What I Read in February 2013

Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942-1945. Klemperer, a German Jew who survived World War II in Dresden kept a diary of his daily life under the regime. This is volume 2; the first volume covers the years 1933-1941. I have commented on the travails of 1942 and again on the final years of World War II in 1943-1945: The Bitter End.

David Lodge, Out of the Shelter. Lodge calls this probably his most autobiographical novel. Like Lodge, in 1951, a teen aged boy who had lived through the London Blitz, spends several weeks in Heidelberg. Those weeks change his life.

In The Last Coyote, the fourth in Michael Connelly’s series featuring Harry Bosch, Detective Bosch is in several kinds of trouble which simultaneously trying to solve a very old crime, the murder of his mother, when Harry was a boy.

Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love. Mitford’s social comedy, set in pre-War and wartime Britain and France, is pure entertainment. The sequel, Love in a Cold Climate, follows some of the same characters, plus additions The glow begins to fade towards the end, but it is good fun most of the way.

Emma Goldman, Anarchism and Other Essays. In a series of essays, Goldman develops her ideas about anarchism, suffrage and the position of women in the early 20th century.

Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot. That’s the standard plot in classic novels: they meet, they fall in love and, eventually, they marry so that they can live happily ever after. Is that plot still happening today?

Barbara Pym, The Sweet Dove Died. After Emma Goldman, it’s quite a switch to Barbara Pym. Who is the “sweet dove”? She appears to be an elegant lady of a certain age who enjoys male friends who are not quite accepted as lovers.

Richard Russo, Elsewhere: A Memoir. Richard Russo is from Gloversville, a decayed milltown in upstate New York. Now he is Elsewhere, but he lived in both places with his volatile mother. This memoir is about their relationship.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment. Does Raskolnikov regret having murdered two women with an ax? He regrets having bungled the crime, but believes the crime was justified by the benefits he would have received if he had done things more effectively. He considers himself superior to the women he murdered, yet he proves inferior in his role as executioner. Rashkolnikov’s egotism which values only his life, his goals, his very existence is so repulsive to me that I am unable to judge this novel fairly or comment on its literary value.

What Does Emma Goldman Want?

‘The great question that has never been answered,
and which I have not yet been able to answer,
despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is
“What does a woman want?”
- Sigmund Freud

 In several of the essays included in her Anarchism and Other Essays, anarchist Emma Goldman tells us what a woman wants. Anarchism rejects the authority of property, religion and government. It also rejects the attitudes which restrict individual freedom. This rejection is not only negative. In “The Hypocrisy of Puritanism” Goldman affirms what she values in life.

 More than art, more than estheticism, life represents beauty in a thousand variations; it is, indeed, a gigantic panorama of eternal change. Puritanism, on the other hand, rests on a fixed and immovable conception of life; it is based on the Calvinistic idea that life is a curse, imposed upon man by the wrath of God. In order to redeem himself man must do constant penance, must repudiate every natural and healthy impulse, and turn his back on joy and beauty.

It certainly follows from this that women do not need to repudiate their natural impulses. As Goldman sees it, first Puritanism represses natural sex desires, then binds women in marriage to continue to bear children when exhausted and in poor health.

 Prevention, even by scientifically determined safe methods, is absolutely prohibited; nay, the very mention of the subject is considered criminal.

In “The Traffic in Women” Goldman points out that the contemporary cry against prostitution is a passing interest which ignores the more basic evils of capitalism and the bondage of all women.

 Nowhere is woman treated according to the merit of her work, but rather as a sex. It is therefore almost inevitable that she should pay for her right to exist, to keep a position in whatever line, with sex favors. Thus it is merely a question of degree whether she sells herself to one man, in or out of marriage, or to many men. Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of woman is responsible for prostitution.

The conventions of property, religion and government promote practices just as degrading as prostitution. She sees no moral difference between sex for money in marriage and sex for money on the open market.

 To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock. That this is no mere statement is proved by the fact that marriage for monetary considerations is perfectly legitimate, sanctified by law and public opinion, while any other union is condemned and repudiated.

In “Woman Suffrage” Goldman points out that women should indeed have the vote, but it won’t help very much if it involves supporting a system which is already rotten.

 Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neither physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has failed.

In “The Tragedy of Woman’s Emancipation” she says that whatever the differences between groups – including between men and women – “there is a point where these differentiations may meet and grow into one perfect whole.” They can form such a perfect whole “when the reorganization of our social life, based on the principles of economic justice, shall have become a reality.” She has a vision of individual fulfillment:

 Peace or harmony between the sexes and individuals does not necessarily depend on a superficial equalization of human beings; nor does it call for the elimination of individual traits and peculiarities. The problem that confronts us today, and which the nearest future is to solve, is how to be one’s self and yet in oneness with others, to feel deeply with all human beings and still retain one’s own characteristic qualities.

Emancipation has benefited a privileged class of women, but they are now isolated from their fellow beings and, in that way, emancipation works against unity of purpose and freedom for all. Although “Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the truest sense,” that goal has not yet been achieved. Goldman examines the options of paid work, professional attainments, marriage, home making, but finds difficulties everywhere. She recognizes that the claim that women would have “a purifying effect on all institutions in society” is a trap.

 The greatest shortcoming of the emancipation of the present day (c. 1917) lies in its artificial stiffness and its narrow respectabilities, which produce an emptiness in woman’s soul that will not let her drink from the fountain of life.

Goldman’s concludes that “Salvation lies in an energetic march onward towards a brighter and clearer future.” Her bright future is one of social justice and personal freedom, but she does not provide a clearly-marked route for the energetic march toward it. I wish she had. We are still marching, one hundred years later, and the way to go is still unclear.

Louisa May Alcott and the Wise Woman

This is my second contribution to this month’s discussion of Little Women at the Year of Feminist Classics.

One issue which is seldom discussed when appraising feminist themes in literature is the role of women in old age. Too often older women are invisible, just as Doris Lessing observed in her novel The Summer before the Dark.

Nice picture, but not yet a “wise woman.”

Last year, when we discussed Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman at A Year of Feminist Classics, I was impressed by Gilman’s description of an all-female society where older women are both honored for the lives they have led and employed for their wisdom and self-control. Here the male visitors are greeted:

“If they were only younger,” he muttered between his teeth. “What on earth is a fellow to say to a regiment of old Colonels like this?”

In all our discussions and speculations we had always unconsciously assumed that the women, whatever else they might be, would be young. Most men do think that way, I fancy.

“Woman” in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether. But these good ladies were very much on the stage, and yet any one of them might have been a grandmother.

Although Louisa May Alcott is writing about a real 19^th-century world – not a fantasy like Herland – she also recognizes the powerful role older women can take in understanding and counseling the young as they try to make their way in life. Marmee in Little Women is a clear example. Her opinions are usually conservative.

“Learn to know and value the praise which is worth having, and to excite the admiration of excellent people by being modest as well as pretty, Meg.”

Also,

“I’m not ambitious for a splendid fortune, a fashionable position, or a great name for my girls. If rank and money come with love and virtue, also, I would accept them gratefully, and enjoy your good fortune; but I know, by experience, how much genuine happiness can be had in a plain little house, where the daily bread is earned, and some privations give sweetness to the few pleasures.”

At the same time, Marmee unites with Mr. March in not accepting poverty passively. When the girls propose to find work,

“Believing they could not begin too early to cultivate energy, industry, and independence, their parents consented, and both fell to work with the hearty good-will which in spite of all obstacles is sure to succeed at last.”

What is most striking to a modern parent is not that the girls’ mother gives advice – all mothers do that – but that the girls take the advice so seriously.

Alcott’s next successful children’s book after Little Women was An Old Fashioned Girl. In it, Alcott continues to show the strong role an older woman can take in a sometimes dysfunctional household. Young Polly – pretty, gifted and poor – comes to stay in the Shaw household. The Shaw children are friendly but spoiled. Polly receives understanding and support not from their mother, but from their grandmother. When they meet, unsophisticated country Polly is praised by Grandmother Shaw because she is still a child:

“Well, dear, I’ll tell you. In my day, children of fourteen and fifteen did n’t dress in the height of the fashion; go to parties, as nearly like those of grown people as it’s possible to make them; lead idle, giddy, unhealthy lives, and get blas, at twenty. We were little folks till eighteen or so; worked and studied, dressed and played, like children; honored our parents; and our days were much longer in the land than now, it seems to, me.”

