What Friends Are For Wednesday

[evelyn_b]

What I've Finished Reading



Alfred Kazin's memoir Starting Out in the Thirties was actually a 2017 book, chosen because it was short - I was worried about getting to 75 in my Mount TBR goal - that I later forgot to include on the list. It turned out to be quite good, or anyway I liked it. On the surface it's about being young and lucky, as Kazin was as a writer in Manhattan in the late 1930s, but structurally it's about broken hopes - those of his nervous spinster cousin Sophie, who falls victim to a mysterious huckster, and those of the American left in the age of Stalin.

My teaching in the evening session at City College became wearisome as the faithful in my classes resisted every example of free thought, of literary originality. In giving a course on modern fiction, I found to my disgust that half the class refused to read anything by H. G. Wells – he was a “bourgeois liberal.”

A few paragraphs later, he shouts “It’s not true!” at a radio announcing the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, though in a way he already knows it’s true.

Dorothy Dale and her Chums is a 1909 juvenile novel by Margaret Penrose - fourth in a series that begins with Dorothy Dale: A Girl of To-Day. Dorothy is a cheerful fifteen-year old who just wants to help everyone and make friends with all (except the designated Mean Girls, of course, who are too mean). She has a loyal best friend, Tavia, and a friendish alliance with a "gypsy girl" named Urania, who is probably the most believable and likable of all the characters because she is realistically conflicted and not syrupy. Urania helps Dorothy and Tavia get their things back from a band of burglars, but gets herself into trouble as a result and goes on the run. A series of threats is too obviously shoved at her by the author to pinball her into school and a settled life. Meanwhile, back at Dorothy and Tavia's boarding school, a new girl called Minette is shrouded in mystery and tragedy. Can assiduous snooping help her get her money back from a grasping aunt? Maybe not in a more realistic book, but Dorothy Dale has an understanding but absent father-ex-machina and several other resources at her disposal. Plus, she's a paragon of virtue! You don't accidentally make everything worse when you're a paragon of virtue. That would be bad for the morals.

"Our young girls of to-day," a pompous gentleman tells Dorothy at the two-thirds mark, "very often display a more commendable type of heroism than characterized the Joans of former days . . .The results of their works are more practical, to say the least."

In case you need more deets on this vague and possibly back-handed compliment, we get some further discussion of the Heroine of To-Day a little later, this time courtesy of the narrator:

In how many homes to-day are not young girls doing things quietly and almost unconsciously to help the entire family, not alone to obtain bread and butter, but to secure real peace and happiness?

Think of the numberless girls who are assisting good mothers with the trying details of the household, taking from tired heads and shoulders a generous share of the burden that would otherwise make life miserable for these same long-taxed mothers!

There are Dorothy Dales in almost every home -- but we have not written their story yet. The "Home Girl" is one of the great unwritten volumes that writers hold so sacred in their hearts, scarcely is pen or paper deemed worthy to make the picture.

I found this a surprisingly engaging book for what it is. It's not alive with specificity or bursting with charm, but it moves easily and the little dramas are reasonably suspenseful. As a glimpse into American girlhood circa 1909, it's probably about as materially and spiritually accurate as The Baby-Sitters Club or Sweet Valley Twins to 1989, which is to say not particularly.

I finally got around to reading 2001: A Space Odyssey, the book version. It was all right! My favorite thing about it was the astronaut David Bowman (only the computer calls him Dave) meticulously shaving himself every day on the long journey to Saturn’s moons, because now that his crew have all been killed, he is the sole ambassador of the human race. You don't want to make a scrubby impression! Then he journeys through sufficient weirdness to turn him into a magical baby waiting in the sky, who would like to come and meet us but thinks he’ll blow our minds. At least, I think that's what happened. This sort of thing is not really my thing, but it was nicely lucid (confusing baby transformation aside) and excellent for reading on the plane.

What I'm Reading Now

For 99 Novels: The Assistant. A defeated shopkeeper is robbed at gunpoint at the end of a bad day, and one of the "holdupniks" cracks him over the head with a pistol. While he's recovering from the head injury, a hapless-looking young man starts hanging around the store, claiming that he wants grocery experience and offering to work for free. Mundane sadness turns to suspense and mystery by an apparently inevitable process. The truth about the assistant comes out early on and isn't hard to guess, but you should read it for yourself anyway. This is a good book about how difficult it is to do the right thing, and it's stressing me out. I keep wanting to knock it against the wall in hopes of knocking some sense into the characters, though it's been made perfectly clear that sense isn't the problem.

Appointment With Death by Agatha Christie is also an intense reading experience, but the nature of the mystery is easier to articulate. It's "which of this unambiguously loathsome woman's children killed her for the good of the family?" Lots and lots of predictably brittle family drama with one or two unexpected elements. The presence of a Renowned Psychologist and his protege means we are treated to a bucketload of midcentury psychoanalysis at every turn, but it doesn't hurt the plot any. I suspect that I've already guessed the real killer from one very noticeable bit of clue-burying - but I've been burned by Christie's sneaky construction methods before.

What I Plan to Read Next

I managed to turn away the temptation to run out and buy The Golden House after reading an interview with Salman Rushdie, and instead got it from the library, using the hold system so that I wouldn't have to keep coming back to check if it was there. This is a simple system, but until now I've been too lazy to do it. But I saved at least ten dollars, which I can now use to buy more books for groceries and other responsible pursuits.

Comments

[chelseagirl]

I read the 2001 book when I was in junior high, and had not yet seen the movie. One of the things I remembered most vividly about it was a small . . . well, basically a tablet, that Dave was reading a newspaper on while still on earth. And I thought it unimaginably cool.

[evelyn_b]

Yes! When I read that, I thought it was smart of Clark to guess that the future people of 2001 might call them newspapers and not e.g. newsvids or telepapers, using a familiar word for a familiar thing in a now-familiar form.

2001 is full of pretty cool stuff. I saw the movie in high school and remembered it as a cool visual experience that I couldn't make heads or tails of, so I was surprised when it turned out, as a book, to be perfectly readable and not particularly "arty."

[osprey_archer]

It's always kind of magical to me how many different problems girls solve in early twentieth-century books. Robbers, lost inheritances, getting lost in a snow storm, dread diseases, God knows what else, they meet it all with pluck and aplomb and a smile on their faces.

I rather suspect that Emily Byrd Starr's comparative prickliness came as a breath of fresh air, though. FINALLY, a girl who doesn't want to befriend everyone in the world.

[evelyn_b]

Girls can do anything, as any number of purple t-shirts will still tell you. This one is full of little sermons on the happy home girl, but it doesn't prevent Dorothy from thrashing around in the woods OR wandering around New York City interviewing shopgirls to suss out the Mystery of Minette.

FINALLY, a girl who doesn't want to befriend everyone in the world.

That is just how I felt when I first read the Emily books, though I was not a Girl of the Day. Now I have a lot more sympathy for the plucky befrienders; it can be hard to remember just how much I used to dislike them.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, there is something about old girls' stories, isn't there? I find it hard to resist the UK equivalent when I stumble over them, especially boarding school stories.

I suspect that I've already guessed the real killer from one very noticeable bit of clue-burying - but I've been burned by Christie's sneaky construction methods before.

You can't trust that Christie woman! ;-)

[evelyn_b]

There really is! <3

[brigdh]

Oh, I absolutely loved The Golden House! I'll be excited to read what you think of it.

[evelyn_b]

I completely neglected to post anything about it when I finished it, but maybe I'll do so soon, since you're interested! I enjoyed it but had mixed feelings, basically amounting to "I think I liked Rushdie a little better when I didn't get the references."