1949
Nancy Mitford
Love in a Cold Climate
B
Although I don't generally like the term "companion novel," this is closer to that than to a sequel of The Pursuit of Love, since it's set from the mid 1920s to the early '30s, and it tells of Fanny's distant cousin Polly. The love of the title is Polly's for her uncle by marriage, Boy Dougdale, whom the Radletts have nicknamed The Lecherous Lecturer, because he likes to molest teenaged girls. It's not clear what he does to Polly at 13, at least hair-stroking, probably much more, since he pinches Jassy's bottom, and she must be about 7 at the time. Mitford is not at all consistent with the Radletts' ages in this novel. Not only does Jassy sound much older than she is, but so does little Victoria, who can't be more than 10 by the end of the novel. Also, Mitford has the Crash of '29 happening a year or two too soon if Fanny and Linda are born in 1911. (Polly is a year or two older.)
The uncle-niece romance is distasteful, but it's seen that way by most of the characters. It does lead to one of my favorite exchanges, between sassy Jassy and always hilarious Uncle Davey:
"'I say,' said Jassy. 'Come on, Dave.'"
"'Oh, no, dear, thank you. Marry one of you demons? Not for any money.'"
Polly does marry her uncle soon after his wife dies, but her parents, Lord and Lady Montdore, disinherit her. The estate is entailed, but she was going to get everything else. Now all the property is going to go to a distant relation, so distant he's Canadian. (Thank you, I'll be here all week. Try the veal.) People imagine a cross between Little Lord Fauntleroy and a lumberjack, but what they get in Cedric is closer to the former. He's a stereotypical but completely happy homosexual, gay you might say. (Tip your waitress.) The story ends well for him and everyone, as both he and Lady Montdore get the Boy, although Fanny points out that the stodgy Borely family "think it simply terrible."
As with Pursuit, read the novel for everything other than the main romance. Lady Montdore is a delightful old bitch and Uncle Matthew continues to be a delightful old bastard. My favorite section was the chub-fuddling, although I also enjoyed Fanny's disillusionment with Oxford wives.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Excerpt from "The Blue Lantern"
1949
Colette, translated by Elaine Marks
Excerpt from The Blue Lantern
B-
It's somehow fitting that the last of Colette's works I own, from almost the last thing she published, ends with "To be continued...." The nearly 50-year span of her writing that we've covered has been wildly uneven, but I can't say that it hasn't been an interesting ride. And what's most notable about her and her characters (except the ones that commit suicide) is that they always go on, their sparks of life impossible to extinguish. Colette herself lived to 81, still writing, and still outrageous. This last piece tells of herself as an old woman shivering before the fire, but there's a memory of a prize-winning reader, "at twelve and a half years of age, Gabrielle-Sidonie Colette." That madcap but clever tomboy lived on inside the sophisticated writer.
Just taking the works of Gigi and Selected Writings, there are a B+, 3 B's, 6 B-s, 2 C+s, a C-, and a D, but of course these are various lengths. A B- for the overall grade feels fair though.
Colette, translated by Elaine Marks
Excerpt from The Blue Lantern
B-
It's somehow fitting that the last of Colette's works I own, from almost the last thing she published, ends with "To be continued...." The nearly 50-year span of her writing that we've covered has been wildly uneven, but I can't say that it hasn't been an interesting ride. And what's most notable about her and her characters (except the ones that commit suicide) is that they always go on, their sparks of life impossible to extinguish. Colette herself lived to 81, still writing, and still outrageous. This last piece tells of herself as an old woman shivering before the fire, but there's a memory of a prize-winning reader, "at twelve and a half years of age, Gabrielle-Sidonie Colette." That madcap but clever tomboy lived on inside the sophisticated writer.
Just taking the works of Gigi and Selected Writings, there are a B+, 3 B's, 6 B-s, 2 C+s, a C-, and a D, but of course these are various lengths. A B- for the overall grade feels fair though.
Orchid
1949
Colette, translated by Roger Senhouse
Orchid
B-
Colette describes, yes, an orchid, comparing it to everything from an octopus to a shoe. Colette's grown daughter has a very brief cameo, but then the whole thing is only two pages.
Colette, translated by Roger Senhouse
Orchid
B-
Colette describes, yes, an orchid, comparing it to everything from an octopus to a shoe. Colette's grown daughter has a very brief cameo, but then the whole thing is only two pages.
