![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bWhat I've Finished Reading
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham! It's been a while since I checked in on my mopey wannabe sage friend Maugham, and I'd been meaning to read this one for a long time. I enjoyed it!
It opens with an adulterous couple surprised in the act by someone turning the handle. Is it Kitty's husband? They fret and reassure each other for a while, but it turns out the answer is yes. We learn a little bit about Kitty's marriage: she married Dr. Fane because her younger sister was about to get married, and since Kitty had always been the beautiful one whom everyone thought would make a brilliant match, it would be just too embarrassing to let her sister get married first. She doesn't love Dr. Fane and his passion for her makes her wince a little, but he's not a literal sack of nightcrawlers or anything and he has a government job in Hong Kong, so she figures maybe it'll be tolerable. In Hong Kong she meets Charlie Townsend, an attractive smooth-talker, and starts sleeping with him at every opportunity. But then her husband comes by to drop off a book during one of those opportunities, and he immediately recognizes the situation and gets very bitter very quickly.
Soon Dr. Fane announces that he is going to replace another doctor who died in a cholera epidemic in the north, and Kitty is going to accompany him. If she doesn't want to, he'll consent to a divorce - but only if Townsend promises to divorce his wife and marry her. Kitty agrees, thinking that Townsend will obviously jump at the opportunity - but of course he doesn't; he's very fond of his wife and he has his career to think of. So Kitty goes to the cholera-stricken city and pines for her lost illusions and grimly eats salad every night specifically because they've been warned not to eat salad. After a while she finds work to do looking after orphans at the local convent, realizes Townsend was kind of an empty suit even though the sex was good, and discovers that she is pregnant.
This plot is a bit rough on poor Kitty, and Dr. Fane is not very lovable even by the usual standards of wronged fictional husbands. If he described his plan on r/AmITheAsshole, I have to assume he would get a resounding "yes." But it makes a good fiction. Eventually Dr. Fane dies; she tries to get him to forgive her but he's either suffering from delirium or way too ambiguous with his literary references, and she has to go back to Hong Kong and sort out their things. She tries to join the convent and immolate herself in service, but the nuns kick her out because frankly she's kind of useless.
What she awakens to at the end of all this suffering is not any revalatory total metamorphosis but just a calm factual determination to be nicer to her dad whom she and her sister have always taken for granted. There may be some other kind of life ahead, but for now that's good enough.
This is one of many classic novels of spiritual awakening that is also a good argument for no-fault divorce.
What I'm Reading Now
My Library of the World's Best Literature is more incomplete than I thought. I finally noticed that the title page said "Thirty-One Volumes" and did some research. In addition to Volume 27 (Zoroaster-???), it's also missing volumes dedicated to Songs, Hymns, and Lyrics, a Biographical Dictionary of Authors, and an Index-Guide to Systematic Readings.
About Frances Hodgson Burnett, the editors of the Library say, "'Little Lord Fauntleroy' (1886) is the best known of a series of stories nominally written for children, but intended to be read by their elders."
I would like to share a story from the collection. This is by Henry C. Bunner, who was apparently famous in the second half of the nineteenth century for his gentle comedies of urban life. This story is called "The Love Letters of Smith" and it is a very small romance that begins with a pewter mug of beer. Luckily, it and the short story collection where it originated (Short Sixes: Stories to be Read While the Candle Burns) are available on Project Gutenberg, so I don't have to type it all out or mail anyone the incredibly heavy volume of the Library where I found it.
I'm deep in the latest two gigantic 99 Novels books, Darconville's Cat by Alexander Theroux and Creation by Gore Vidal, and they're both perfectly fine. Alex Theroux is having a grand old time making fun of Southern naming patterns and Vidal is living it up in a reasonably well-researched but flexible and cooperative past in which he gets to meet Socrates, Confucius, the Buddha, and Lao Tzu and muse on their respective virtues and vices for 600 leisurely pages. Gravity's Rainbow is also perfectly fine in the abstract, but I keep finding excuses not to read it.
What I Plan to Read Next
Pattee's Dietetics (1935 edition), Composition and Grammar, and other books I bought for "research" ten years ago and am unlikely to need in the near future. Also: Lilith's Brood, a series of three novels by Octavia Butler (for a book club), just begun and beautifully unsettling.
The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham! It's been a while since I checked in on my mopey wannabe sage friend Maugham, and I'd been meaning to read this one for a long time. I enjoyed it!
