New Century Reading

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

I've read this before, many years ago, but it was a pleasure to return to. It's a phenomenal journey through Plath's teenage and college years up until the time she was about to leave the U.S. for good, married to Ted Hughes and pregnant with their first child, and just on the verge of making her poetic breakthrough. We see everything from teenage naivete to early-20s obsession with self and lovers and first suicide attempt, especially Richard Sassoon (the entries involving him are perhaps the only ones I find almost unbearable to read), and finally her agonizing struggles over giving up her long-wanted academic career to pursue writing, a decision that both terrified her and put her in direct conflict with her mother.

Then it's the long section where she faces, for the first time, trying to be a writer as her primary vocation, and the world of struggles that go along with that. As a writer myself, this is the section I found mesmerizing. She's balancing her own needs and fears along with her role of a 1950s American woman and wife, as well as the expectations of her mother, and her own fears of failure as a writer. It's hard to believe that she didn't know about the success ahead of her, but of course, how could she?

While there are some post-1959 writings in the appendices, this volume does make the reader--this reader, anyway--really regret what's lost: the journals written after Plath and Hughes returned to Britain in late 1959. I saw someone on Goodreads commenting that this journal collection just shows how Plath was subjugated by Hughes and gave up her artistic autonomy to him as she wrote the most important works of her career. Um, no. Those poems were written in 1962-63. The poems she wrote during most of this journal are not largely considered to be her best work. In the latter half of 1959, the couple had a long stay at the writer's retreat Yaddo, and while there Plath did have a beginning of a breakthrough, composing things like Mushrooms and Poem for a Birthday that set the stage for her later work. 

Yes, in the journals she talks a great deal about the importance of Ted's work, and he seems to have been miles ahead of her at this stage, at least in terms of self-confidence and willingness to take risks. Yet she also notes the support he provided her during her myriad down times. So I don't think that Goodreads reviewer really grasped the timing and complexity of the situation.

And that makes me really wistful for a final volume of journals. Ted Hughes has said that he burned the last notebooks, and the ones previous to that "disappeared." Of course, that's led to all kinds of rumors. I can't help but hope that there's an unopened archive somewhere that still has them. Not because of the salacious details of the marital downfall between them, but to see Plath's journey as she increasingly came into her own as a writer and wrote the poems that she finally, correctly, said would make her name.

Alas, that is life in the literary artifact zone. Complete works are simply not always available, but this is a valuable piece to look at one writer's partial journey.

The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume 2

I loved the first volume of Virginia Woolf's diaries, and volume two did not disappoint. After surviving a breakdown in volume one, this volume finds Woolf growing in strength and health, as well as gaining mastery and confidence in her writing. This is the period during which she wrote the ever-wonderful Mrs. Dalloway, and the diary entries around that offer so much to readers of that book. She had more confidence in Dalloway than in previous novels, even while doubting that the public or critics would be as enamored by it.

There is still the endless rounds of gossip, some of it very mean-spirited, and also her coming to terms with the death of her frenemy, Katherine Mansfield. 

But there's also her battle with Leonard, who'd moved her out to the suburbs after her breakdown because he felt that London took too much of a toll on her. Regaining her health, she pushes back, and ultimately they return to London, which is a situation for pure delight for Virginia. She often goes days and days without writing in her diary, which is frustrating to the reader, except for the knowledge that this was a rich period for her; being able to easily explore London and see people, while watching the Hogarth Press grow in prestige and sales, and seeing her own work blossom. 

She also tosses off little gems like: "Pure honesty is a doubtful quality; it often means lack of imagination."

And it appears she was an early practitioner of a fiction-writing technique in which, when it's time to revise, authors retype from the very beginning rather than just notating in the margins (or, in today's world, beginning an entirely new file rather than just editing within an existing document): 

"I am now galloping over Mrs Dalloway, re-typing it entirely from the start, which is more or less what I did with the [Voyage Out] a good method, I believe, as thus one works with a wet brush over the whole, & joins parts separately composed & gone dry."

Very excited for volume three.

