Guest Post: A Shakespeare Reading Group, by Johnnie Johnson Hafernik

I am pleased that my longtime colleague and friend Johnnie Johnson Hafernik kindly agreed to my request that she write about the Shakespeare Reading Group that she co-founded and organizes. Thank you, Johnnie! Here is her post: Over five years ago a friend and I attended an informative and engaging long-weekend seminar near Yosemite entitled “Shakespeare and Opera.” I was attracted by the “opera” theme but left not only still passionate about opera but reminded of how much I enjoy Shakespeare. That weekend my friend and I decided to form a Shakespeare reading group. We easily convinced two other friends to join us as core members, with a few others who occasionally attended. Today, the group has grown to eight. Sadly, our most passionate and knowledgeable (about Shakespeare and much more) founding member, B., died last year. Early on, B. gave each of us Tina Packer’s "Women of Will: The Remarkable Evolution of Shakespeare’s Female Characters." The book has been invaluable for our discussions. We miss her. At each meeting, we decide by consensus which play to read for the following meeting. In preparation for meetings, our group has evolved from initially each of us choosing a passage to discuss from the selected play and a character we’d like to play to a more free-flowing and wide-ranging discussion. Each of us has our own way of preparing for our discussions, but we’ve found it especially helpful to listen to an audio version of the play and/or to watch one or more versions of the play, many available for streaming. Our go-to versions are the mid-1980s BBC productions of all the plays; adaptations of the play (e.g., "Throne of Blood," the Kurosawa film adaptation of "Macbeth"; operatic or musical versions such as "West Side Story"/"Romeo and Juliet"); podcasts and commentaries; and novels that are modern retellings of Shakespeare plays from The Hogarth Shakespeare Series (e.g., Margaret Atwood’s "Hagseed," a retelling of "The Tempest.") Our enthusiasm for our discussions and appreciation for Shakespeare have only increased over time. We leave each meeting energized, full of questions, and reminded of his greatness. Even plays some of us were initially not interested in reading capture our attention and spark discussion. Each play offers much to appreciate and explore: the beautiful language, the phrasing, the songs, the structure of the play, the humor, the vivid characters who often resemble well-known and not so well-known individuals, the questions and themes presented, and much more. Perhaps most important, we have found “today” in each play — situations, people, circumstances, motivations, questions of right and wrong. Stephen Marche in his book "How Shakespeare Changed Everything" (a book that B. highly recommended) draws attention to these themes, and to the complexities of life, when he writes that “Shakespeare is a messy writer with a complex view of morality whose conception of the universe is a bottomless, shifting ground” (p. 133). Marche goes on to argue that Shakespeare “recognizes the messiness of life as does no other writer, but it comes at a cost of an easy understanding of life’s ultimate purpose” (p. 135).

"Miss Austen," by Gill Hornby

Most people who know me in person and/or through this blog know how much I love and admire the novels of Jane Austen, each of which I have read many times. I also enjoy some – although not all – of the “take-offs” of her work: prequels, sequels, books about one or more of her characters, and other permutations. I have also read several biographical and critical studies. The most recent Austen-related novel that I have read is “Miss Austen: A Novel of the Austen Sisters” (Flatiron, 2020), by Gill Hornby (sister of the author Nick Hornby). The main character is Jane Austen’s dear, very close sister, Cassandra Austen; the novel imagines her late in life as she tries to find and destroy any letters or other materials that might tarnish her sister Jane’s reputation and legacy. (In fact, Cassandra did in real life destroy such letters and papers.) The novel goes back and forth in time between Cassandra’s old age, long after Jane has died, and their earlier times together. This is a serious book, and I respect the work. I admit that it took a while for me to be drawn into the novel, which is quite “slow,” but gradually I became more caught up in it. The characterizations of Cassandra and Jane, and of their relationship, are of interest; the other characters portrayed – various relatives of the Austen family – are minor characters of minor interest. I am glad that I read “Miss Austen,” and I recommend it to other devotees of all things Austen, but perhaps not to people with less focused and less intense interest in the author and her work. Finally, Austen’s writing is so much a work of genius that almost anything written about her or about her characters pales in comparison.

RIP Beverly Cleary

I was one of the many, many children who loved Beverly Cleary’s books about Ramona Quimby, her older sister Beezus, Henry Huggins, Otis Spofford, and this author’s other indelible characters. Cleary, a librarian, had children ask for books about “kids like us,” so she started writing about kids and situations based on her own childhood in Oregon. Cleary’s books are relatable and funny, and readers feel they know her characters personally. The books have obviously had a wide appeal; 91 million copies of her books have been sold. The books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and have won multiple awards. As a child, I loved the Ramona books, but the book I felt the closest connection with was “Ellen Tebbets.” Ellen had a secret: her mother made her wear long underwear, and when she changed for her dance class, she was petrified that others would find out. I don’t know why I particularly related to this book or to this situation, but I do remember to this day that the book made me feel like an insider, the one who knew the secret, and I did not want anyone else to know it. I had no idea that millions of other young readers also knew the secret; instead, it was as if Ellen had confided in me, and only me. I was sad to hear that Cleary had died on March 25, 2021, at the age of 104. What a great legacy she left! (Note: thanks to Hillel Italie of the Associated Press for some of the details I have written about here.)

