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

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

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

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

Fannie Flagg – Thursday 21 September 1944 – still living as of this post

Introduction

Well here’s another novel - Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg - that I haven’t read, but I did see the movie. My reading list keeps getting longer and longer and longer… I suppose I’d have more time to read if I stop going to the movies. Stop going to the movies?? Nah!

Excerpts from Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café

“THE WEEMS WEEKLY (WHISTLE STOP, ALABAMA’S WEEKLY BULLETIN) JUNE 12, 1929
Café Opens

The Whistle Stop Café opened up last week, right next door to me at the post office, and owners Idgie Threadgoode and Ruth Jamison said business has been good over since. Idgie says that for people who know her not to worry about getting poisoned, she is not cooking. All the cooking is being done by two colored women, Sipsey and Onzell, and the barbecue is being cooked by Big George, who is Onzell’s husband.

If there is anybody that has not been there yet, Idgie says that the breakfast hours are from 5:30-7:30, and you can get eggs, grits, biscuits, bacon, sausage, ham and red-eye gravy, and coffee for 25¢.

For lunch and supper you can have fried chicken; pork chops and gravy; catfish; chicken and dumplings; or a barbecue plate; and your choice of three vegetables, biscuits or cornbread, your drink and dessert-for 35¢.

She said the vegetables are creamed corn; fried green tomatoes; fried okra; collard or turnip greens; black-eyed peas; candied yams; butter beans or lima beans.

And pie for dessert.

My other half, Wilbur, and I ate there the other night, and it was so good he says he might not ever eat at home again. Ha. Ha. I wish this were true. I spend all my time cooking for the big lug, and still can’t keep him filled up.

By the way, Idgie says that one of her hens laid an egg with a ten-dollar bill in it.

…Dot Weems”


“FRIED GREEN TOMATOES

1 medium green tomato (per person)
Salt
Pepper
White cornmeal
Bacon drippings

Slice tomatoes about ¼ inch thick, season with salt and pepper and then coat both sides with cornmeal. In a large skillet, heat enough bacon drippings to coat the bottom of the pan and fry tomatoes until lightly browned on both sides.

You’ll think you died and gone to heaven!”



Yesterday’s writer - Noël Riley Fitch
Tomorrow’s writer - Marilyn French

Source: Flagg, Fannie. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. McGraw-Hill, 1988.
ISBN 0-07-021257-0. Excerpts: pages 3-4, 403

Images:
Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café.
Center: Fannie Flagg from the website flixster.com

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

Colette – Tuesday 28 January 1873 – Tuesday 3 August 1954

Introduction

Since today is International Women’s Day, I thought it would be the perfect time to present a woman who wrote in a language other than English. The language is French and the woman is Colette. I have read translations of her first Claudine novel, Claudine à l'école, and of her novel Chéri. If my French skills were better, I would read all French works in the original language. So for today, L’entrave, a novel written in French. Read about Colette in English by clicking here.

Excerpt from L’entrave

"Le peu qu'une femme puisse apercevoir d'elle-meme, ce n'est pas la calme et ronde lumiere d'une lampe, allumee tous les soirs sur la meme table, qui le lui rnontre. Mais, a changer de table, de lampe, et de chambre, qu'ai-je acquis? Le soupcon, bientot la certitude, que tous les pays vont se ressembler, si je ne trouve le secret de les renouveler, en me renouvelant, moi. Le temps est passe ou je comptais sur ma solide raison! La solide raison d'une femme... Si nous parlions un peu des « fondations inebranlables » d'une maison japonaise, aux murs en papier ? Ni solide, ni raisonnable, mais bien emue et bien tremblante, pour une banale rencontre tout a 1'heure, sur la Promenade des Anglais.

C'est tout simple, pourtant, cela devait arriver, cela aurait du arriver deja... La, tout a 1'heure, a cote de moi, il a passe sans me voir, I'homme qui voulait me donner son nom, son amour, 1'appui de son ferme coeur. II avait d'un cote une jeune femme et de 1'autre un tres petit enfant tout rond, qui marchait a peine. II ne m'a pas vue, parce qu'il donnait toute son attention, sa touchante et solen-nelle attention un peu bete, a 1'enfant qui trebuchait. « Grand serin!» il a passe si pres, j'ai vu ses longs cils durs, et sa cravate sanglee comme pour la vie. Il etait si pareil a lui-meme que j'aurais, comme autrefois, etendu la main pour desserrer un peu cette cravate et enfoncer, dans la poche du veston, un coin de mouchoir trop visible. J'ai peur, a present, du geste que j'aurais pu faire. Il m'a si peu sentie, si peu devinee, que j'ai eu 1'impression d'etre supprimee du nombre des vivants, le fantome d'air qu'il allait traverser. C'est singulier, je n'ai pas songe a regarder sa femme ni son enfant. Us ont continue tous les trois leur promenade le long de la mer.

