International Women's Day

As today is the 100th anniversary of the founding of International Women's Day, I want to acknowledge and thank all the brave pioneer women in many different fields who took risks and broke barriers, leading the way for the rest of us in ensuing generations. I especially want to give tribute to the great women writers over the years who wrote and published despite all the obstacles put in their way.

Guest Blog: Movie Versions of Books

My friend Mary and I were emailing about the new movie version of "Jane Eyre" that has just come out. We were thinking about why we do or don't like movie versions of books. In my case, even though I know I may well be disappointed, I usually can't resist a movie based on one of my favorite books. So, for example, you will find me watching every single movie or TV version of Austen's novels. I liked Mary's comments on the topic, so I persuaded her to let me publish them here as a guest blog post. Thanks, Mary!

Mary's comments:
I find that in general, if I have read the book I am less likely to like a movie made from it than if I have not read the book. There is usually just so much in a book that a movie can't possibly include it all. Especially hard I think is translating the "voice" of the narrator or the inner thoughts of characters. It can be irritating to have nuanced characters (of whom I have formed pictures in my mind) come clunkily to life in a movie. Occasionally the movie maker will change the plot or at least ending of a popular book--maybe so moviegoers who've read the book will be motivated to see it if it might offer something new? Having said that, there are a few movies that capture the book so perfectly--somehow getting in enough of the essence of the movie--that the book and movie become almost seamless in my memory. One that always comes to mind is To Kill a Mockingbird. I read and loved the book before I saw the movie, yet in my mind Atticus Finch looks and sounds exactly like Gregory Peck! And sometimes a very good movie can be made out of a not great book--The Godfather comes to mind.

Characters Lodged in My Mind

Certain characters from often-read and well-loved novels are so vivid and fully-formed, as if they are people I know personally, that they seem to have taken up long-term residence in my mind, and I often find myself thinking of them. Below is a list of some such characters.

-Elizabeth Bennet, Emma Woodhouse, Anne Elliot, Fanny Price, and Elinor and Marianne Dashwood (all from Austen’s novels)
-Jane Eyre (from Jane Eyre)
-Dorothea Brooke Casaubon (from Middlemarch)
-Becky Sharp (from Vanity Fair)
-Miss Matty Jenkyns (from Cranford)
-Tess Durbeyfield/D’Urberville (from Tess of the D'Urbervilles)
-Anna Karenina (from Anna Karenina)
-Emma Bovary (from Madame Bovary)
-Jo, Meg, Beth, and Amy March (from Little Women)
-Lily Bart (from House of Mirth)
-Countess Ellen Olenska (from The Age of Innocence)
-Isabel Archer (from The Portrait of a Lady)
-Antonia Shimerda (from My Antonia)
-Clarissa Dalloway (from Mrs. Dalloway)
-Dr. Aziz (from A Passage to India)
-Margaret Schlegel Wilcox (from Howard’s End)
-Lucy Honeychurch (from A Room With a View)
-Edna Pontellier (from The Awakening)
-Kurtz (from The Heart of Darkness)
-Anne Shirley (from Anne of Green Gables)
-Jake Barnes (from The Sun Also Rises)
-Benjy Compton (from The Sound and the Fury)
-Rose of Sharon Joad Rivers (from The Grapes of Wrath)
-Emmeline “Lucia” Lucas (from the Mapp and Lucia novels)
-Holden Caulfield (from The Catcher in the Rye)
-Dean Moriarty (from On the Road)
-Moses Herzog (from Herzog)
-Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom (from Rabbit, Run)
-Celie (from The Color Purple)
-Mira (from The Women’s Room)
-Sula (from Sula)

"Vanishing, and Other Stories"

As a former Canadian who still feels quite connected to Canada, I am always glad to find and read fiction by Canadian writers. In the case of "Vanishing, and Other Stories" (Harper Perennial, 2009), there is the added interest factor that the stories are set on Vancouver Island, where I have relatives, and which I visited a couple of years ago for the first time in a long time. We enjoyed our visits with relatives, and were struck again by the beauty of the island. The author, Deborah Willis, works in a bookstore in Victoria, as she writes about in an interesting interview at the end of the book. She also cites fellow Canadian Alice Munro as her biggest influence, and that influence is definitely discernible in these stories. As readers of this blog know, Munro is one of my most-treasured writers. The stories in "Vanishing" are intriguing, very readable, and revealing about the complexities of (mostly young) people's lives and relationships. Willis is particularly insightful about family relationships, and about the things we know and don't know about our family members. Of course Willis doesn't fill Munro's very big shoes -- who does? -- and her stories lack Munro's stories' absolute groundedness and solidity. But they are strong, rewarding, and enjoyable stories. I am very glad that I have read them, and will look out for her future fiction.

