lily and rosedale

One of my favorite novels is Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth, which tells the fateful tale of lovely Lily Bart and her quest for a husband.  And not just any husband, because Lily is part of New York society and must make the best match possible, but even though she has the right instincts, she isn't shrewd enough to close the deal.  To complicate matters, Lily has strong feelings for a typical Wharton hero, Lawrence Selden, who chafes at social confines but is never quite able to break free of them.  Lily plays her cards with a kind of narcissistic honor, and if you've read the book you know how that ends up -- and if you haven't, I won't give anything away.  Among Lily's admirers is a gentleman named Simon Rosedale, described by Wharton as "a plump rosy man of the blond Jewish type, with smart London clothes fitting him like upholstery, and small sidelong eyes which gave him the air of appraising people as if they were bric-a-brac."  Rosedale is of a different breed of wealthy New Yorkers, coming in with the then-impending 20th century and eager to work his way into higher social circles.

Since The House of Mirth was written in 1905, Rosedale and Lily never had a chance romantically and Rosedale himself was never going to be more than just a pivotal side character.  Rosedale is sympathetic at the novel's end, in his own way, but essentially Lily's resisting him and all he stands for as a nouveau riche Jew only adds to her tragic lily-like honor.  Lev Raphael's Rosedale in Love, however, takes Mr. Simon Rosedale and anyone who happens to be intrigued by him to a new fictional level that is quite enjoyable and well worth reading.  Written over a hundred years later, Rosedale in Love still remains faithful to its Gilded Age setting and allows us to see Lily through Rosedale's eyes, yet also offers a portrait of Rosedale beyond Lily's limited view.

tarot cuisine

Technically a Tarot deck isn't a book, but if you find Tarot cards intriguing and you have a dash of culinary passion, The Epicurean Tarot (U.S. Games, 2001) will be a great addition to your cookbook shelf.  The Epicurean Tarot's creator Corrinne Kenner has concocted 78 inventive and tasty recipes that take their own special meaning from each traditional Tarot card, and this particular deck is functionally oversized and laminated for hands-on kitchen adventures.  Also included is a companion booklet for more detail on both the cards and recipes, with the only problem being is that a quick survey of Amazon and Barnes & Noble shows that The Epicurean Tarot is out of print and the copies currently out there for purchase are pretty pricey.  Good news if you want to part with your boxed set and sell it, but not so good if you're looking for an Epicurean Tarot of your own -- especially if you want to whip up some of Death's Stuffed Mushrooms and The Devil's Deviled Eggs (what else?) for your Halloween party. 

royal care

Chicago veterinarian Dr. Barbara Royal has a new book out called The Royal Treatment:  A Natural Approach to Wildly Healthy Pets -- and I highly recommend it.  Dr. Royal can claim some celebrity pet clients indeed, but she treats each dog, cat, or whatever animal she sees with an amazing level of care and attention, and you do not have to be rich or famous to visit her warm, friendly clinic on Chicago's north side.  I know because my cat was a patient of Dr. Royal's and she helped me -- and especially him -- through the last month of his life with true compassion.  (Yes, he was an exceptional cat among a world of exceptional cats but maybe I'm somewhat biased!)  Her book details the holistic and conventional elements to her practice, and her words emphasize her level of feeling for all creatures great and small.  And as a wildlife, zoo and domestic animal vet, she really knows her creatures.  There are also recipes for natural diets and therapeutic options to help our indoor pets live with more outdoor vigor.  With the holidays just around the corner, this would be a great gift for any pet lover on your list.

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened.  -- Anatole France

it's national book month!

What will you be reading??


(Pictured:  The Novel Reader -- Vincent van Gogh, 1888)

julia and minette...and other cats in the kitchen

Julia's Cats and/or Julia Child's Life in the Company of Cats by Patricia Barey and Therese Burson is a lovely little tail/tale about one of our first chef celebrities and all the felines who captivated her and husband Paul.  Starting with Minette who came in as a mouser at Chez Child in 1948, Julia was a cat lover who truly seemed to understand the curious quirks and ways of the whiskered ones.  If you're a fellow cat lover, you'll most likely read it in one sitting with a smile and occasional tear or two, and if you're a fan of Julia Child, you'll be even more so by the book's end.  And come to think of it, a birthdate of August 15th made Julia an astrological Leo -- and apparently all cats are regal and playful Leos, no matter what month they're born in.  

good luck, miss wyckoff

It looks like this novel by William Inge has been out of print for a while, with an original hardcover publication date of 1970.  Inge was of course best known as a playwright, penning famed stage and screen works like Picnic, Bus Stop and Come Back Little Sheba.  Born in 1913, Inge attended the University of Kansas then later taught English and drama at a Kansas high school.  He had especially keen insight into his female characters, particularly repressed women trying to reach for something beyond their claustrophobic boardinghouse lives.