Ce n'est pas d'amour que je tremble, ni de chagrin. Quelle est, dans mon trouble, la part du regret ? Je ne sais. Le choc, 1'eclair, viennent de me dormer la sensation de ma fragilite, bien mieux que la reverie maniaque, ou quoti-diennement je m'abuse sur ma sagesse. Meditation, si vous voulez... D n'y a pas de meditation sage. Toute meditation habituelle contient un principe de delire. Elle confine a la crise, a 1'extase provoquee, douloureuse ou non...

Et me voila partie a generaliser, bien femininement. Tant mieux! Il y a comme cela des heures ou je me plais assez en femelle. C'est comme si je constatais que je peux encore servir a quelque chose, amoureusement parlant.

Aurais-je aime qu'il me vit?... Non, je n'y tiens pas. Je redis son nom, malaisement, son nom encombrant: Maxime Dufferein-Chautel... Je suis sure de ne pas 1'aimer. Mais, tout de meme, cet homme-la, il represente 1'amour dans ma vie, et 1'aventure, et meme la volupte... C'est sans doute cela qui me tient tremblante et vague-ment revoltee. Cette bouche-la, ces mains-la, ce grand corps chaud, tout cela, ensemble, a ete bien pres de me composer un amant, il y a trois ans... S'il avait ete seul, tout a 1'heure, et qu'il m'eut parle, l'aurais-je nomme Max, ou « mon cheri» ou « vous » tout court ? Il avait son air le plus marie, mais c'est un air qu'il a, si j'ose dire, de nais-sance. Sa femme et son enfant, il les affichait comme des denrees neuves qu'il eut achetees place Massena...

Tachons d'etre sincere. Je ne 1'ai pas fui, mais je me suis cachee dans une immobilite qui seule pouvait me derober a ses yeux - le lievre surpris se terre et n'ignore pas qu'il est couleur de sillon... Le moindre geste, sur ma robe sombre, de ma main gantee de blanc, eut attire son regard - j'ai craint jusqu'a la volte brusque qui pouvait lui porter tout a coup mon parfum, toujours le meme... Je ne voulais pas, non, je ne voulais pas. J'ai rougi comme une femme surprise en bigoudis. Et puis il avait, lui, un air si riche de tant de choses nouvelles: un enfant tout frais, une femme en fourrures et en plumes, une canne que je ne lui connaissais pas; tandis que moi... Il m'humiliat, son air d'avoir fait fortune...."

Yesterday’s writer – Agatha Christie
Tomorrow’s writer – Anne Fine

Source: Colette. L’entrave. Flammarion, January 1997. Excerpt: pages 9-11

Images:

Left: Front cover of my personal copy of L’entrave
Center: Colette from the website centre-colette.com

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

Pearl S. (Sydenstricker) Buck – Sunday 26 June 1892 – Tuesday 6 March 1973

Introduction

Pearl S. Buck was my introduction to China and Eastern perspectives. Through The Good Earth I had my first understanding of an Asian culture. My limited travels have not brought me to the Orient yet, but I do envision someday walking on the Great Wall of China. Walking on, not falling off.

Pearls S. Buck quotation in The Good Earth

“I am always glad when any of my books can be put into an inexpensive edition, because I like to think that any people who might wish to read them can do so. Surely books ought to be within the reach of everybody.”

Excerpt from Chapter One of The Good Earth

“It was Wang Lung’s marriage day. At first, opening his eyes in the blackness of the curtains about his bed, he could not think why the dawn seemed different from any other. The house was still except for the faint, gasping cough of his old father, whose room was opposite to his own across the middle room. Every morning the old man’s cough was the first sound to be heard. Wang Lung usually lay listening to it and moved only when he heard it approaching nearer and when he heard the door of his father’s room squeak upon its wooden hinges.