"Clara Mondschein's Melancholia"

“Clara Mondschein’s Melancholia” (MacAdam/Cage, 2002), by Anne Raeff, is a beautifully written book, dense with reading pleasures. This may sound like an odd thing to say about a novel about Holocaust survivors and their descendants. But the emphasis in this novel is on the living, and on the pure force of life. The title character, Clara, was miraculously born in, and survived, a German concentration camp in World War II, and has ever after experienced bouts of melancholy, or as doctors would call it now, depression, by which she is often immobilized. Although she is the title character, Clara is not the main character. The two main characters are Clara’s mother, Ruth, and daughter, Deborah. Their two voices alternate as they tell the stories of the three generations of women. Clara, in the middle generation, tends to be indistinct and somewhat mysterious, although we understand that she suffers from the well-known syndrome of lifelong psychological effects of being a Holocaust survivor, or the child of survivors. It seems that Clara’s indistinctness is intentional on the part of the author, because the true stories here are those vividly told in the distinct, original, and -- in different ways -- very appealing voices of Ruth and Deborah, characters who practically jump off the page. These two also love, feel comfortable with, and learn from each other. Each of the two has a deep inner strength and resilience that allows her to overcome hardship and to dive into life and savor it. I want to repeat that the writing is beautiful. The author shows complete control of her material; readers immediately know they are in good hands, and continue to feel that sensation throughout the novel. Highly recommended.

"The Sun Also Rises" Revisited

A. Reasons that I resisted re-reading “The Sun Also Rises” (Scribner, 1926):
1. It is macho.
2. It is anti-semitic.
3. I don’t like to read about fishing (too boring).
4. I don’t like to read about bullfighting (too cruel and gory AND, somehow, simultaneously, too boring).
B. Reasons that I just re-read it anyway, for the first time since college:
1. I have been revisiting many books from those days.
2. I wanted to see how I felt about Hemingway’s style, and his short, declarative sentences, these many years later.
3. I still have a romanticized appreciation for depictions of the “Lost Generation” of Americans and their bohemian, literary life in Europe in the 1920s.
C. Reasons that I liked it again, despite myself:
1. The style is rather effective, after all.
2. I love the descriptions of the streets and cafes of Paris and of the landscapes and towns in Spain.
3. The character of Jake is intriguing, pathetic, honorable, and even endearing.
4. The doomed romance between Jake and Brett is moving.
5. Brett, despite her extreme carelessness with her various lovers’ feelings, is a woman who acts on her own desires at a time when not many women were able to do so. However, unfortunately, she never seems happy, and ends as a sad, forlorn character. (Although, come to think of it, most of the male characters end as sad, forlorn characters as well. Equal-opportunity anomie?)
D. Reservations I still have:
1. The expatriate literary generation seemed to spend a lot less time writing or working than I remembered the novel's portraying, and a lot more time drinking – drinking a LOT! Yes, they hung out in (practically lived in) the famous cafes and bars of Paris and Pamplona, but they weren’t having conversations about literature or other intellectual topics; they mainly drank (and drank and drank and drank) and spoke in short, declarative sentences that didn’t give away much.
2. The novel is still macho and anti-semitic, and I still don’t like to read about bullfighting.

"Cinderella Ate My Daughter"

"Cinderella Ate My Daughter" (Harper, 2011). Catchy title, isn't it? The subtitle is "Dispatches from the Front Lines of the New Girlie-Girl Culture." Peggy Orenstein previously (1994) wrote "Schoolgirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem, and the Confidence Gap," in which she described her close observation of girls in two middle schools; it was excellent research about an important topic. In this new book, Orenstein, who now has a young daughter of her own, describes the increasingly narrow focus of marketing to very young girls, at least partially fueled by the Disney films and by all the associated items sold to/for young girls. First, every little girl is a princess, and dressed in pink, with costumes, tiaras, and sparkles. Then as she gets older and follows the example of Miley Cyrus and other early teen celebrities, she dresses in a "hot," sexy version of the sparkling pink clothes. Orenstein ponders the paradox that girls and women now have so many more educational and career options, yet the emphasis on girls' looking and behaving a certain way seems ever more restrictive. This author has a talent for close observation and the telling anecdote, backed up with research. Her worries about raising her own daughter in this atmosphere are palpable, and provide a unifying thread throughout the book. She has no definitive answers, but does stimulate thought; she advocates more awareness, more communication with daughters, and hopes that parental awareness will start a movement for change, just as more awareness about nutrition has made some difference in policy, practice and even corporations. This book is short and very readable; I recommend it to all parents and others who care about the future of our children.