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Literary Comfort Food

Last weekend I wasn't feeling so great -- a summer cold was coming on -- so I curled up with some ice cream and its literary equivalent. "Mr. Darcy's Diary" by Amanda Grange. This is what I would call fan-fiction related to Jane Austen. In this case, Grange imagines the male side of the great novel Pride and Prejudice and writes from the hero's perspective, as opposed to the heroine's.
There's a lot of this kind of Jane-related fiction if you care to read it: sequels and prequels and alternate takes, all generally summed up under the category of "para-literature." I generally steer clear of this stuff because reading these impersonations of Jane Austen's inimitable style can be quite painful.
On the other hand, I really liked "Mr. Darcy's Diary." It's title explains it; the jottings of Mr. Darcy as he meets and courts P&P's Elizabeth Bennet. This was a very smart approach on the part of Ms. Grange because there's no need for her to imitate Austen's style -- Mr. Darcy's musings are appropriately masculine, plain-spoken and to the point.
Did I learn anything new from hearing Darcy's side of the story? Not really. But oh how I enjoyed it. And I soon got to feeling better.

Read an excerpt from Grange's Web site. In this scene, we find out what happens after Elizabeth's sister Lydia runs off with the scoundrel George Wickham. In P&P, Darcy sets it aright, but we never really learn details of what happens. Here's Grange's take on the meeting between Darcy and Wickham:

I met Wickham at my club and the negotiations began.
'You must marry her,' I said to him shortly.
'If I do that, I give up forever the chance of making my fortune through marriage.'
'You have ruined her,' I said. 'Does that mean nothing to you?'

Continue reading ...

1001 Books

I love lists, and really, who doesn't? So first thing, I went through the new list of "1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die," and checked off all the ones I've read. My haul was pretty pitiful. I've read 80 of the books on the list. William Grimes of The New York Times has read 300! Don't I feel inadequate.

I was also startled because if I were to divide the books I've read into categories, the number one category would probably be books I read in high school, followed by books I read with my book group. It really depresses me that I didn't read more in college. Sure, I read some, but not nearly as much as I could have. I wasted so much time in college hanging out, partying, etc. Very dumb on my part. I also read -- by my own choice -- a lot of literary theory in college that has not held up well over the years. That's a whole other post, but I think theory was useful as an analytical tool in some contexts. Now, though, I would prefer that I had had a broader exposure to the history of literature.

I hope to create a new master list of books I would like to read, and then methodically read them, to make up for lost time. But is this realistic? I work a 40-hour job and have friends and family members to attend to. I also have library school and my beloved violin lessons.

College-goers, may this sad tale be a warning to you!

Here are the 10 favorite books of the most recently published 80 books I have read:

• Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
• Life of Pi – Yann Martel
• Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
• Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
• The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
• Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
• The Color Purple – Alice Walker
• Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
• Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
• In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

The New Yorker on Ezra Pound

The New Yorker has a fascinating review of a new book about Ezra Pound. Ezra Pound! Has anyone touched more great literature? Friend and adviser of Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, and James Joyce. Also the lesser lights: William Carlos Williams, H.D., Robert Lowell.
The New Yorker essay really captures the weird dynamic about Pound: While he redefined literature with his slogan "Make it new," he was also, quite literally, a treasonous, Fascist anti-Semite. What a juxtaposition. In Pound's defense, there is some evidence that he was mentally ill.
For a humorous take on Pound's political leanings, read McSweeney's The Ten Worst Films of 1942; As reviewed by Ezra Pound over Italian radio. "CAT PEOPLE: A race may civilize itself BY LANGUAGE, not film. Cat People is filth."
I'm told that Pound was the one who came up with the title of Eliot's "The Waste Land." Eliot himself wanted to call it ... (oh dear) ... "He Do the Police in Different Voices." Good lord, what a dreadful title. If that's all Pound did, he did literature a favor.
And then there's Ernest Hemingway's memoir of his Paris years, "A Moveable Feast." A really marvelous book. Hemingway writes:

Ezra was the most generous writer I have ever known and the most disinterested. He helped poets, painters, sculptors and prose writers that he believed in and he would help anyone whether he believed in them or not if they were in trouble. He worried about everyone and in the time when I first knew him he was most worried about T.S. Eliot who, Ezra told me, had to work in a bank in London and so had insufficient time and bad hours to function as a poet.

Love Papa Hemingway! That writing just jumps off the page for me with it's elegance. I especially love "insufficient time and bad hours."
If only Edgar Lee Masters had had a Pound to help him with Spoon River Anthology. He would have trimmed off the ponderous pseudo-epic-poem finale "The Spooniad." (Not kidding! That's how SRA ends.)

If I seem tense ...

An article in American Journalism Review gets at some of the difficulties facing my beloved newspaper industry right now. It discusses projections made by consultant Mark Potts that show online advertising is not increasing fast enough -- not nearly fast enough -- to make up for the declines in print advertising.

(T)he scariest problem — which Potts himself points out — is that many papers won't share in the online growth. There will be winners and losers. And even as the industry as a whole survives, we may begin seeing, pretty soon, big American
cities with no daily newspaper.
"It's going to be really bloody, incredibly devastating," Potts predicts. "And I think there are going to be a lot of major metros that don't make it."