About Mr. Bennet in "Pride and Prejudice"

I have read Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” many times, and heard audio versions several times. Each time I am struck by different aspects of the novel. While recently listening to this timeless book read to me on CD by the estimable Flo Gibson, I focused on Mr. Bennet, the father of Elizabeth and her four sisters. Everyone knows that Mrs. Bennet is rather crude and embarrassing at times, especially in her pursuit of husbands for her five daughters. But Mr. Bennet, because he is more sophisticated, scholarly, and wryly humorous, gets a pass, at least to a certain point. But truly he is just as bad a parent as Mrs. Bennet is, and with less excuse, as he is much more intelligent. He loves his girls, but just doesn’t get very involved with raising them, or with putting any sensible limits on them, especially his out-of-control youngest daughter, Lydia. He can’t be bothered; he would rather stay in his study reading, or entertain himself by teasing his wife and daughters. For example, Elizabeth pleads with him not to let Lydia go stay with Colonel and Mrs. Forster in Brighton, but he carelessly thinks she will be fine, and he can't make the effort to stand up to Lydia's pleading. The only time he admits his errors as a father is when Lydia runs off with Wickham, and even then he states that he will admit them once and then not again. This event is a disaster for the family, and only Darcy’s intervention saves the day. I realize that although I was critical of Mr. Bennet about this episode during past readings, I had really been letting him off the hook because of his love of books, his humorous remarks, and his having the discernment to prefer Elizabeth as his favorite daughter. Ironically, she is similar to her father in her intellect and sense of humor, but has much more awareness and sense than he does, at least regarding raising his daughters.

Wolitzer on Gender Inequities in the Book World

Readers of this blog know that a topic I occasionally address, and one that I feel strongly about, is gender inequities in the book world. Even today, when many women writers are published and widely read, there are problems. The novelist Meg Wolitzer recently (4/1/12) wrote in the New York Times Book Review an essay titled “The Second Shelf” (an allusion to Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist manifesto, “The Second Sex”). She argues, as other women writers have recently done as well (e.g., Jennifer Egan), that when women write about marriage, families, sex, and children, their work is labeled as “women’s fiction,” but when male novelists write about the same topics, their work is not labeled or ghettoized, but praised. Case in point (as Wolitzer’s essay begins): “If ‘The Marriage Plot,' by Jeffrey Eugenides, had been written by a woman yet still had the same title and wedding ring on its cover, would it have received a great deal of serious literary attention? Or would this novel (which I loved) have been relegated to ‘Women’s Fiction,’ that close-quartered lower shelf where books emphasizing relationships and the interior lives of women are often relegated?” Further, Wolitzer states, “Some people, especially some men, see most fiction by women as one soft, undifferentiated mass that has little to do with them.” This concern about inequity is backed up by facts: for example, VIDA, a women’s literary organization, showed statistically that “women get shockingly short shrift as reviewers and reviewees in most prestigious publications. Of all the authors reviewed in the publications it tracked, three-fourths were men.” Such practices disadvantage women writers, limit their audiences, and limit the kind of recognition they receive. Wolitzer acknowledges that there are many exceptions: women writers whose books have sold well and been acclaimed. But, she concludes, “the top tier of literary fiction – where the air is rich and the view is great and where a book enters the public imagination and the current conversation – tends to feel peculiarly, disproportionately male.” Many female authors feel the same; for example, in the “letters to the editor” section of the NYT Book Review on 4/15/12, there was a letter of strong agreement with Wolitzer, signed by 89 women writers. What will it take to change this inequitable situation?

"The Red Book," by Deborah Copaken Kogan

Why am I and many other readers so drawn to fiction set in Ivy League colleges (or their prep school predecessors – witness the big bestseller of a few years ago, “Prep”)? Is it the same impulse that has made many readers through the years want to read about the upper class, the affluent -- a kind of wanting to learn how the upper crust (what we now call “the 1%") lives? Is it admiration, envy, jealousy, political criticism, outrage? Or something much simpler: wallowing in the opulent details of the lives of the rich? It is perhaps a win-win situation: We can enjoy the pleasures of the luxury that the affluent experience, but also take a kind of satisfaction in seeing that the rich have the same problems we all do: health problems, relationship problems, family problems, work problems, unhappiness, and yes, sometimes even money problems. (Meanwhile, as someone very concerned about the huge inequities in the distribution of income/assets in the U.S., a part of me feels guilty about enjoying reading about the lives of the rich…) (In a strange sort of way, this kind of novel is a successor to Edith Wharton’s far better written novels that I recently wrote about, her novels about the rich in New York 140 years ago.) This is not to say that everyone who goes to Ivy League colleges is rich, but most -- especially the ones written about in fiction -- are at least upper-middle-class. This is a long prologue to saying that as I expected from the description that I would, I thoroughly enjoyed Deborah Copaken Kogan’s novel, “The Red Book” (Voice/Hyperion, 2012), about a group of friends who graduated from Harvard and are now at their 20th Class Reunion. We learn about them through their surprisingly (unrealistically?) candid entries in Harvard’s alumni publication, the “red book,” and through a description of what happens during the days of the reunion in Cambridge; there is plenty of action, involving not only the four friends but their spouses, partners, children, friends, and acquaintances. The four main characters are Clover, Mia, Jane, and Addison. (This is another popular and seductive trope in current novels: the group of women friends and how their lives develop -- full of drama and crisis -- separately and intertwined.). Each character’s role is somewhat predictable: Addison is the spoiled rich girl, Clover the half-black scholarship girl, Jane the adopted Vietnamese war orphan, and Mia perhaps the happiest and most mainstream one, but frustrated not to carry out her dreams of a career in acting. There is certainly more than a hint of formula in this novel and in the characters; is this high-flown “chick lit”? “Ivy League lit”? “Girlfriends lit”? Whichever category we might put it in, the novel tells a good story (actually several stories), is expertly constructed, is reasonably well written, and definitely keeps the attention of the reader.

