Penguin Classic: I only got halfway through Le Grand Meaulnes before I had to return it. It was an ILL and it came all the way from Ripon College in Wisconsin, no possibility of renewing it. Okay, this is an admittedly obscure title, but jeez, it’s a Penguin Classic, it’s not exactly out of print. And there was no copy closer to Ann Arbor MI than Ripon? Well, anyway. I sort of enjoyed the half that I read, but I was definitely handicapped by my lack of familiarity with the customs & mores of late 19th century rural France. There were a lot of descriptions of clothes that I’m sure were significant, but the significance escaped me entirely. For example, all the guys were wearing smocks. Smocks. Now I know they weren’t wearing oversized men’s shirts, backwards, with the sleeves cut off at the elbows. I know they weren’t fingerpainting. But there’s got to be some reason why these smocks (?) were mentioned so frequently. Honestly, I never thought I’d say this about any novel, but this one could have used some footnotes, or at least an introduction. Still, I’d like to go back and finish it some day. Despite the smocks, it was a vivid portrait of adolescent boys, coming of age, friendship, first love, etc. And, to answer your burning question, Meaulnes rhymes with moan, and it’s the main character’s name.

Book Group: We’re reading Beloved. I’m halfway through. How did I manage to miss reading this before? It’s really good. Really good! Query: why is “magical realism” so unpalatable in Latin American fiction and yet so perfect and true when Toni Morrison is the author?

Slaves of Golconda: I totally missed out last month. The book was The Island of Dr. Moreau. However, I felt like I joined them in spirit, anyway. During the last week of August, when I should have been reading and writing about Island, I was instead watching the first season of Lost on DVD. Yeah, that was the week before school started, when I should have been getting organized and Steve should have been working on lesson plans. And instead we were staying up until one in the morning every night for a week, watching three or four episodes per evening. I understand season two is out on video now, too. We are going to try to hold off for a while.

From the Nonfiction Department: I read The China Study. Actually, I should probably save this one for a separate post. It’s a detailed and very compelling treatise on the health benefits of a vegan “whole foods, plant-based diet.” We are working on it. I have discovered that Silk brand soy yogurt is sooooo good! Better than regular yogurt. Other than that, as I say, we’re working on it.

From the Library: Remember the contraption that allows me to browse in the adult fiction section? Well, a book called The Darwin Conspiracy caught my eye at once. This novel purports to answer the real-life question of why, after his legendary voyage in the Beagle, Darwin never travelled again, became anxious and sickly with myriad vague, psychosomatic ailments, and waited more than twenty years to publish his theory. Can you imagine a better premise for a novel than that? I’d never heard of this book, or the author, John Darnton, but there were glowing blurbs on the back from Ann Arbor’s own Nicholas Delbanco and also Elie Wiesel. So it must be good. Right? Wrong. I don’t know who paid Nick and Elie to write these glowing encomiums but they couldn’t possibly have read it. Here’s a sample. Get your barf bag ready.

And then [young Charles Darwin] had returned home to find the offer waiting for him, a bolt from the blue that could change his life forever, provide it with meaning. And to be denied it! To have his hopes elevated so high and then dashed the very next moment! How could he endure it?

This book is supposed to remind us of Possession. It goes back and forth between the present (researchers fall in love while uncovering the mystery), and the past (Darwin’s life). Here’s a bit from the present. You might need another barf bag.

That was back before Victor left [the Galapagos island where they're doing field research -- copped straight from The Beak of the Finch, I might add]. At first it was a relief to be alone — solitude was what he had been looking for, part of his penitence — but as weeks stretched into months, the loneliness he had sought became almost too much to bear. Then when the rainy season didn’t come and the lava island turned into a black frying pan stuck way out in the ocean, at times he actually wondered if he could keep going. But of course he did. He had known he would — in that way at least, in brute staying power, he was strong. It was his psyche that was brittle.

No! He actually wondered if he could keep going? Thank goodness he had that brute staying power, because you know, that lava island was just like a black frying pan. And not just any old black frying pan, but one that stuck way out in the ocean.

Boy, what a mean-spirited review. I am sorry. But honestly? I was sooooo excited about this plot idea. The disappointment is bitter. In fact . . . to have my hopes elevated so high and then dashed the very next moment! How will I endure it? ;)

First, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. I’m sure by now y’all know what the story is about. Miss Jean Brodie is the schoolteacher, the charismatic schoolteacher with “advanced and seditious” teaching methods, at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls in 1930s Edinburgh. She has carefully selected a “set” (isn’t that such a better word than clique?) of girls with whom she spends much time, carefully feeding them the manners, opinions and ideas that will make them the “créme de la créme.” She has an affair with one of her colleagues and she tries to engineer an affair between another teacher and one of the girls. Eventually one of the other girls in the set, Sandy, secretly “betrays” her and she loses her job.

