The Look of the 19th Century (Dad Admires Hank’s Scenery too)

A post from my Dad, about the setting and time frame of Washington Square and an art exhibit he saw with Mom.

An architectural sidestep: As it happens, there’s an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York that adds visual context to how we can see the Washington Square of 1835, when Dr. Sloper built his “handsome, modern, wide-fronted house, with … a flight of white marble steps ascending to a portal.” Betty’s mom and I happened upon the paintings of Andrew Jones, whose renditions of the stoops and iron railings of New York are at the George Billis Gallery and at the museum Jones loves the lines and shadows made by the intricate ironwork and has a couple of images from the north side of Washington Square, which is where we take the Sloper manse to be (James says Fifth Avenue was around the corner). At the time the Sloper house was built, the style was moving away from the relatively plain Federal to a Greek revival, with anthemion filigrees on the railings shaped like a honeysuckle plant Perhaps this “stoopscape” is something like what Mysterious Morris saw as he ascended the marble steps.

Poetry Not-Friday

I spent the weekend at the wedding of two very dear friends.  It was wonderful weather, a celebration of good friends, and the marriage of two people who are very, very much in love.

This poem was one of the readings.

Pablo Neruda

Sonnet XVII (100 Love Sonnets, 1960)

I don’t love you as if you were the salt-rose, topaz
or arrow of carnations that propagate fire:
I love you as certain dark things are loved,
secretly, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that doesn’t bloom and carries
hidden within itself the light of those flowers,
and thanks to your love, darkly in my body
lives the dense fragrance that rises from the earth.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where,
I love you simply, without problems or pride:
I love you in this way because I don’t know any other way of loving

but this, in which there is no I or you,
so intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.

Don DeLillo and Mean Hank James

I’ve been plotting this post for some time, since around the middle of Chapter 2 actually.   I’ve been hampered by the days it took to unearth a copy of Americana, by Don DeLillo, from the back of my closet.   Paging through, I remember why I didn’t like it, or finish it.

There’s a casual, caustic meanness and pettiness to the way the characters interact.   “It was a party and we didn’t want to talk to each other.  The whole point was to separate for the evening and find exciting people to talk to and then at the very end, to meet again and tell each other how terrible it had been and how glad we were to be together again.”  It may be that I should avoid reading DeLillo or watching Mad Men, but reading endless scenes of men groping secretaries who have “stereophonic tits,” and taking 3 martini lunches makes me feel grubby.

When he’s not writiting about awful people being awful to and about each other, DeLillo writes nearly lyrical prose about New York city itself.  “Thousands of men hurried toward Grand Central, moving in broken strides, dodging, marching down deep corridors…the warm trains waiting, long darkness, newsprint on every finger, the fight against sleep.”

Henry James offers a similarly disjointed pairing of mean, repugnant characters, and lovely atmospheric writing about New York.  Finally, digging into the third chapter, Hank James stops mocking his characters long enough to give me some scenery.    Dr. Sloper has a house in Washington Square, “a handsome, modern, wide-fronted house” (that is now probably part of the NYU camupus.)  Around the corner was the more august precinct of Fifth Avenue, taking its origin at this point with the more spacious and confident air which already marked it for high destinies.”

These passages, with characters and individual opinions erased, are lovely to read aloud.  Once you take both Henry James and Don DeLillo out of the nasty, petty scrutiny of individual people’s flaws and foibles, the larger scenic view has a reverence, maybe even a subdued joy.   I feel like I can relax into these lovely passages, until a character moves through, and I’m alert to the ways this one is going to get mocked, condescended to, or picked to shreds, by authors who seem like the gossipy popular girls of some slick, literary high school.

Dad Post: Irony, Agony, and a Suitor

Dad on Chapt 3-4:
One of the early puzzlements about James is whether he really is as obsessed as he seems to be with matters of appearance, or whether he is using his narrator’s voice (will we be told who the narrator is, BTW?) to comment on the superficialities of the time.  We’ll hope for the latter, because so far, the continued profiling of young Catherine, her father and their world considers only their looks, their money and their station without the irony we’ve been told to expect.  (Exactly- narrator claims that Dr. S’s conversations and attitudes with his daughter are ironic.  I think Dr. S is just mean and unloving.  – Betty)
• At least in Chapter 4 the story is starting to move. Here comes the suitor with the murky past and the unexplained interest in plain old Catherine. Oh-oh.
• I liked this sentence: “In those days, in New York, there were still a few altar fires flickering in the temple of republican simplicity.” If only ….
• And for those of us still trying to figure out the time element in that impenetrable first sentence (““During a portion of the first half of the present century, and more particularly during the latter part of it…”), Hank cuts us a break and says it’s 1835.

Poetry Friday: Maria Luisa Arroyo

Today’s poem from WVFC’s Poetry Friday made me need to stop and catch my breath.  A perfectly captured moment… I have a good amount of poem envy, actually, and will need to read more by Ms. Arroyo, for sure.

Her bio and info:

Academically trained in German language and literature at Colby (BA), Tufts (MA), and Harvard (ABD), Maria Luisa Arroyo (www.marialuisaarroyo.com) is an educator, a single parent, a 2004 Massachusetts Cultural Council poetry grant recipient, a 2008 Massachusetts Unsung Heroine, a visual artist, and a self-taught poet. Her collections of poems include Gathering Words/Recogiendo Palabras (Bilingual Press, Tempe, AZ: June 2008). The poem below appeared in her self-published chapbook, Touching and Naming the Roots of This Tree (2007).

Read her poem “On Our Drive to North Haven” at Women’s Voices For Change.