But children were not idle at all:

“Yes, and we all learned to make bread, and cook, and wore little chintz gowns, and were as gay and hearty as kittens. All lived to be grandmothers and fathers; and I’m the last, seventy, next birthday, my dear, and not worn out yet; though daughter Shaw is an invalid at forty.”

“That’s the way I was brought up, and that’s why Fan calls me old-fashioned, I suppose,” said Polly.

This function of advice giver and reinforcer of conservative family values is given to Uncle Alec in another successful children’s book, Eight Cousins. But still, the many aunts in the story sometimes get a word in and the elderly great aunts, Peace and Plenty, stand firmly for the good old days and good old values.

Even in her adult novel, Moods, Alcott finds a place for a wise woman. When Sylvia is grieving over the unfortunate marital choice, she has a “sudden memory”:

“If ever you need help that Geoffrey cannot give, remember cousin Faith.”

This was the hour Faith foresaw; Moor had gone to her in his trouble, why not follow, and let this woman, wise, discreet, and gentle, show her what should come next.

Faith diagnoses that Sylvia has two spirits contending in one body, and “…each rules by turns, and each helps or hinders as moods and circumstances lead.” Advice and comfort are then given and gratefully received.

Louisa May Alcott wrote two sequels to Little Women. In Little Men and Jo’s Boys Marmee does not completely disappear, but Jo is now clearly in charge of the family destiny. Whereas she was once the harum scarum tomboy who wanted independence of action, now she follows the fortunes of others and guides them on their various ways. Jo is now the wise woman.

Little Women – Feminist Novel?

During the month of July I am hosting the discussion of Little Women at A Year of Feminist Classics. Here is my initial contribution.

I would like to open the discussion of Little Women, Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel for girls, with a proposition. Some readers find in the book a feminist message of independence and self-expression, while others find a message of social conformity. So which is it – a liberating view of female possibilities or an imposition of community expectations? My proposition is that Little Women delivers both messages. The tension between them is what makes the book so real and so memorable.

Let’s start with the conformity message. In Little Women, Mr. March is the absent father, leaving the four sisters and their mother to fend for themselves while he serves as a military chaplain in the Civil War. His presence is strongly felt, however, as he presses for the girls to grow up in accordance with his ideals.

 “I know they will remember all I said to them, that they will be loving children to you, will do their duty faithfully, fight their bosom enemies bravely, and conquer themselves so beautifully, that when I come back to them I may be fonder and prouder than ever of my little women.”

The March sisters receive a letter from their father in which he expresses his ideals for his “little women.”

If they must fight their bosom enemies and conquer themselves, then they must suppress their true natures in favor of a standard set by him, the father. This is reinforced when, near the end of part one of the book, Mr. March comes back from the war and proclaims:

“I see a young lady [Jo] who pins her collar straight, laces her boots neatly, and neither whistles, talks slang, nor lies on the rug as she used to do. Her face is rather thin and pale just now, with watching and anxiety; but I like to look at it, for it has grown gentler, and her voice is lower; she doesn’t bounce, but moves quietly, and takes care of a certain little person in a motherly way which delights me. I rather miss my wild girl; but if I get a strong, helpful, tender-hearted woman in her place, I shall feel quite satisfied.”

A “strong, helpful, tender-hearted woman” is no bad ideal, but it is Mr. March’s ideal, not Jo’s. Alcott realistically shows that when a girl is as energetic and ambitious as Jo, she can expect loving parents will try to get her to conform. Most books for girls at that time would leave it there, with Jo seeing the error of her ways and finding happiness in meeting family expectations. Alcott is a better writer than that. She depicts a Jo who is fully appreciative of love and support; she is not rebelling against her family but against the role of a girl:

“It’s bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boys’ games and work and manners! I can’t get over my disappointment in not being a boy; and it’s worse than ever now, for I’m dying to go and fight with papa and I can only stay at home and knit, like a poky old woman!”