But this morning he did not wait. He sprang up and pushed aside the curtains of his bed. It was a dark, ruddy dawn, and through a small square hole of a window, where the tattered paper fluttered, a glimpse of bronze sky gleamed. He went to the hole and tore the paper away.

'It is spring and I do not need this,' he muttered.

He was ashamed to say aloud that he wished the house to look neat on this day. The hole was barely large enough to admit his hand and he thrust it out to feel of the air. A small soft wind blew gently from the east, a wind mild and murmurous and full of rain. It was a good omen. The fields needed rain for fruition. There would be no rain this day, but within a few days, if this wind continued, there would be water. It was good. Yesterday he had said to his father that if this brazen, glittering sunshine continued, the wheat would not fill in the ear. Now it was as if Heaven had chosen this day to wish him well. Earth would bear fruit.

He hurried out into the middle room, drawing on his blue outer trousers as he went, and knotting about the fullness at his waist his girdle of blue cotton cloth. He left his upper body bare until he had heated water to bathe himself. He went into the shed which was the kitchen, leaning against the house, and out of its dusk an ox twisted its head from behind the corner next the door and lowed at him deeply. The kitchen was made of earthen bricks as the house was, great squares of earth dug from their own fields, and thatched with straw from their own wheat. Out of their own earth had his grandfather in his youth fashioned also the oven, baked and black with many years of meal preparing. On top of this earthen structure stood a deep, round, iron cauldron.

This cauldron he filled partly full of water, dipping it with a half gourd from an earthen jar that stood near, but he dipped cautiously, for water was precious. Then, after a hesitation, he suddenly lifted the jar and emptied all the water into the cauldron. This day he would bathe his whole body. Not since he was a child upon his mother’s knee had anyone looked upon his body. Today one would, and he would have it clean.”


Yesterday’s writer – Maeve Binchy
Tomorrow’s writer – Agatha Christie

Source: Buck, Pearl S. The Good Earth. Pocket Cardinal, May 1965. Excerpt: pages 3-4

Images:

Left: Front cover of my personal copy of The Good Earth

Center: Pearl S. Buck 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

Jane Austen – Saturday 16 December 1775 – Friday 18 July 1817

Introduction

I have always been amused by Jane Austen ever since the first book of hers I read, Pride and Prejudice (spoiler alert), and continuing with her other novels, including Sense and Sensibility (spoiler alert). Reading the novels with current day eyes often evokes chuckles at the maneuvers and manners displayed in the pursuit of matrimony in that earlier century. But to be fair, I’m sure a future reader/viewer of our present day procedures in the quest for marriage will find much to amuse her. The Bachelor and The Bachelorette come to mind.

Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Sense and Sensibility

“The family of Dashwood had been long settled in Sussex. Their estate was large, and their residence was at Norland Park, in the centre of their property, where, for many generations, they had lived in so respectable a manner as to engage the general good opinion of their surrounding acquaintance. The later owner of this estate was a single man who lived to a very advanced age, and who for many years of his life had a constant companion and housekeeper in his sister. But her death, which happened ten years before his own, produced a great alteration in his home; for to supply her loss, he invited and received into his house the family of his nephew Mr. Henry Dashwood, the legal inheritor of the Norland estate, and the person to whom he intended to bequeath it. In the society of his nephew and niece, and their children, the old gentleman’s days were comfortably spent. His attachment to them all increased. The constant attention of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Dashwood to his wishes, which proceeded not merely from interest, but from goodness of heart, gave him every degree of solid comfort which his age could receive; and the cheerfulness of the children added a relish to this existence.

By a former marriage, Mr. Henry Dashwood had one son: by his present lady, three daughters. The son, a steady respectable young man, was amply provided for by the fortune of his mother, which had been large, and half of which devolved on him on his coming of age. By his own marriage, likewise, which happened soon afterwards, he added to his wealth. To him, therefore, the succession to the Norland estate was not so really important as to his sisters; for their fortune, independent of what might arise to them from their father’s inheriting the property, could be but small. Their mother had nothing, and their father only seven thousand pounds in his own disposal, for the remaining moiety of his first wife’s fortune was also secured to her child, and he had only a life interest in it.