The most interesting aspect of this book is the characters, particularly Miss Brodie and Sandy. Miss Brodie: is she for real? Why does she try to set up one of her students to have an affair with a teacher? I mean, it’s explained in the book (“Sandy looked at her, and perceived that the woman was obsessed by the need for Rose to sleep with the man she herself was in love with”) but why does she actually do it? And Sandy: why does she betray Miss Brodie? I assume Sandy is the autobiographical character here; she has the storyteller’s imagination (her flights of fancy are the best part of the book) and later converts to Catholicism, like Spark herself, and becomes a nun.

Second, Memento Mori — a soap opera about old people! A very funny idea. A group of men and women in their 80s keep getting prank phone calls: a voice intones, “Remember, you must die!” This group of people are all interrelated a set. They’re all either the spouses, the illicit lovers, or the maids of each other. As they react in their various ways to the prank calls their moldy old secrets are revealed, including love affairs, blackmail, bigamy. Pure soap opera!

Overall, Memento Mori was a bit disappointing, especially given the spectacular premise. I had trouble keeping track of the characters. I wish Spark had done in this one what she did so nicely in Jean Brodie, cueing the reader with a repeated detail (Rose, who was famous for sex; Mary Macgregor who was stupid and died a gruesome death, etc.). And although one or two characters surmise that the prank caller might actually be Death I wish the idea had been explored more fully.

I will go out on a limb here and complain that Muriel Spark has a way of treating big subjects too lightly. I find it hard to believe that she was a religious person. I know she became an R.C. and was obsessed with Cardinal Newman. Obviously religion must have been important to her, and the themes in her books reflect this (life, death, moral choice, truth, etc.) but she comes across as so callous and cynical. For example, “everyone likes to visit a nun, it provides a spiritual sensation, a catharsis to go home with, especially if the nun clutches the bars of the grille.” Yuck! Though I suppose it’s also possible that this nice Jewish girl with a not-so-secret infatuation with the Catholic church takes this stuff a just wee bit too seriously?

My other complaint is that none of the characters are particularly likeable. I’ve now read three books by Spark (here‘s what I wrote about Loitering with Intent last year) and out of all three books there was a grand total of one (1) character that I actually liked. That would be Fleur from Loitering, whom I liked immensely. Maybe I’m just not one of the créme de la créme, but it’s hard for me to appreciate a book when I don’t like any of the characters in it.

Quillhill set up a separate Slaves of Golconda blog. I will cross-post this over there, and you might want to head on over to see what others have to say about Muriel Spark. Discussion has started over at the Metaxu Café as well.

The Virginian is a Western. The plot outline sounds stupid and generic: Tenderfoot Nameless First Person Narrator goes out west and meets Handsome Strong Silent Hero Who Lives By A Perfect Code of Honor And Therefore Must Occasionally Take The Law Into His Own Hands (aka “The Virginian”). Tenderfoot also meets Beautiful Young Schoolteacher Who Loves Hero But Fears Her Family Won’t Accept Him Because His Lineage And Manners Aren’t As Classy As Hers. Oh yes, and there’s also Mean Drunken Yellow-bellied Bad Guy Who Makes Things Difficult For Hero.

How does this book rise above these generic plot elements? Well, for one, it has a bit of humor. One of my favorite parts is Schoolteacher’s first appearance in the book. She’s written a letter inquiring about the teaching position, and Tenderfoot, Virginian, and Minor Character are discussing it. The letter is hilarious: she inquires whether she could sue if the Wyoming climate ruins her complexion, she comments that she may be unsuited for teaching because she leaves out the “u” in “honor,” and finally she signs it “your very sincere spinster.” Though Minor Character “over whose not highly civilized head certain portions of the letter had highly passed” takes the letter at face value (“I guess that means she’s forty”), The Virginian immediately susses that she couldn’t be more than twenty, and thus “the seed of love” is sown.

For another, it is so much about the land. Here’s The Virginian and Schoolteacher on their honeymoon:

They passed through the gates of the foot-hills, following the stream up among them. The outstretching fences and the widely trodden dust were no more. Now and then they rose again into view of the fields and houses down in the plain below. But as the sum of the miles and hours grew, they were glad to see the road less worn with travel, and the traces of men passing from sight. The ploughed and planted country, that quilt of many-colored harvests which they had watched yesterday, lay in another world which they had watched yesterday, lay in another world from this where they rode now. No hand but nature’s had sown these crops of yellow flowers, these willow thickets and tall cottonwoods. Somewhere in a passage of red rocks the last sign of wagon wheels was lost, and after this the trail became a wild mountain trail. . . . Full solitude was around them now, so that their words grew scarce, and when they spoke it was with low voices.