After she publishes her first story, Jo does not reject her family role, but desires to be independent within it, to support those she loves as – dare we say it! – a boy would have been expected to do.

 Jo’s breath gave out here; and, wrapping her head in the paper, she dedewed her little story with a few natural tears; for to be independent, and earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest wishes of her heart, and this seemed to be the first step toward that happy end.

By the time she wrote Little Women in 1868, Louisa May Alcott was establishing herself as a professional writer. Like Jo, she wanted to support her chronically-needy family, by any honest means. She did, in fact, try various jobs including teaching, sewing and serving as a paid companion. Writing paid best, besides being satisfying in other ways. She wrote plays, poetry, short stories, thrillers, and an account of her nursing experiences in a Civil War hospital – whatever would sell. Her greatest affection was for her “adult” novels, such as Moods, with their emphasis of emotional states and high romance. She wrote Little Women on assignment so, rather than trying to move the reader as in Moods, she told the story, as in Hospital Sketches. When the story is told – drawing on her own experiences growing up with three sisters in the poor but worthy Alcott family – her true values are expressed in the story itself and the choices she made in telling it.

“Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

People talk like that. These are real girls, not models of perfection. Whatever your concept of feminism may be, for me it is the belief that women define their own natures; they are not defined for them by the male half of humanity. If women are entirely noble and good or entirely evil and dangerous, that is a patriarchal construct which separates females from the rest of the human race where everyone is a mixture of good and bad characteristics.

Jo does want to make money for her family, but she also knows that with money comes power, and she wants that too.

 …Jo was satisfied with the investment of her prize money, and fell to work with a cheery spirit, bent on earning more of those delightful checks. She did earn several that year, and began to feel herself a power in the house….

Jo enjoyed a taste of this satisfaction, and ceased to envy richer girls, taking great comfort in the knowledge that she could supply her own wants, and need ask no one for a penny.

She also has ambition for herself, for her own sake.

“I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle, — something heroic or wonderful, that won’t be forgotten when I’m dead. I don’t know what, but I’m on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all, some day. I think I shall write books, and get rich and famous: that would suit me, so that is my favorite dream.”

This is important because so often, in stories about girls or biographies of women, their accomplishments are portrayed as done entirely for the sake of others, to fulfill a helper role. Jo does not reject being a helper, but she also wants her own satisfactions and achievements. Within the realities of 19^th-century life, Jo gets them. She rejects the suitor she does not love, she leaves home to support herself, she sells her stories, she writes a good book, and, finally, she does marry, but it is an unconventional union which enables her to become the manager of a school.

1. Which is the stronger message within Little Women – conformity or independence?
2. What other messages to you find there?
3. What are the roles of Marmee and of Jo’s sisters?  Do they support or deny feminist values?

For more information about Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, and the interesting town of Concord, visit my blog page: http://silverseason.wordpress.com/courses-and-presentations/little-women-by-louisa-may-alcott/

What I Read in May 2012

Dai Sijie, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. Two teen-age boys are sent to the remote countryside during Mao’s cultural revolution. Their “re-education” there comes not from the hard work in field and mine, but from secretly reading the French classics which have been translated into Chinese. They also educate the little seamstress, but what she learns is not what they expect.

Stendahl, The Red and the Black. The classic French novel from 1830, read by me in translation. The story begins as a tale of poor but ambitious young man on the make, moves into high-flown romance and ends as melodrama.

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, Translated into Modern English by Nevill Coghill. I started this in a four-session class, where we only read selections, and then finished it on my own. It was a long slog, seemed like. I found many delightful patches, but as a whole it wearied me. I am not the person who can fully appreciate literature from this period.

Alison Lurie, Love and Friendship. After the heavy going in Stendahl and Chaucer, this light-weight academic social comedy was just the ticket. All is not well on the idyllic but isolated campus of Convers College, but then, why should it be?

Susan Cheever, Home Before Dark: A Biographical Memoir of John Cheever by His Daughter. The long subtitle accurately describes this affectionate but honest account of John Cheever’s life. After reading Cheever’s published Journals and Blake Bailey’s detailed biography, I thought I knew all I needed — or wanted — to know of this teller of suburban tales. I knew too much. Susan Cheever does it better in this sympathetic telling of her father’s story.

