Page Reprint: The Duel by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (Дуэль на Антон Павлович Чехов)

It is through his plays that I best know Anton Chekov. The Duel is the first prose work of this Russian writer that I’ve read and the impetus for the reading was the adaption of the novella into a film, which I recently viewed. Although The Duel (1891) was written four years before Chekhov’s first play, The Seagull (Чайка), a four-act play structure, preferred by Chekhov, can be seen in this prose piece with the addition of a Prologue and Epilogue. Chekhov wrote the piece in twenty-one sections and the following is my break down of the prose work into a play format. This is one approach to the reading of The Duel. The titles given to the sections/scenes are mine.

Prologue – Section I – Summer Morning in the Caucasus
Here on an early Summer morning in a small town located in the Caucasus, the reader is introduced to two men swimming in the sea and later having coffee In the pavilion. First is the main character of the story, Ivan Andreich Laevsky (hereafter, Laevsky), a young government official whose unhappiness with his life away from Moscow and Petersburg has come to a crisis point and he longs to escape “To the pines, to the mushrooms, to people, to ideas…” (page 122). And the second man is Alexander Davidych Samoilenko (hereafter, Samoilenko), older and an army doctor who is the focal character of the narrative, the person others seek out and who willingly gives them his advice.

Act I – Summer Afternoon
During the afternoon of the morning in the Prologue, lunchtime is presented in two households. The first is the one that Laevsky shares with Nadezhda Fyodorovna (hereafter, Nadezhda), the married woman Laevsky ran away with from Petersburg to the Caucasus and the second is Samoilenko’s, who provides lunch for the zoologist Nikolai Vassilievich von Koren (hereafter, von Koren), who is hostile to Laevsky “’…everything comes down to drink, cards, slippers, and women. Women play a fatal, overwhelming role in his life.’” (page 137) and for the deacon Pobedov (hereafter, the deacon).
Scene 1 – Section II – Lunch with Laevsky and Nadezhda
Scene 2 – Section III – Samoilenko’s Table d’Hôte
Scene 3 – Section IV – Von Koren Discusses Laevsky with Samoilenko

Act II – Sunday and Monday
The reader meets more inhabitants of the small Caucasus town during an evening picnic in the countryside. Three of them are Marya Konstantinovna Bitiugov (hereafter, Marya), who provides the moral compass for Nadezhda; the police chief Ilya Mikhailych Kirilin (hereafter, Kirilin), Nadezhda’s discarded lover; and young Atchmianov, Nadezhda’s would-be lover. And Laevsky’s opinion of von Koren is voiced “’Despotism is a strong in science as in war. And he’s living for the second summer in this stinking little town, because it’s better to be first in a village than second in a city. Here he’s a king and an eagle; he’s got all the inhabitants under his thumb and oppresses them with his authority. He’s taken everybody in hand, he interferes in other people’s affairs, he wants to be in on everything, and everybody’s afraid of him. I’m slipping out from under his paw, he senses it, and he hates me’” (page 169).
Scene 1 – Section V – Nadezhda and Marya at the Shore
Scene 2 – Section VI – Picnic at the Black and Yellow Rivers
Scene 3 – Section VII – Nadezhda Talks with Kirilin and Atchmianov
Scene 4 – Section VIII – Von Koren Dismisses Nadezhda to Samoilenko
Scene 5 – Section IX – Laevsky Discusses von Koren with Samoilenko

Act III – Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Revelations come forth over the course of three days. Marya was the only woman of the town to receive Nadezhda “You horrified me from the very first day, but I was unable to treat you with scorn, like everyone else. I suffered for dear, kind Ivan Andreich as for a son.” (page 173); some of the money for Laevsky’s “escape” would come from von Koren; and Kirilin is actually repulsive not respectable.
Scene 1 – Section X – Nadezhda and Marya Speak of Domestic Issues
Scene 2 – Section XI – Roubles for Laevsky
Scene 3 – Section XII – Kostya’s Birthday Celebration
Scene 4 – Section XIII – Laevsky’s Nervous Breakdown
Scene 5 – Section XIV – Nadezhda Meets Kirilin and Misses Atchmianov

Act IV – Friday and Saturday
Resolutions are made between persons: the affair between Nadezhda and Kirilin; the love of Laevsky and Nadezhda; the philosophies of von Koren and the deacon; and the hate between Laevasky and von Koren “…coming back from a cemetery where they had just buried a difficult, unbearable man who had interfered with all their lives.” (page 231).
Scene 1 – Section XV – The Challenge and the Betrayal
Scene 2 – Section XVI – Philosophy of the Strong Versus the Weak
Scene 3 – Section XVII – Duel Day Dawns
Scene 4 – Section XVIII – The Deacon’s Journey
Scene 5 – Section XIX – Duelists Arrive, Duelists Fire
Scene 6 – Section XX – Duel Dénouement

Epilogue – Section XXI – Autumn Night in the Caucasus
It is three months after the events and von Koren is taking his leave of the town. So on the night of a storm-filled day and before he is rowed out to the waiting steamer, von Koren says good-bye to some of the people of the town. As he has always been von Koren’s friend, Samoilenko sees him off at the shore with a fond farewell into the dark “’Don’t forget me, Kolya…Write…We’ll expect you next spring.’” (page 236).


