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

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

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

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

Sandra M. (Mortola) Gilbert – Sunday 27 December 1936 – still living as of this post and Susan Gubar – 1944 – still living as of this post

Introduction

The first volume (The War of the Words) of Sandra M. Gilbert’s and Susan Gubar’s three-volume opus – overall title No Man’s Land: The Place of the Woman Writer in the Twentieth Century - on women and writing, was a present from a long-time friend, Kathryn. I was so inspired by this first volume, that on a visit to London, I bought volumes two (Sexchanges) and three (Letters From the Front) from a bookstore on famed Charing Cross Road. My experience with actual writing is a hate/love one (hated writing papers in college/loved the positive feedback). Even though I am primarily a visual woman, I do enjoy a well-turned phrase and without the pressure of academic deadlines, I someday may turn some phrases – well I hope.

Dedication in The War of the Words

“In memory of Alexis J. Mortola and Frank W. David”

Excerpt from Chapter 5 – Sexual Linguistics, Women’s Sentence, Men’s Sentencing of The War of the Words

“In this chapter, attempting to integrate the divergent forces of power, language, and meaning, we will examine this relationship between sexual difference and the symbolic contract in an effort primarily to trace the permutations of the modern battle over language and secondarily to place recent ideas about sexual linguistics in a larger historical context. For, as we shall suggest, contemporary language theorists-female and male-participate in a long, bifurcated tradition of feminist and masculinist linguistic fantasy. That such a tradition demonstrably exists, moreover, implies an intuition of the primacy of the mother rather than the father in the process of language acquisition that assimilates the child into what Kristeva calls the “symbolic contract.” Thus questioning Kristeva’s identification of the symbolic contract with the social contract, we will draw upon precisely the complex literary history that we have already discussed-the history of the last one hundred years in England and America-to argue that the female subject is not necessarily alienated from the words she writes and speaks.

Significantly, the English woman who most publicly entered into the linguistic fray by defining a female literary tradition saw gender-marked words as potentially central to that tradition’s vitality. In one of the most famous yet opaque passages in A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf introduces her notoriously puzzling concept of “a woman’s sentence.” Remarking that the early nineteenth-century woman novelist found that “there was no common sentence ready for her use,” she declared that the “man’s sentence” inherited by “Thackeray and Dickens and Balzac” from “Johnson, Gibbon and the rest” was as alien to her mind as “the [hardened and set] older forms of literature” were to her imagination (78-80). Her comment, like the literary history in which it is embedded, seems appealingly empirical. Those of us who wish to understand the relationship between genre and gender, Woolf seems to imply-even those who wish to examine the more ontological connection between sexuality and creativity-need merely analyze and classify linguistic structures.”


Yesterday’s writer – Marilyn French
Tomorrow’s writer – Doris Kearns Goodwin

Source: Gilbert, Sandra M. and Gubar, Susan. The War of the Words. Yale University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-300-04587-5. Dedication: page v, Excerpt: pages 228-229.

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of The War of the Words

Center Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar from the website virtual.clemson.edu

Marilyn French – Thursday 21 November 1929 – Saturday 2 May 2009

Introduction

Marilyn French’s novel was one of the first feminist themed books I read. Sometimes it’s a struggle to remain self-defined and to know exactly who you are and where you should be. Or what you should do. The Women’s Room presents these wonderings in an era of awakening for women.

Dedication in The Women’s Room

“TO ISABEL, TO JANET- SISTERS, FRIENDS”

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of The Women’s Room

“Mira was hiding in the ladies’ room. She called it that, even though someone had scratched out the word ladies’ in the sign on the door, and written women’s underneath. She called it that out of thirty-eight years of habit, and until she saw the cross-out on the door, had never thought about it. “Ladies’ room” was a euphemism, she supposed, and she disliked euphemisms on principle. However, she also detested what she called vulgarity, and had never in her life, even when handling it, uttered the word shit. But here she was at the age of thirty-eight huddled for safety in a toilet booth in the basement of Sever Hall, gazing at, no, studying that word and others of the same genre, scrawled on the gray enameled door and walls.

