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April 26, 2008

The Jane Austen Survey

My life lately has been Austen-tastic. That's one of the things I want to blog about if I ever get a couple of hours in a row when I can concentrate.... Anyway, as I've mentioned before, I'm not only a Janeite but a lifelong member of the Jane Austen Society of North America, though I've never yet attended one of the conferences. I hope that will change in 2009; the focus of that conference is on siblings in Austen's work, a topic I wrote a pretty decent paper on as an undergrad.

A full exploration of the Austen-tastic-ness of my life will have to wait until I've got time to write about it properly, but in the meantime I'd like to invite any Janeites who read my blog to take the Austen survey. The point of the survey is to gather information about the sorts of people who are Austen fans (my guess is they're pretty damn diverse); the results will be presented in a breakout session at the 2008 JASNA Annual General Meeting, in a presentation entitled "Anatomy of a Janeite."

Survey participants need to have read all six of the finished novels. If you have, please complete this survey.

Posted by Holly at 4:44 PM | Comments (0)

December 16, 2007

My New Action Figure

Today is the birthday of my two favorite writers: Jane Austen and... ME!

You may well roll your eyes and think I'm arrogant for announcing that I'm my own favorite writer, but one of the many reasons I love Saviour Onassis is for the way he taught me to value my own talents. Someday I will tell the story of how Saviour Onassis convinced me that I should always say I am my own favorite artist, but in the meantime I will tell you the story of one of the coolest presents I have received this birthday, namely, this:

That's right, it's a Jane Austen action figure! I have wanted one ever since I read an entry on Robyn's blog about how she got one from her father. My dad usually leaves gift buying to my mother, so I knew not to expect anything from that quarter, but mercifully one of my sisters obliged me.... (Actually my siblings have been really good to me this year--I got all kinds of stuff! But that's going to be another post, I hope--I have so many things I've been meaning to blog about.) You can see the box in front of some flowers a friend sent me--I love getting flowers but it's just not something most people send. (Including me, now that I think about it.) You can also see my cat checking out a bit of the greenery--there's something about these particular bits of foliage that freak her out.

Here's Jane out of the box and not quite in action, in front of my (alphabetized) copies of her work:

I had a very early Barbie as a little girl, one that had I never played with it or taken it out of the box, would be worth thousands today. But I was four or so when I got it--of course I took it out of the box and played with it, though I never did intentionally destructive things like draw on it or cut its hair. It occurred to me after I ripped the box of this action figure open that maybe I was supposed to just leave it in its box, but I wanted to handle the figure.

Turns out this version of Jane is wielding a quill like a weapon.

She's also kind of hot... I don't know if the real Jane was this curvy, but I do know Regency fabric didn't drape on the body the way this doll is depicted.

Anyway. What I would like from you is a birthday greeting, whenever you happen to read this message. I don't care if it's a week or two or three from now, please say hi! In fact, I will accept birthday wishes on this message up until December 15, 2008.

Cheers!

Posted by Holly at 11:59 AM | Comments (13)

September 26, 2006

Crouching Horse-Horse-Tiger-Tiger Hidden Dragon

Since I've had a discussion of movies, I thought I'd continue the trend. Here's a review I wrote of "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" when it came out.

One of the first things I learned to say when I began studying Chinese was mamahuhu, which means "horse-horse-tiger-tiger." It is an idiomatic expression denoting something which is an uncomfortable hybrid, neither successfully this or that, nor even a worthy combination of the two; it's often translated as "mediocre" or "so-so." One of the first things I heard about Ang Lee's new movie, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, was that Lee had described it as "Bruce Lee meets Jane Austen;" one of his assistants called it "Sense and Sensibility with sword fights."

I'm a big fan of Austen, and if there were anyone who could blend Bruce Lee and Austen successfully, it would be Ang Lee, whose first three movies were set (at least in part) in his native Taiwan; his fourth movie was Sense and Sensibility (1995). But I would have to say that I found this movie more horse-horse-tiger-tiger than tiger-tiger-dragon-dragon.

One big disappointment was the primary love story. "Jane Austen meets anything" must have at least one love story, and Crouching Tiger has several. The first involves Li Mu Bai (Chow Yung Fat) and Yu Shu Lien (Michelle Yeoh), who have long been in love but never admitted it for a variety of reasons, including the fact that Shu Lien's fiance was killed in battle next to Li Mu Bai. But their passion, supposedly on the point of bursting forth after years of restraint, isn't portrayed successfully. Mu Bai displays far greater passion in his devotion to his sword the Green Destiny, or his attempts to woo Jen (Zhang Ziyi), who repeatedly steals the Green Destiny from him, into becoming his disciple. When Jen finally asks, "Is it the sword or me you really want?" I was glad the movie acknowledged the force of his attraction to her.

Jen is involved in the rest of the love stories, usually as the one who breaks a heart. The love affair I cared about most involved Jen and Lo, a bandit living in the western desert whom Jen pursues because he steals her comb. "I'm not big or tall, but I'm quick as the wind" he tells Jen, and he could add that he's charming, funny and fairly gentlemanly--Henry Tilney residing in a cave rather than Northanger Abbey. But Jen is no more faithful to him than she is to her house maid/martial arts instructor Jade Fox or to her adopted sister Shu Lien.

Aside from Jen, the characters seem to have motivations that are not only simple but simplistic. Jade Fox (Chen Pei Pei) seeks esoteric knowledge because she is bad and wants to be able to defy social convention and kill those who thwart her; Li Mu Bai is good because he follows the rules and wants to kill Jade Fox. Yu Shu Lien is good because she is patient, long-suffering and honors the memory of her dead fiance; Yu Jen is bad because she doesn't even honor her living fiance--well, that doesn't quite make her bad, but her willingness to steal, lie, and break promises isn't quite enough to make her bad, either. She gets to be not quite good or bad, but it seems that the main reason for that might simply be that she's young and pretty.

Other elements of the movie offer more rewards. Like the rest of Lee's work, Crouching Tiger is beautifully filmed, gorgeous to look at. The fight scenes are amazing, energetic and inspiring dances precisely choreographed by Yuen Wo Ping, the expert responsible for designing the similarly remarkable acrobatics in The Matrix. It's rare that anyone die in these fights scenes--Jade Fox is the only character evil enough to actually kill someone else--so you can enjoy them for the athletic prowess (and flying ability) of the combatants. Virtually every fight involves Jen, who usually wins. Especially notable is her handiwork, footwork and swordplay as she takes on an entire tavernful of tough guys, one or two or six at a time, defeating them all, leaving them with broken bones or missing teeth but steady pulses.