Spring Fever
1948, as part of 1983 Avenel edition of P. G. Wodehouse: Five Complete Novels
P. G. Wodehouse
Spring Fever
Original price $15.70, purchase price $9.99
Good condition hardcover
C-
Unlike the '30s Jeeves books, I seldom reread this volume, and this story is a good example of why. The plots and subplots are kind of boring. Also, the "hero" likes to jokingly insult and threaten violence to the "heroine." There are occasional flashes of the Wodehouse wit, and a bit of insight into Hollywood, but it's rather a slog to get to them. Not exactly terrible, but not something I'd recommend. The title has little to do with the story, other than it's set in the spring, and the cast is mostly dim-witted, although not feverish.
Also, this novel is riddled with typos, often of the extra-letter-in-a-word variety, I suspect due to Avenel trying to cash in on Wodehouse's name.
P. G. Wodehouse
Spring Fever
Original price $15.70, purchase price $9.99
Good condition hardcover
C-
Unlike the '30s Jeeves books, I seldom reread this volume, and this story is a good example of why. The plots and subplots are kind of boring. Also, the "hero" likes to jokingly insult and threaten violence to the "heroine." There are occasional flashes of the Wodehouse wit, and a bit of insight into Hollywood, but it's rather a slog to get to them. Not exactly terrible, but not something I'd recommend. The title has little to do with the story, other than it's set in the spring, and the cast is mostly dim-witted, although not feverish.
Also, this novel is riddled with typos, often of the extra-letter-in-a-word variety, I suspect due to Avenel trying to cash in on Wodehouse's name.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
The Loved One
1948, 1969 Dell Laurel edition
Evelyn Waugh
The Loved One
Original price 50 cents, purchase price 10 cents, quite a bargain
Not very worn paperback
B-
Dark comedy of love among the mortuary crowd, with the female love interest named Aimée Thanatogenos, meaning "beloved tribe of death." I have to agree with the original New Yorker review, "The freshest part of Mr. Waugh's story is the part which refers to the English in Hollywood, and we wish, wistfully, that he had concerned himself more exclusively with that theme." It's not that the parts about the Forest-Lawn-inspired Whispering Glades and the pet cemetery Happier Hunting Ground are in poor taste. They are, but the shock value is mostly gone, along with the resulting humour. It's much more entertaining reading about a Jewish actress who became "Spanish" a decade ago and now has to be revamped as Irish by one of the British expatriates.
Waugh dedicated the book to his friend Nancy Mitford, but if I recall correctly, he didn't care for Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death (1963), which I think is funnier because it's nonfiction rather than satire. This edition came out not only after her book but after the now forgotten 1965 Terry Southern film loosely based on the novel. The cover here is by, quite appropriately, Charles Addams.
Evelyn Waugh
The Loved One
Original price 50 cents, purchase price 10 cents, quite a bargain
Not very worn paperback
B-
Dark comedy of love among the mortuary crowd, with the female love interest named Aimée Thanatogenos, meaning "beloved tribe of death." I have to agree with the original New Yorker review, "The freshest part of Mr. Waugh's story is the part which refers to the English in Hollywood, and we wish, wistfully, that he had concerned himself more exclusively with that theme." It's not that the parts about the Forest-Lawn-inspired Whispering Glades and the pet cemetery Happier Hunting Ground are in poor taste. They are, but the shock value is mostly gone, along with the resulting humour. It's much more entertaining reading about a Jewish actress who became "Spanish" a decade ago and now has to be revamped as Irish by one of the British expatriates.
Waugh dedicated the book to his friend Nancy Mitford, but if I recall correctly, he didn't care for Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death (1963), which I think is funnier because it's nonfiction rather than satire. This edition came out not only after her book but after the now forgotten 1965 Terry Southern film loosely based on the novel. The cover here is by, quite appropriately, Charles Addams.
Cheaper by the Dozen
1948, 1988 Bantam edition
Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Illustrated by Donald McKay
Cheaper by the Dozen
Original price $5.50, purchase price $3.00
Fair condition paperback
B-
Although I'm an only child, I've always had a soft spot for stories of large families, which I suppose you can blame on The Brady Bunch. There are twice as many children in this real-life story, although one (Mary) died at age five. For the most part, this is ignored, and the brood is spoken of as a dozen throughout. In any case, eleven or twelve children was a lot even in the 1920s, and perhaps only a pair of efficiency experts could've deliberately planned and managed that amount (even down to there being half girls, half boys, although that was just luck).