She was perched, fully clothed, on the edge of the open toilet seat, feeling stupid and helpless, and constantly looking at her watch. It would all have been redeemed, even translated into excitement, had there been some grim-faced Walter Matthau in a trench coat, his hand in a gun-swollen pocket, or some wild-eyed Anthony Perkins in a turtleneck, his itching strangler’s hands clenching and unclenching-someone glamorous and terrifying at any rate-waiting for her outside in the hall, if she had been sitting in panic searching for another way out. But of course it that were the case, there would also be a cool and desperate Cary Grant or Burt Lancaster sliding along the walls of another hallway, waiting for Walter to show himself. And that by itself, she thought mournfully, feeling somehow terribly put upon, would have been enough. If she had one of them, anyone at all, waiting for her at home, she would not be hiding in a toilet booth in the basement of Sever Hall. She would have been upstairs in a corridor with the other students, leaning against a wall with her books at her feet, or strolling past the unseeing faces. She could have transcended, knowing she had one of them at home, and could therefore move alone in a crowd. She puzzled over that paradox, but only briefly. The graffiti were too interesting.”


Yesterday’ writer – Fannie Flagg
Tomorrow’s writers – Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubor

Source: French, Marilyn. The Women’s Room. Jove/HBI, October 1978. Dedication: page 4, Excerpt: pages 7-8

Images:

Left: Front cover of my personal copy of The Women’s Room

Center: Marilyn French from the website washingtonpost.com

Noël Riley Fitch – 1937 – still living as of this post

Introduction

I met Noël on a lovely Parisian June afternoon in 2002 at a reception in her honor and we actually had a brief conversation in which geographical connections were discovered. Here’s the entry from my journal. “Went over to the Abbey Bookshop, but was a little early, so I went for a walk along St. Michel. When I returned to the bookstore, there were a number of people already there. Turns out that Noël Riley Fitch had led a walk on Île St. Louis in the morning and this is where they finished – just in time for Noël to be here for her reception….sign the three books of hers that I had….she has roots in Massachusetts. She and her husband live in LA (Brentwood) from January to April – she teaches at USC and then they spend the summer in Paris where Noel teaches an expatriate literary course at the American University. Her husband writes and edits books on food and wine. And there was wine, cheese and crackers (and water) for the reception. The owner of the bookstore, Brian, gave a little background talk about the street on which the Abbey Bookshop is located and then he introduced Noël Riley Fitch. She talked about the books she has written and told some Paris-related literary stories. After her talk, I hung around and talked to some of the people….There was a violinist playing at the end of the street….having the violinist come over to the bookstore and play. Such a pleasant afternoon – Literature, food and wine, music and meeting new people.” – personal journal, Sunday 23 June 2002. In my copy of her book, Literary Cafes of Paris, that she graciously signed, Noël wrote: “For Adrean With best wishes and happy drinking Noël Riley Fitch 23 June 2002 Paris.”

Dedication in Literary Cafes of Paris

“Dedicated to Gailyn Fitch, café sitter par excellence”

Excerpt from the Café de Flore entry in Literary Cafes of Paris

“’This afternoon I’m upstairs at the Flore, near the window; I can see the wet street, the plane tree swaying in the sharp wind; there are a lot of people, and downstairs there’s a great hubbub.’ So wrote Simone de Beauvoir in the late 1940s, on one of the many days that she worked at a table at the Flore. She wrote portions of her journal, Second Sex and novels such as The Mandarins in this venerable neighborhood café. Flore was founded in 1865 and named for a small statue of Flore, the goddess of flowers and mother of spring, that once stood in front of the door.

The café is homey, with its worn Art Deco interior of red banquettes, mahogany and mirrors. Outside it is characterized by cream-colored awnings with green and gold letters and by its location on the corner of two busy streets: the little Rue St-Benoit is crowded with foot traffic in the evenings when the restaurants are full; on the wide boulevard, the Flore sits between an excellent postcard shop and a distinguished bookstore, La Hune, next to the Deux-Magots.

Beginning with Huysmans and Remy de Gourmont in the late 19th century, nearly every French writer has spent time at the Flore. Yet the Flore has been identified with several distinct groups at different times, and each one has in turn determined the personality of the café. One of the first significant groups to make the Flore home was the political Right. L’Action Française wrote its first manifestos here in 1899 (they were printed nearby in Rue Cassette). The leader of L’Action Française was Charles Maurras, who lived at 60 Rue de Verneuil. He called his political memoirs Souvenirs de vie politique: Au signe de Flore.