I was told I'd love this movie, and I wanted to. After all, it's in Chinese, most of the main characters are women, it's up for Best Picture and it isn't Gladiator. But I didn't love it. I thought it was OK. I don't feel I wasted either the price of the ticket or the time required to see it, but I was disappointed. I could see the crouching--or maybe it was cowering?-- horse-horse-tiger-tiger, but the hidden dragon stayed far too hidden.

Posted by Holly at 8:01 AM | Comments (1)

August 21, 2006

As They Say about Acid

Yeah, I'm back.

I got home Wednesday night. The journey home was, as they say about acid from time to time, a bad trip. Flight patterns were screwed up at the Salt Lake airport for some reason no one ever bothered explaining to me so although we boarded on time and shut the door on time and pulled away from the gate on time, we then sat on the tarmac for 55 minutes (the captain specified that it was 55 minutes) waiting for our turn to take off, waiting and waiting and then waiting some more as if waiting were a perfectly normal thing to do in an airplane. Fortunately I have a gift, a very fortunate gift indeed, and even a strange one, in light of the fact that in a bed I am prone to insomnia, and my gift is this: I always fall asleep on planes. I am so disposed to falling asleep on planes that I get sleepy just waiting to board one. So I slept while we waited for our plane to take off, even though I had slept a lot the night before and it was only ten a.m., too early really to be sleepy.

My plane and I should have landed before 3 p.m. eastern daylight saving time but we did not land until after 4 p.m. I had not flown in or out of my local airport because it was too expensive; instead I flew out of a bigger spiffier airport two hours away because it was cheap AND a direct flight to SLC, but that meant I had to pay seven bucks a day to park my car at some godforsaken parking lot. And after I picked up my luggage and took a shuttle back to my car in that godforsaken lot I discovered that my battery was dead; it was dead because I had left my lights on for an entire week, a terrible mistake and one I have not made since automakers started including that little bell that goes off when you leave your lights on. I don't know how I missed it but I did somehow last week when the shuttle driver was waiting impatiently for me to get my stuff together and get out of my car and get on the shuttle and go to the airport.

At least the shuttle/parking people had jumper cables and they were able to start my car. But everything had been timed just right to ensure that I hit rush hour traffic and there was a lot of it. And there was also a lot of construction on the highway between the airport two hours away and my house. And when I got home from this bad trip I was so cranky that for the next four days I could scarcely do ANYTHING except think about how much I hated flying, notice that my house really needed cleaning (eventually I talked myself into cleaning it), read Pride and Prejudice for the 18th time (because it is the best book in the whole world), and knit.

Yeah, knit. I have been knitting a lot. I am in love with knitting. I am currently making a green cardigan/jacket thingy and a pair of red fingerless gloves. I will write more about this soon. I sort of even plan to post pictures.

Sunday morning at about 4:30 I finished Pride and Prejudice for the 18th time because I was in my bed and not on a plane and that meant I couldn't sleep even though I had two shots of a vodka and a Benadryl and then that meant that when I went to bed Sunday night I had to read something else, so I picked up The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein because that is what I had chosen as the book to read on the airplane when I wasn't sleeping.

tAoABT was the last of the big important books I had to read to prepare for teaching this semester and I saved it for last because I suspected strongly that I wouldn't like it but lo and behold I was wrong, very wrong. Once after a movie we really liked (though I don't remember what it was) Saviour Onassis and I observed that we could tell when a movie was really good because when we walked out of it, we couldn't help talking like the characters in it. As opposed to a movie that was really bad: then we would choose to talk like the characters but we would do it as mocking, as a deliberate invocation of the accidental artifice we had never ceased to be annoyed by, as in the case of Shakespeare in Love which we saw together and HATED, how we HATED that movie, the script was lame and obvious and contradictory and the characterization lame and obvious and unconvincing and Gwyneth Paltrow just plain sucks.

Using that same reasoning and logic I am attempting to convey how much I to my surprise loved tAoABT because I find myself totally captivated and affected by Gertrude Stein's sentences, they are very moving and effective sentences, and I want to copy them. Trudy (as I prefer to call her, not Gertie; Gertie rhymes with "dirty" but Trudy rhymes with "beauty") has completely captured my thinking heart and despite my fervent loyalty to conventional punctuation I feel a shitload of run-on sentences and comma splices piling up inside me and needing to spill forth. I not only want to write like her, I want to read everything else she has ever written, or at least look all the titles up in the library catalogue and order the books so they can sit on the shelf in my office and make me feel hopeful.

We'll see where this heads.

So you've just read an entry that's not about Mormons or Mormonism or how fucked up and fucked-upping Utah is. Enjoy it while it lasts! I might try to postpone the diatribe against the weirdness that my annual pilgrimage to "Zion" always unleashes in my life, since I wrote about precisely that before I left, but it will occur sooner or later, I can guarantee it.

In the meantime, before posting again, I am going to try to get caught up on YOUR blogs, which I have shamefully neglected. Pardon me. I really was too cranky to leave comments much worth reading, and I knew I wouldn't respond properly to much that I read.

But really, Trudy has cheered me up and I will try to read everything with the same delighted surprise and gossipy happiness (the woman knew everyone! Everyone wanted to know her!) her sentences aroused in me.

Posted by Holly at 12:44 AM | Comments (9)

February 23, 2006

Reader, I'm Not Sure What Happened

Reese, Frankengirl, Mystic Gypsy, and all types like me, check out this plea from the BBC:

Are you an avid reader of romantic fiction? Has Mr Darcy made you leave your fiancé? Has Mr Rochester, Heathcliff or any other fictional hero changed your love life in a significant way? Does your partner want you to be more like these fictional male heroes?

Silverriver Productions are producing a series of three 60' programmes for the BBC about the history of the romantic novel. Presented by Daisy Goodwin, Reader, I Married Him! will examine the work of Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer, Margaret Mitchell, Helen Fielding and Catherine Cookson amongst others, looking at how romantic novels have changed the female perception of the ideal man.

In the programmes we want to talk to real men and women whose love lives have been transformed by romantic fiction for better or for worse. We want to speak to the women who have never found their Mr Darcy, as well as the men who feel that they fall short of romantic literary ideals.

If you have an interesting story, please get in touch with Louisa MacInnes on 020 7580 2746 or louisa.macinnes@silverriver.tv with details of your experience and and some method of contacting you.

Posted by Holly at 12:54 PM | Comments (13)

January 31, 2006

Can They Be a Sensible Academy?

I just learned that Keira Knightley got an Oscar nomination for her insipid portrayal of Elizabeth Bennet in prd & prjdc! The movie as a whole got FOUR nominations, including art direction (yeah, it was pretty, but that doesn't make up for the lousy script), costume design (again, the clothes were very pretty, but they were NOT authentic--there was one gown Caroline Bingley wore that, while fabulous, was a thoroughly contemporary design), and "music written for a motion picture" (can't say the music made an impression on me).