In the Great Green Room

In the Great Green Room is, of course, the first line of the iconic children's picture book, Goodnight Moon. Our oldest son loved Goodnight Moon so much as a toddler that my husband and I both knew it by heart for a long time. I can still quote several pages from memory. It's a lovely, quiet story of saying goodnight, charming without being cloying, comforting and ritualistic in a good way. No wonder it's still a bestseller decades after being published.

When I saw there was a biography out about its author, of whom I knew nothing, I decided to give it a try. Author Amy Gary had been working on getting some of Brown's works back into print and asked Brown's sister if there were any unpublished works. Turns out there were--including a huge stash of diaries and letters.

That's a cool find. Gary used them as the basis for this bio, and it turns out that Brown had a really interesting life. She was a groundbreaker in ways I hadn't realized. When she started writing children's books, the prevailing attitude was that children only liked fantasy and fairy tales. Brown disagreed. She felt that children looked at their own lives and the real world with a sense of wonder, and that books for them should explore that. Clearly she was onto something.

She also earned a living (mostly--although it didn't hurt that she came from a wealthy family and her father kept her on an allowance) as a single woman in the 1930s and 40s, something that was rare, and she had an extended relationship with a woman. She owned unique and interesting properties and was almost frighteningly prolific, yet hard on herself; she longed to write adult works, but her attempts in that direction failed. She was a shrewd businesswoman and tough negotiator. She once sent a publisher a set of dueling pistols while they were haggling a contract.

So, interesting woman, interesting life. But the bio itself had some serious flaws. Most of it reads as if the author simply paraphrased things from the journals and diaries. In the end, she notes considerable research, but most of that doesn't seem to appear in the actual text. Not enough time is spent looking at the effects of the lesbian relationship she had, in which her partner was emotionally abusive, to put it mildly. It would have been nice to know if the author had uncovered any source materials from the partner that might give some alternative views on the relationship, or on the relationship she had with a man who was more than a bit of a cad. Towards the end of her life, Brown finally had a romantic relationship that seemed to be working, but it was cut short by her sudden death. The author treats that last relationship as the romance for all times. But we don't know that for sure, do we? Brown had a terrible track record in terms of her love life. We have no idea if this relationship would have lasted. 

It would also have been nice to have more time spent on the iconic books like Goodnight Moon and The Runaway Bunny. Other than noting that the librarians at New York Public Library didn't consider Goodnight Moon to be a good book and, in fact, didn't stock it in the library until decades after it was first published, the importance of those books is barely noted.

 

The Invention of Angela Carter

I confess I haven't read any of Angela Carter's novels, but am besotted with her short stories. So I was excited to see there was a biography just out and was fortunate enough to be among the first wave to get it from the library.

Did the biography live up to my excitement? Not quite. There are good aspects--I really didn't know much about Carter's life, and she lived an interesting one: She up and moved to Japan for a while without knowing a word of Japanese and had two love affairs there; she met her life partner when he was working on a house across the street from hers and she asked him to fix a plumbing problem in her home; she traveled all over the world and knew tons of literary stars, but never found herself overly starstruck about any of them. The excerpts from her letters make me wish that 1. I'd been a recipient of some of those letters and 2. that someone would compile the letters and publish them. (Also: her journals.) She sounds like she was a hell of a correspondent. Author Edmund Gordon appears to have been a thorough researcher and made contact with many people who are still alive (or were, while researching) who knew her and were willing to talk to him. There were also a few who wouldn't talk to him, including Carter's first husband, and there were apparently some sources who had letters they wouldn't share. All of which makes me wonder if we'll see more Carter scholarship as the years go on. People who have those letters must realize how valuable they are and hopefully are planning to donate them somewhere at some point.

That said, I had some problems with the book. Gordon is given to making statement like "she must have felt" without giving us any solid proof that she felt that way. While telling us about Carter's first job in a small town newspaper, where she was the first female reporter, he says the newsroom had a "self-consciously masculine environment." First of all, he wasn't there to know if it was self-conscious or not and doesn't report anyone saying anything of the sort; second of all, of course it had a masculine environment--it had been a boys' club for years. I doubt there was anything "self-conscious" about it. Worse, much of Carter's development as a writer took place during the 1960s and 1970s, yet Gordon barely touches on what was happening socially and culturally during those years, especially for women. He interviewed many of Carter's peers during that time, but doesn't seem to have done any kind of deep dive into that aspect with them, and the book sorely lacks from that.

