Read A Book About Reading

A BOOK CLUB WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Painting by Vittorio Matteo Corcos (1859 - 1933)
Book by Stefan Bollmann (b 1958)
Foreward by Karen Joy Fowler (b 1950)
Thanks to my friend Katy B. for giving me this gorgeous and inspiring book. I read the foreword and introductory material months ago, just after Christmas, and since then have had the book on my coffee table, where I pick it up at random quiet moments and study the classic paintings (plus a few photographs) of reading women, beautifully explained by author / editor Stefan Bollmann. I was delighted to note the inclusion by Bollmann of a few prints that have appeared previously on my Book Blog (e.g., Young Woman with Book, by Alexander Deineka; Reading Girl by Franz Eybl; and Young Girl Reading by Jean-Honoré Fragonard). Great minds!

by Alexander Deineka
Speaking of great minds, thanks to my friend Katie F. for suggesting earlier in the summer that I might enjoy reading The Jane Austen Book Club, which I promptly ordered and placed carefully atop my towering "to read" stack.

The connection was right in front of me, but I missed it until, by happy coincidence, Katie F. stopped by to visit, noticed and admired Women Who Read laying out in pride of place on my table, and then exclaimed "Foreword by Karen Joy Fowler -- she also wrote The Jane Austen Book Club! Have you read it yet? No, I hadn't, but I did so right away, then re-read Fowler's opening remarks about dangerous reading women, and typed up the following favorite passages from each:

Women Who Read Are Dangerous

"Centuries upon centuries . . . women have read on -- the unacceptable books as well as the acceptable, Gothic novels in the time of Austen, Harlequin romances, horror novels, space operas, mysteries, police procedurals, chick lit, biographies . . . Now they are joining book clubs . . ." (16, emphasis added).

by Jean-Honoré Fragonard
"One might wonder why artists so often choose a woman reading as the subject of a painting or photograph. . . . the image is an interestingly complicated one. . . . She might, while the book lasts, be a completely different person from the one we are seeing. . . . She might be having trouble concentrating, or she might be spellbound. She might be escaping from boredom into a frothy romantic comedy [by Jane Austen!] . . . she might be experiencing some transformation so profound that she will never be quite the same again. At the very moment we see her, the scales might be falling from her eyes" (13 - 14).

The Jane Austen Book Club

"Austen suggests that Udolpho is a dangerous book, because it makes people think life is an adventure . . . But that's not the kind of book that's really dangerous to people. . . . All the while it's Austen writing the really dangerous books . . . Books that people really do believe, even hundreds of years later. How virtue will be recognized and rewarded. How love will prevail. How life is a romance" (141).

by Franz Eybl
"There was something appealing in thinking of a character with a secret life that her author knew nothing about. Slipping off while the author's back was turned to find love in her own way. Showing up just in time to deliver the next bit of dialogue with an innocent face. If Sylvia were a character in a book, that's the kind she's want to be" (171).

Another timely connection: As I was pulling this post together, my good friend and reading buddy Cate sent me an excellent article:

"Why Books and Reading Are More Important Than Ever"

containing these inspiring words by Will Schwalbe

When it’s a beautiful day, I read in the park.
When it’s raining, I read under the covers.
When I’m on a plane, I read on the plane.
When the plane is stuck on the tarmac,
I have more time to read on the plane.

"I wrote that books remain one of the few defenses we have against narrowness, domination, and mind control. But only if we read them – and then only if we spring into action based on what we’ve learned and discovered. Books can’t do anything by themselves. They need us.

"Today we need to read more than ever. And we need to act now more than ever.

"If you are reading this essay, you aren’t reading a book. At least, not this very second. But you’re probably a book reader or you wouldn’t have found your way here or clicked on the shared link that brought these words to your attention. And there’s the rub. I’m writing a piece about the importance of books for an audience already sold on the concept. And it’s taking you (and me) away from them."

additional titles from Schwalbe:

Books for Living & The End of Your Life Book Club

I had to write straight back to Cate:

"I love this essay and it fits right in with the blog post that I'm working on right now: "Read A Book About Reading." No kidding -- that's the title that I gave it before reading this essay, in which he talks about the very same conundrum of reading an essay about reading! I'll add the link here as soon as I get done! Hey I've got writing to do! As Schwalbe commands us: 'Seriously. Go! I've got books to read. You do, too.' What a great conclusion!"

Dreams, 1896

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Thursday, September 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ BEAUTIFUL POEM FROM CHARLOTTE ERIKSSON ~
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST ~ THIS MONTH ~ MORE FROM CATE ~
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Notes Toward a Heroine of Sensibility

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

"The whole of anything is never told;
you can only take what groups together."
from
The Notebooks of Henry James
A couple of things happened over the weekend:

First, I had a note from the niece of my dear friend and literary colleague, Celine Carrigan, marking the 20th - year memorial of her passing. Twenty years . . . without Celine . . . it will never seem right.