Having read Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth-- A Life Beyond "Cheaper by the Dozen," I know that she was a much more complex woman than the mother shown here, or in the 1950 movie. Even in the sequel, Belles on Their Toes, more sides are shown to her. But this book is about Dad, up to shortly after his death in 1924. He comes across as larger than life, bluff and charming. However, what really struck me this reading was his harsh discipline. I don't mean the spankings or the way the children had to check off things like teeth-brushing. I mean things like him hitting them on the head to teach typing, or flogging them when they're the crew on his boat. The punishments are told in the same breezy, humorous style as the rest of the book, but they leave a bad aftertaste.
The other weakness of the book is the illustrator. On the one hand, McKay shows many funny moments from the lives of the Gilbreths, but on the other, his style is kind of bland. I could blame this on the decline of illustration in the post-war period, and gosh knows he's not as ghastly as Kramer, but I own some 1950s books with pleasant or even beautiful illustrations. The worst thing that McKay does is hair. Whether the girls wear cootie-catchers (long hair) or bobs, their hair is nondescript, and the boys' isn't any better.
On the plus side, the book is still occasionally laugh-out-loud funny and the co-authors (eldest boy and third-eldest girl respectively) do a good job of making each of their siblings, even baby sister Jane, distinct to the reader. It's also fun to see how the early '20s seemed a quarter-century later.
Apparently, this book is sometimes assigned in high schools, and one of the Phyllis Reynolds Naylor "Alice" books (which I've read but don't own) has Alice taking the role of eldest sister Anne in the school play. I never thought of it as a children's, or YA, book. It contains enough mild swearing to offend some readers on Amazon, and there are references to illegitimacy and prostitution. There's also a quite funny scene, which made it into the movie, where a mother of eight sends a birth control activist over to the Gilbreths because Mrs. Gilbreth would be a better campaigner for the cause than she is.
And, yes, I can like this book and Margaret Sanger's autobiography. The Gilbreths wanted and could afford a dozen children, even sending them all to college. However, I despise the 2003 Steve Martin movie because it's tasteless without being funny.
Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Illustrated by Donald McKay
Cheaper by the Dozen
Original price $5.50, purchase price $3.00
Fair condition paperback
B-
Although I'm an only child, I've always had a soft spot for stories of large families, which I suppose you can blame on The Brady Bunch. There are twice as many children in this real-life story, although one (Mary) died at age five. For the most part, this is ignored, and the brood is spoken of as a dozen throughout. In any case, eleven or twelve children was a lot even in the 1920s, and perhaps only a pair of efficiency experts could've deliberately planned and managed that amount (even down to there being half girls, half boys, although that was just luck).
Having read Making Time: Lillian Moller Gilbreth-- A Life Beyond "Cheaper by the Dozen," I know that she was a much more complex woman than the mother shown here, or in the 1950 movie. Even in the sequel, Belles on Their Toes, more sides are shown to her. But this book is about Dad, up to shortly after his death in 1924. He comes across as larger than life, bluff and charming. However, what really struck me this reading was his harsh discipline. I don't mean the spankings or the way the children had to check off things like teeth-brushing. I mean things like him hitting them on the head to teach typing, or flogging them when they're the crew on his boat. The punishments are told in the same breezy, humorous style as the rest of the book, but they leave a bad aftertaste.
The other weakness of the book is the illustrator. On the one hand, McKay shows many funny moments from the lives of the Gilbreths, but on the other, his style is kind of bland. I could blame this on the decline of illustration in the post-war period, and gosh knows he's not as ghastly as Kramer, but I own some 1950s books with pleasant or even beautiful illustrations. The worst thing that McKay does is hair. Whether the girls wear cootie-catchers (long hair) or bobs, their hair is nondescript, and the boys' isn't any better.
On the plus side, the book is still occasionally laugh-out-loud funny and the co-authors (eldest boy and third-eldest girl respectively) do a good job of making each of their siblings, even baby sister Jane, distinct to the reader. It's also fun to see how the early '20s seemed a quarter-century later.
Apparently, this book is sometimes assigned in high schools, and one of the Phyllis Reynolds Naylor "Alice" books (which I've read but don't own) has Alice taking the role of eldest sister Anne in the school play. I never thought of it as a children's, or YA, book. It contains enough mild swearing to offend some readers on Amazon, and there are references to illegitimacy and prostitution. There's also a quite funny scene, which made it into the movie, where a mother of eight sends a birth control activist over to the Gilbreths because Mrs. Gilbreth would be a better campaigner for the cause than she is.