I Will Not Ignore Ivanova’s Recommendations

Claudia Christian, whose four seasons playing Commander Susan Ivanova made her one of my all-time favorite sci-fi actresses, has been reviewing books on her blog.

Here’s her review of The Geography of Bliss by Eric Weiner.

Her review of Sister of My Heart by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni explores her wanderlust inspired by good writing about India, and acknowledges the cultural freedoms she takes for granted.

I’m a little star-struck, and wondering if I could ask her to do a contributing post for WVFC, or a guest book review.  Eek!

Thanks to Raphy, the Brazilian with Wonderful Strand Luck for the link.

Tamora Pierce Is Wonderful

This post from the feministing.com community reminded me why I love Tamora Pierce.  (Contains spoilers for Pierce’s most recent series.)  Strong female characters in a richly imagined, nuanced fantasy genre culture.  Women who kick butt, use magic, fight, love, stay true to themselves.   Well written prose, smart without being flowery.

Alanna: The First Adventure was one of the first fantasy novels I read as a young teenager.  It became a benchmark for what I seek in good fantasy novels.  Magic, adventure, strong characters who are smart and flawed and funny and loving and stupid and brave.  Human, in other words.

I still go back to Pierce’s Tortall books, as an adult.  They’re still good.   The Song of the Lioness, the Alanna books, are my favorites.  (I’m unfairly picky about anything involving a talking animal, so the books surrounding Daine, a character who communicates with animals, have never been favorites.)  Maybe I’ll treat myself to a re-read, after Dad and I are done with Henry James.

Hank James- Our Family and Friends weigh in.

From Uncle Ron, who has taught English and Latin at a prep school in Connecticut: “What a wonderful project. “No one” reads James anymore. Including me. But I’m going to look at Washington Square. I seem to recall that that his tone lamented the state of affairs, but I’m sure you’re right about the mockery. He and Edith (my buddy) Wharton both wrote from a pedestal that looked ironically down on society, even when they were depicting their
social equals.”

From Gomez, (one of my oldest friends, and my competitor in the Ludicrous Romance Writing Challenge) “Have you read North River, by Pete Hamill? NY circa Great Depression main character is a neighborhood doctor.  Also deals with a father/daughter relationship, sort of.”

Washington Square- Population: Jerks

Dad’s reply to my last Washington Square post.

One would hope that in any novel, there would be at least one character to engage with — to actually like. After Chapter 2, I have an uneasy feeling that “Washington Square” may not provide us with such a character. Dr. Sloper certainly seems a jerk — his attitudes toward the women in his life, including his late wife, are unpardonable. And the women themselves are so far no great shakes either. I share Betty’s concern that young Catherine may be more willing victim than heroine as the story unfolds. Cue the zombies.
That said, it will be interesting (I hope) to watch James explore the father-daughter equation. Not having had the experience of “a commonplace child” myself — quite the contrary — it may be educational. There is certainly nothing of my own feisty daughter apparent in Catherine, and I can only hope Betty doesn’t see anything of Dr. Sloper in me.
Aside from all that, there’s a not-bad line at the start of Chapter 2, a glimmer of something like humor: “… which Lavinia accepted with the alacrity of a woman who had spent the ten years of her married life in the town of Poughkeepsie.” As a refugee herself from Poughkeepsie, Betty should appreciate the reference.

(Yep- saw the Poughkeepsie mention.  I think this novel is set before Vassar was founded, and certainly eons before you could get good Vietnamese food in town.  Dark times.- Betty)

Hank James, Washington Square Ch 2 (me)

Let me reiterate:  I picked this one up on a whim.  Henry James on a whim, also.  Little did I expect, there’s a strong fathers-and-daughters theme being set up.  Serendipitous for the first outing of the father and daughter book club.  Though- this is hardly a sweet tale of father-daughter bonding.  Since we’re limited to Dr. S’s point of view, we have to trust him and the narrative about young Catherine.

Gems like: “she had simply a plain, dull, gentle countenance,” to describe her looks.   She’s “something of a glutton.”  And then we get to her cleverness, much hoped-for by Dr. S.  “Catherine was decidedly not clever…She was not abnormally deficient, and she mustered enough learning to acquit herself respectably in conversation with her contemporaries.”  It reminds me of mean girls in high school.   A fake, sweet smile, and barbs hidden in equivocation, or padded with really bland compliments.

Her aunt and governess doesn’t come off well either, portrayed as a silly romantic “goose,” only to have Catherine too unimaginative and dull to be romantic along with her, though no less slow-witted.  “Dr. Sloper would have liked to be proud of his poor daughter, but there was nothing to be proud of in her.”  Ouch!  Two questions:  One, does James hate all women like this, and two, if she’s so dull and Mrs. Penniman so frivolous and stupid, why are we reading about them?

Honestly, also gives me the daughterly shivers on Catherine’s behalf.  She’s in awe of her father,(don’t get any ideas, Dad!) and he’s disappointed by, moping about, and apparently awfully condescending to his daughter.  More, her awe is a good thing, apparently, with a “little tremor of fear that mixed itself with her filial affections,” giving her love an added zest.  I’ll take humor, good books, hugs, honesty, and puns any day.  And sarcasm mixed with love.

I still can’t tell how much of what James is writing is meant to be taken as satire or at least tongue in cheek. I also wonder if this is setting us up for Catherine to break out of character, tell everyone to stick it, and go kill a zombie or two.  I knew I should have waited longer to read this after I read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

Ok, I’m getting wordier than Hank James here, and probably have written longer than the chapter.