Where he does go into detail is into the mundane things like how much money she was advanced for every book. This quickly becomes tedious, except for the few times he compares it to what other writers in Britain were earning at the time. But most of the time, it starts to feel like a list: "In X year she sold X book for X pounds. In Y year she sold Y book for Y pounds." This all could have been condensed; the only time it's really important to know the actual amounts is when she took a big leap forward or back. In fact, that approach is kind of how the entire second half of the book goes: "She did this, and then this, and then this. She went here, and then there, and then there. She wrote this, and then that, and then that." It's a bit plodding and made me wish for Hermione Lee's approach instead. It would be much more interesting to look at Carter's life and work from thematic standpoints rather than straightforward chronology.

Finally, one hope I had going into this book was that I'd learn why Carter's amazing story, "The Fall River Axe Murders" (about Lizzie Borden), appeared in a different form in Carter's collected works than in its original form in Black Venus. The altered version leaves out a critical scene that's breathtaking and important to the story. I've always wondered if Carter chose that and why. But that's not even mentioned in this book.

To his credit, the author notes in an epilogue that he was aware that people might say it would have been better for a woman to write this bio. He defends himself by saying there have been great bios by men about women and vice versa. It's true, but I do think this book in particular lacked a strong female perspective, especially in terms of Carter's feminism, which was not rote and got her into trouble at times. But he also notes that he doesn't expect this to be the only biography of Carter, just the first one, and he hopes other biographers will be able to dive into her life and bring new perspectives to the table, which seems appropriate.

So if you're interested in learning more about her life, this is an OK start, but I'm definitely keeping my eyes open for someone else to tackle this subject. And in the meantime, I have a lot of her novels to catch up on.

 

A Rather Haunted Life

Gotta say, I've been reading some stellar biographies lately, and Ruth Franklin's recent tome on the life of Shirley Jackson fits right in that category. It's thoroughly researched, thoughtfully reported, has a good balance of respect for the author being written about combined with an objective distance that keeps the respect from tipping over into fandom, and, after all, a pretty interesting subject.

If you don't know much about Jackson other than that she wrote The Lottery and The Haunting of Hill House, well, Franklin has the book for you. Jackson is a fascinating person on her own. She grew up in a dysfunctional household, and to the end of her life, her mother harangued her about her looks and weight, sometimes doing so instead of honoring Jackson's writing successes. Jackson found her soul mate--or so she thought--in Stanley Hyman, a man who early on recognized her writing ability and respected it. Unfortunately, he wasn't so respectful of her feelings about his having affairs on the side, situations he didn't bother to hide; he just saw that as who he was, and if she wanted to be with him, she needed to go along with it. Combine that attitude with the rough world for women in the 1950s, as well as the difficulties of moving to a small New England town where outsiders are viewed with suspicion (especially female outsiders who had a profession and left their house messy) and Jackson, who was very bright, had a lot of thoughts and feelings about the world, about the home, and about women's place in each.

In other words, if you take her stories for simple horror stories, you're not getting past the face value. There's a lot more going on. Franklin explores that deeply, looking at repeated motifs (and names) throughout Jackson's work, and does an exemplary job examining various drafts to see how Jackson revised her work, what she cut or changed, and what she kept. Possibly the best parts of the book (for me) were these literary analyses, which made me want to put the bio down and look up each work referenced. (Sadly, I got the book from the library, and there's a waitlist, so that project will have to wait for another day.) But doesn't a paragraph like this make you want to read everything Jackson wrote:

"One of the ironies of Jackson's fiction is the essential role that women play in enforcing the standards of the community--standards that hurt them most. The psychological intrigues that dominate their lives have the power to bring down the neighborhood. The Road Through the Wall, like "Flower Garden" and the majority of Jackson's stories, exists almost entirely in the world of women and children: nearly all the action on the street takes place after the men have gone off to work. The fact that these works are dominated by women does not necessarily make them feminist, a term with which Jackson did not identify. Still, the way she portrays certain of her characters' attitudes strikingly anticipates the movement to come: one neighbor, who regards herself as 'something more than a housewife,' is scorned by the others for putting on airs. But no escape from the hothouse of hostility in which these women live."

