Nonsuch Book

two gaskells

That copy of Cranford stared at me from the shelves for a very long time. I resolved to finally read it in the new year, and I have. "Cranford is in possession of all the Amazons; all the holders of houses, above a certain rent, are women." The bonds of friendship prevail in this small place, and the women come together to face down all manner of hardships and heartbreaks. It would have been sweet but sappy if Gaskell did not have such a wicked sense of humor, and did not utilize a narrator that lived outside Cranford but visited often to provide a satiric contrast between this insulated community and the world beyond it. A pleasant and amusing read, bittersweet in parts where we see the old women clinging to an outdated notion of aristocracy and their own gentility.

Reading Cranford did nothing to prepare me for reading The Poor Clare, a novella from Gaskell often included in collections of her gothic tales. This was a classic, over-dramatized wonder of gothic storytelling whose evil doppelganger theme sent a creepy dream my way last night, and sent me searching for the rest of Gaskell's gothic short fiction this morning. Tremendous fun but then I am a sucker for Ann Radcliffe novels and Frankenstein and The Monk and Austen's satiric take of the gothic in Northanger Abbey and.... The list goes on. The Poor Clare centers around a curse that travels through a family and forcibly highlights class divisions, gender inequalities and the conflicts netween Catholicism and Protestantism in Gaskell's time. Smart and pitch perfect and only 90 pages. A really satisfying snow day read. And an interesting look into the range and depth of Gaskell's work.

more hawthorne

Julia and I share an appreciation of The House of Seven Gables, an affection that was not shared by many of our worthy group co-readers this past week. But undaunted by those yawns and complaints, we have decided to push on together, and read The Blithedale Romance together the first week of November. We will post and discuss beginning on Friday, November 4 and chat through the weekend hopefully. Join us?

Before you decide, I would like to candidly warn you that many think of this book as the weakest Hawthorne link, a dull and plodding exploration of utopian agrarian vision in 19th century America that bears a startling resemblance to a communal living experience of the author, even going so far as to borrow excerpts from his journals. But.... much like The House of the Seven Gables, this book hides so much behind its easily accessible veneer that I welcome all of you to come dig with us. For the humor, for the subtext that is revealing of not just the author but of a key time of transition between restrictive Puritan ethics and an increasingly individualistic culture. That being said, I am assuming it will be just me and Julia, but I could not hope for better company. Surprise me? Sign on to read with us?

readers imbibing peril group read: the house of the seven gables by nathaniel hawthorne

"Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst." -- Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The House of the Seven Gables."

In comments and on Twitter on Sunday, Audrey and I decided to co-host a group read of The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne for the RIP VI. The group read is a new feature of the popular yearly challenge, and as Audrey and I discussed the two of us reading this together, it occurred to us that an invitation to all was an option.

Written in 1851, this novel trails through generations of a family plagued by rumors of witchcraft, a curse attached to the supernatural and yet is written in a realistic style prompting Hawthorne to declare it a "romance" in the preface of the book - a blend of two genres. How did the Pyncheon come to this property long ago and how can they be liberated from its legacy? Perhaps one of the greatest examples of house as character in American literature.

We ask that everyone participating post on Friday, October 14, and take the weekend to extend the conversation throughout the group by commenting on one another's posts. Please join us? Let us know if you are interested by leaving a comment here or at Audrey's place.

the art of the novella reading challenge: the end of it

Update: 30 novellas read but have decided to postpone posting on the last three until I can give them their due. All exceptional reads - The Eternal Husband, The Dialogue of the Dogs and Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

The stack on the left is the 30 novellas that I will complete and post on by Wednesday. My daughter just calculated that stack to represent 3,523 pages read in August. Of some pretty dense material as it turned out.

The stack in the middle is the seven volumes that will remain unread for a while.

The stack on the right is The Duel X5 to which I will turn my attention soon. Once I catch my breath.

Ultimately, I could have forced this to make it by the deadline but this is not the type of reading material to rush through. The Eternal Husband was the one that finally forced my admission of this. A marvelous read, and I was not going to deprive myself of its fineness by dashing through it. Ditto on today's Cervantes. And the Johnson that will be last for the month deserves more too. 