The old gentleman died; his will was read, and like almost every other will gave as much disappointment as pleasure. He was neither so unjust, nor so ungrateful, as to leave his estate from his nephew; but he left it to him on such terms as destroyed half the value of the bequest. Mr. Dashwood had wished for it more for the sake of his wife and daughters than for himself or his son; but to his son and his son’s son, a child of four years old, it was secured in such a way as to leave to himself no power of providing for those who were most dear to him, and who most needed a provision, by any charge on the estate, or by any sale of its valuable woods. The whole was tied up for the benefit of this child, who, in occasional visits with his father and mother at Norland, had so far gained on the affections of his uncle, by such attractions as are by no means unusual in children of two or three years old; an imperfect articulation, an earnest desire of having his own way, many cunning tricks, and a great deal of noise, as to outweigh all the value of the attention which, for years, he had received from his niece and her daughters. He meant not to be unkind however, and as a mark of his affection for the three girls, he left them a thousand pounds apiece.”

Excerpt from the Afterword by Patricia Meyer Spacks in Sense and Sensibility

“Sense and Sensibility begins with money and ends with love. By the time the novel achieves its inevitable culmination in the happy marriages of the principal characters, the reader has come to understand the intricate ways in which money affects feelings, how the realities of the outside world impinge on the interior realm. Economic and psychic facts, from Jane Austen’s point of view, bear closely on one another. Their relationship defines her novelistic subject.”


Yesterday’s writer – Harriette Arnow
Tomorrow’s writer – Maeve Binchy

Source: Austen, Jane. Sense and Sensibility. Bantam Classic, January 1983. ISBN 0-553-21110-2. Chapter 1 Excerpt: pages 1-2; Afterword Excerpt: page 332

Images:

Left: Front cover of personal copy of Sense and Sensibility

Center: Jane Austen from website en.wikipedia.org

Harriette Arnow – Tuesday 7 July 1908 – Saturday 22 March 1986

Introduction

I am not sure how or why I came to read Harriette Arnow’s The Dollmaker. I think someone recommended it to me and that was a good suggestion. The book provides insight into a different type of life, one that I would never personally experience, and how the transition from a known life to an unknown one can bring forth unexpected challenges, doubts, and triumphs.

Excerpt from Chapter One of The Dollmaker

“DOCK’S shoes on the rocks up the hill and his heavy breathing had shut out all sound so that it seemed a long while she had heard nothing, and Amos lay too still, not clawing at the blanket as when they had started. They reached the ridge top where the road ran through scrub pine in sand, and while the mule’s shoes were soft on the thick needles she bent her head low over the long bundle across the saddle horn, listening. Almost at once she straightened, and kicked the already sweat-soaked mule hard in the flanks until it broke into an awkward gallop. 'I know you’re tired, but it ain’t much furder,' she said in a low tight voice.

She rode on in silence, her big body hunched protectingly over the bundle. Now and then she glanced worriedly up at the sky, graying into the thick twilight of a rainy afternoon in October; but mostly her eyes, large, like the rest of her, and the deep, unshining gray of the rain-wet pine trunks, were fixed straight ahead of the mule’s ears, as if by much looking she might help the weary animal pull the road past her with her eyes.

They reached the highway, stretching empty between the pines, silent, no sign of cars or people, as if it were not a road at all, but some lost island of asphalt coming from no place, going nowhere. The mule stopped, his ears flicking slowly back and forth as he considered the road. She kicked him again, explaining, 'It’s a road fer automobiles; we’ll have to ride it to stop a car, then you can git back home.'

The mule tried to turn away from the strange black stuff, flung his head about, danced stiff-leggedly back into the familiar sanctuary of soft ground and pine trees. “No,” the woman said, gripping his thin flanks with her long thighs, “no, you’ve got to git out in the middle so’s we can stop a car a goen toward th doctor’s. You’ve got to.” She kicked him again, turned him about. He tried one weary, half-hearted bucking jump; but the woman only settled herself in the saddle, gripped with her thighs, her drawnup knees, her heels. Her voice was half pleading, half scolding: 'Now, Dock, you know you cain’t buck me off, not even if you was fresh-an you ain’t. So git on.'

The great raw-boned mule argued with his ears, shook the bridle rein, side-stepped against a pine tree, but accepted soon the fact that the woman was master still, even on a strange road. He galloped again, down the middle of the asphalt that followed a high and narrow ridge and seemed at times like a road in the sky, the nothingness of fog-filled valleys far below on either side.”