My only criticism of the book is that Franklin was a bit rushed in wrapping things up. Yes, we all know Jackson died, so it's not that that needed dwelling upon. But Franklin raises some questions about Jackson's actions and motives at the end of her life that aren't explored as thoroughly, nor documented as well as the other sections of the book. Still, the book overall gives Jackson a deeper place in American literature, something that Jackson herself--and Hyman--always felt she deserved. And they were right.

 

Virginia Woolf

A year or so ago, I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, that book by the Japanese organizational guru. I found many of her techniques to be truly useful (my sock drawer became, and has remained, a thing of joy and beauty). But when it came to books, she insisted that people get read of unread books, because likely you'll never read them. Now, admittedly there is some truth to that. But the fact that I like books in my life, whether I've read them or not, slowed me down from following that advice. But the other thing is, there are books I haven't read that I truly mean to. Sure, there were books I'd purchased on impulse, "it" books of the moment that I was never that interested in, and I divested myself of those. But I had a stack remaining of books I really wanted to read. The overriding factor in not having read most of them? Intimidation. A 750+-page book in fine print about Virginia Woolf? Yes, I want to read it, but lord almighty, that's an undertaking. And I have many of these tomes, quite a few of them literary biographies, that I want to read. I decided there was nothing for it but to start, and to just take it slow, a few pages here and there while reading other books.

It figures that I immediately found Hermione Lee's Virginia Woolf to be a fascinating, gripping book. In Lee's afterword, she mentioned having begun work on it in 1991, and the copyright date is 1996. I cannot fathom what it took to research and write this book in that short a time period.

Besides the fact that the quality of the writing and research is high, there's another aspect that makes this book so worthwhile. Woolf's life is told roughly chronologically, but each time period is broken down into different themes: Houses, Paternal, Maternal, Subversives, Failures, among others. Things sometimes get told out of order, but by looking at them thematically gives a deeper sense of Woolf as both human and as writer. And also as a flawed human--Lee doesn't sugarcoat or apologize for some of Woolf's attitudes, especially towards servants, just presents them as they were.

If there was one complaint I had, it would be that this maybe isn't the best book for a Woolf novice. I didn't know an awful lot about Woolf before I read it, although I've read several of her novels. Lee assumes some prior knowledge and does things like refer to Woolf's having been abused as a child in passing before the abuse gets fully discussed. Not having known that she'd been abused, I had no idea what Lee was talking about. But that's fairly minor in comparison with the positives. One chapter in particular stood out to me: Lee pored through Leonard Woolf's meticulous records to track down what medications and treatments Woolf was given during her breakdowns, and did a current-day review of them. The results were not encouraging.

Lee also examines how two world wars affected Woolf and concludes (reasonably, I think) that it's a mistake to say that Woolf's suicide was completely the result of the onset of WWII. Certainly it had an impact--WWI had a terrible effect on her, and seeing another war coming had to be difficult. But there were so many things going on in Woolf's life, and in her head, that to point to one external cause is oversimplifying, and in calling that out and proposing a more complex theory, Lee does a wonderful service.

And of course, reading about how Woolf's great written works came to be, what inspired them, and how often she felt they were terrible--apparently she very rarely read any of her work once it was published--is fantastic. Her family and friend intrigues, the gossip, the appearance of so many iconic people (Joyce! Yeats!) makes this almost as good as a novel.

So, on to the next book in the stack. Who should I read about next? Yeats? Dickens? Louisa May Alcott? Emily Dickinson?

The Brontes: A Life in Letters

This book has been sitting on my shelf for years--more than a decade. I finally pulled it down earlier this year, feeling very studious and scholarly, and wanting to know more about the Brontes. It felt like what my friend Kristin would call a "spinach read"--something educational and good for me, but not necessarily very enjoyable. Something I could feel learned and smug about having read, if I finished it.