While I do not typically read in the competitive quest for page or volume count, I do have to admit that my gray cells feel pretty good right now having forced themselves to focus upon challenging (for the most part) material at an accelerated pace. That required ignoring all manner of typical distractions most of which require plugging in. But I have a job. A family. A life. And as Nicole said, I do enjoy sleeping from time to time.

So I am happy with the 30. And grateful to all of you reading with me and cheering me along. Especially you Twitter friends. And of course to Melville House folks who supported my implausible scheme with humor and generosity. This is an amazing set of books give or take a volume here and there. Just too much excellence for a single month. For me. Still waiting to see if another reader makes it through.

the art of the novella reading challenge 27/42: the devil by leo tolstoy

Without meaning to generalize, I have had more than a few moments of mistaking this month's reading project for an "Art of Misogyny" themed exercise. There are reasons. We all know them. But still.

Today's excursion into heinous womanhood portrays a lusty and attractive peasant woman as the devil. Because the aristocratic narrator/Tolstoy has an obsessive sexual attraction for her. And his inability to control his own desires would naturally indicate that some evil and supernatural force (aka slutty field worker) is at play. His own desires are only natural, indulged "merely for health's sake," as men are not intended to live in a state of "compulsory self-restraint." What he seems to find unnatural is a connection to his own desires that defies his own and society's compartmentalized views of womanhood - the angel/devil and lady/whore dichotomies.

Nicole pulled some great quotes from this one that contrast the wife and the woman/service provider. The wife as institution, "angel in the house" and business arrangement and the peasant as carefree and dismissive of the consequences of a relationship with the narrator. The peasant woman actually recognizes and accepts the narrator's true desires whereas his wife remains forever in the dark about what troubles her husband just as Mrs. Tolstoy must have been sheltered from the truth by such actions as the author hiding this manucript in the upholstery of his arm chair so that she might not find it.

Two separate endings here both highlight that there can be no class conflation. Either aristocrat or peasant must go. Despite the snark here, I did enjoy reading this. There is a nervous energy, that obsessiveness and the effort required to hide what is perceived as shameful, that drives this narrative forward in a more graceful way than I thought possible.

the art of the novella reading challenge 23/42 - 26/42: time is of the essence

If I am to catch up by next Wednesday, and a hurricane weekend's measure of sloth time says I can, I need to dispense with the idea of four regular posts on the novellas above. Not that they are not worth my time. If I had any time to spare. But I need to clear the decks in order to push ahead. So...

• The Lesson of the Master by Henry James - The vulgarity of marriage. A theme James just loves. And this time, marriage provides many material comforts but deprives the artist of the ability to attain perfection in his craft. The distractions. The obligations. The wife as architect and warden of the artist's cage, as administrator of his affairs, as disciplinarian that knows a prolific output means a healthy bank account. "They're the idol and the altar and the flame." To which one sacrifices a measure of one's talent. And is it worth it? What is the endgame? Very enjoyable. Although occasionally venomous. Which makes it all the more fun.
• Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf - Hauntingly beautiful. I flew through and did not stop to take a single note for fear of disrupting the flow of fragments unifying into a single picture. Which of course is impossible expectation but a clearer view of Jacob does emerge through the thoughts of women that knew him. But never his own voice. Which is intriguing. But this is a re-read at a more leisurely pace and more time to gather my thoughts. Not a novella. It demands one's undivided attention. It demands more than I have to give at the moment. See Emily's post instead. Brilliant.
• A Simple Heart by Gustave Flaubert - Rather heartbreaking. Felicite is a simple woman without education, means or family to speak of. Without love. Yet she pours herself into the care of others without reserve, and had only a stuffed parrot by life's end. A parrot that carries much potential meaning. What constitutes meaning in life? I felt like Flaubert grew a heart here a la the Grinch on Christmas morn.
• Lady Susan by Jane Austen - Epistolary treatment of the husband quest marked by naked ambition is an enjoyable read but a young Austen to be sure. Wicked. Funny. Regency girl power. In a way.

the art of the novella reading challenge 22/42: the horla by guy de maupassant

When life gets a little crazy, I find that reading about lives far less in touch with reality than my own are like a breath of fresh air. No invisible spirits invade my rooms at night and drink my beverages. I see no spectral arm raise a rose to an invisible nose. And I have never torched my domestic staff in a fiery inferno I set myself to eradicate the form of life that will replace humanity. I am also happy to report that I do not have syphilis in any form much less of a strain so virulent that my delusions become the stuff of a volume of the Art of the Novella series.