Second, I had a call from my friend Sandy S - K asking me, on behalf of her studious daughter Rachel, how I used to prepare for my big exams. What came to mind was my typical strategy, suggested by Henry James (above) of taking "what groups together."

In fact, I remember applying that particular strategy when getting ready, with assistance from Celine, for a presentation on "The Heroine of Sensibility" (one of her specialties) -- and I still have those notes! So I pulled them to take a look and see what I had learned and hopefully retained from that study session.

Thus, I begin this post with a shout - out of "Congratulations!" to Rachel on the completion of her M.A. in English / Writing. And I dedicate these musings to the memory of Celine's scholarship and pedagogy. She was a gentlewoman and a scholar, a beloved teacher and a true friend, and a heroine of sensibility in her own right.

~ Heart - shaped ornaments ~ a gift from Celine ~

From the 18th Century through the present day, the heroine of sensibility has animated the British and American novel with spirited introspection and vibrant discourse. Despite lack or loss of legitimate authority in her life, her will is always strong enough to initiate a natural regrouping, restoring order and continuity. She strives for autonomy, self - determination, and a life not entirely bound by acquiescence. Modernist Carolyn Heilbrun suggests a more appropriate designation: "The Woman as Hero."

Such a character believes herself sufficiently in control of the situation at hand; she develops a sense of her own identity as she contemplates and searches for destiny. As with any male hero, the woman as hero struggles with the tension "between her apparent freedom and her actual relegation to a constrained destiny."

All you have to do is google "sensibility," and Jane Austen is all over the place. In chronological order here are a few additional authors and novels that capture the characters and the concepts:

Samuel Richardson / Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded (1740)
My thoughts: Her focus finally shifts from the wickedness around her to a matter of confusion within her soul. She identifies herself as "an enemy she never thought of before." She names her own mind as the power with which she must struggle. Pamela holds out for being treated as a social and economic equal, for unrestricted, unclassed treatment as a human being.

Samuel Richardson / Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady (1748)
"Steadily she [Clarissa Harlowe] has refused the marriage he offers: she cannot marry without love, cannot love without honour, and cannot honour the man who, by every action, has ruined his (not her own) honour in her eyes" (Elizabeth Bowen, from English Novelists, 1942). Clarissa transcends the limits set by the novel's world.

Henry Fielding / The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, 1749
" 'Love,' says Squire Allworthy, 'however much we may corrupt and pervert its meaning . . . remains a rational passion' " (21).

Charlotte Bronte / Jane Eyre (1847)
"But Jane, like Clarissa Harlowe, still identifies virtue with the power to keep her fate in her own hands" (Elizabeth Bowen, from English Novelists, 1942).

"As Celine Carrigan notes . . . Charlotte Bronte's heroines, unlike their creator are generally 'free from the burden of imposed responsibility' (214, "Versions of the Governess: Narrative Patterns in Ellen Weeton, Elizabeth Gaskell, and Charlotte Bronte." Diss. U of Notre Dame, 1988). They work to support themselves, but do not have others dependent upon them; rather, they assert her belief that work in itself is respectable and healthy for women" (Christine Doyle in Louisa May Alcott and Charlotte Bronte: Transatlantic Translations, 140).

from Jane Eyre, Chapter 2: "How is he my master? Am I a servant?"

" 'Unjust! -- unjust!' said my reason."

Jane resolves to achieve escape from insupportable oppression.

Chapter 10: " . . . my experience had been of its rules and systems; now I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitements, awaited those who had courage to go forth into its expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils."

Emily Bronte / Wuthering Heights (1847)
"The love in it is relentless, as pure of hope as it is of flesh. . . . here is the real English dark tower of passion above rationality. Wuthering Heights bears no definite feminine stamp -- though perhaps only a woman could have liberated her spirit so completely" (Elizabeth Bowen, from English Novelists, 1942).

Henry James / Portrait of a Lady (1881)
My favorite thing about Isabel Archer: when she says, "I feel very old." And Ralph responds, "You'll grow very young again. . . ." (Chapter 54, p 471).

James gives Isabel traits of himself and of his beloved cousin Minny Temple, who died young of tuberculosis and of whom he said: "She would have given anything to live."

Created late in the 19th Century, Isabel is a modern heroine of sensibility: honest, imaginative, innocent, intelligent, philosophical, presumptuous, reflective, soul - searching -- so many admirable traits! Even so, it is a struggle to order her own life and control her own destiny without being "ground in the very mill of the conventional." Thinking over the ways in which fate and friends have let her down, Isabel suspects that "she might have been a woman more blest."

