A Tribute to Carolyn Heilbrun

I recently read Carolyn G. Heilbrun's "The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty" (Ballantine, 1997), but I have found myself hesitating to write about the book, and about the author, for fear of not being able to do justice to this wise feminist scholar and heroine. But I must try, because she is someone I admire tremendously; she wrote brilliantly about literature and about women, and was a pioneer in so many ways. This particular book is full of clear-eyed, honest wisdom about getting older, covering topics like long marriages, young friends, dogs, email, England, family, sadness, losses and gains. All of her books have been gifts to readers, especially women readers: scholarly but accessible, brilliant, fierce, feminist, humane, and informed by her deep knowledge of, and great love of, literature. So many of her books -- including "Toward a Recognition of Androgyny," "Reinventing Womanhood," "Writing a Woman's Life," and "Hamlet's Mother and Other Women," have been groundbreaking. And on top of writing these wonderful scholarly works, she wrote a series of entertaining, pointedly feminist mysteries under the pseudonym of Amanda Cross. She was one of the first women faculty in the Columbia University English Department, and she had to fight to be recognized there. After a long career and, eventually, great success there, she resigned in protest of the sexist treatment of other women faculty there. She also had a long marriage and raised three children. I was fortunate enough to hear her speak once, perhaps 25 years ago, and was in awe of her intellect, her originality, and her great focus on the fight for equity for women. I -- along with many other admirers -- was so sad when she died a few years ago, but the legacy of this strong and brilliant woman will live on for a long time. Thank you, Carolyn Heilbrun, for the joys of reading your amazing work, and for being such a brave and inspiring writer and woman.

True Confession: StephanieVandrickReads...Chick Lit!

Most of the books that I read, and that I post on here, are "literary." But it's summer, and sometimes what a girl (even an - ahem - mature girl) wants, what a girl needs is -- chick lit! I don't seem to be getting to many beaches lately, but once in a while on sunny summer days I crave a good "beach read." And so I just read "Beachcombers" (Ballantine, 2010), by Nancy Thayer. The title couldn't be a more blatant appeal to summer readers of chick lit/beach reads, but it worked for me. Ingredients: three young adult sisters spending the summer at their childhood home on Nantucket; much angst about life, sibling relationships, past and present disappointments, broken romances. But - surprise ! - new romances with handsome, sexy, attentive men appear like magic within a couple of chapters! Romances with ups and downs, sure, but that's part of the formula. Who could resist? Did I say formula? Yes, this book is pretty formulaic -- but in a good way, when one is in the mood for it. It is undemanding and goes down very easy. Fortunately, Thayer's writing is a slight cut above the usual beach read's, so there is only a little cringing involved on the reader's part.

Where Have All the Years Gone?

On 7/6/10, I wrote positively about Joan Frank's book "In Envy Country." I have now read two more of her books (they are short!): "Boys Keep Being Born: Stories" (University of Missouri Press, 2001) and "The Great Far Away" (The Permanent Press, 2007) (a novel which I will refer to here as GFA), and liked both of them very much as well. These two books, and especially GFA, focus on Baby Boomers who started their adult lives in the 70s, sure that their "alternative" lives would be different than those of their parents. They were going to avoid the "Straight Life," because "They were meant for better things, they knew" (GFA, p. 15). The novel takes place in a small town in Northern California, where a "tribe" of young people gathers, enjoying their freedom, their music, their weed, their relationships, and their heady sense of living their lives in a purer way than their forebears. Naturally, as they mature and gain families, more traditional and better-paying jobs, and houses with attendant mortgages, and as they experience sad losses and disillusioning betrayals, they find that life is more complicated than they expected. In addition, the town itself becomes bigger, more overrun by houses and chain stores, and more a part of the larger world. The tone of the novel is elegiac and a bit wistful, as it harks back to a time when life was simpler for these characters and for their town. These Boomer ex-hippies (for want of a better label) wonder where the time has gone, and can't quite believe they - and their contemporaries and their enchanted worlds - have gotten so much older and changed so much. Being a member of this generation myself, I can relate. And I suddenly had a flash of the Who's iconic 1965 song "Talkin' 'bout my Generation"....

