July 29, 2008

Rereading Emily of New Moon

I reread Emily of New Moon this weekend, still riding the wave of recent L.M. Montgomery mania (which Steph at Crooked House rounds up here). I was surprised (but then not overly) to discover that my paperback copy was actually stolen goods, my then-school library’s ownership stamped on the inside cover, and with no evidence of a “discard”.

I don’t remember how old I was when I first encountered Emily, but she never entranced me the way that Anne did. I do remember enjoying the books, but also how difficult I found them, and I could never quite explain why, and Emily-lovers never really understood what I meant, but I see it now. First being that I read all of Montgomery’s books really young, and any of my understanding of Anne of Green Gables was probably due to having watched the Kevin Sullivan film, which came out when I was six. There was never an Emily movie, and so I was unfamiliar with the story. (This is interesting also to consider how the cinematic Anne influenced my impressions of that novel, considering how different it was to read Emily without such pictures in my mind).

That I had no “template” for understanding Emily might read a bit strangely, considering this story of an incorrigible orphan girl in PEI with romantic dreams and literary leanings, who is sent to live with bachelor/spinster strangers and changes their lives, investing a lonely old house with the heart it had lost, and bewitching every single person in town. That the novel is so remarkably like Anne, however, only shows Montgomery’s progression as a novelist between 1908 and 1923 (nine books later). Emily is a longer book, her character drawn with so much more detail, we get inside her head the way we never really did with Anne, her perspective maintained throughout the text. Her own progression is less a series of scrapes and lessons learned. She has not Anne’s fiery temper– her own outbursts are usually in protest to some injustice instead. She has a certain steadiness uncanny for a child. Emily grows up, but she never changes, she never relents.

This depth of character would have been what tripped me up back when I first read this book. The complicated nature of the others too– I remember being confused by Mr. Carpenter, who tormented the students who had potential in order to draw it further from them, and their ambivalent feelings towards him, and how I couldn’t comprehend it. Though I remember finding Dean Priest’s feelings for Emily a bit creepy, and I still do. Class issues– what it meant that Perry came from a place called “Stovepipe Town” and I remembering picturing a village full of men wearing top hats.

This time around, the book was a pleasure, to discover what I’d been missing. I liked the novel’s engagement with the wider world– stories of immigration, with history. As with Anne, I loved Emily’s bookishness, her passion for writing and how she’d have to do it anyway even if she’d never make a penny. The wise advice that she is given:

“If at thirteen you can write ten good lines, at twenty you’ll write ten times ten– if the gods are kind. Stop messing over months, though– and don’t imagine you’re a genius either, if you have written ten decent lines. I think there’s something trying to speak through you– but you’ll have to make yourself a fit instrument for it. You’ve got to work hard and sacrifice– by gad, girl, you’ve chosen a jealous goddess.”

July 28, 2008

This is a photograph

As in Atwood’s poem, “This is a photograph of me”: “The photograph was taken the day after I drowned./ I am in the lake, in the center of the picture, just under the surface…” Except that I didn’t drown, and I am just left of centre, but this is a photograph of me and I am in the lake, with Stuart. We’ve been away all weekend with our friends Bronwyn and Alex, who were kind enough to share their cottage and the BMW to take us there. And the weekend was such an adventure!

We saw two frogs, three hummingbirds, a snake(!), and lots of minnows. The cottage was cottage-perfect, full of thirty years of fantastic family history. The weather was sometimes good, and often terrible. This meant a massive thunderstorm knocked out our power and so we had to live as our ancestors did, conserving freezer-door openings in order not to hasten the ice cream’s melting. Luckily we had a bbq at our disposal, and the beer stayed cold, and after the storm the sun came out, and we went swimming and canoeing. As the sun went down, we made do with candlelight, and played Apples to Apples late into the evening, and then went outside to be ravished with stars.

We made an obligatory cheese factory stop, and bought a bag of curds and then went in and bought another. We spent plenty of time reading (and I writing!), and, of course, eating. Obligatory watermelon too, and we all pretended not to be terrified when the storm came, when the hail fell from the sky like wrath unfurled. We cheered when the sun came, and cursed it when it left. We also took 85 pictures, because we have a new camera at our house (exciting!). I gave up a lifelong passion for frog-catching because Stuart said it was cruel. We bathed in bug spray, and braved cold water, sang “Boom didi yada”. The power came back on this afternoon.

