Children of Men
Center: P. D. James from the website faber.co.uk
Right: Signed title page of my personal copy of The Children of Men

Katharine Hepburn – Sunday 12 May 1907 – Sunday 29 June 2003

Introduction

All right, Kate Hepburn’s life accomplishments are in the area of acting, not writing; but trying one’s hand in a different area, even later in life, can produce unexpected good results such as The Making of the African Queen: Or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind. Thoroughly enjoyed Kate’s autobiographical memoir of life on the set of the Oscar-winning film, "The African Queen".

Dedication in The Making of the African Queen

“To Mother and Dad”

Excerpt from The Making of the African Queen

“Leopoldville, practically on the Equator, was our first destination. Heat—-damp---a barrage of amateur photographers---long flat-field-flat-town---very kind people. Heat—-hotel---French-speaking Belgians-—no panes of glass in windows-—porches—-high ceilings—blinds-—mosquito nets over beds-—painted cement floors-—dark, spare bathroom—-watch the bugs-—watch the water-—thoughtful people-—took care of us afternoon and evening. We went to bed early. Up at 4:00 a.m. And off again.

Stanleyville. Belgian Congo. Peter Viertel met us. One hour before, John Huston had taken off for our village at Biondo. Did you hear what I said? One hour before. We had flown halfway around the world to get to him. And one hour before, he had left on a private plane for our camp, which was just being completed—south-—down the Congo River about eight hours by rail and then west into the jungle by car another forty miles and no telephone. I can’t describe my emotions. You see, I didn’t know any of these people. The Bogarts seemed sweet but I didn’t know them. Peter Viertel? Well, I knew his mother, Salka Viertel, and he seemed nice. But gosh, I couldn’t be entirely honest with him. Not only had Huston gone to Biondo but he had taken his guns with him. Not the script! To this day he has never told me why he left. I suppose he was absolutely horrified at the thought of beginning the picture, and the sight of us was the knell of doom. It was an utterly piggish thing to do and it makes me mad to think of it even now—goddamn—goddamn….

If Peter Viertel, the writer, had not met us, no one would have. Dear Peter Viertel. He saved my sanity-—he sort of took me over and filled my time with golf and trips here and there and talk about the script. Peter Viertel was an absolute angel to me-—to everyone. Helpful—kind-—and a damned good writer. He eventually wrote a fascinating book about two men, White Hunter, Black Heart, sort of inspired by this experience. Thank God he was there.”


Yesterday’s writer – Lillian Hellman
Tomorrow’s writer – P. D. James

Source: Hepburn, Katharine. The Making of The African Queen: Or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind. Alfred A. Knopf, 1987. ISBN 0-394-56272-0. Excerpt: pages 21-23

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of The Making of The African Queen

Center: Katharine Hepburn from the website imdb.com

Lillian Hellman – Tuesday 20 June 1905 – Saturday 30 June 1984

Introduction

Discovered Lillian Hellman through reading her first autobiography, An Unfinished Woman (like the title). Haven’t read or seen any of her plays; but I did read her subsequent autobiography, Penitmento: A Book of Portraits, and saw the film Julia, which is based on the portrait of the same name in her book.


Foreword from Pentimento: A Book of Portraits

“Old paint on canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman’s dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter “repented,” changed his mind. Perhaps it would be as well to say that the old conception, replaced by a later choice, is a way of seeing and then seeing again.

That is all I mean about the people in this book. The paint has aged now and I wanted to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.”

Excerpt from Theatre in Pentimento: A Book of Portraits

“It is strange to me that so many people like to listen to so many other people talk about the theatre. There are those who talk for large fees or give it away at small dinner parties and often their stories are charming and funny, but they are seldom people who have done much solid work. You are there, you are good in the theatre, you have written or directed or acted or designed just because you have and there is little that you can or should be certain about because almost everything in the theatre contradicts something else. People have come together, as much by accident as by design, done the best they can and sometimes the worst, profited or not, gone their way vowing to see each other the next week, mean it, and wave across a room a few years later.

The manuscript, the words on the page, was what you started with and what you have left. The production is of great importance, has given the play the only life it will know, but it is gone, in the end, and the pages are the only wall against which to throw the future or measure the past.”