The Canterbury Tales (by Geoffrey Chaucer), adapted by Seymour Chwast.  The whole thing is too long to read? You want a version more entertaining than Cliffs Notes? This graphic interpretation is probably right for you. It’s complete — all the tales and the prologues and the epilogues — but just the good parts, happily interpreted.

Patricia O’Brien, The Glory Cloak. In this historical novel, we meet and mingle real-life figures like Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton with fictional characters. The time is the Civil War, when Alcott served briefly as a nurse in the Union Hospital in Washington.

Loren Eiseley, Darwin’s Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It. It was not a quick trip from the Galapagos Islands to The Origin of Species and Darwin did not make the trip alone. He followed along behind Smith and Lamarck and Lyell and all the others who were trying to make sense of the discoveries of science.

Jane Eyre: Choices

Jane Eyre is the one with her eyes open.

Initially Jane Eyre had no choices at all. Orphaned, she was left to an aunt by marriage who did not care for her at all. The opinion in the house: “If she were a nice, pretty child, one might compasionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that.”

Even with that unpromising beginning, she asserts her own opinion, when she meets with the domineering Mr. Brocklehurst who threatens her with hell:

“And what is hell? Can you tell me that?”

“A pit full of fire.”

“And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?”

“No, sir.”

“What must you do to avoid it?”

I deliberated for a moment; my answer, when it did come, was objectionable: “I must keep in good health and not die.”

Again and again, Jane exercises her power to judge and to choose based on her own views of herself and others. She does not shirk her obligations, but she understands their limits. When her hateful aunt dies, she goes to assist her and her cousins.

It is true, that while I worked, she would idle; and I thought to myself, “If you and I were destined to live always together, cousin, we would commence matters on a different footing, I would not settle tamely down into being the forbearing party; I should assign you your share of labour and compel you to accomplish it, or else it should be left undone….”

After the marriage with Rochester is broken off, she flees. St. John Rivers — another domineering but more tactful clergyman — offers her marriage along with the opportunity to serve in the East. She tries to negotiate with him for service without the marriage. The pressures are great, but she turns him down.

Every reader remembers the proud declaration at the end of the book: “Reader, I married him.” She wasn’t pressured, she wasn’t swept up, she chose to be Rochester’s wife and support.

At A Year of Feminist Classics, we are discussing Jane Eyre this month. Some readers find in Charlotte Bronte’s novel only a thrilling romance, but few romances  persist in our imaginations for over 150 years. Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One’s Own, thought Jane  was too angry and it did not become her. Woolf herself admits to considerable annoyance with the male establishment, so it is strange that she begrudges it to Bronte who wrote in  an even more restricted time.

I don’t think the strength of the book is in the romance or in the anger, but in the Jame’s clear-headed knowledge that she had the right to have her own opinions and to act upon them, to make the choices that matter.

Feminist Classics

Last year I enjoyed joining in the discussions at the Year of Feminist Classics blog. Among others we discussed John Stuart Mills’ The Subjection of Women, Mary Wollstonecrafts’ A Vindication of the Rights of Women and Charlotte Gilman Perkins’ Herland.

Now, a new year, and a new list.

• February – Feminism is for Everybody by bell hooks (Amy)
• March – The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine De Pizan (Jean)
• April – Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano (Cass)
• May – Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë read alongside Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (Iris)
• June – Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (Emily)
• July – Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (Nancy)
• August – The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (Lauren)
• September – Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua (Melissa)
• October – The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (Jodie)
• November – Beyond the Veil by Fatema Mernissi (Ana)
• December – Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis (Emily Jane)
• January – Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practising Solidarity by Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Eva)

This time around, each book will have a discussion leader. In July I will lead the discussion of Louisa May Alcott’s well-known novel for girls, Little Women. Fellow feminist Jean Ping will be helping me with this.

There’s nothing to join, no entrance fees, and no commitment. Please stop by as often as you like to enjoy the discussions and bring your own point of view to the party.

Roses and Cousins

By1875, when Louisa May Alcott wrote Eight Cousins, she was well-known as the author of Little Women, and her books for children were in demand. Eight Cousins tells the story of orphaned Rose Campbell who goes to live under the care of her Uncle Alec and in close proximity with seven male Campbell cousins (1 Rose + 7 boys = 8 cousins) and six aunts.