Note: The adage has always been “to not judge a book by its cover”. However, I propose that a book cover can be judged by its art. The cover of the short novel collection in which I read The Duel can be seen above right. I don’t like the dots that go across most of the cover (they don’t add anything positive to the overall image) and the red rectangle should be higher on the cover so that there is space between it and the heads of the people in the photograph. Actually, my suggestion for a revision of the elements on this cover would be to eliminate the dots; to keep the photograph; to put Chekhov’s name across the top (above the heads!) in red lettering (no rectangle); to move the title down a little to below the man’s hand; and to keep the white lettering as is for the title, et.al.


Book Facts: Title: The Complete Short Novels, Author: Anton Chekhov, Translators: Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky, Table of Contents: Introduction, Select Bibliography, Chronology, The Steppe, The Duel, The Story of an Unknown Man, Three Years, My Life, Notes, Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, Book Division: Borzoi, Book Series: Everyman’s Library, Book Format: Hardcover with dust jacket, Year: 2004, Pages: 600, Language: English, ISBN: 1-4000-40249-3


Images:
Left: Anton Pavlovich Chekhov from the website upload.wikimedia.org
Center: Graphic interpretation of The Duel by Adrean Darce Brent
Right: Front cover of The Complete Short Novels

Vis-À-Vis: “Writing On The City, Writing On The Margins”

The G2 Gallery in Venice, California was the setting for the second Vis-À-Vis panel of the day. On the second floor of this venue, the audience was seated in the “Visions of the Arctic” color photography exhibition area. It was a larger space than the first panel’s venue and the established seating was adequate. However, the event was running behind schedule and the panel session began about a half hour later than expected. Before the panel began, copies of “Fiction France: A Selection of French Contemporary Fiction To Be Read And Translated” dated March 2009 were handed out to the audience.

This second panel’s authors were James Frey (Bright Shiny Morning), Richard Lange (This Wicked World), and Jean Rolin (Christians in Palestine) and the panel moderator was Olivier Barrot. Once again the panel focus was on the reading of excerpts from the authors’ works. James Frey read an excerpt from his book Bright Shiny Morning. Frey, who used to live in Venice, California from 1995 to 2002, said that his book has no single protagonist or story. He also revealed that about seventy-five percent of the statistics in the book are accurate with the remaining twenty-five percent being inaccurate (he made them up to serve his own purposes with the novel). The question then becomes, does Frey tell the reader which of the statistics are accurate and which are inaccurate?

Next, instead of from This Wicked World, Jean Rolin read in French, an excerpt from “Culver City”, a short story from Richard Lange’s Dead Boys. Then Lange read that same excerpt in English. Lange had attended film school at the University of Southern California, but discovered he did not enjoy the collaborative nature of film making and turned to writing. Los Angeles is the city that Lange really loves.

Finally, Jean Rolin read his entry in “Fiction France” (mentioned above), which is an excerpt from Un Chien Mort Après Lui (A Dead Dog After Him), while the French-reading people in the audience followed along in the publication. Rolin is in Los Angeles learning how to get around using the public transportation system. He recounted his travels from Los Angeles to Calabasas and from Long Beach to Malibu via bus and rail, remarking on the length of time it took to complete those two journeys. Rolin is doing this public transportation activity as part of his preparation for his next work. Besides, the only car he can drive is a Renault Ford and there probably aren’t too many of them in Los Angeles.

It was Jean Rolin’s book Christians in Palestine that I bought at the end of the session. This is a new subject for me, but sure to give a perspective on the Middle East not usually known. Unfortunately Jean Rolin had left by the time I bought the paperback, so I was unable to have him sign the book or talk to him. As I am also a taker of public transportation, I wanted to share my views of the bus traveler’s life in Los Angeles. Oh well, perhaps someday we’ll meet on a, sometimes inaccurately named, Rapid bus. Until then – Bon Voyage!