And, yes, I can like this book and Margaret Sanger's autobiography. The Gilbreths wanted and could afford a dozen children, even sending them all to college. However, I despise the 2003 Steve Martin movie because it's tasteless without being funny.
Kingsblood Royal
1947, original Random House edition
Sinclair Lewis
Kingsblood Royal
Original price unknown, purchase price $4.95
Falling apart hardcover
B-
Although more horrible things happen in this book than in Cass Timberlane, including a couple and their friends arrested for defending their home from a mob, I find it a more pleasant and more hopeful book. Lewis takes a nice but bigoted young man-- a veteran, husband, father, and banker-- and shows how his world is turned upside-down when he finds out he has "black blood." His ancestor was an admirable pioneer, who happened to be a Negro. (Pace, George Carlin.) Neil Kingsblood's father thinks that the family is descended from Catherine of Aragon, but Neil's amateur explorations in genealogy turn up a more dramatic story on his mother's side of the family.
As other online reviews show, this book still has the power to startle, that Lewis was talking about race 65 years ago. (The year after it was published, Strom Thurmond ran for President as a Dixiecrat.) White critics of the time found the book contrived, which it is, while many black critics found it courageous, which it also is. I would give it a B, but I find the transformation of Neil and his wife Vestal, from owners of a dog named Nigger to the expectant parents of a child they half-jokingly plan to name Booker T., to be too quick and easy.
Also, I'm not sure what the point of Neil's flirtation with Sophie Concord is. In Arrowsmith, Orchid Pickerbaugh is a distraction from Martin's marriage to sloppy saint Leora and from his noble bride Science, but he doesn't let it go too far. Sophie seems to be here to assure readers that if Vestal leaves him, as her family and most people in town urge, Neil won't be alone. And he also has surrogate parents and dear friends in the black community by the end, making up for all the white associates he loses. (A few loyal whites, including Vestal, stick by him.)
The story is set in the same world as Timberlane, picking up at roughly the time that novel ended. Indeed, Vestal is friends with Jinny Timberlane. The judge is one of the more tolerant whites, although he doesn't have much impact on the story.
Lewis wrote two more novels after this, but I've never read them. He died in 1951. He was a very flawed man and a somewhat flawed writer, but I'm glad I own so many of his books.
Sinclair Lewis
Kingsblood Royal
Original price unknown, purchase price $4.95
Falling apart hardcover
B-
Although more horrible things happen in this book than in Cass Timberlane, including a couple and their friends arrested for defending their home from a mob, I find it a more pleasant and more hopeful book. Lewis takes a nice but bigoted young man-- a veteran, husband, father, and banker-- and shows how his world is turned upside-down when he finds out he has "black blood." His ancestor was an admirable pioneer, who happened to be a Negro. (Pace, George Carlin.) Neil Kingsblood's father thinks that the family is descended from Catherine of Aragon, but Neil's amateur explorations in genealogy turn up a more dramatic story on his mother's side of the family.
As other online reviews show, this book still has the power to startle, that Lewis was talking about race 65 years ago. (The year after it was published, Strom Thurmond ran for President as a Dixiecrat.) White critics of the time found the book contrived, which it is, while many black critics found it courageous, which it also is. I would give it a B, but I find the transformation of Neil and his wife Vestal, from owners of a dog named Nigger to the expectant parents of a child they half-jokingly plan to name Booker T., to be too quick and easy.
Also, I'm not sure what the point of Neil's flirtation with Sophie Concord is. In Arrowsmith, Orchid Pickerbaugh is a distraction from Martin's marriage to sloppy saint Leora and from his noble bride Science, but he doesn't let it go too far. Sophie seems to be here to assure readers that if Vestal leaves him, as her family and most people in town urge, Neil won't be alone. And he also has surrogate parents and dear friends in the black community by the end, making up for all the white associates he loses. (A few loyal whites, including Vestal, stick by him.)
The story is set in the same world as Timberlane, picking up at roughly the time that novel ended. Indeed, Vestal is friends with Jinny Timberlane. The judge is one of the more tolerant whites, although he doesn't have much impact on the story.
Lewis wrote two more novels after this, but I've never read them. He died in 1951. He was a very flawed man and a somewhat flawed writer, but I'm glad I own so many of his books.
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