E. M. Forster / Howards End (1910):
Of course, I have invoked Forster many times over on this blog for his iconic phrase "Only connect! (See Mission Statement, Commonplace Book, King & Queen, Handful of Dust, RedBear.)

Taking a closer look at the hero of Howards End: Margaret Schlegel begins the novel with an awareness of herself, her sexuality, and her lack of inheritance; by the end, she inherits from Mrs. Wilcox a sense of England and a sense of reality that allows her to pass the inheritance on.

Helen to Margaret: "But you picked up the pieces, and made us a home. Can't it strike you -- even for a moment -- that your life has been heroic?" (222 - 23).

E. M. Forster / A Passage to India (1924)
My favorite thing about Adela Quested: "She loved plans" (147). She speaks the truth, makes decisions, alienates everyone, shakes the world, and makes a fool of herself in the cause of justice. Unlike other characters in the novel, she is capable of public heroism. She finds her function beyond the range of her womanhood. As a heroine of sensibility, her innate quest is not necessarily bound by a desire for romance and children. [Likewise Miles Franklin's heroine Sybylla Melvyn in her 1901 novel My Brilliant Career. In the movies, both Adela and Sybylla are portrayed brilliantly by Judy Davis.]

Doris Lessing / The Golden Notebook (1962)
Anna thinks,"That will be my epitaph. Here lies Anna Wulf, who was always too intelligent." Anna and her friend Molly are "free women," but their emotional structure is incompatible with the fragmentation of real life: " . . . the point is, that as far as I can see, everything's cracking up" and our strongest emotions are irrelevant to the time we live in. Despite her notebooks, Anna fears that her words "have no connection with anything I feel to be true" and suffers from a lack of conviction and faith in her own significance. As a heroine of sensibility, Anna wonders "What anonymous whole am I part of?" Furthermore, she is willing to pay the price of seeing whole, including anxiety, exhaustion, and responsibility: "The world would never get itself understood, be ordered by words, be 'named,' unless [she] remained a woman who was able to be responsible" (651). [Likewise Margaret Drabble's character Alison in The Ice Age who must endure for the sake of her daughters.]

Though possessed of many gifts and talents, the heroine of sensibility still makes mistakes; in fact her very self - honesty and introspection sometimes lead her into inevitable error. The woman as hero is not always able to please herself, nor does she escape her share of the world's burdens. Yet her path is made more interesting to herself and to the reader because she consults her feelings and acts from the highest dictates of her intelligence.

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Sunday, May 14th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

The Ides of Whatever

A TIME WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
Posting a day late in honor of the time - honored
historic and historical Ides of March.

I came across this mysteriously annotated sugar packet when cleaning out my backpack the other day. How can I explain it? I searched my mind but drew a blank. It seems that once again I've written a note to myself yet completely forgotten what it was that I intended to remember. I can only assume that at some point in my travels, a stray thought crossed my mind -- something about "The Present" -- and, having a pen in hand but no paper, I jotted down a note to myself on the nearest portable surface -- thank goodness for the ubiquity of sugar packets!

It wouldn't be the first time! A friend of mine at Notre Dame asked me once how I could write down so little, and I assured her that I would retain what I needed to know. She couldn't believe that sometimes I didn't even have a notebook, and she liked to say that if I suddenly needed to write something down, I would just reach back and tear the label from my tee - shirt and jot down a word or two for future reference. I never really did that, but I liked that story!

Alas, despite my best intentions, I am unable to interpret the sugar packet message, sent by my very own self from the past into the future, never to be understood in the present. I am not alone, however; Joan Didion's journal entry -- "dinner with E, depressed" -- suffers the same indecipherable fate:

Who is E?
Was this "E" depressed,
or was I depressed?
Maybe one day my sugar packet message will reveal itself to me. Was I thinking of a gift for someone -- a present to purchase, wrap, send, or bring to a party? Was it perhaps a self - actualizing reminder to stay focused on the time at hand, to live in the present moment. One thing I know for sure, I will never solve this riddle by staring at the sugar packet, so I think it is about time to move on to some prose and poetry about time.

"Lets look to the past only as it gives us pleasure.
And look to the future only as it gives us hope."
from Death Comes to Pemberley (2011)
by P. D. James (1920 - 2014)

Jane Austen version:
"Think only of the past as its
remembrance gives you pleasure."
So often we are impatient for time to pass. Years ago, in a book from childhood, I read a story that warned against such impatience. I have lost all the details -- title, author, plot; yet one scene has stayed with me, though I can no longer recall the names of the characters: the grandchildren are piled into a one - horse open sleigh, riding over the river and through the wood with their grandfather. Excited for their destination, they start wishing they were already there, but the grandfather warns: "You must never wish the time away!" How often that line has come back to me!