Yesterday’s writer – Lorraine Hansberry
Tomorrow’s writer – Katharine Hepburn

Source: Hellman, Lillian. Pentimento: A Book of Portraits. Signet, 1974. Foreword: page 1, Excerpt: page 125

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Pentimento: A Book of Portraits

Center: Lillian Hellman from MD, March 1974

Lorraine Hansberry – Monday 19 May 1930 – Tuesday 12 January 1965

Introduction

Though I often have to confess that “Yes, I’ve seen the movie and no, I haven’t read the book”. In the case of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin In The Sun, I can say that “Yes, I’ve seen the movie and yes, I’ve read the play”. Although the play is her best-known work, it is Lorraine’s autobiography, To Be Young, Gifted And Black, that is the focus here. I will never write a comprehensive autobiography (although perhaps a selective memoir or two), so I do respect anyone who willingly presents their whole life to the world.

Excerpt from Chicago: Southside Summers in To Be Young, Gifted And Black

“For some time now-I think since I was a child-I have been possessed of the desire to put down the stuff of my life. That is a commonplace impulse, apparently, among persons of massive self-interest; sooner or later we all do it. And, I am quite certain, there is only one internal quarrel: how much of the truth to tell? How much, how much; how much! It is brutal, in sober uncompromising moments, to reflect on the comedy of concern we all enact when it comes to our precious images!

Even so, when such vanity as propels the writing of such memoirs is examined, certainly one would wish at least to have some boast of social serviceability on one’s side. I shall set down on these pages what shall seem to me to the truth of my life and essences…which are to be found, first of all, in the Southside of Chicago, where I was born….

All travelers to my city should ride the elevated trains that race along the back ways of Chicago. The lives you can look into!

I think you could find the tempo of my people on their back porches. The honesty of their living is there in the shabbiness. Scrubbed porches that sag and look their danger. Dirty gray wood steps. And always a line of white and pink clothes scrubbed so well, waving in the dirty wind of the city.

My people are poor. And they are tired. And they are determined to live.

Our Southside is a place apart: each piece of our living is a protest.”


Yesterday’s writer – Edith Hamilton
Tomorrow’s writer – Lillian Hellman

Source: Hansberry, Lorraine. To Be Young, Gifted And Black. Signet, 1970. ISBN 0-451-11080-3. Excerpt: page 45

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of To Be Young, Gifted And Black

Center: Lorraine Hansberry from the website en.wikipedia.org

Edith Hamilton – Monday 12 August 1867 – Friday 31 May 1963

Introduction

I have always enjoyed the mythology presented in various cultures around the world, but I have especially loved the stories of the Greek and Roman Gods and Goddesses. Not exactly sure what about them appeals to me. Perhaps it is the adventures and exploits they have with each other and humans; or their amazing abilities and recognizable flaws; or maybe it is simply that they are immortal and I found that completely intriguing. In any case, Edith Hamilton’s Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, is a wonderful book full of the myths surrounding the deities of an earlier time and in a fantastical place.

Excerpt from The Lesser Gods of Olympus in Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

“THE GRACES were three Aglaia (Splendor), Euphrosyne (Mirth), and Thalia (Good Cheer). They were the daughters of Zeus and Eurynome, a child of the Titan, Ocean. Except in a story Homer and Hesiod tell, that Aglaia married Hephaestus, they are not treated as separate personalities, but always together, a triple incarnation of grace and beauty. The gods delighted in them when they danced enchantingly to Apollo’s lyre, and the man they visited was happy. They “give life its bloom.” Together with their companions, the Muses, they were “queens of song,” and no banquet without them could please.

THE MUSES were nine in number, the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, Memory. At first, like the Graces, they were not distinguished from each other. “They are all,” Hesiod says, “of one mind, their hearts are set upon song and their spirit is free from care. He is happy whom the Muses love. For though a man has sorrow and grief in his soul, yet when the servant of the Muses sings, at once he forgets his dark thoughts and remembers not his troubles. Such is the holy gift of the Muses to men.”