In the first decade of this century, Apollinaire and his friends funded Les Soirees de Paris magazine here. The group that dominated the Flore environment in the following decade included Léon-Paul Fargue, André Breton and his Surrealist colleagues, and Picasso. After he moved to live in his studio nearby in Rue des Grands-Augustins. Picasso patronized first the Deux-Magots. He moved to the Flore in the late 1930s, where he engaged in lengthy political discussions joined occasionally by Marc Chagall. At the end of an evening the two exiled artists would exchange the matchbooks on which each had doodled. Janet Flanner says she saw Picasso there every night after 1945, sitting at the second table in front of the main door, sipping a small bottle of mineral water and speaking with his Spanish friends.”


Yesterday’s writer – Anne Fine
Tomorrow’s writer – Fannie Flagg

Source: Fitch, Noël Riley. Literary Cafes of Paris. Starrhill Press, 1989. ISBN 0-913515-42-6. Dedication: page 4, Excerpt: pages 23-24

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Literary Cafes of Paris
Center: Noël Riley Fitch from the website noëlrileyfitch.com
Right: Signed title page of my personal copy of Literary Cafes of Paris

Anne Fine – Sunday 7 December 1947 – still living as of this post

Introduction

I met (in the casual, one-of-a-crowd way that occurs at book signings) Anne Fine at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2001. She gave a talk before the obligatory signing and this is what I wrote in my journal. “…Anne Fine…talked about each of the adult books she has written (…mainly known as a children’s writer). Anne was funny – she says her books have a dark humour to them…will enjoy reading her…has an open and easy personality.” – personal journal, Monday 20 August 2001. Anne signed my copy of her book, Taking the Devil’s Advice, as follows: “For Adrean, With all good wishes Anne Fine.”

Dedication in Taking the Devil’s Advice

“For Tik Enif”

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Taking the Devil’s Advice

“Look at this. Look! What a cheek. Look what I’ve found hidden away at the back of the bloody airing cupboard.

She has been writing in my autobiography again. She so annoys me. Why must she poke her nose in everything, meddling and prying, forever insisting on her right to be taken into account? Sometime I think my last few waking hours of Perfect Privacy must have passed by, unnoticed and unvalued, the day before I met Constance. How long is it since we parted – three years? Four? Yet here she is, snooping around my room whenever I’m out, leafing through papers on my table, reading the (few) bits that interest her and scribbling her irritating little comments and additions down the margins and over on the back. I can’t put up with this for three more months. I should never have agreed to spend the summer here in the first place. It was a foolish idea, and I’m not sure it’s even very good for the children. I’ll have to move out and find somewhere else. Or buy a large tin box with a good lock.

And yet, let’s face it, I’m not here by accident, am I? I did choose of my own free will not to spurn Constance’s offer of a place to stay, and I can’t argue that I didn’t live with her long enough to know exactly what she’s like. I must have realized Constance could no more stay peacefully and incuriously outside a room in which her former husband is writing anything of a remotely personal nature than she could fly unaided to the moon. I must have known that she’d be in and out all the time, rooting through, checking, complaining, criticizing; that even the most casual attempt to pin down a few simple dates would turn one mealtime after another into great atavistic wrangles about the reasons for this move, that baby, those blinding arguments; that it would be three months of pure hell. It isn’t even as if what Constance remembers is of any relevance. I’m not writing that sort of autobiography, and if I were, this is the last place on earth I’d choose to write it. I’m here because all my philosophical papers are still in the attic. Why else would I suffer the indignity of living and sleeping up in my old study while this great shambling amiable Ally sleeps in my old bed with my old wife?”