"The Big House"

My friend Mary recommended a wonderful book I have just finished reading: "The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home" (Scribner, 2003), by George Howe Colt. Thank you, Mary! The book is bursting with so many ideas, so much lovely description, and so much feeling that a paragraph on this blog can't possibly do justice to it. Although I am a very happy longtime resident of the West Coast, I have always been fascinated with the East Coast, especially New England, and the very words "Cape Cod" elicit all sorts of images and feelings. So I couldn't help but be enchanted by this depiction of a family's long history of several generations' spending summers at a huge, ramshackle, delightful old house on Cape Cod, eating meals around the big table, swimming, fishing, sailing, playing tennis, drinking, and talking, in the midst of old furniture, photos and family memories. The author is also realistic in acknowledging family problems, illnesses, and estrangements over the years. But the predominant impressions are of family, love, tradition, and continuity. The issue of social class privilege hovers over the book as well; the author deals with it head on, and the truth regarding this issue is more complicated than one might think. My very favorite part of the book, as Mary predicted, was the evocative description of the thousands of books scattered throughout the house, accumulated over decades, and of the pleasures of curling up and reading in various rooms in the house. If you can get access to a copy of this book, and if you read nothing else, do read pages 230-236, all about books and reading in the Big House.

Romantic Memories and Current Reading

I have written about associating certain books with certain times or places in our lives. Do we also associate certain authors or literary works with certain people we were close to, perhaps especially with romantic attachments? A friend -- whom I will call "Z" -- tells me (in response to one of my blog posts) of the effects of a youthful romance on his appreciation of a certain author. His romance with a sophisticated older woman -- let's call her Y -- in a glamorous city -- let's call it NYC -- included a mutual devotion to a certain young, well-known, understatedly hip author. Z and his lady love Y even met this author -- let's call her A -- at a reading. Now, some 20 years later, when Z lives another life in another city with another woman, he no longer reads A's work, and tells me that this is partly because in his mind A is too much associated with memories of his romance with Y. I find Z's story intriguing, and try to remember if there were a similar situation in my life. I rack my brain, hoping for an equally glamorous memory, but -- nothing! Before my long marriage began, I had the requisite romances, and I like to think that some of them were glamorous, intellectual and literary, but somehow my stories don't measure up to Z's in this regard. Sigh. (I did, however, just now have a moment of feeling a bit Carrie Bradshaw-esque, tapping away on my laptop about sophisticated romance in the big city...I can almost hear the voice-over...we get our glamour where we can....)

"In Envy Country: Stories"

I had read Joan Frank's book reviews in my local paper, The San Francisco Chronicle, but only a few days ago did I pick up and read one of her own books, "In Envy Country: Stories" (University of Notre Dame Press, 2010). Although Frank doesn't directly say so, many of the stories take place in and near San Francisco, with side trips to Europe. So the familiar names and locales were part of the pleasure for me, but the appeal of the book was so much more. The stories are very much about the characters, and the characters are very familiar, sometimes painfully familiar. Who hasn't met the self-made boss who everyone has to pretend is clever, or the self-righteous, arrogant colleague who can't let any grudge go? Who hasn't had beautiful friends that came to a bad end? Who doesn't have married friends who fight too much? Who doesn't sometimes become frustrated or disillusioned with a family member one simultaneously desperately loves? Who doesn't have friends who show off? Or old loves from the past that show up at inopportune times? Although these situations are familiar, as are the marriages and families Frank portrays, they are also unique and original in Frank's hands. I can promise you that you will not be bored by this collection of observant, touching, wry, realistic, and sometimes wrenching stories.

Do We Really Want to Know?

Literary scholars and readers disagree about whether we should consider authors' biographies when we judge their books. Some say yes, that knowing about their lives enriches our understanding of their books. Others say no, the books stand alone. What about you? Do you like to know a lot about authors before you read their books? Are you disappointed when the author blurb at the back of a book is too short and unrevealing? Do you like to see an author photo on the inside of the back book cover? After you find favorite authors, do you read up on them and their lives? Do you attend author lectures and readings? Watch their appearances on TV? Speculate about whether or not their stories have autobiographical roots? Do you like literary gossip? Or does all of this seem irrelevant and uninteresting to you? Do you even purposely avoid learning too much about authors, in case that knowledge negatively affects your appreciation of their books? We readers are all different in this regard. Personally, I enjoy learning about authors' lives, and I will confess to an interest in "gossip" about them. I admire writers -- especially writers of fiction -- immensely, yet find it reassuring to learn of evidence that they are not perfect beings but are instead very human and fallible. I am not consistent, though; if I learn something really terrible about an author, I find it hard to put it out of my mind and continue reading and enjoying his or her books.