I shouldn't gripe, I suppose: after all, even though it's watered-down, simplified, prettified Austen.... No, I should gripe. It's a mediocre version of a GREAT novel, and I rather hope Keira Knightley loses.

Posted by Holly at 11:41 AM | Comments (3)

January 11, 2006

Love vs. Whatever

As promised in yesterday's post, here is a list of scenarios about various ways people approach relationships and marriage in which love and other concerns might be in conflict.

Before presenting the list, I instructed my students to let memory and imagination run wild, to think of every dysfunctional relationship they'd either been in or witnessed.

A. Imagine that you go home and say, "Mom, Dad, guess what. I'm engaged. He's so great. He's a sculptor and, well, he's unemployed right now, and he just dropped out of school because he felt like his teachers couldn't really understand his vision but he's so talented, he's so great, and I'm going to drop out of school and go to work and support him until he makes it big." They say, "Um, OK, well, when can we meet him?" and you say, "When he gets out of rehab." I don't care what you say about marrying for love instead of more practical concerns--your parents would FREAK.

B. Imagine that a friend who grew up in a really conservative religious home in rural Iowa. She's always had a thing for bad boys, and she falls in love with this guy who spends all his money on his Harley. And he loves her too--he treats her really well--and they get engaged. Both families are HORRIFIED. Her family says, "Did you have to fall in love with a criminal?" His family says, "Did you have to fall in love with someone whose dad is going to call the cops as soon as someone lights up a joint at your reception?"

C. Imagine another friend. She's really smart, president of your sorority, has a 3.9 GPA, does all this other extra curricula stuff, gets accepted to Harvard medical school. Now, she loves Big Macs. And she finds an all-night McDonald's near her apartment in Cambridge and studies there. And she falls in love with the manager. He's a really nice guy but he dropped out of high school because he had a drug problem and his parents stuck him in rehab. He finally got a GED and he worked his way up the ladder at McDonald's and that is the extent of his ambition: he wants to work for McDonald's his whole life. They get engaged, and her family FREAKS. "You're going to be a radiologist and earn $300,000 a year and he's going to flip burgers his whole life and earn $30,000 a year! Can you really believe that is going to make you happy?" But is MONEY the ONLY issue? Then there are his friends. They HATE her. "She's f*ckin' bitch, she's such a snob, acts all high and mighty 'cause we drink Old Style, gets all mad when we want take him to boxing matches, blah blah blah."

D. Now imagine that your dad dumps your mom for a 19-year-old stripper. Who are they going to hang out with: his friends or hers? Will they HAVE any friends but each other? Will any of your siblings refuse to talk to him? Will you still talk to him?

E. How many of you know someone who broke up with a boyfriend or girlfriend because that person wasn't ambitious enough? Examples:
1. He's not on the football team any more, and I really want to date a football player because I'm a cheerleader, and that's just more fun
2. He asked me to marry him and I really love him, but all he wants to do is work for his dad and take over the farm. I want to travel, and I don't want to raise my kids in Truro, Iowa.

F. How many of you know someone who got dumped, and instantly went out and dated or made out with or slept with or MARRIED the first person who came along, just to prove that SOMEONE wanted them, that they weren't just going to be all heart-broken and sad over the creep who dumped them?

G. How many of you know someone who just can't stand to be alone? As in "I hate not having a boyfriend because I hate going to the movies by myself and it's no fun at parties if you don't already have a boyfriend and besides, I need somebody who, like, can fix my car and help me carry heavy things"–the issue of significant other as personal servant.

H. How many of you know someone who got married because they were pregnant or had gotten someone pregnant?

I. How many of you know someone whose favorite pastime is not just flirting, not just sleeping around, but trying to make people fall in love with them? How many of you have met a modern-day version (male or female) of Henry Crawford from Mansfield Park, who says, "I have two weeks to kill, and I want to make someone fall in love with me. I want her to smile at me, and keep a chair for me by herself wherever we are, and be all animation when I take it and talk to her; to think as I think, be interested in all my possessions and pleasures, try to keep me longer here in town, and feel when I go away that she will never be happy again. I want nothing more."

J. How many of you know someone who married for love, but who, as the years went by, either fell out of love, or found that they didn't love each other as much as they thought, or found that they couldn't stand to live together, and so got a divorce?

K. How many of you know someone who fell out of love but stayed in a bad marriage because of kids, or because they didn't have enough skills that they could get a decent job and support themselves if they left?

L. How many of you know someone who dated, got married, seemed to be completely in love with someone, then left the relationship because they'd realized they were gay?

M. How many of you know someone who got married just so they could get cheaper health insurance?

N. How many of you know someone who says, "I want to be a virgin when I get married, and I only want to have sex with a spouse I really love, my whole life." How about someone who says, "I want to get laid as often as possible by as many different people as possible." How many of you know people in between those two extremes? Now imagine how grossed out Austen would be--not just in a religious sense of sin, but in a sense of demonstrating a lack of self-worth and self-dignity-- if she could witness a Saturday night at some undergraduate meat market bar, all these girls just desperate to go home with some loser who is never going to speak to them again. Imagine her writing a book about that.

O. Now. Who can tell me about the dating and marriage practices among British people who own at least two houses, a huge house in the country as well as an apartment in London, who sends their kids to Oxford and who own at least one Rolls Royce and one Jaguar? OK. That is the modern version of the class of people that Austen is writing about, and if you don't know any of them today, you don't know that things have changed that much. I admit I don't know for sure, but my guess is that people of that class marry for much the same reasons as they did 200 years ago, and as evidence I offer the very public failure of a marriage between people of even higher classes, i.e., Charles and Diana--a marriage that was billed, by the way, as a love match, though we know now all about Camilla, and what Charles was really after in that marriage.

We have little room to take the moral high ground when it comes to relationships. Our legal system is better; our educational system is better; women have more rights and opportunities, but when it comes to the interpersonal stuff, I think it likely that on a whole, we date and have sex and get married and get divorced for reasons every bit as pragmatic and/or deplorable and/or convoluted and/or pure as any motives anyone had in Austen's day. Instead of thinking how relationships have changed since Austen's day, I want you to think about how they might be exactly the same. Your writing assignment for next week is to pick any relationship in Emma and to write about a relationship you personally have observed that parallels it closely in some way.

Posted by Holly at 1:22 AM | Comments (3)

January 10, 2006

Prudent Matches

I've been reading all over the blogosphere about the January 3, 2006 NY Times editorial by John Tierney, discussing how smart, educated straight women are likely to end up alone because they won't date dumb men with bad jobs: these women actually do something so calculated and unromantic as consider a man's earning potential in deciding whether or not to marry him.