Yesterday’s writer – Colette
Tomorrow’s writer - Noël Riley Fitch

Source: Fine, Anne. Taking the Devil’s Advice. Black Swan, 1999. ISBN 0-552-99826-5. Dedication: page 5, Excerpt: pages 11-12

Images:

Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Taking the Devil’s Advice
Center: Anne Fine from the website annefine.co.uk

Right: Signed title page of my personal copy of Taking the Devil’s Advice

Agatha Christie – Monday 15 September 1890 – Monday 12 January 1976

Introduction

Have read numerous Agatha Christie mysteries; in fact have probably read more of her mysteries than the works of any other mystery writer. But then again she has written a great number of them. It was due to one of her two main detectives, Hercule Poirot, that I learned a country by the name of Belgium existed. Although I have lived among the Belgians, I never met anyone quite like Hercule; though of course I never became involved in murder mysteries. It was more pleasurable activities (drinking Leffe, eating Callebaut, carrying umbrellas) with the Belgians that I was happy to experience. Agatha’s other main detective is Jane Marple, an Englishwoman. At Bertram’s Hotel (spoiler alert) is a Miss Marple mystery. The little grey cells work well in a little grey lady. On another English note, it was Agatha Christies’ play “The Mousetrap” (spoiler alert), performed at St. Martin’s Theatre that was my initiation to London’s West End theatre district.

Dedication in At Bertram’s Hotel

“FOR HARRY SMITH because I appreciate the scientific ways he reads my books”

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of At Bertram’s Hotel

“In the heart of the West End, there are many quiet pockets, unknown to almost all but taxi drivers who traverse them with expert knowledge, and arrive triumphantly thereby at Park Lane, Berkeley Square, or South Audley Street.

If you turn off on an unpretentious street from the Park, and turn left and right once or twice, you will find yourself in a quiet street with Bertram’s Hotel on the right-hand side. Bertram’s Hotel has been there a long time. During the war, houses were demolished on the right of it, and a little further down on the left of it, but Bertram’s itself remained unscathed. Naturally it could not escape being, as house agents would say, scratched, bruised, and marked, but by the expenditure of only a reasonable amount of money it was restored to its original condition. By 1955 it looked precisely as it had looked in 1939-dignified, unostentatious, and quietly expensive.

Such was Bertram’s, patronized over a long stretch of years by the higher echelons of the clergy, dowager ladies of the aristocracy up from the country, girls on their way home for the holidays from expensive finishing schools. (“So few places where a girl can stay alone in London but of course it is quite all right at Bertram’s. We have stayed there for years.”)

There had, of course been many other hotels on the model of Bertram’s. Some still existed, but nearly all had felt the wind of change. They had had necessarily to modernize themselves, to cater for a different clientele. Bertram’s, too, had had to change, but it had been done so cleverly that it was not at all apparent at the first casual glance.”


Yesterday’s writer – Pearl S. Buck
Tomorrow’s writer - Colette

Source: Christie, Agatha. At Bertram’s Hotel. Pocket Books, December 1967. ISBN 0-671-43379-2. Dedication: page 5, Excerpt: pages 7-8

Images:

Left: Front cover of my personal copy of At Bertram’s Hotel

Center: Agatha Christie from the website en.wikipedia.org

Maeve Binchy – Tuesday 28 May 1940 – still living as of this post

Introduction

I must confess that I have not read Circle of Friends; I only have seen the movie. My book collection contains several additional Maeve Binchy novels and a collection of short stories that I obtained at a garage sale – they haven’t been read either. Time to do a Binchy reading project.

Dedication in Circle of Friends

“To dearest Gordon with all my love”

Excerpt from Chapter One of Circle of Friends

“Benny’s father ran Hogan’s Outfitters, the big menswear shop in the middle of Knockglen. The shop was often at its busiest on a Saturday, when the farmers came in, or the men who had a half day themselves were marched in by wives to have themselves fitted out by Mr. Hogan, or Mike the old assistant, the tailor who had been there since time immemorial. Since the days when young Mr. Hogan had bought the business.

Benny was glad her father would be there for the cake, because that was when she might be given her present. Father had said it was going to be a wonderful surprise. Benny knew that they must have got her the velvet dress with the lacy collar and the pumps to go with it. She had wanted it since last Christmas when they went to the pantomime in Dublin and she had seen the girls on the stage dancing in pink velvet dresses like this.

They had heard that they sold them in Clerys, and that was only a few minutes from where the bus stopped when it went to Dublin.

Benny was large and square, but she wouldn’t look like that in the pink velvet dress. She would be just like the fairy dancers they had seen on the stage, and her feet wouldn’t look big and flat in those shoes because they had lovely pointy toes, and little pom-poms on them.