Scholarly, schmolarly. This is just a ripping good read. As in, hard to put down at times. Most of the letters here are from Charlotte. She was, after all, the longest living of the Bronte children, and the most socially outward. And, as it turns out, she was a kickass correspondent. Oh, to have been on the receiving end of her letters! We are fortunate indeed that one of her closest friends and frequent correspondents, Ellen Nussey, made a promise she had no intention of keeping: After their marriage, Charlotte's husband demanded that Charlotte's friends burn all her letters so as to leave no trace that could be interpreted as impropriety. Friend Mary Taylor apparently kept that promise, and there are few letters surviving to her. But Nussey did keep the letters, and they comprise a big chunk of the book. It's a shame we don't have all of the letters to Taylor, as apparently Charlotte was more forthcoming about her literary ambitions to her than she was to Nussey. It can't be helped, but let's just be thankful for what we do have.

And what we do have is the story of the very close Bronte family, their efforts to earn a living in the hardscrabble town of Haworth, the travels they undertook to find a living, the disastrous consequences of that living on Branwell and the tragic deaths of Branwell, Emily, and Anne, all within just a few months of one another. Charlotte's anguish in the letters after those deaths is palpable, as in this one, written shortly after Branwell and Emily had died and while it was becoming clear that Anne was gravely ill:

"My letters had better be brief at present--they cannot be cheerful. I am however still sustained, and still, while looking with dismay on the desolation sickness and death have wrought in our home I can combine with awe of God's judgements a sense of gratitude for his mercies. Yet life has become very void, and hope has proved a strange traitor: when I shall again be able to put confidence in her suggestions, I know not; she kept whispering that Emily would not--could not die--and where is she now? Out of my reach,--out of my world, torn from me."

Haworth is nearly unbearable in its silence and memories, but she is steadfast in her determination to remain with her father.

But then there's the long-suffering curate, Arthur Bell Nichols, whose love for Charlotte is spurned at first, not just by Charlotte, but by her father and several of her friends. The amount of interference that went into this dragged-out courtship is staggering. But in the end, he won her hand; in the letters dated between their wedding and her becoming pregnant, which proved deadly to her, you can see her fondness and respect for him growing into something deeper. And then...

Sigh.

There are far fewer letters from Emily and Anne, although a diary page from Emily speaks volumes about her:

"I am quite contented for myself--not as idle as formerly, altogether as hearty and having learnt to make the most of the present and hope for the future with less fidgetiness that I cannot do all that I wish--seldom or ever troubled with nothing to do and merely desiring that every body could be as comfortable as myself and as undesponding and then we should have a very tolerable world of it--"

A lovely, lovely read, and it's clearly time for me to return to some of these great novels.

Book of Ages

Book of Ages has such an interesting premise. It starts with something akin to Virginia Woolf's Shakespeare's sister theory, which says that women have not historically had the education and/or opportunities to make themselves as successful as men. It's a good baseline for the true story of Jane Franklin, Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister. Though they were both born into a large, poverty-stricken family, Ben (obviously) made quite a mark on the world, whereas Jane married very young to a ne'er-do-well, had many children (several of whom died young), struggled to manage a household when her husband was a debtor rather than an earner, and eventually had a significant role in raising both her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Ben gave her some fundamental literacy education, but while he was able to hone his skills and rise to prominence, Jane barely had time to read, much less become more proficient. Yet what little remains to be known of Jane--primarily letters she wrote to Ben--shows her to be intelligent, thoughtful, and more than a little irascible. Imagine if she could have put that intelligence to use in something other than daily survival.

Unfortunately, proving Woolf's theory doesn't take much time, and a great deal of this book ends up being about Ben Franklin and the fight for independence. That frustrated me, more than a little--if I'd wanted to read a book about Franklin or the Revolutionary War, I would have picked that up instead. I wanted to read about Jane Franklin. I'd read an excerpt of the book in the New Yorker and thought it sounded intriguing, but perhaps it was better as a piece of long-form magazine writing than as a book. Entire sections begin to feel like filler.