Even so, we sometimes wish for the time to fly. The Here and Now can drive us a little crazy -- making us tense, so to speak! It might be that you are not really into the Ides of March, or the Ides of He Who Must Not Be Named, or the Ides of Whatever. Maybe March just isn't your favorite month, as was certainly the case for one of my favorite Philadelphia columnists Karen Heller (now of the Washington Post). In her humorous essay "Nine days to go," she gloomily describes the final days of February:

You must not fight February but embrace it like the cold, wet, aging testy, mangy, drooling gray mutt that it is. February is here to make us appreciate May . . . How can you love May when you haven't Februaryed in grand style? And so we wallow and we wait knowing that only this month could deliver a comeback, a punchline, a headache as nasty and wicked and ugly as February.
March. ~ from the Philadelphia Inquirer, mid 1990s

Poet Leonard Orr shares the negative sentiment, suggesting "daychotomies" or "weekectomies" to get through the offending times, going so far as to eliminate entirely The Month That Must Not Be Named. Even the title offers some alternatives to the Present Tense:

Past Tense, Future Tense
My naive calendar has so much sadness now
I could not stand it. Little did I know,
little did I know. I snipped away the foul days.
I completely excised whatever was that
month after February, its name I will not mention.
If it comes up accidentally, I drown it out
with whirling greigers and stamping feet. April
turned out far better, though individual days
when we could not be together, these I carefully
snipped away, performing daychotomies,
weekectomies, and sutured the ragged sad edges
together, wetting the wounds as needed
with my abundant fluids, all my excess. I expanded
those few times we were together, those dates
receiving hour - augmentations; I botoxed my tongue,
the tips of my fingers, to seal inside me those
recollections of you, the spectacular aerie,
the tiny bits of time, ticking, always ticking.
May and the first days of June, little did I know,
little did I know, so wonderful and blissful,
joyful in my last days, my running out of sand,
and now these blanks of time, soggy, unprinted
months with no days, no light, no passionate glowing.
(emphasis added)

~ Leonard Orr ~
from his collection Why We Have Evening
P.S.
Political Post Script for
The Ides of Trump

My postcard messasges:
1. Stop Gerrymandering
2. Protect Planned Parenthood & Roe v. Wade
3. Don't Build the Wall
4. Remember the traditional motto of our country:
E Pluribus Unum
5. Honor the Statue of Liberty:
"Give me your tired your poor . . . the homeless . . .
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."
SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS ON MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, March 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

Your Broken Heart

BE MY VALENTINE
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

Path

Go to your broken heart.
If you think you don’t have one, get one.
To get one, be sincere.
Learn sincerity of intent by letting
life enter because you’re helpless, really,
to do otherwise.
Even as you try escaping, let it take you
and tear you open
like a letter sent
like a sentence inside
you’ve waited for all your life
though you’ve committed nothing.
Let it send you up.
Let it break you, heart.
Broken-heartedness is the beginning
of all real reception.
The ear of humility hears beyond the gates.
See the gates opening.
Feel your hands going akimbo on your hips,
your mouth opening like a womb
giving birth to your voice for the first time.
Go singing whirling into the glory
of being ecstatically simple.
Write the poem.

by Jack Hirschman (1933 – 2021)

See also
"Keep the Faith" by Jack Butler
"Your Poem, My Poem" & "What Do Writers Want"

Hear this poem read aloud in the movie
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You never know where you might find a heart!

Chocolate Ravens & Ginger Hearts

Toast

Snowy ~ Hearts

"The human heart is vast enough to contain all the world."
~ Joseph Conrad ~

Be My Valentine!
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, February 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blogs
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com

Friends in Art

BEST FRIENDS FOREVER
~ ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS ~

The Tea Party
by Edward Cucuel (1875 - 1954)

“Friendship is certainly the finest balm
for the pangs of disappointed love.”

~ Jane Austen ~
Northanger Abbey
[Volume I, Chapter IV]

An essay in pictures . . .

Two Ladies on a Bench
by Edward Cucuel (1875 - 1954)

Borbee Plays the Flute, ca 1908
by Florence Kate Upton (1873 – 1922)

Two Girls In The Garden At Montmartre, 1895
by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919)

The Bathers, 1925
Jose de Almada-Negreiros (1893 - 1970)

Two Women Throwing Flowers, 1872
by Mary Cassatt (1844 - 1926)

Two Women in a Boat
by Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847 - 1928)

Two Women in Renaissance Dress, One Playing a Lute
by Frank Stone (1800 – 1859)

Two Young Women Seated, ca 1900
by William Henry Margetson (1861 - 1940)

“The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, not the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson ~

Earlier Emerson Posts: QK ~ FN ~ KL
Enough excellent transcendental advice
to get you through the entire year!

Coming in two weeks: "Sisters, Friends"
& in May: Friends Have Made the Story
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, January 28th
Between now and then, read

THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogsppot.com