The invitations to the party had been sent out ten days ago. There would be seven girls from school, farmers’ daughters mainly from outside Knockglen. And Maire Carroll, whose mother and father owned the grocery. The Kennedys from the chemist’s were all boys so they wouldn’t be there, and Dr. Johnson’s children were all too young so they couldn’t come either. Peggy Pine who ran the smart clothes shop said that she might have her young niece staying with her. Benny said she didn’t want anyone they didn’t know, and it was with some relief that they heard the niece Clodagh didn’t want to go amongst strangers either.”


Yesterday’s writer – Jane Austen
Tomorrow’s writer – Pearl S. Buck

UPDATE: Maeve Binchy died on Monday 30 July 2012 in Dublin, Ireland

Source: Binchy, Maeve. Circle of Friends. Dell Publishing, November 1991. ISBN 0-440-21126-3. Excerpt: pages 3-4

Images:

Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Circle of Friends

Center: Maeve Binchy from the website maevebinchy.com

Joy Adamson – Thursday 20 January 1910 – Thursday 3 January 1980

Born Free, Living Free, and Forever Free by Joy Adamson were the first books I read in which Africa was the setting and lions were the topic. The story of Elsa sparked an interest in seeing the animals and lands of that continent, which evolved into a desire to someday go on a photographic safari. That adventure still needs to be done. Although the whole relationship with Elsa intrigues me, I’m unable to experience that type of connection even on a small scale as I am allergic to cats. Would any of you cat lovers and owners ever want to have a really Big cat?

Publisher’s Foreword to Forever Free

“In Born Free and Living Free, Joy Adamson told the extraordinary story of her association with Elsa, whom she and her husband George had raised from a tiny cub to a full-grown lioness and then released to life in the wild. ‘By a passionate patience and an understanding love,’ as Sir Julian Huxley points out, a relationship was established that survived the release. When Elsa had mated with a wild lion and her three cubs, Jespah, Gopa, and Little Elsa, were born, she brought them to the Adamsons’ camp. And when she died prematurely, leaving her cubs unprotected, the Adamsons assumed guardianship over three lions raised in the wild. How they acquitted themselves of their unprecedented, heroic task is recorded in Forever Free.”

Dedication in Forever Free

“To all who help in the conservation of wild life.”

Excerpt from Chapter One – “The Deportation Order” of Forever Free

“It was on Christmas Eve 1960 that we received a letter from the African District Council ordering us to remove Elsa and her cubs from the reserve. The reason given by the council was that since Elsa was used to our company she might become a danger to other people.

We were amazed: the local authorities themselves had helped us to choose the area for her release, and up to now had regarded her as a great asset to the reserve. It had been her home for two and a half years, and during that time she had never hurt anyone. We were as anxious as they were to avoid the possibility of an accident, and had even offered to pay a good rent for Elsa’s territory, so that visitors could be kept out of it without financial loss to the game reserve.

Now, with the arrival of the deportation order, all we could do was to try to make the removal as little harmful to the lions as possible and find a satisfactory new home for them.

We wrote to friends in Tanganyika, Uganda, the Rhodesias, and South Africa, inquiring what the chances were of finding a good territory for the family in their countries, but, before finally deciding to remove Elsa and her family from Kenya, George wished to carry out a reconnaissance along the eastern shores of Lake Rudolf in the north of Kenya.

I was distressed by this plan. The country there is very grim, and I feared that game around the lake might be so scarce that Elsa and the cubs would become dependent upon us for their food supply. Besides this, the area is so remote, that in case of an emergency we should be very lucky if we were able to get any help. On the other hand, this very remoteness was an asset, for the fact that this country is inhospitable and almost cut off from the rest of Africa would at least ensure that the lions would be unlikely to become a pawn in political intrigues.

So, while we waited for replies to our letters, we made provisional plans for their removal to Lake Rudolf. We estimated that the journey would take two or three days and nights: we knew that the tracks would be very rough and that we should need to tow the cars through sandy river beds, stretches of desert, and over rocky escarpments.”


Tomorrow’s writer – Margery Allingham


Source: Adamson, Joy. Forever Free. Bantam Books, October 1967. Excerpt: pages 1-2

Images:

Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Forever Free
Center: Joy Adamson with Elsa from website fatheroflions.org