In later times each had her own special field. Clio was Muse of history, Urania of astronomy, Melpomene of tragedy, Thalia of comedy, Terpsichore of the dance, Calliope of epic poetry, Erato of love-poetry, Polyhymnia of songs to the gods, Euterpe of lyric poetry.”


Yesterday’s writer – Mollie Gregory
Tomorrow’s writer – Lorraine Hansberry

Source: Hamilton, Edith. Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. Mentor Books, 1963. Excerpt: page 37

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
Center: Edith Hamilton from the back cover of my personal copy of Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

Mollie Gregory – still living as of this post

Introduction

It was in 2003 that I first attended the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books which was held at UCLA. Because of my interest in film, on the second day of the two-day event, I went to a panel discussion titled “Women in Hollywood” in which Mollie Gregory participated, along with Norma Barzman, Cari Beauchamp, and Lynda Obst. This is from my journal: “Went to the book signing and decided to buy Mollie Gregory’s book “Women Who Run The Show”. When Mollie signed my book, she asked me what I did. I said…for art I did black and white photography….she mentioned two women in the book I should read.” – personal journal, Sunday 27 April 2003. In my copy of Women Who Run The Show: How a Brilliant and Creative New Generation of Women Stormed Hollywood, Mollie wrote: “For Adrean Good luck in all your pursuits! Mollie Gregory April 27 2003.”

Excerpt from Beachhead: The 1970s in Women Who Run The Show

“It felt like a beachhead. Certainly each woman fought and struggled hard in different ways in a kind of war. “Women working today have never been in battle, but we were,” one woman, an entertainment lawyer, said. “I deserved war pay.”

1973 might as well be a century ago, so much has changed.

Before 1973, employment want ads were separated into jobs for men and women. In some states women could not invest in stocks without their husband’s written approval. Most women went to work in high heels and skirts. Society still frowned on women and men living together without benefit of a marriage license, “single parent” and “significant other” were unknown tags to define your personal setup, and baby boomers were a long way from retirement. Abortion was illegal and often dangerous. Face-lifts were something only movie stars did.

There were three networks-ABC, NBC, and CBS-and seven major film studios (Paramount, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Columbia, United Artists, MGM and Universal). A few independent producers turned out shows and films so constantly they resembled mini-studios. We went to movies in theaters and watched shows on television. If we missed a TV show, it was gone until rerun time. Video cassettes, VCRs, and personal computers did not exist; neither did CDs, laser discs, Home Box Office, CNN, or Blockbuster.

In January 1973, the Supreme Court made two momentous decisions: ruling on Roe v. Wade, the Court made first trimester abortions legal; it also declared in another case that job advertisements could not specify gender. Imagine scanning an ad for a mechanic that did not specify men only-or a cosmetics sales position not restricted to women. Reading those ads, imagination began to wander outside traditional limits for, perhaps, the first time.”

Author’s Note in Women Who Run The Show

“This book is based on more than 125 interviews conducted mainly in Los Angeles, in person and by telephone. I have also used secondary materials-books, magazine and newspaper articles, and some unpublished studies-to fix events by date, and to augment facts related in the interviews. But the thrust of the book relies on the candor and the memory of those interviewed, their sense of their own experiences, their point of view; their accounts are both factual and subjective, a cousin, perhaps, of the oral history. When accounts differed with others, I have noted it, but generally recollections did not differ much where they interconnected. Some of the women, and men, interviewed, did not want their remarks on the record, or asked that a portion of their remarks by kept confidential; therefore, some comments are noted as “anonymous.” Most interviews were done entirely on the record.”

Yesterday’s writer – Doris Kearns Goodwin
Tomorrow’s writer – Edith Hamilton

Source: Gregory, Mollie. Women Who Run The Show: How a Brilliant and Creative New Generation of Women Stormed Hollywood. St. Martin’s Press, 2002. ISBN 0-312-30182-0. Excerpt: pages 1-2. Author’s Note: page 379.