My Increasing Allergy to Newspaper Ink

I have written here about my strong preference for print newspapers. I have subscribed to the San Francisco Chronicle for decades (and my family of origin subscribed to various newspapers during my childhood and teen years), and I love the ritual of finding it at our doorstep in the morning and reading it with my morning coffee. I also subscribe to the New York Times and the Washington Post online, and I skim those, but my most enjoyable newspaper habit is the in-print reading, separating out the sections, trading sections with my husband, and sometimes clipping articles for future reference. So it is unfortunate that over the past few years I have gradually been developing an increasing reaction to the ink used in printing the paper; it often makes me sneeze or sniffle. I don’t have any allergies otherwise, so it is a bit surprising to have this one. It only happens with newspaper print, not other printed matter, so I assume it is because of the fresh ink. My late father used to have “hay fever” (do people still use this term for allergies?) and this included being allergic to print papers as well as to various plants, grasses, and pollen. I remember that because of this allergy, he would hold the paper out quite far while reading, and now I find myself doing that as well. (OK, this is also partly because of my aging eyes!) But reading my morning print newspaper is too deeply ingrained, and too enjoyable, to give it up unless it becomes absolutely necessary. Of course there is also the very real danger that print newspapers are a dying breed, so maybe it will be a matter of a race to which happens first: newspapers stop print versions, or I can no longer tolerate the ink. I dread both, and will be very sad when either or both of these events happen.

"Amy Tan: An Unintended Memoir," on PBS

I still remember the wonderful shock of reading Amy Tan’s novel “The Joy Luck Club” when it was first published in 1989. There had been a few, but very few, novels by Chinese American authors published before this, the most notable of which was (in my opinion) Maxine Hong Kingston’s 1976 book “The Woman Warrior.” These two books together were true breakthroughs, not only for Chinese American writers, but for opening up possibilities for writers of other minority ethnicities. They were particularly meaningful as pioneer Chinese American women writers. It is perhaps hard for younger readers of today to realize how very white and male U.S. literature was before the 1970s and 1980s; see any college literature curriculum of the time, for example. “The Joy Luck Club” became a huge bestseller, and was made into a movie, and Tan’s later books were also very successful. Today I am writing about Tan and her novels because a couple of weeks ago, on May 3, I watched PBS’ program “Amy Tan: An Unintended Memoir,” about Tan, her family (especially her mother), her writing, her supportive husband, her being part of a writers’ rock band, her love of drawing birds, and how she learned to take risks, along with many other topics. Tan has struggled with the early loss of her father and brother to fatal brain tumors; with her own health issues, including a terrible case of Lyme Disease; with periodic writers’ block; and with criticism from those who quibble with her portrayals of Chinese Americans. There are interviews on this program with Tan herself and those who know her, including clips of her with her late mother. Also other authors, notably Kevin Kwan, speak with emotion of how Tan’s work was such a breakthrough, and paved the way for other Chinese-American writers. This program was so insightful, so interesting, and so beautifully produced that I was glued to the screen the whole hour and 40 minutes. It is a lovely tribute to this great writer (who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, so we take extra pride in her and her work).

Brief Reports on Three Recently-Read Books by Te-Ping Chen, Joan Frank, and Dantiel W. Moniz

My recently-read books have been piling up, so I am going to “catch up” with very brief entries on three of these. First, Te-Ping Chen’s “Land of Big Numbers” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021) is a powerful and illuminating collection of stories about Chinese characters in China and as emigrants elsewhere. The portrayals are psychologically and culturally astute, and I felt that I learned more about China from these stories than in all the articles and books I have read about the country. (I am exaggerating, but only slightly.) The second book is by one of my longtime favorite (partly but of course not only because she is from Northern California!) authors, Joan Frank: the novel “The Outlook for Earthlings” (Regal House, 2020). This story of two lifetime friends, Mel and Scarlet, stretches from 1964 to 2013. The friends are very different, often misunderstanding each other, yet their lives are interwoven. Some readers of this blog will remember that I am drawn to stories about women’s friendships, and this one is emotionally gripping. A third recently-read book, a short story collection, is “Milk Blood Heat” (Grove Press, 2021), by Dantiel W. Moniz. It features young women of various backgrounds in Florida. The stories are intense and sharp-edged, as young women’s lives often are; the characters deal with family, bodily issues, racial issues, cultural differences, spirituality, and death. I highly recommend all three of these books.

RIP Robb Forman Dew

I was sad to hear, belatedly, that the author Robb Forman Dew had died on May 22, 1920, at the age of 73, of a heart problem. I read her first and perhaps still most famous novel, “Dale Loves Sophie to Death” (1981) when it came out, and later read her other novels. She is known for, as the New York Times obituary put it, her unhurried “carefully etched novels of family life” that made her “one of our premier chroniclers of everyday life.” Readers of this blog know that these kinds of novels are among my most cherished. Dew was raised in the South, and felt she was shaped by her time there. Her becoming an author was partially influenced by her maternal grandfather, the well-known poet and critic John Crowe Ransom, with whom Dew was close. As a young adult, she formed lifelong friendships with several women writers, including Gail Godwin, Nancy Thayer, Louise Erdrich, and Anne Tyler. Besides her novels, she wrote a memoir, “The Family Heart” (1994), about her and her husband’s reaction to one of her sons’ coming out as gay. I am truly sad to hear of Dew’s death, especially at this relatively young age. Forty years after reading Dew’s first novel, and having read her other novels as well, I am inspired to re-read some or all of them; they are now on my to-read list.