The book reprises many of the themes of Little Women – the love of a close family, the pleasures of innocent fun, the importance of learning self control – but the tone is more straight-laced. Rose is no Jo March, and does not rebel against Uncle Alec’s strictures of no coffee, no corsets, plenty of fresh air and exercise. Alcott takes a few swipes at education also.

“I’ve been at boarding school nearly a year, and I’m almost dead with lessons. The more I did, the more Miss Power gave me, and I was so miserable I ‘most cried my eyes out. Papa never gave me hard things to do, and he always taught me so pleasantly I loved to study.”

Good Uncle Alec takes over Rose’s education in all branches, and her lively boy cousins take over her social life. The strength of the book is in the children. The older generation are mostly stock characters: remote Uncle Mac, hypochondriacal Aunt Myra, benevolent Aunts Peace and Plenty. Still, it all moves along briskly enough and we enjoy seeing Rose gradually transformed from a timid and sad little girl into a lively teenager, unafraid of all those male cousins and more than ready to join in the fun.

The sequel, Rose in Bloom written the following year, is less successful. Rose, now twenty, has been taken off to Europe for travel and culture, and returns a young woman. The oldest of the cousins are potential marriage partners, so the plot of the book becomes rather standard Victorian romance. Who will marry whom? Since the course of true love never does run smooth, we can expect some difficulties. One of the difficulties is that Rose is rich.

The heiress was the attraction to most of the young men whom she met. Good fellows enough, but educated, as nearly all are nowadays, to believe that girls with beauty or money are brought to market to sell or buy as the case may be.

Most bothersome — for me at least — is Rose’s continued dependence of Uncle Alec to form her character. She constantly seeks his approval even as he claims to stand back and let her learn from her own experiences. Rose cannot buy the shimmering opal silk for a new gown because Uncle Alec has taught her that it would be better to be charitable with resources. As said, Rose is no Jo March.

The silk gown is as close as Rose comes to temptation, but one cousin at least is not so fortunate. Most of the characters in the story express the conventional hope that the love of a good woman will show him the right path — no wine at parties — and keep him there. Alcott is a strong enough writer to do a small twist on that expectation and get away with it.

Mona Simpson, Anywhere But Here

When Steve Jobs died and I read that he had a sister named Mona Simpson, I realized that I had Anywhere But Here by her on my shelf, unread. Not recent, it was published in 1986 to good reviews.

This is a young woman’s book. The strongest parts are the road trip with her mother from Wisconsin to California, seeking a new life (for mother) and a possible television career as a child actress for (daughter). Sections are very interesting, moving even, but it just didn’t gel for me. Simpson gives us the story through four sets of eyes: Ann, in her preteen and adolescent years; Adelle, her mother, beautiful, amoral, manipulative; Carol, her midwestern aunt; Lillian, her grandmother. Ann’s voice — presumably the author as she recreates her own younger life — rings true. The rest seem a bit stagey.

What I Read in September 2011

Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. I was moved and impressed by these graphic novels about growing up during the Iranian revolution.

Anna Maclean, Louisa and the Missing Heiress. A rather lightweight mystery story set in 1850s Boston in which Louisa May Alcott is the detective.

Carolyn G. Heilbrun, Writing a Woman’s Life. A woman is not a man. Sounds obvious, but when a woman achieves something a man might have achieved — written a novel, for example — it must be because she is less than a “woman”.

Homer, The Iliad. We experience War, with its heroism and cruelty, and the interference of the gods. I have posted on The Iliad: How They Die and The Iliad: Fate.

Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone. This is an excellent medical novel with wonderful characters, but not for the squeamish. I finished it the night before the moving cataclysm and could not find it for several days. Here is a scan of its somewhat battered cover.

September has been an unusually lean reading month, although any month in which one completes The Iliad is memorable for that. We have been engaged in moving out of our house, in which we have lived happily but somewhat messily for 32 years. As a non materialistic person, how did I accumulate so much stuff! After days of packing and unpacking boxes we are not through yet.