The best parts of the book use the few letters in existence to document the relationship between the two Franklin siblings. She clearly adored her brother, and though he rarely saw her, he tried to provide for her, helping out some of her children and, later in her life, providing her with the first stable home she'd ever had. He repeatedly asked her to tell him what she needed, and not trusting that she was being honest, he also wrote to her neighbor and pastor, asking them to please let him know if there was something she needed.

Yet in spite of this closeness, when he wrote his autobiography, he did not mention her even once. Not once. I have to say, that tidbit was a punch in the gut. But it really reinforces Lepore's--and Woolf's--point: no matter how much he cared for his sister, she just wasn't relevant in the scheme of history.

As Woolf wrote in "The Lives of the Obscure": "The obscure sleep on the walls, slouching against each other as if they were too drowsy to stand upright. Why disturb their sleep?"

I think I wouldn't have minded the digressions from Jane's (admittedly little-known) life if those digressions had focused more on other women. References are made to Abigail Adams, Anne Bradstreet, and Phyllis Wheatley, any of whom would have been a good source for deeper exploration. Instead, so much unnecessary detail about Ben just adds to the problem Lepore is writing about.

Marmee & Louisa

I enjoyed much of this book, but something troubles me. The subtitle is "The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother." The premise of the book is that no one has ever looked at the relationship between Louisa and her mother; instead, biographers have focused only on the relationship between Louisa and her father.

That troubles me a bit, because I seem to remember reading other books about the Alcott family, where Abigail (Marmee) is an important figure. And even if my memory is incorrect, anyone who's read Little Women and knows that it's deeply (if not completely) autobiographical must realize how important the author's mother was to her. After all, Marmee is a central figure of that novel, while Mr. March is away most of the time.

So I don't know. The author of this bio is a distant cousin of Louisa's, and as such has some proprietary feelings toward the Alcott family. The passion she demonstrates in her scholarship is exemplary, and there were many aspects of the Alcotts' lives I wasn't aware of. I knew they were abolitionists, but wasn't aware of their early work for equal rights for women. I knew Bronson was, shall we say, problematic in terms of caring for his family, but didn't realize just how awful he truly was. I'd forgotten Louisa died at 55--relatively young, and after what could best be described as a life of utter toil and little pleasure.

So, yes, I learned things. However, I think this could have used a heavier editorial hand. There are mind-boggling descriptions of this relative and that relative, to the point it's hard to keep them straight.

And while this provides a great portrait of Abigail herself (who ranks up there with Sophia Tolstoy as one of the most beleaguered wives ever), Louisa is a bit more thinly drawn. Someone on Goodreads commented that they thought this would have been a better book if it had focused on Abigail and her brother Samuel, and I tend to agree. Abigail's brother was a critical component in Abigail's survival. He often provided money, of which there was never enough in the Alcott household, and he himself put his own career and livelihood at risk by supporting first the abolitionists and then the women's rights groups.

The author does succeed in positioning Abigail as a critical force in Louisa's life, but again, I'm not 100% convinced that was at question. Still, if you're interested in the Alcotts, or in the battles for freedom for slaves and women, this is a great starting point.

Virginia Woolf

For some time (cough *years* cough) I've been meaning to read Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf. But it's a bit intimidating. For one thing, it clocks in at nearly 1000 pages. That's a lot of biographical detail. Which is not to say I'm not that interested--I am--but that's a big commitment.

When I read that there was a shorter, perhaps more introductory bio of Mrs. Woolf by Alexandra Harris, I thought, hey, that might be just the thing to start.

And it was. Just 170 pages long, it obviously can't go into the level of analysis that the Lee bio can, but it's a good overview of Woolf's life, literary and otherwise. Sometimes the shortness of it means that little commentary is given to things like the abuse Woolf experienced as a child, or her attachment to Vita Sackville-West. Yet it still gave me a clearer picture than I had of Woolf as a person. Best of all, it increased my interest in reading the Lee bio. As soon as I read the novels I haven't yet read. Which now are leaping to the top of my TBR stack. For a short book, it sure did its duty.