Images:
Left: Front cover of Bright Shiny Morning from the website visavisla.blogspot.com
Center: Front cover of This Wicked World from the website visavisla.blogspot.com

Right: Front cover of Christians in Palestine from the website visavisla.blogspot.com

Vis-À-Vis: “The Novel Vs. Cinema And Television”

The venue for the first panel of Vis-À-Vis was located in the entry area of the Consortium Gallery in Venice, California. Surrounded by large, colorful abstract paintings and a couple of black and white photographs, the audience patiently waited for the session to begin. Actually more seating had to be added as more people than had been anticipated arrived for the session. Of course that took time and the panel began later than its scheduled start hour. The front door to the Consortium remained opened during the panel readings and discussion, which allowed not only more people to enter, but also outside noises as well. It was a drawback to the ambience to hear the sounds of car engines and cell phone conversations jolt into the space and compete with the voices of the authors.

The authors for this initial panel were Philippe Djian (Impardonnables), Steve Erickson (Zeroville), and Norman Klein (The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory) and the panel moderator was Laure Murat. The majority of the time was devoted to the reading of excerpts/notes from a work by each author. An excerpt from Philippe Dijian’s Impardonnables (Unforgivable) was begun in English by an actor, continued in French by Djian, and finished, once again by the actor, in English. Then Steve Erickson read excerpts, in English, from the beginning of Zeroville. Finally, instead of reading an excerpt from The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory, Norman Klein chose to present notes and ideas from a work he is in the process of writing.

From the short discussion that followed, Djian offered, in regard to cinema, “change the angles, change the view of the world.” Some of Djian’s works have been made into films, but he does not feel betrayed if the film is not an exact reflection of his words. That was unexpected – I know that I would want any writings of mine to be filmed accurately. If there were to be changes, then I would want to be the screenwriter and make them myself. Erickson mentioned The English Patient as an influence, while for Klein it was Tristram Shandy (complete title: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman). The consensus distinction between cinema and the novel is that film making is a collective endeavor, while writing is a private one - the team versus the individual. Even though one of them had been a film student (Erickson), obviously working individually won out, though films are the centerpiece of his novel Zeroville. Perhaps having an actual filmmaker as part of the panel would have added another insight into the discussion.

After the panel ended, books by the authors were for sale and I bought a paperback copy of Steve Erickson’s Zeroville. And before he settled into videotaping an interview, Erickson signed my newly purchased book. I do know that before reading Zeroville I will have to watch “A Place in the Sun” again, as that is the protagonist’s core film – in fact the faces of the two lead actors are inked on his head for all to see. Now that’s one way to start a dialogue – têtes à tête!


Images:
Left: Front cover of Impardonnables (Unforgivable) from the website visavisla.blogspot.com
Center: Front cover of Zeroville from the website visavisla.blogspot.com
Right: Front cover of The History of Forgetting: Los Angeles and the Erasure of Memory from the website visavisla.blogspot.com

Vis-À-Vis: A Day With French & American Writers

The Vis-À-Vis: A Day With French & American Writers literary festival in Venice, California is in its inaugural year this May 2010. As stated in the literary event’s blog – “The driving force behind this project is the idea of dialogue, whether between France and America, or between the written and spoken words, for the American public and the French community.” Today’s program consists of three author panels, two children’s workshops, and one cocktail hour. I am attending two of the author panels, both of which are in Abbot Kinney Boulevard venues. The panels are:

“The novel vs. cinema and television”
Philippe Djian / Steve Erickson / Norman Klein
11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Consortium Gallery

“Writing on the city, writing on the margins”
James Frey / Richard Lange / Jean Rolin
2:30 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the G2 Gallery

As a lover of all things French, I am looking forward to a day of hearing French, reading French, and perhaps even speaking French. Most importantly, this free festival is a chance to increase my literary awareness of contemporary French and American writers. However I do regret that I won’t be eating or drinking French today. That will have to be a treat for another day – perhaps while reading a work by one of the festival’s authors. Bonne lecture!


Images:
Left: Consortium logo from the website consortium-studios.com
Center: Front side of the Vis-À-Vis postcard

Right: G2 Galley from the website theg2gallery.com

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

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

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


Image is from the website nwhp.org

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

Introduction

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

Excerpt from Chapter 1 in Rhode Island Blues

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

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


Yesterday’s writer – Maria Tatar

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

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

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

Introduction

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Center: Gloria Steinem from the website feminist.com

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

Introduction

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


Dedication in White Teeth

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

Excerpt from Teething Trouble in White Teeth

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


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

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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

Dedication in Busman’s Honeymoon

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

Excerpt from Chapter II Goosefeather Bed in Busman’s Honeymoon

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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


Dedication in Playing Sardines

“In memoriam Lorna Sage”

Excerpt from Fluency in Playing Sardines

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

Introduction

A. Nin
Anon
A Nun
Non! Non!

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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

Dedication in Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

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

Excerpt from Chapter I of Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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


Foreword from Pentimento: A Book of Portraits

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

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

Excerpt from Theatre in Pentimento: A Book of Portraits

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

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


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

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

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

Center: Lillian Hellman from MD, March 1974

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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