This volume actually contains three versions of the same story - the 1885 "Letter from a Madman" and the 1886 and 1887 versions of the story. The tones may vary but what is clear is that the substance of the story remains the same with such fidelity that the ownership the author felt for the material appears personal. One man's "descent into madness" assumes a pseudo-reality as he offers reasons for what is happening to him that are difficult to believe but are so consistently expressed, especialy given the three iterations in this volume, that a reader can easily slip into a place where they entertain believing his story. Kind of like my reaction to The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Go ahead. Tell me it's not alright to compare Waters to de Maupassant. 

the art of the novella reading challenge 21/42: the hound of the baskervilles by sir arthur conan doyle

Some would say that this reappearance of Sherlock Holmes, after Doyle tried to kill him off but fans protested vehemently, reveals a kinder, gentler drug-using violin player. But I have always thought that he only appears milder because there is less of him. Conan Doyle offers a return to Sherlock that leaves no doubt as to his feeling that there is more to his works than a fictitious genius with whom the public so entrusted their imaginations that a complete suspension of disbelief proved possible. They thought Holmes was real. But in The Hound of the Baskervilles, the author shows us the worth of Watson, "not luminous" but a "conductor of light," as well as the worth of his own lovely prose. All with hardly a mention of Sherlock for page upon page except where Watson sends updates on the investigation.

You know the story. Dark and dreary family history of Baskervilles living on a desolate moor, and doomed to live in fear of the unnaturally large and savage hound that travels the moors at night hunting the descendents of a particularly unsavory ancestor who brought this plight upon his descendents by his seeming inability to keep his pants on. The newest resident of the hall and heir of the Baskerville fortune enlists the help of Holmes to solve this mystery, but Holmes dispatches Watson to the scene while he attends to other matters. Only to appear in the nick of time of course.

Yes, this is flawed in parts but I love it. As I love most things Sherlock. Highest marks.

the art of the novella reading challenge 20/42: the lemoine affair by marcel proust

Proust in short form seemed like a dicey proposition to me. I mean, couldn't he stretch a single perfect sentence out to novella length? And then I dug a little deeper and realized that the subject of the novella was a real life defrauding scheme involving the manufacturing of diamonds that Proust himself and other notables of his day had lost money in. And that Proust addresses the scandal in short chapters told from the viewpoints of the famous including Flaubert and Balzac. And then I became convinced that this would prove an outlet for Marcel's bitchiest best. But I was wrong. This is wonderfully clever. He imitates their writing styles in the most uncanny way. Flaubert imitation is spot on. The translation work required to evoke these highly nuanced interpretations is incredibly impressive. My only complaint is that it absorbed too much of my challenge-dictated reading time as I hunted down lesser-known allusions and writers and such. This novella screams out for footnotes! Proust lover? Read this parlor game type fun. Don't know much of Proust or period? Skip it until it appears properly framed and digestible through notes.

the art of the novella reading challenge update

The best laid plans. Often go astray. With about ten days left in the challenge, I am further off the mark than I had hoped but the situation is not impossible. I am over the halfway point in reading (if not in posting), but just in case, have devised a contingency plan in the event all 42 novellas are not possible - I will read the core 37 volumes and save the five Duel volumes for the first week in September.

As I said to Emily last night on Twitter, I underestimated the density of some of these volumes. And some of these are, ahem, a bit longer than what I think of as a novella. 

I had originally planned to save The Hound of the Baskervilles until last but need a bookish hug today so will be reading it early. How far have you gotten in the challenge?