It opens with an adulterous couple surprised in the act by someone turning the handle. Is it Kitty's husband? They fret and reassure each other for a while, but it turns out the answer is yes. We learn a little bit about Kitty's marriage: she married Dr. Fane because her younger sister was about to get married, and since Kitty had always been the beautiful one whom everyone thought would make a brilliant match, it would be just too embarrassing to let her sister get married first. She doesn't love Dr. Fane and his passion for her makes her wince a little, but he's not a literal sack of nightcrawlers or anything and he has a government job in Hong Kong, so she figures maybe it'll be tolerable. In Hong Kong she meets Charlie Townsend, an attractive smooth-talker, and starts sleeping with him at every opportunity. But then her husband comes by to drop off a book during one of those opportunities, and he immediately recognizes the situation and gets very bitter very quickly.
Soon Dr. Fane announces that he is going to replace another doctor who died in a cholera epidemic in the north, and Kitty is going to accompany him. If she doesn't want to, he'll consent to a divorce - but only if Townsend promises to divorce his wife and marry her. Kitty agrees, thinking that Townsend will obviously jump at the opportunity - but of course he doesn't; he's very fond of his wife and he has his career to think of. So Kitty goes to the cholera-stricken city and pines for her lost illusions and grimly eats salad every night specifically because they've been warned not to eat salad. After a while she finds work to do looking after orphans at the local convent, realizes Townsend was kind of an empty suit even though the sex was good, and discovers that she is pregnant.
This plot is a bit rough on poor Kitty, and Dr. Fane is not very lovable even by the usual standards of wronged fictional husbands. If he described his plan on r/AmITheAsshole, I have to assume he would get a resounding "yes." But it makes a good fiction. Eventually Dr. Fane dies; she tries to get him to forgive her but he's either suffering from delirium or way too ambiguous with his literary references, and she has to go back to Hong Kong and sort out their things. She tries to join the convent and immolate herself in service, but the nuns kick her out because frankly she's kind of useless.
What she awakens to at the end of all this suffering is not any revalatory total metamorphosis but just a calm factual determination to be nicer to her dad whom she and her sister have always taken for granted. There may be some other kind of life ahead, but for now that's good enough.
This is one of many classic novels of spiritual awakening that is also a good argument for no-fault divorce.
What I'm Reading Now
My Library of the World's Best Literature is more incomplete than I thought. I finally noticed that the title page said "Thirty-One Volumes" and did some research. In addition to Volume 27 (Zoroaster-???), it's also missing volumes dedicated to Songs, Hymns, and Lyrics, a Biographical Dictionary of Authors, and an Index-Guide to Systematic Readings.
About Frances Hodgson Burnett, the editors of the Library say, "'Little Lord Fauntleroy' (1886) is the best known of a series of stories nominally written for children, but intended to be read by their elders."
I would like to share a story from the collection. This is by Henry C. Bunner, who was apparently famous in the second half of the nineteenth century for his gentle comedies of urban life. This story is called "The Love Letters of Smith" and it is a very small romance that begins with a pewter mug of beer. Luckily, it and the short story collection where it originated (Short Sixes: Stories to be Read While the Candle Burns) are available on Project Gutenberg, so I don't have to type it all out or mail anyone the incredibly heavy volume of the Library where I found it.
I'm deep in the latest two gigantic 99 Novels books, Darconville's Cat by Alexander Theroux and Creation by Gore Vidal, and they're both perfectly fine. Alex Theroux is having a grand old time making fun of Southern naming patterns and Vidal is living it up in a reasonably well-researched but flexible and cooperative past in which he gets to meet Socrates, Confucius, the Buddha, and Lao Tzu and muse on their respective virtues and vices for 600 leisurely pages. Gravity's Rainbow is also perfectly fine in the abstract, but I keep finding excuses not to read it.
What I Plan to Read Next
Pattee's Dietetics (1935 edition), Composition and Grammar, and other books I bought for "research" ten years ago and am unlikely to need in the near future. Also: Lilith's Brood, a series of three novels by Octavia Butler (for a book club), just begun and beautifully unsettling.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-20 08:23 pm (UTC)I read "The Love Letters of Smith" and it was very sweet. It's almost like instant messaging, except with pen and paper instead of internet.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-20 11:45 pm (UTC)I didn't know The Painted Veil was a movie! It looks pretty good.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-20 10:46 pm (UTC)Wow, so that was a thing people said back in the day also! Though Burnett feels like an odd target for it.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-21 12:08 am (UTC)Burnett wasn't necessarily best known for her children's books at this time, and her most lastingly popular ones (The Secret Garden and A Little Princess) had yet to be written - though L.L. Fauntleroy was one of those ubiquitous pop-cultural phenomena and had been for some time.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-22 09:55 am (UTC)You don't have to go looking for the missing volumes, though, now, do you?
no subject
Date: 2019-11-22 05:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-23 04:55 pm (UTC)And ooh, I loved "'Lilith's Brood"; I'll be interested to see what you think!
no subject
Date: 2019-11-25 06:16 pm (UTC)Lilith's Brood is excellently upsetting so far.