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Women Who Run The Show
Center: Mollie Gregory from the website molliegregory.net
Right: Signed title page of my personal copy of Women Who Run The Show

Doris Kearns Goodwin – Monday 4 January 1943 – still living as of this post

Introduction

I had vaguely heard of Doris Kearns Goodwin in an academic context (she is an Historian). However, it was as an interviewee in Ken Burn’s excellent documentary film, Baseball (the sequel, The Tenth Inning is scheduled to air on PBS in the Fall of 2010), that Doris’s name has stuck with me. Doris is a baseball fan and in Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir, she recounts her childhood love for the Brooklyn Dodgers. As a baseball fan myself, I enjoyed the story of how her love of baseball evolved. I have been a Boston Red Sox fan all my life (Red Sox Box) and Doris became a Red Sox fan in her adulthood.

Dedication in Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir

“In memory of my parents MICHAEL AND HELEN KEARNS and to my sisters, CHARLOTTE AND JEANNE”

Excerpt from CHAPTER ONE of Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir

“ON A SULTRY FRIDAY evening that same summer, after months of listening to games on the radio, I saw my first game at Ebbets Field. As my father and I walked up the cobblestone slope of Bedford Avenue and approached the arched windows of the legendary brick stadium, he explained how, as a boy, he had watched the ballpark being built, since the place where he had been sent to live after his parents died was only two blocks away. He was at the site in 1912, when Dodger owner Charles Ebbets pushed a shovel into the ground to begin the excavation. And when the park opened a year later, he was in the bleachers watching the first official game, against the Philadelphia Phillies. He had seen the Dodgers win their first two pennants in 1916 and 1920, only to lose to the Red Sox and the Indians. He had sustained his love affair with “dem Bums” through the frustrating period of the thirties, when he Dodgers were stuck at the bottom of the division, into the happier era of the forties, when under General Manager Branch Rickey they began to look like a championship team. And now my own pilgrimage was about to begin.

The marble rotunda at the entrance to the shrine looked like a train station in a dream, with dozens of gilded ticket windows scattered around the floor. The floor tiles were embellished with baseball stitches, and in the center of the domed ceiling hung an elaborate chandelier composed of a dozen baseball bats. As we started through a tunneled ramp into the stadium, my father told me that I was about to see the most beautiful sight in the world. Just as he finished speaking, there it was: the reddish-brown diamond, the impossibly green grass, the stands so tightly packed with people that not a single empty seat could be seen. I reached over instinctively to hold my father’s hand as we wended our way to seats between home plate and first base, which, like the thousands of seats in this tiny, comfortable park, were so close to the playing field that we could hear what the ballplayers said to one another as they ran onto the field and could watch their individual gestures and mannerisms as they loosened up in the on-deck circle. There, come to earth, were the heroes of my imagination, Snider and Robinson and the powerful-looking Don Newcombe; and there were the villains-the “hated New York Giants,” an epithet that was to us a single word-Monte Irvin, Sheldon Jones, and the turncoat Leo Durocher.”

Excerpt from the EPILOGUE of Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir

“Although time and events outdistanced and reconciled my personal losses, my anger over O’Malley’s treason still persisted. At Colby College and in my first year at Harvard-where I would teach for almost a decade before leaving to become a full-time historian-I refused to follow baseball, skipping over the sports pages with their accounts of alien teams called the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants. Then, in my second year of studying for my doctorate, a young man invited me to Fenway Park. Allowing my desire for his companionship to overcome my principled reluctance, we took the subway to Kenmore Square in Boston, and together we walked up Lansdowne Street to the park. There it was again: the entrance up the darkened ramp disclosing an expanse of amazing green, the fervent crowd contained in a stadium scaled to human dimensions, the players so close it almost seemed that you could touch them, the eccentric features of an old ballpark constructed to fit the contours of the allotted space. I watched the players, the dirt scars which marked the base paths, the knowledgeable fans shouting their imprecations and exhortations.

For years I had managed to stay away. I had formed the firmest of resolutions. I had given myself irrefutable reasons, expressed the most passionate of rejections. But I could not get away. Addiction or obsession, love or need, I was born a baseball fan and a baseball fan I was fated to remain.”


Yesterday’s writers – Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar
Tomorrow’s writer – Mollie Gregory

Source: Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir. Touchstone, 1998. ISBN 0-684-84795-7. Dedication: page 7, Excerpt: pages 45-48, Epilogue excerpt: pages 253-254.

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir
Center: Doris Kearns Goodwin from the website achievement.org