I admit I haven't read the editorial--I don't subscribe to the paper version of the Times, so if I want to read its columnists on line, I have to pay for the privilege, and I wouldn't fork over my last dingy centime or any other piece of no-longer-current European currency to read a single word by that shithead Tierney. Thus, my response is based only on a few excerpts and synopses provided by others. And my reaction to the synopses and excerpts I have read is pretty much this:

Duh. So what.

I mean, OF COURSE INTELLIGENT, EDUCATED STRAIGHT WOMEN TEND TO THINK ABOUT HOW MUCH MONEY A GUY IS LIKELY TO EARN IN DECIDING WHETHER OR NOT TO MARRY HIM. AN ABILITY TO GRASP THE IMPORTANCE OF THINGS LIKE FINANCES IS PART OF WHAT MAKES THEM SMART AND PART OF WHAT HELPED THEM BECOME EDUCATED.

Before I pursue that premise any further, let me make one thing clear: I'm a big believer in love. I love a lot of people. I've been in love and it has changed my life in ways I'm still grateful for. I think falling in love is one of the best things that can happen to someone. I believe in the redemptive power and possibilities of love.

And I used to think that the fact that you really, truly loved somebody sort of meant you HAD to get married, because if you love someone as much as I loved a couple of people, your feelings for them OBLIGATED you to vow to spend the rest of your life with them.

Funny how things work out.

I'm sure someone will accuse me of being as cynical and cold-blooded as John Tierney seems to have labeled my entire demographic group for what I'm about to say next. But despite my belief in love I question whether or not it is really the main reason we marry, and perhaps I feel that way not only because I am a 42-year-old single woman with a PhD, but because I'm a 42-year-old single woman with a PhD who twice in her life rather expected to get married to men I loved whole-heartedly--once I was even engaged. But I didn't end up marrying either of those two men I loved so deeply. The fiancé I didn't marry because he was gay, though we're still friends, partly because he had the decency NOT to marry me--it would have been pretty easy for him to go through with the wedding so that he could live a conventional "straight" life, much like the guys in Brokeback Mountain (which I saw with Wayne over Christmas and which I plan to write about in the near future). The other I didn't marry for a whole range of reasons including the fact that he never asked me and that, as he informed me eventually, he was "ashamed" (his word--I'm not making this up) to love me because he knew his father wouldn't approve of me: I hadn't gone to an ivy league university, like his family did; I was from rural Arizona instead of the suburban Connecticut; I had had braces but not a nosejob as a teenager. (The guy's father was a plastic surgeon, and this rotten ex of mine had miserable teeth but a finely sculpted nose.) The fact that I was more likely to finish my dissertation and get a job than he was, was actually another strike against me--he felt threatened.

So yeah, I learned a few lessons there about prudence.

I also know too many Mormons who got married far too young to the wrong person--a person whom, in their limited experience, they honestly believed they loved. But they were 21, fairly naive, incredibly horny and anxious to remain a technical virgin long enough that they could get married in the temple, which means "obeying the law of chastity," or not committing fornication. What they actually married for, some of them discovered eventually, was lust, curiosity and boredom.

I also know people who got married because (as they admitted either at the time or when they tried to figure out how they ended up in such a screwed-up marriage) they felt it was the next step in adulthood, and although they claimed to love the person they married, the marriages didn't last long--though they often lasted longer than they should have.

I also know people who got married primarily to obtain health benefits for themselves or their partner. Some of those marriages have survived; some haven't. But as advocates for gay marriage point out, a legally recognized marriage is important not because it creates or recognizes any kind of LOVE, but because it creates and recognizes economic and social privileges and rights.

This whole discussion reminds me of what happened when I taught a course on the novels of Jane Austen at the University of Iowa in 2001. (Which isn't surprising given that the title of Tierney's article is "Male Pride and Female Prejudice," although the way the article is summarized--"Traditionalists seem to be a dwindling minority as men have come to appreciate the value of a wife's paycheck"–suggests that Tierney's never read Austen carefully enough to notice the plethora of fortune-hunting men chasing little girls with big dowries.) The course was an evening course that met once a week for two and a half hours. I had 20 students, 19 young women and one young man, which made for an interesting dynamic: there was one night when the guy had to leave early, and after he walked out of the room the rest of us looked at each other and burst out laughing--there was this cool slumber-party feel to the rest of the evening. (He also mentioned at the end of the semester that he had learned more from that class than from any other class he had ever taken--he had never realized how much he didn't know about women. Imagine!)

Anyway, although I loved the class, I was extremely disappointed when I collected the first batch of papers: all but two or three of them advanced the simplistic, facile assertion that "In Austen's day people married for money, but today, we marry for love." It pissed me off because it was wrong on both counts, and it meant the students weren't paying close attention either to the books we were reading or the lives of people around them. In Austen's day, money was certainly a consideration but it wasn't the only one, and there was and remains a difference between a cold-blooded hunt for the richest spouse you can possibly catch, and a realistic recognition of what kind of income you have to have if you want to raise two kids and send them to college.

So to prove my point I wrote up a list of various scenarios involving love, status, social background and wealth, which I'll post next time.

Posted by Holly at 9:19 AM | Comments (3)

December 17, 2005

prd & prjdc

One night while I was in Belgium, Matt, Leo and I went to see the most recent adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice at the Torsion d'Or (aka the Golden Fleece) in downtown Brussels. The novel is, of course, one of the greatest masterpieces ever composed in any language, and my favorite novel. I've read it at least a dozen times, taught it several times, hope to teach it again. (One of the best courses I ever taught was "All of Austen" at the U of Iowa--it was a blast.)

This adaptation is also titled Pride and Prejudice, but I think this is inappropriate. It should be called prd & prjdc, because it is an abbreviated, overly simplified affair, relying on the hard consonants of major plot points while forfeiting the vowel-like softness of nuance and complexity provided by character development, human growth and discovery.

There are reasons why Austen's novel remains a best seller almost 200 years after it was originally published, why it is read and understood easily even by modern high school students (I first read and loved it as a 15-year-old junior), why it is so often adapted into contemporary works. Bridget Jones's Diary, after all, is based on Pride and Prejudice, and BJD as novel, at least, does a good job of retaining major elements of the plot (not so much in the movie). Then there was Bride and Prejudice, a contemporary retelling set in India, LA and London. It includes a few great Bollywood dance numbers, and is loads of fun--as well as fairly loyal to the plot.

One reason for Jane's continued popularity is the fact that her language has aged very well. Austen's prose, while intellectually and syntactically complex, precise in vocabulary and laden with humor both understated and overt, is spare on similes and metaphors. S&M are, of course, evocative, and make for richness and beauty, but they only work if you understand both the literal and connotative meanings of the objects on each side of the comparison--otherwise, they inhibit rather than augment one's understanding of what's being evoked--"ox-eyed Athena" springs to mind.