July 25, 2008

Looking forward

It may have been raining plenty of late, but it is still summer. We’re off on a cottage mini-break this weekend, for which we’re very lucky and excited, and life is never ever better than it is in July. However the following is a list of things for which I’m looking forward to autumn (and they must be good, to make me look past July). Surprise, surprise, they’re mainly bookish:

• Once by Rebecca Rosenblum (Biblioasis, September 15)
• Goldengrove by Francine Prose (Harper Collins Canada, September 3)
• The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews (Knopf Canada, September 2)
• Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing (Harper Collins Canada)
• Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings by M.H. Rubio (Doubleday Canada October)
• When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson (Bond Street Books, September 9)
• What It Feels Like For A Girl by Jennica Harper (Anvil Press, September 15)
• Promised Land by Dar Williams (September)

July 25, 2008

Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky

Fire in the Blood by Irène Némirovsky is a funny little book. Although twisting in its plot, it is rather straightforward in its twists, and I thought I had it all figured out when I finished reading. I had its two main points summed up, but there was just one problem– that these two main points were entirely contradictory, and so I delved further into the text to try to solve this problem, and discovered there is a whole lot going on in this novel than what I’d first assumed.

My experience being quite analogous to the story, a similar theme to Suite Française— that rural tranquility can belie all variety of human drama, and that even in Arcadia, there be– in addition to death– murder in particular, and love, and lust, and secrets and lies.

Fire in the Blood is narrated by Silvio, structured as a notebook, as he observes the passage of time during the autumn of his life. The novel beginning upon his young niece Colette’s engagement, and he reflects upon her happiness, “the fire in her blood” that he remembers from his own youth. That seems so distant from him now, so much so that he supposes if he ever happened to meet his young self, he wouldn’t even recognize him. The past is past, and he is old, and, as his cousin remarks to him, “My god, if only one could know at twenty how simple life is…”

This is a novel quite obvious in its imagery, full of images of burning and fever, of fire and flame. This sort of energy similar to “the force that through the green fuse drives the flower”, I suppose, Silvio’s cousin remarking to him, “Ah, dear friend, when something happens in life, do you ever think about the moment that caused it, the seed from which it grew?… Imagine a field being sowed and all the promise that’s contained in a grain of wheat, all the future harvests…”

When Colette’s husband is murdered, however, and the points of a complicated love triangle become clear, notions of “promise” become dark and ominous. Raising questions of chance or destiny, what happens to our fire, how the past changes as it gets away, and that youth is eternal, always the same, that promise. Silvio asking, “But who would bother to sow his fields if he knew in advance what the harvest would bring?” but still we do, knowing full well what the end is.

This story’s simplicity is deceptive, and perhaps undermined by the fact of this book’s history. Némirovsky’s own story being well known, as well as the story of Suite Française and its remarkable discovery. Fire in the Blood has similar origins, part of it thought missing for years and only found quite recently among the author’s other papers. And it is clear to me that this novel wasn’t finished, wasn’t quite polished, for though the writing is strong (this partly due to translator Sandra Smith, of course), the novel’s structure is clunky and fragmented. Not to the point where the reading is compromised, but the effect is not that of the greatness that was so evident from Suite Française. This being wholly understandable within its context, and so the context becomes necessary, enhancing. This reader being grateful for the author still having sowed her seeds.

July 25, 2008

Oh, we do love love

Oh, we do love love here at Pickle Me This. The true kind, the dream-come-true kind. We love perfect couples and wonderful friends, and how exciting then, to get to celebrate all of this. Because my friend Paul, he of the years of steadfastness, the life-saving, the infinite goodness (and besides if it weren’t for him, I would never have met my husband) has asked the remarkable Hannah to marry him. And smart girl she is, she said yes. Hannah, who I adored from the second we met, and, selfishly, I must admit that I’m also excited because this means I get to be friends with her forever too. They are a perfect couple, so wonderful together and oh so happy. What a spectacular beginning now, and here’s to brilliant days ahead.

July 24, 2008

Of poetry and war crimes

What I’ve found fascinating about recently-captured Serbian war-criminal Radovan Karadžić was not his hair (which, incidentally, is quite remarkable both before and after) but rather the fact that, in addition to being guilty of crimes of genocide, he is a poet. That he is a poet surprised me, because I’d always supposed that literature in general and poetry in most particular would act as some sort of inoculating force against the decisiveness, the arrogance, narrow vision, and lack of empathy necessary for such a crime.