Excerpt from the Afterword by Joyce Carol Oates in The Dollmaker

“This brutal, beautiful novel has a permanent effect upon the reader: long after one has put it aside, he is still in the presence of its people, absorbed in their trivial and tragic dilemma, sorting out their mistakes, rearranging their possibilities, pondering upon the fate that makes certain people live certain lives, suffer certain atrocities, while other people merely read about them. Because Harriette Arnow’s people are not articulate, we are anxious to give their confusion a recognizable order, to contribute to their reality, to complete them with language. They are assimilated into us, and we into them. The Dollmaker deals with human beings to whom language is not a means of changing or even expressing reality, but a means of pitifully recording its effect upon the nerves. It is a legitimate tragedy, our most unpretentious American masterpiece.”


Yesterday’s writer – Margery Allingham
Tomorrow’s writer – Jane Austen

Source: Arnow, Harriette. The Dollmaker. Avon Books, August 1972. ISBN 0-380-00947-1. Chapter One Excerpt: pages 7-8; Afterword Excerpt: page 601

Images:

Left: Front cover of my personal copy of The Dollmaker

Center: Harriette Arnow from the website harriettearnow.org

Margery Allingham – Friday 20 May 1904 – Thursday 30 June 1966

Introduction

In addition to Traitor’s Purse (spoiler alert), the only other Margery Allingham novel I’ve read is Pearls Before Swine, which is also an Albert Campion mystery. Even if my literary relationship with her is not substantial, I am quite fond of the mystery and detective genres and enjoyed the two Margery Allingham books I have read. Definitely need to read more of them, but when I’ll find the time is surely one of the mysteries of my life.

Excerpt from Chapter I of Traitor’s Purse

“The muttering was indistinct. It crept down the dark ward, forcing itself upon the man who lay in the patch of light at the far end of the vast room.

It was a pleasant muttering. It made a reassuring undercurrent below the worry, that terrifying anxiety which was thrusting icy fingers deep into his diaphragm.

He tried to concentrate on the muttering. Mercifully it was recognizable. There were two distinct voices and when he could catch them the words meant something. That was good. That was hopeful.

In a little while the words might start connecting and then, please, God, he would learn something and this appalling fear would recede.

From where he lay he could just see a wedge of polished floor, a section of a neat empty bed, and a tall shrouded window, fading into complete darkness at the top where the shaded light over his own head was too faint to reach it. All there were entirely unfamiliar. He was not even sure that he was in a hospital. That was part of the whole situation. He knew what a hospital was; that was comforting. They were large grey buildings, made grimly gay by enormous posters announcing scarifying debts. The recollection of those placards cheered him up. He could still read; he was sure of that. Sometimes one couldn’t. Sometimes on these occasions one could only recognize spoken words. That was an odd piece of information to remember now. His mind was clear enough as far as it went…as far as it went.

He concentrated on the muttering. It was a long way away. They must be just outside the farther door up there in the darkness. The woman was a nurse, of course. The discovery delighted him foolishly. He was getting on. At any moment now other obvious things much occur to him.

He had no idea who the man was, but his ramble was human and friendly. He settled himself to listen.”


Yesterday’s writer – Joy Adamson
Tomorrow’s writer – Harriette Arnow

Source: Allingham, Margery. Traitor’s Purse. Bantam Books, April 1990. ISBN 0-553-23822-1. Excerpt: pages 1-2

Images:

Left: Front cover of my personal copy of Traitor’s Purse
Center: Margery Allingham from the website margeryallingham.org.uk

J. D. (Jerome David) Salinger – Wednesday 1 January 1919 – Wednesday 27 January 2010

Upon hearing of the death of J. D. Salinger, I went in search of my copy of The Catcher In The Rye. Unhappily the book is missing from my library collection. No matter. It was The Catcher In The Rye that helped me through my own adolescent journey and gave me reassurance that I would make it to the other side. Until I read that novel, I was in despair of survival. An explanation of how I, a black, middle-class, public school educated, teenage girl related so well to a white, upper-class, prep school educated, teenage boy protagonist is not to be had - it is a mystery to be embraced. And I am forever grateful for it.

So, Jerome David Salinger, may you rest well in whatever afterlife there may be. Know that there are many of us who found solace in Holden Caulfield’s story – a variation of our own many individual ones. Thank you J. D.


The Catcher In The Rye book cover image from Wikipedia