Sigh! This book was written almost at the time that it takes place (first published in 1902). Owen Wister was really there. The characters may be idealized heroic/romantic stereotypes, but Wyoming — that’s what he really saw!

The Virginian is not without flaws. The worst, in my opinion, is that for much of the book Tenderfoot is narrating events, conversations, thoughts, and feelings that he wasn’t privy to. Once or twice his deep friendship with Schoolteacher is briefly alluded to, and we must assume she told him “everything” — but it doesn’t quite work. And Tenderfoot is not a well-defined character. Why is he even in Wyoming? Maybe Wister didn’t want to delve too deeply into Tenderfoot’s character for, ahem, other reasons, such as the fact that Tenderfoot’s first description of The Virginian is “a slim young giant, more beautiful than pictures.”

Another thing I didn’t like was that although it’s mentioned many times that The Virginian must take matters into his own hands because the judicial system is so corrupt, we don’t really see the corruption. I would have liked the corruption to be more integral to the plot since it’s so integral to The Virginian’s motivations.

Still and all, I love Westerns, and I love idealized romantic heroes. This one was a page-turner. I was so worried that The Virginian might not live through the final showdown with Bad Guy that I actually flipped ahead to check — something I normally would never, never do.

Thanks again, Ella!

He’s not finding this a big deal at all. In fact, he mistakenly thought he was turning forty last year. I, however, am thinking about it a lot. I’m turning forty this year, too, though not until December. How on earth did this happen? Just yesterday I was ten!

So, do you think it’s wrong for me to let a 2yo lick the bowl when the birthday cake batter contains not only four raw eggs but also an eighth of a cup of Meyer’s Dark Rum? Personally, I think I’d be derelict in my duty if I didn’t let him. After all, he should get some recompense for the five seconds he spent stirring.

* * *

I had a couple of days earlier this week where I was really afraid that I wouldn’t be able to deliver what I’d rashly promised my client: a website that she would be able to update herself, almost as easily as posting to Blogger. But I stubbornly persisted like a true INTJ, and after a couple of days I figured out the content management system. I think I’m going to be able to make good on my promise after all. Phew! Now I’ve got most of the structure down and it’s just a question of inserting the content from the old site into the new one. The process is tedious, yet so satisfying. Tedious because the only way I know of to get rid of all the old <font> tags and other unnecessary crap is to do it by hand. Yet so satisfying! I love nothing better than pruning. And when I’m done the site will be clean, crisp, and simple. Yesssss!!

But surely, you ask, you’re not spending every minute of the day pruning old <font> tags? Yes, that’s true. I could’ve been blogging… except that I was reading. Finally I managed to get with the Slaves of Golconda program, and I’ve been reading The Virginian. We’re not supposed to post about it until April 30, so I will just say for now that I. Couldn’t. Put. It. Down.

Now I’m in the process of whipping through two Orson Scott Card novels before getting into my next book club book, Bittersweet. So Orson Scott Card, in case you don’t know, is a once-great science fiction writer who now just seems to write the same one novel over and over again. Literally! Ender’s Game was one of the best sci-fi books of all time. A great read, satisfying on many levels. Likewise great is its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, which takes place hundreds of years after the events in the first novel and has almost no relation to it. A striking, original story. But Card is one of those writers who just can’t leave well enough alone. No, he continued the series with a couple more books after Speaker that are just cheesy and formulaic. And if that’s not enough, he then went back to Ender’s Game and rewrote it from the point of view of another character, calling it a “parallel” novel. Okay, that’s a cool idea — in fact, I’m a sucker for stories that tell the same event through the eyes of different characters — and that book, Ender’s Shadow, turned out all right. But now he’s written three more books that come after Shadow, again, cheesy and formulaic. Why do I helplessly keep reading them? I do not know.

And when the time came, I found I couldn’t read it. I didn’t even get myself a copy. After Birds Without Wings I just didn’t have it in me to tackle a book with “death” in its title. And I got distracted by The Dark is Rising. And I also have to confess that I’ve never been able to get into that whole Latin American “magical realism” thing. I don’t know why. I’ve attempted to read One Hundred Years of Solitude at least three times, and never managed to finish it. I really don’t know why. Maybe I should give it another try. Thoughts, anyone?

That said, I strongly urge you to read the other bloggers’ posts about Chronicle. Those I know of who’ve posted so far are Quillhill, Sylvia, and Ella. It is endlessly fascinating to me how the same words can elicit such different reactions from different people. And stay tuned for the next book. I’ll post the title as soon as I learn it, and anyone who wants is welcome to read & post about it.