Miss Evelyn Wyckoff of the Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff title is definitely an Inge woman.  She's a teacher of Latin in the 1950s at a Kansas high school, an intelligent, secretly passionate 35 year old virgin whose fairly progressive doctor suggests that she pay more attention to her physical being and become romantically involved with a man.  That her lack of healthy sexual activity is perhaps causing an early menopause and affecting her in other psychosomatic ways, and that she talk to a psychiatrist in Wichita as well.

I don't want to give away too much of the plot or the whos and whys of what happens following her treatment, but essentially the dramatic pivot occurs when Miss Wyckoff has her first encounter with Rafe, a young African-American man.  It's not a romance, it's an affair; Rafe isn't too likable, but he has his reasons for being arrogant and mistrusting and frustrated with his own lot in life.  And Miss Wyckoff, in her confused and heightened state of longing, justifies that this affair proves that she truly believes in racial equality -- unlike many of her fellow teachers or residents of Freedom, Kansas (yes, it's kind of a heavy-handed name but Inge himself was born in Independence, Kansas)   Perhaps seeking out other African-American men -- another teacher maybe -- with whom she could connect both mentally and physically would have been a better proof of racial openness, but Miss Wyckoff tends to think in intense but narrow spirals and she is after all a woman of the 1950s Midwest.

There are some nice turns of phrase in this novel, like when Miss Wyckoff recalls her college days and the "handsome fraternity boys" she'd observed "who seemed to live totally apart from her own world of eyestrain and study."  When she sees a husband and wife embrace and says to herself, "There but for the thoughtlessness of God go I."   And then there are some off-putting descriptions like "She bore the smell of aloneness in her armpits."  It's not a politically correct book nor a perfect one, but it does seem real and both suffocating and uncomfortably liberating at the same time.

A film version of the novel was made in 1979 with alternate titles of The Shaming, The Sin and Secret Yearnings -- but those come across as sensationalist and undermine Inge's original intention.  Inge opted for Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff because as Evelyn leaves Freedom with a couple of suitcases and a lot more baggage of scandal, her former landlady calls out "Good luck!" from the boardinghouse doorway.  Miss Wyckoff realizes that good luck "constituted her only hope for the future" and that she would "need lots of it."   But she at least does have a future and isn't jumping off a bridge or overdosing on sleeping pills.  Because in truth, she's had an experience, not a shaming or a sin, and with luck it might turn out to be an awakening and emergence into a bigger and more open-minded world.   Sadly, Inge committed suicide in 1973, but perhaps he wanted to give his fictional creation a bit more hope.

thirteen men

I bought Tiffany Thayer's Thirteen Men at the Salvation Army for a quarter, and at first glance I thought it was probably a sappy 1930s romance novel written by a female named Tiffany about a baker's dozen of lovers.  Tiffany, however, was a man, and the book is far from sappy.  The men in question are twelve jurors chosen for the trial of a pathological murderer called the Phantom.  Earlier, the Phantom had gone on a cold-blooded cross-country killing spree, then turned himself in to an incredulous cop who declared, "I've got a nut here who wants to be cracked."  The Phantom, of course, is the thirteenth man.

The lives of the twelve jurors are then detailed up to the point when each receives his jury duty summons, reinforcing the notion of how no verdict is without prejudicial experience.  And then there's the history of the person on trial.  (Sure, we know it from Twelve Angry Men but that was 1954 and this was published two decades earlier.)  Mr. Thayer was apparently pretty way-out there in terms of some of his theories (read more about him here) and fond of writing sci-fi tales, but in this case he's dealing primarily with the honest or dishonest, arrogant or timid, bizarre or mundane creatures that tend to amount to life on this planet.

Thayer's work is not regarded too highly and was scorned by his literary peers, but I have to admit, this is a crazy, strange, page-turner of a read.  It reminds me of a sensationalized version of John Dos Passos' USA Trilogy, the first book of which came out in 1930, also the year that Thirteen Men was published.  The fast-flowing biographies of these diverse thirteen, the slang of the day, the cynicism, the political incorrectness, the trial and jaded aftermath -- if you're a fan of the American Dirty Thirties, this is worth checking out.  Also featured in my Sun Dial Press copy are a whole side-set of intriguing pen and ink drawings by Mahlon Blaine, the first of which -- the Phantom himself -- is pictured here.      

***

Mother of Marty Durkin, the Tearney boys, Dean O'Banion, "Scarface Al" Capone, Johnny Torrio, Tony Lombardo and a thousand other celebrities, Chicago took "the Phantom" to her capacious bosom and tried to make the world believe that he, too, was a home product.  The feature writers warmed to the subject they loved.

From Thirteen Men, Tiffany Thayer