But of course the main reason Austen remains popular is that she's a fabulous storyteller with keen insight into human psychology. And that keen insight is precisely what this new adaptation lacks.

In the original novel, Fitzwilliam Darcy, a haughty, disagreeable and exceedingly rich young gentleman of 28 discovers to his mortification that he is smitten with Elizabeth Bennet, a good-natured, intelligent, relatively poor 20-year-old gentlewoman with a bunch of boorish relatives. She's not conventionally pretty enough to appeal his tastes at first (a fact he announces loudly enough for her to overhear him), and she's too willing to express unconventional opinions to suit his sense of what a woman should be. But later he finds himself for some reason captivated by her "fine eyes," resolves to learn more of her, and as he observes firsthand her intelligence, her generosity, her courage, he falls head over heels in love with her.

Meanwhile Elizabeth has developed a fervid fancy for a ne'er-do-well named George Wickham, a hot young thing who drives all the ladies mad with his gallant manners and the sad, sad tales of how he was wronged by the nasty, dishonorable Mr. Darcy. Given how smitten she is with Georgy-Porgy, given how Darcy insulted her looks, given how taciturn and unpleasant Darcy invariably is, Elizabeth has to work even to maintain basic civility in her dealings with him.

But Darcy, reading her brittle politeness as interest in him because it flatters his vanity to do so, eventually proposes marriage to her, telling her that she must put him out of his misery and agree to marry him, even though she is decidedly inferior to him in status and connexions, and that he loves her against his will, his reason and his character. Even after she refuses this less-than-flattering offer of his hand, he believes that she rejects him primarily because he has wounded her vanity "by [his] honest confession of the scruples that long prevented [his] forming any serious" design on her.

Elizabeth struggles to retain her composure and her temper as she replies, "You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way, than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentleman-like manner...You could not have made me the offer of you hand in any possible way that would have tempted me to accept it."

Darcy is mortified and astonished that anyone would dare to FORM such an opinion of him, let alone express it, but he remains silent as Elizabeth continues:

From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immovable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.

But this abhorrence of Darcy is softened and abridged, if not outright removed from the new adaptation, having been replaced with what my friends both pointed out was an "undeniable sexual attraction" between Darcy and Elizabeth. Furthermore, instead of taking place in the drawing room of the Collins' home, as it does in the book, the proposal scene in the movie occurs outside in the rain, with Darcy and Elizabeth so moved by each other's physical presence that they very nearly kiss, even after insulting each other.

Make no mistake: the novel Pride and Prejudice is full of sexual attraction, and Austen makes it clear that a good marriage needs to have a healthy dose of it to succeed. But Elizabeth is not the least bit sexually attracted to Darcy at that point: she has the hots for Wickham, and her attraction for that sexy little bad boy was one reason she is so repulsed--physically, emotionally and intellectually--by Darcy. But oh yeah, Elizabeth's crush on Wickham has been deleted from the new movie too.

Austen also makes clear that in her view of things, sexual attraction must be supported and maintained by a healthy intellectual and emotional attraction: Mr. Bennet, after all, married a girl he was sexually attracted to, only to discover that she was an idiot with whom he could never have a meaningful conversation. And so that marriage could give no lasting pleasure to either partner in it--in fact, it becomes a source of great unhappiness, not only to the two spouses, but to the children it produced.

One of the reasons the novel is so satisfying is that both of the main characters change; both discover their weaknesses and become better people by interacting with the other. John Stuart Mill describes marriage as a relation where "there exists that best kind of equality, similarity of powers and capacities with reciprocal superiority in them--so that each can enjoy the luxury of looking up to the other, and can have alternately the pleasure of leading and of being led in the path of development." That's what you get in the novel Jane Austen wrote, and it occurs precisely because the two partners in the (eventual) marriage are able to recognize and act upon valid critiques of their behavior from the other.

For instance, Darcy's letter, in which he explains his dealings with Wickham and his interferences in Bingley's intentions towards Jane, allows Elizabeth to admit to herself that

Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly. --Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself.

After inadvertently encountering Darcy at Pemberly and seeing how he has changed because of her, Elizabeth begins "to comprehend that he was exactly the man, who, in dispositions and talents, would most suit her." Months later, when Darcy finally manages to make Elizabeth the offer of his hand in a way she is willing to accept, he says, of his earlier attempt,

The recollection of what I then said, of my conduct, my manners, my expressions during the whole of it, is now, and has been many months, inexpressibly painful to me. Your reproof, so well applied, I shall never forget: ‘had you believe in a more gentleman-like manner.' Those were your words. You know not, you can scarcely conceive, how they have tortured me;--though it was some time, I confess, before I was reasonable enough to allow their justice.... I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.... I was given good principles, but left to follow them in pride and conceit....I was spoiled by my parents, who...allowed, encouraged, almost taught me to be selfish and overbearing, to think meanly of all the rest of the world, to wish at least to think meanly of their sense and worth compared to my own. Such I was, from eight to eight and twenty; and such I might still have been but for you, dearest, loveliest Elizabeth! What do I not owe you! You have taught me a lesson, hard indeed at first, but most advantageous. By you, I was properly humbled. I came to you without a doubt of my reception. You shewed me how insufficient were all my pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased.

BUT THAT'S GONE FROM THE FREAKIN' LOUSY NEW MOVIE! In it, Darcy never owns up to making any mistakes; he's always just this great guy this skinny impertinent girl doesn't have the sense to appreciate. His "pretensions to please a woman worthy of being pleased" were never insufficient, and Elizabeth's final conversation with her father makes that clear: she goes on and on about how she misunderstood him, how they all misunderstood him! She learns nothing about herself, aside from the fact that she's really lucky to have this fabulous hunky rich guy in love with her. I could scarce keep my countenance....wait a minute: I didn't even bother to TRY to keep my countenance: at that point I scowled fiercely and flipped off the screen.

I admit that I preferred Brenda Blethyn's performance as Mrs. Bennet to Alison Steadman's horrible rendering of the character--Mrs. Bennet is supposed to be a ditzy, annoying airhead, but I couldn't stand how shrill and brittle she was in the 1995 mini-series, especially when contrasted to Benjamin Whitrow's witty, dry, understated performance as Mr. Bennet. (I don't consider the performance of Mr. Bennet in the new version interesting enough to warrant mentioning the name of the actor who played him.) Judi Dench was something to behold as Lady Catherine de Bourgh: the audience gasped when she first appeared on screen. But there was so little to the role as it was written--I would bet Ms. Dench spent longer in hair and make-up than she did learning the lines or preparing for the role, because an actress of her caliber could master that particular part in her sleep.

And in my opinion, there is not praise enough in the world to do justice to Julia Sawalha's energetic, rollicking, scene-stealing performance as Lydia in the 1995 version! Wan little Jena Malone, who managed to do just fine as the pregnant Christian in Saved!, provides a Lydia who is overwhelmingly forgettable and insipid. (which I guess doesn't matter since Wickham's part is so stunted and curtailed that her elopement with him doesn't have the force or significance it should.)

I suppose I should say something about the principals.... Keira Knightley bugs--at least, she bugs me. I admit I was glad when I heard she was named Britain's Sexiest Woman, (even sexier than Sienna Miller) because she's not exactly big-breasted, and as someone else whose assets aren't all on her chest, I am happy when women are recognized as devastatingly sexy even when they lack gigantic mammary glands. But Knightley, to borrow the criticism Darcy offers of Jane, "smiles too much." And she doesn's just smile: she does these weird things to her mouth: bites her lip; starts to smile, stops, then goes ahead and smiles; smirks. She can be charming, sure: but she lacks the obvious intelligence and thoughtfulness of someone like Claire Danes, which I think are necessary to play Elizabeth. (Claire Danes is who I would have liked to see in the part--if it had been better written, that is.)

As for Matthew MacFadyen, I liked him well enough in MI5 (known as Spooks in the UK), but I didn't think he was a good Darcy. (I admit I watched MI5--and everything else MacFadyen has been in--about a year ago so I could speculate about what kind of Darcy he might make.) He seemed to think he was playing Heathcliff.... He never commanded my attention on the screen. I could say to myself, "Oh, yeah, the heroine's love interest is back; I should probably pay attention to this interaction," but I would have been just as happy to look at something else.

Then there's the matter of the ending. The version I saw in Brussels ended with Mr. Bennet's command that "If any young men come for Mary or Kitty, send them in, for I am quite at leisure." But I've been told that the version released in the US ends with some cheesy post-nuptial discussion about what Darcy should call Elizabeth, a discussion culminating in her declaration that he should address her as "Mrs. Darcy" only when she is at her happiest. I cannot but be grateful that I was spared seeing that.... I shudder to think of it.

In my opinion, credit for the fabulousness of the 1995 version goes to Andrew Davies, who wrote the screenplay. I would gladly drink this guy's bathwater... I'll watch anything he signs his name to. He has written plenty of adaptations of meaty British novels, including truly amazing versions of Middlemarch and Moll Flanders. His adaptations are always LONG, as in four or five or six hours: he devotes the time and care necessary to translate a 300-page novel into a fairly faithful film.

However, Deborah Moggach, the writer of the new version, should have her computer taken from her until she promises not to write any more trite, superficial shit.

For more analysis of the movie, check out two posts by FrankenGirl: Pride and Prejudice Publicity: Gender, Glamor, Sex and Film: Pride & Prejudice 2005 (I’m not proud. I’m just misunderstood.)

If you're a Janeite, you should see this movie, because Janeites want to know how Jane's work lives in the modern world. The movie isn't vile, exactly, just profoundly inferior to the source material. If you're not a Janeite, you might want to see this movie because you might not care how inferior it is to the original, and I have heard from enough people who don't know the original well and liked this a lot to believe that it might be OK in and of itself--and I readily admit I can't watch it that way, because I'm far too invested in the novel. But don't buy it, or anything like that: buy the 1995 (UK release date) mini-series, and Bride and Prejudice, and oh yeah, the book! Don't forget the book.

Posted by Holly at 8:24 AM | Comments (11)

December 13, 2005

I'm a Janeite

I belong to all kinds of scholarly and professional associations (The Modern Language Association, the American Association of University Women, Academy of American Poets, etc) and I try to support charitable organizations whose work I value (Red Cross, Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, etc) but there's one organization that I knew I'd want to support until I die, so a few years ago, after paying yearly membership dues for a decade, I just went ahead and bought a lifetime membership.

That organization is the Jane Austen Society of North America.

This morning when I got up and checked my email, there was a message from someone at the Jane Austen Society of Western Pennsylvania, inviting me to join the local branch. It's not so very local: The meetings are held an hour or two from where I live, but what the hell--I'll drive a few hours to talk to other Janeites.

For weeks now I've been working on a post about why I didn't like the new film adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. I'll finish and post it one of these days.... Jane's birthday is coming up--she was born December 16, 1775--and I considered posting about her that day, but there's something else I want to write about then. (Yeah, I actually do plan ahead some times.) But when I got that message this morning, I thought, OK, today it's time to say something about Jane.

She's fabulous, you know? I recently showed all six episodes of the 1995 BBC/A&E production of Pride and Prejudice to a friend, who was pleasantly surprised by how very much he liked it, that it was immediately accessible and very funny. He got a little upset when I turned the television off at the end of episode Four, when Darcy runs into Elizabeth at Pemberly, and couldn't believe how engrossed he was. If I hadn't said, "Sorry, it's time to go home," he would have kept watching because he needed to know exactly how it would all work out!

I admit I'm a little rushed for time today--I've got final papers to grade--so there's plenty to say that I'll wait and say later. Look forward to more on Jane in the next ten days! In the meantime, if you've never read it, check out this short story by Rudyard Kipling, called "The Janeites," about a guy who finds himself in the trenches of World War I in the midst of a secret society devoted to Austen--so devoted, in fact, that they name all their heavy artillery after the heavies in Austen novels--one of their biggest cannons is "Lady Catherine de Bugg."

I've read that during the worst of World War II, Winston Churchill had his daughter read Jane Austen to him every night so that he could relax--her novels managed to transport him in ways that nothing else could, so he might agree with what Humberstall concludes about Jane: "You take it from me, Brethren, there’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place. Gawd bless ’er, whoever she was."

Posted by Holly at 11:45 AM | Comments (2)

November 27, 2005

Hosts and Guests

Sunday was my last full day in Brussels. I was sitting at Matt's computer doing my email when he walked in to say good morning. We began discussing what we'd do on my last day, and I felt compelled to ask him if I'd been an OK guest.

He frowned for a moment, then nodded. "You've been an OK guest," he said, emphasizing the "OK" while looking away. Then he looked right at me. "You're not the easiest person to live with."

I frowned and nodded myself. I already knew this. At this point in my life I generally find other people hard to live with, and I figure it must work both ways. I'm very habituated to living alone, to managing my money, my space, my stuff and my time as I see fit. I first did it when I was 23, after my mission (which involved as little privacy as possible--you're allowed to use the bathroom on your own, but the rest of your time is supposed to be spent in the presence of an assigned partner, so you have fewer opportunities to break the rules). The parents of one of my friends in Tucson had a studio apartment they offered to rent me, and it seemed like a good place to live while I finished my bachelor's degree. I was surprised at how much I liked living alone. Yes, I was often lonely, but there are many, many worse things in life than loneliness, and one of them is sharing a kitchen with someone who never does the dishes, either properly or at all.

While thinking about these matters, I asked Matt if he had ever lived alone. He said he'd had his own room in the dorms in college, but we agreed that's not really living alone. Among my friends and family are what seem to me a remarkable number of people who have reached the age of 35 never having lived alone, or having lived alone in a small apartment for a year or two after college, before they move in with a significant other.

Whereas out of my 42 years on this planet, I've lived alone for 16 of them, and over eight of those years were spent not merely in an apartment but a house, so I had a yard to myself as well.

When Elizabeth Bennet (the heroine of Pride and Prejudice, for anyone unfortunate enough not to recognize that name) and her aunt visit the ladies at Pemberly one afternoon, it becomes clear to Caroline Bingley that Darcy admires Elizabeth. Jealous and upset, Miss Bingley makes a nasty comment about Elizabeth's appearance. Having failed to goad Darcy into declaring Elizabeth unattractively coarse and changed beyond recognition, Miss Bingley then complains that Elizabeth's nose lacks character while her complexion lacks brilliancy, adding, "in her air altogether, there is a self-sufficiency without fashion which is intolerable." I am sure there is considerable self-sufficiency in my air; I hope it is not entirely intolerable, but no doubt it's part of what makes me hard to live with. At least I can comfort myself with the fact that these days it's not unfashionable to be rather self-sufficient.

I like other people; I like them quite a lot. I think I'm capable of great loyalty and I try to be a generous and compassionate friend. But I also really like solitude, and I really like being in control of my time, my money, my space and my stuff. This is one reason I have often said that were I ever to marry, I would find it ideal to live next door to my husband, or perhaps share a big house with separate households in different wings or on different floors. That way we'd see each other easily enough but we wouldn't have to ask each other where the scissors are because we'd each have our own pair, in our own office. I know that seems like a mundane example of how it's inconvenient to share space with another human being, but the thing about living with someone is that it IS mundane--it's what you do every single day: accommodate the most quotidienne needs and demands of another human being.

When you're a host or a guest you do the same thing, but for a few days or weeks, instead of a few years or decades.

You could not ask for more generous or accommodating hosts than Matt and Leo. They feed me better than I feed myself. They go out of their way to amuse me. They take me places. They spend time with me and also leave me time to myself. They have a lovely home and make me very comfortable in it.

I try to be a reasonable guest: I try to minimize my requests; I try not to spend too much time in the bathroom (though it does take a long time to wash my hair); I try to do what I can for myself without being intrusive or demanding--for instance, I'll make tea for myself, because I can do that with a minimum of fuss, but I haven't insisted that anyone show me how to work the espresso machine. I am happy to let my hosts go off to the gym and leave me at home to blog (though I should really be doing some preparation for teaching--in less than 48 hours, I'll be back in the classroom).

But the fact still remains that I know darn good and well that however happy I am to have someone come visit me, I am also glad when s/he leaves and I get my space and my routine back. And I know Matt and Leo feel the same way about me--and I don't just come for a weekend, either; because it's so expensive to fly from the states and because Matt is one of my dearest friends, I always come for a week or two. And I know it's because Matt loves me that he lets me be his guest for so long, even though I'm hard to live with.

Which really does make me lucky, lucky, lucky.

Read about the rest of my trip in Someplace High in Paris, Il Neige, I Went: Europe, and Happy Thanksgiving. Get the details on coming home in Welcome Home.

Posted by Holly at 11:59 PM | Comments (3)

October 3, 2005

The Artist Sleepover

I would love to invite Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Frank O'Hara, Wallace Stevens and Oscar Wilde to my house for a sleepover. I rather suspect that Jane and Wallace might be disposed to decline the invitation, but I would wheedle and flatter, tell Jane how much I admire the navy and promise Wallace I'd buy all my insurance from him, until their resistence would deliquesce like a snowman and its mind of winter thrust suddenly into the orderly heat of Key West. Before my guests arrived, I would bake a batch of my special chocolate chocolate chip cookies, because those cookies always garner me praise, admiration and gratitude. I'd stock up on different flavors of Ben & Jerry's, because after all, the only emperor is the emperor of ice cream. I'd buy a case of Bass Pale Ale, as well of plenty of tequila, triple sec, limes, salt and ice, because who wouldn't like to see Emily Dickinson completely shitfaced? We'd lay our sleeping bags out on the living room floor and play Truth or Dare.

Actually we'd play Truth or Truth. Like I'm going to dare Frank O'Hara to make out with Oscar Wilde? I mean, yeah, I'd love to watch that, but I'd bet my entire poetry collection it would happen on its own. I'm far more interested in what they can tell me.

I'd ask Jane about sentences. She's considered one of the greatest prose writers in the English language, but in her work, metaphors are as scarce as racy lingerie in the underwear draw of a middle-aged Mormon matron. Was it a choice? Did she want clean, elegant prose, free of baroque ornamentation that might distract from her withering characterizations of fools and the wisdom achieved by her heroines and their paramours? So much of her work focuses on the ways people communicate and miscommunicate; was she working to communicate as directly as possible as with her readers? Does she think that's one reason her work has aged so well?

I'd give Frank O'Hara the complete works of David Sedaris and beg him to read some of it aloud. I'd ask him what he thinks of Oscar's statement in The Critic as Artist that "That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul." I'd ask him what he really thinks of Andy Warhol's work. I'd invite him to lunch, hoping he'd write a poem about it later. I'd play some Madonna and convince him to dance.

As for Wallace--first of all, I'd want to know how he came up with the name Holly for his daughter, way back around 1910. (Of course I think it's a fabulous name, but there aren't many people my age or older with that name. The character who popularized the name was of course Miss Holly Golightly, but in her case, Holly was short for Holiday, and her real name was Lula May.) I'd give him Julia Kristeva's Powers of Horror, then ask him to discuss "The Man on the Dump" in terms of Kristeva's notion of the abject. I'd ask him how we recognize and reckon with the mess. If you're Eve in the garden and you can't tell the garden has become a junk heap, then what's going on?

I'd ask Emily about friendship and death. I'd ask about mastering homemaking skills, since when she was 25, she "won second prize in the bread division at the local cattle show." I'd ask about dwelling in possibility. I'd ask if she ever had her astrological charts done. (Emily, Jane and I are all Sagittariuses--Jane and I share the same birthday.) I'd ask about her refusal to be baptized into the religion of her family and if she was ever afraid of God. I'd ask her about this poem, one of my favorites in the whole word:

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes--

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us--
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the meanings are--

None may teach it--Any--
'Tis the Seal Despair--
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air--

When it comes, the Landscape listens--
Shadows--hold their breath--
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death--

I'd ask about internal difference. Her answer would probably make me as earnest and overblown as a Tony Kushner character, so to lighten the mood I'd show her my meticulously ordered closets: one for shirts and blouses, one for skirts and dresses, another for trousers and miscellaneous items, and of course my coat closet (I just bought the coolest lightweight sky blue quilted walking coat), and ask if she wanted to try on any of my clothes.

And Oscar? First of all I'd ask him if his last words were really, "Either this wallpaper goes or I do." I'd ask if he still loves Bosie. I'd ask if he has truly forgiven Bosie. I'd ask him about Constance, where his wife fits into the memory of his life. I'd tell him that in the first year of my PhD program, I wrote a paper about him that was returned with the comment that it was "wonderfully well written and enormously entertaining. It feels like it could be published in Vogue, say, beginning as it does with ‘boredom' and ending with a rowdy affirmation" and a grade of A-. (Anyone else who's done work toward a PhD ever have a professor tell you your critical work could appear in Vogue?) I would read him this paragraph from another paper I wrote about him:

For Eliot, who got away with his dictum that "good poets steal; bad poets borrow" partly because Wilde had already announced, "Of course I plagiarise. It is the privilege of the appreciative man," his proximity to Wilde (and perhaps his homophobia) was too great: he is Wilde's hypocrite lecteur but the familial slot Eliot occupies is not frere but fils. Eliot as Oedipus is aware of Wilde as Laios, and is very uncomfortable with his brilliant, tragic, homosexual, disgraced and already dead father. He could not allow himself to acknowledge or appreciate Wilde, not only when borrowing from and expanding on, but also when reacting against and attempting to refute, Wilde's work. He is anxious to see completed the erasure of Wilde begun after Wilde's fall from grace.

I'd get him to agree with me that Eliot is thoroughly overrated and The Waste Land really kind of sucks. I'd ask him about this passage from de Profundis:

Great passions are for the great of soul, and great events can be seen only by those who are on a level with them. We think we can have our emotions for nothing. We cannot. Even the finest and most self-sacrificing emotions have to be paid for. Strangely enough, that is what makes them fine. The intellectual and emotional life of ordinary people is a very contemptible affair. Just as they borrow their ideas from a sort of circulating library of thought--the Zeitgeist of an age that has no soul and send them back soiled at the end of each week--so they always try to get their emotions on credit, or refuse to pay the bill when it comes in. We must pass out of that conception of life; as soon as we have to pay for an emotion we shall know its quality and be the better for such knowledge.

Then I'd cry and cry and tell him that I have always loved him.

I'd haul out my copies of their work--especially the ones I read and cherished like love letters as an undergrad, the filemot pages now brittle and loose in their cheap bindings--and beg them for autographs. I'd give every last one of them the address for this blog and ask them please to comment. I'd stare out the window at the darkness beyond my neighbors' houses and think about nothing that is not there and the nothing that is. Then I'd shout, "Who wants more margaritas?"

p.s. Saviour, you are absolutely invited this time.

Posted by Holly at 6:17 AM | Comments (2)

September 18, 2005

A Necessary Ingredient for Enjoying Art

I love Grendel by John Gardner so much I wish I'd written it.

It is, of course, a retelling of the Beowulf saga from the point of view of the monster who wrecks Hrothgar's meadhall and feasts on his men.

I love it because it's a fiercely intellectual book, concerned with truth and ultimate meaning. I love it because it has so many fabulous lines. I love it because the dragon Grendel visits is one of the best characters ever created in all of literature.

I love it because plot is never the point: if you've read Beowulf, you know how Grendel ends: Beowulf rips Grendel's arm off, and Grendel goes off to bleed to death in the woods. So you don't read it for what happens, you read it for how it happens, and why what happens matters.

I get annoyed when people refuse to know anything beyond the initial set-up of a book they want to read or a movie they want to watch. "Don't tell me! Don't ruin the end for me!" they shout, covering their ears, as if ignorance is a necessary ingredient for enjoying art. If I feel I'm getting too caught up in wondering what will happen next to appreciate things in a text like musicality of language and construction of scene, I'll read the end so I can just dispense with the suspense and concentrate on enjoying the pages before the end, rather than racing through to the end.

The best books remain compelling and worthwhile even when you know exactly how they end: you enter the world of the book and that world takes over. I've read Pride and Prejudice at least fifteen times, and every time I read it, I am as engrossed, as anxious to read the next scene, as if I didn't know the story at all--because Austen's prose is just so good, her insight into human beings so clear-eyed and astute, her narrative so breathtakingly complex and rewarding. I reread it this summer and had to stay up until 3:30 in the morning to finish it--I just couldn't put it down until I was done.

Grendel is the same way, and I love it for that; I love that its world is so compelling. I also love Grendel for the stark, empty epiphany he has as he confronts his death. He insists even in the final moments of his life that everything is a matter of chance, that nothing is fated, but at the same time, one choice is as good as another. He refuses to believe that Beowulf managed to hurt him through anything but accident, fortunate for Beowulf, unfortunate for Grendel.

I will cling to what is true. "Blind, mindless, mechanical Mere logic of chance." I am weak from loss of blood. No one follows me now. I stumble again and with my one weak arm I cling to the huge twisted roots of an oak. I look down part stars to a terrifying darkness. I seem to recognize the place, but it's impossible. "Accident," I whisper. I will fall. I seem to desire the fall, and though I fight it with all my will I know in advance that I can't win. Standing baffled, quaking with fear, three feet from the edge of a nightmare cliff, I find myself, incredibly, moving toward it. I look down, down, into bottomless blackness, feeling the dark power moving in me like an ocean current, some monster inside me, deep sea wonder, dread night monarch astir in his cave, moving me slowing to my voluntary tumble into death.

In On Becoming a Novelist, Gardner discusses that scene and comments that while writing it, he was thinking "child thoughts of death with undertones of guilt and the ultimate moral ugliness of God." I have always loved both that phrase and that idea. I do think the idea of God, at least in his Christian form, is one of the most morally repugnant ideas humanity has ever invented, in part because God is so capricious--fate is a matter of his choices, in which one choice is as good as another: he can choose to destroy the world by flood, and then choose not to, and it's all pretty much the same as far as morality and ethics go, because he's God and gets to say so. When I still believed in such a creature, I also often felt like I was falling off the world into some endless hideous darkness.

Which maybe is another reason I don't mind knowing how things turn out.

But don't let the fact that I've provided one of the last paragraphs of the book and the idea behind it prevent you from reading Grendel yourself if you haven't already. It's so good! And since you know now (if you didn't already) how it's going to end, take your time and notice how inventive and insightful the book is, and don't worry about the plot.

Posted by Holly at 9:29 PM | Comments (1)