But perhaps I am naive, and you-know-who was a painter, etc., and surely there have been plenty of evil writers. Yes, definitely there have been some evil writers, by which I mean writers who thought, said, wrote some evil things, but unlike the poet/war-criminal, this doesn’t surprise me at all. For surely it is the writer’s role to think himself into places others can’t even fathom, and it’s natural that some might choose to stay there. But I do see a mild distinction between thinking and doing, the former abhorrent and the latter inexcusable.

It still surprises me that poet could do, a poet. Poets, I’d supposed, knowing better than the rest of us the careful constructs upon which ideas are built, of “just words” after all, and how those words and those ideas can’t be bent and twisted into anything, and that anything is everything, and that nothing can be sure. The difference of a line break, a comma; how fragile is simply everything, including life itself.

But perhaps I’ve overestimating this man, and all evidence suggests as much– the poems are terrible. I read the excerpts and reasoned that they must have been put through an online translator, or translated by a drunk illiterate baboon, but they are said to be as “bad in the original as they sound in the English version.” The lesson being that bad poets are prone to war crimes? But then I’m not so sure, because that kind of assumption is bound to tarnish the reputations of a lot of us.

July 24, 2008

Already Elsewhere

Taking offense to a recent article which termed fiction as distraction, and non-fiction as enlightenment, my friend K at The Pop Triad has some wonderful things to say:

“Fiction is a distraction, but all books are. Reading steals you from the sensory world around you and immerses you in the interior world of the pages in front of you. The temperature and sounds of the place where you sit to read, your seat itself, are irrelevant. You could be anywhere because you are already elsewhere.”

And she wonders if “it’s time to reconsider our collective mindset about the kinds of books that are distractingly enlightening and the kinds that are simply distracting.”

July 24, 2008

Abundant abundance

We’re entering that wonderful time of abundant abundance, and our aubergine/eggplants are blossoming purple. I didn’t even know that eggplants blossomed in purple, which is only one of the thousands of things I don’t about the food that I eat. As well, lots was blooming at the market today– we got blackberries, tomatoes, and cantaloupe in particular. And also purple dragon carrots, which are fabulous.

In other news concerning marvelous creation, may I please introduce you to our cousin site, Create Me This. It is the homegrown initiative of my talented husband, with a little help from me.

July 23, 2008

Birthday Haul

Due to bibliochaos in a variety of forms, I’ve not been able to show you the fine stack of books I received for my birthday last month. The top five a gift from my wonderful in-laws from across the sea where books are cheap, and so I’ve got Henry James’s Daisy Miller, An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel, and Penelope Lively’s Consequences before me. As well as two books I’ve read already but absolutely had to own– Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work and Ian McEwan’s Saturday. My friends Kate and Paul sent me Stalking the Wild Asparagus, in hopes that I’ll go foraging for muskrat and cattails. There is even a recipe for raccoon pie, but I’m not baking. My friend Paul and Hannah, his partner-in-goodness, gave me a copy of Red Wine on the Carpet by Mrs. Danvers (who is said to be a niece of the Mrs. Danvers). Nicola Barker’s Darkmans came from Bronwyn and Alex. The remarkable Rebecca Rosenblum blessed me with Forms of Devotion by Diane Schoemperlen, and finally the bottom three from my fantastic husband who always knows just what I need– Summer of My Amazing Luck by Miriam Toews, Garbo Laughs by Elizabeth Hay, and the breathtakingly marvelous This is San Francisco.

July 22, 2008

So much can slip on by

I’m now rereading Joan Didion’s Where I Was From, which is a very different book from the one I first encountered last May. Partly because I’ve visited California since then, and therefore have a more concrete image of what she describes. Which is not to say Didion’s descriptions are inadequate, but rather now I see something different. In addition, I just finished Sharon Butala’s The Garden of Eden, which has provided Didion’s consideration of California agriculture-culture with a context. I’ve also found that Joan Didion is always worth a trip back to, for she is so subtle that much can slip on by.

Good things on the web of late: I also thought Feist singing “One Two Three Four” on Sesame Street was truly lovely, and will link to Carl Wilson’s post about this because it contains some other vintage Sesame Street counting hits. My new favourite website is Fernham, by Woolf scholar Anne E. Fernald. Writer Margo Rabb’s struggles upon discovering she’d written a YA book, and Laurel Snyder understands.