Pamela Paul's "Books I Have Read" List and Mine

"Bob." That is the name Pamela Paul, a New York Times Book Review editor, gives the notebook in which she keeps a list of books she has read. "Book of Books" = "Bob." I enjoyed reading Paul's essay about Bob in the 4/15/12 NYT Book Review. But when she spoke of having kept her list for 24 years, I had to smile, with just a tiny touch of -- I admit it! -- superiority. Although I have never given it a name, I have kept such a list since earlyish childhood (see my posts about this when I first started this blog, on 1/24/10 and 1/25/10), for a total (so far!) of - ahem! - 51 years! I am now in "Volume III" -- which simply means in my third plain lined school notebook -- and have read a total of 5231 books (some are repeats). Paul and I differ a little bit in our list method. For example, she includes books she didn't finish, but marks them with "inc." for "incomplete"; I do not list unfinished books at all. She occasionally notes where she was when she read a certain book (China, France); I have not done that. I occasionally note whether the book is a repeat read, and whether I listened to the book in audio form. A similarity is the condition of the notebooks. She says "Bob is showing his age. At some point I spilled coffee on him; the gray cover is mottled, and one corner is woody and bare." My "Volume I," a notebook bought from the school supply store at my school in India, with the name of the Indian town on it, is worn at the edges, and Volume II shows some signs of age as well. But despite the large disparity in the number of years Paul and I have kept our notebooks of "books read" lists, we both value our lists very highly. Paul claims that "Were my house to burst suddenly into flames, I would bypass the laptop and photo albums...in order to rescue Bob," and I completely understand that statement!

"The Age of Innocence," by Edith Wharton

What can I say that hasn’t already been said many times about Edith Wharton’s wonderful, beautifully written, always revelatory novel, “The Age of Innocence”? All I can do is describe my own feelings when I read or hear it. I have read this book several times, and have just finished listening to it on CD. (Coincidentally, I wrote about my admiration of Wharton's work on 4/18/10, exactly two years ago.) Published in 1920, "The Age of Innocence" is set in the New York of the upper crust in the 1870s. Like most of Wharton’s novels, this book contrasts the great wealth and privilege held by its characters, on the one hand, and the way they are trapped by severe conventional limits on their behavior, on the other hand. Even the men are bound in this way, but they at least have some outlets, some freedoms, some possibilities that the women do not. There is only one way for women of this class at that time: the way of least resistance, the way of following society’s expectations to the letter. It is a kind of golden cage. The great (unconsummated) love affair between Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska is thwarted by society’s conventions. But Newland still has protections and possibilities; Ellen, as a woman separated from her husband but not allowed, by the standards of her family, to divorce, can never have a legitimate marriage or love again. Even May Welland, Archer’s wife, who is able to keep her husband, knows that his true love and passion is for another woman. Only time brings a kind of acceptance for all three of these characters. But Wharton’s fiction is a powerful reminder of the constrictions imposed on women by convention and of society’s punishments for those who attempt to break free. Wharton’s novels -- especially “The Age of Innocence” and “House of Mirth” -- are among those that I re-read every few years. I always learn something new from them and, despite the sad messages of these books, I also take pleasure in reading them, because of the beauty of the writing, and because of the exquisite portrayals of the characters and of the society in which they live.

"The Beginner's Goodbye," by Anne Tyler

The wonderful Anne Tyler knows so much about family, marriage, and aging, among the many things she is wise about. Over the years I have read almost all -- 17, I believe -- of her 19 novels. Her novels always seem deceptively plain and straightforward, with little in the way of embellishments, experimentation, or flash. But they are rich with real life, down-to-earth life, life that readers can relate to. Her recent novels have tended to feature mature (middle-aged or older) characters (see, for example, my 2/3/10 post on “Noah’s Compass”), and as a “mature” person myself, I appreciate this perspective. Tyler’s newest novel, “The Beginner’s Goodbye” (Knopf, 2012), also features a late-middle-aged character, Aaron, whose wife Dorothy has recently died, but has come back to visit him a few times. (Usually I don’t like fiction with elements of the supernatural, but this novel integrates these visits in such a natural, low-key way, and a way that is really just a device to explore Aaron’s feelings about Dorothy and about their marriage, that I didn’t find the device distracting.) Aaron, like many of Tyler’s protagonists, is somewhat of an introvert, and somewhat out of touch with his own feelings, but willing to learn, in his own slow-paced way. He had loved Dorothy deeply, and misses her badly, but he now sees that he had misunderstood and failed her in some ways during their courtship and marriage. Her occasional visits, and their conversations, give him a second chance to come to an understanding with her, and to achieve some peace for both of them. And by the time she stops visiting, he has realized that his life will go on, and that there is a possibility of joy and even love still awaiting him. “The Beginner’s Goodbye” is a novel about what we learn (if we are fortunate) as we get older, about the capacity to change, and about second chances.

Carl Sagan on Books

A Facebook friend posted this wonderful quotation on books from Carl Sagan:

"What an astonishing thing a book is. It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiqqles. But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic."