the age of desire

Speaking of Edith Wharton, Jennie Fields' The Age of Desire (2012) draws back the heavy velvet drapes of decorum by novelizing aspects of Edith's life and loves.  Wharton, of course, was a fixed member of the upper crust society she portrayed in fiction, thereby using its corseting, restrictive influence as a means of literary liberation.  In The Age of Desire, much of the focus is on Edith's unfulfilling marriage to portly, jovial Teddy Wharton, who was twelve years older and more of a gentleman farmer-type than an aesthete.  Edith and Teddy did get along fairly well at times, but the marriage was strained by a lack of sexual connection.  Edith felt little for her husband romantically and, after a while, Teddy began to turn to other women to fill those needs.

Edith's intellectual and artistic interests were also beyond Teddy's general purview.  When Edith met American journalist Morton Fullerton in Paris, there was a spark of both physical and mental attraction that developed into an intense affair.  Fullerton was younger than then fortyish-Edith and had a bit of a reputation as a player, with both sexes.  Still, Edith seemed to realize that though it would be an overwhelming and troubling relationship, she needed to go through this ring of fire with Fullerton. The characters in her novels, namely Newland Archer in The Age of Innocence and Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, suppressed passions in order to keep within a proper code of social behavior -- Archer remaining in a loveless marriage and Lily eventually succumbing to the permanent oblivion of a chloral hydrate overdose.  Edith was more willing to take the emotional and moral risk of pursuing her own romantic involvement, although interestingly enough, The Age of Innocence was published almost two decades after her affair with Fullerton.

With a framework of Edith's true-life biographical detail and quotes from letters written to Fullerton, The Age of Desire offers a complex and intimate portrait of one of literature's grande dames.  Some may find such intimacy unsettling, while others may be more intrigued by this glimpse of Edith as a living, breathing, yearning, and flawed woman.  The life of Anna Bahlmann, Edith's secretary and confidante, is also part of The Age of Desire; Anna is of another class and tirelessly earnest in her devotion to Edith, and her character is quite compelling.  Furthermore, Fields manages to portray Edith's troubled husband Teddy Wharton in a sympathetic light, though he too is full of flaws and bad impulses.

Some reviewers of The Age of Desire noted instances of dialogue or behavior seeming too modern for the era, but in the larger scope of the novel's purpose, that can be indulged.  The prose itself flows elegantly in a Whartonesque manner, with a resulting view of Edith balancing identities as a woman of her day, a writer, and a human being, and not just a frosty book jacket photograph of one of America's literary greats.  

night at the opera

But they had; they undoubtedly had; for the low-toned comments behind him left no doubt in Archer's mind that the young woman was May Welland's cousin, the cousin always referred to in the family as "poor Ellen Olenska."  Archer knew that she had suddenly arrived from Europe a day or two previously... [a]s for the cause of the commotion, she sat gracefully in her corner of the box, her eyes fixed on the stage, and revealing, as she leaned forward, a little more shoulder and bosom than New York was accustomed to seeing, at least in ladies who had reasons for wishing to pass unnoticed.

From The Age of Innocence -- Edith Wharton

Pictured:  At the Opera --  Thomas Francis Dicksee, R.A.

go holmes go

John Clellon Holmes (1926-1988) was a key member of the Beat Generation's founding circle, having met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg at a party in 1948 and thus beginning decades-long friendships.  Holmes and Kerouac -- both born on March 12th but Kerouac being older by four years -- became creative comrades as well, encouraging each other to observe and write and transform the happenings of their lives into literature.  Holmes' Go was published in 1952, before 1957's more famed On the Road, and though the novels involve many of the same characters in the roman à clef style, the tone of each book is quite different.

While On the Road has a generally more energetic, driven, Beat zeitgeist feeling, with the American post-war landscape rushing by, Go is New York-centric, at times claustrophobically so.  Bars "forlornly gathered the discontented into gaudy islands of warmth and alcohol," and the Manhattan backdrop is urban and landlocked.  Holmes' alter ego in Go is Paul Hobbes, a bright aspiring young writer living with his wife Kathryn.  And here we have another major difference between Go and On the Road -- the emotional and romantic complications of a true marriage.  In On the Road, Sal Paradise's marriage is mentioned as a thing of the past, in the rearview mirror, a vague relationship that's run its course.  Paul Hobbes is both anchored and grounded by his marriage to Kathryn, who works a day job to support him while he writes at home, and who is a strong-willed, passionate woman.  For the most part, Kathryn outrightly disapproves of Paul's "wild" friends and their excessive drinking, smoking, drug use and ambiguous morality, yet she also has a certain fascination for the likes of Gene Pasternak (Kerouac), David Stofsky (Ginsberg), and Hart Kennedy (Neal Cassady), and can't help but be drawn into their world.  She and Paul fight often, adding another claustrophobic element to Go, namely the drunken or sober squabbles in the Hobbes' apartment, but despite all the tension and friction, some sort of earthy magnetism seems to keep them from breaking apart.

In essence, Hobbes stays behind in New York while Pasternak and Kennedy surge westward into the pages of On the Road.  The prose of Go is more measured and dense than Kerouac's flowing narrative, but there are many fine moments and observations in Holmes' earlier novel.  Beyond a deeper perception of some of the female characters, Go gives a sense of this is probably how things really were among the NY Beat social set, warts and all.  Like the cruel, self-destructive tendencies of Bill Agatson (Bill Cannastra), the moody impulses of Pasternak, or the quirky, almost naive brilliance of David Stofsky.  And while On the Road is a definite American literary classic, Go surely should have a prominent place on the Beat bookshelf to add nuance and layers to the story, and for an intriguing variation of the same scene.

This generation may make no bombs; it will probably be asked to drop some, and have some dropped on it, however, and this fact is never far from its mind. It is one of the pressures which created it and will play a large part in what will happen to it. 

"This is The Beat Generation" -- John Clellon Holmes, The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 1952

the literary legacy of philomena guinea

I had read one of Mrs. Guinea's books in the town library--the college library didn't stock them for some reason--and it was crammed from beginning to end with long, suspenseful questions:  "Would Evelyn discern that Gladys knew Roger in her past? wondered Hector feverishly" and "How could Donald marry her when he learned of the child Elsie, hidden away with Mrs. Rollmop on the secluded country farm? Griselda demanded of her bleak, moonlit pillow."  These books earned Philomena Guinea, who later told me she had been very stupid at college, millions and millions of dollars.

From The Bell Jar -- Sylvia Plath

Pictured:  Woman Reading -- Kuroda Seiki, circa 1890 (Tokyo National Museum)

dog days of gatsby

The Great Gatsby is a summer novel that begins with the exciting promise of a glamorous season for Nick yet ends with disillusion and tragedy, a thirtieth birthday, and leaves from "yellowing trees" about to turn and start dropping downward into Gatsby's fateful swimming pool.  There's the longest day of the year that Daisy always forgets to remember, Gatsby's lavish weekend parties on endless warm nights, gin rickeys and mint juleps, and lilac trees in the July rain.  But in the middle of another sticky August heatwave, even summer-loving people might start to agree with Jordan Baker's comment that "Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."  Or we can just take Tom's bullying advice to just forget about the heat:  "You make it ten times worse by crabbing about it."

Pictured:  Beach Scene with Lavender Sky -- William Glackens, 1914 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

cicada days

“Again and again, the cicada’s untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth.”

Runaway Horses -- Yukio Mishima (1925-1970)

(Pictured:  Moonlight View of Tsukuda with Lady on a Balcony -- Utagawa Hiroshige)

june bloom

It's that day in June again, also known as Bloomsday, in commemoration of the famed 24 hours of James Joyce's Ulysses.  Celebrated throughout the world (especially in Dublin, Montreal, and in Philadelphia by the Rosenbach Museum and Library, where the original handwritten Ulysses manuscript can be found), the costumed reenactments of the novel, along with singing, pub-going and other revelry are a great testament to the power of literature.  It's also a good day to read or re/read Ulysses (click here for an online version), and maybe have a gorgonzola sandwich and glass of burgundy to warm the memory and mind.  And some Italian olives and a nice cool salad, while pondering indeed whether God made food, the devil the cooks....

the right wright?

 

Chris Wild's Mashable feature of 1946 Alfred Eisenstaedt photos taken at Howard University includes a young woman described as Sophomore Sara Wright.  Sara, standing next to dapper Walter Hall, has a bit of a quirky smile on her face, and both she and Walter look like they're trying not to seem self-conscious or burst out laughing at the prospect of being photographed for Life magazine.  Flashing forward to September of 2009, the New York Times laments the passing of Sarah E. Wright, novelist, whose 1969 This Child's Gonna Live received rave reviews and is considered a groundbreaking work of African-American fiction. 

According to Margalit Fox's obituary, Wright was born in 1928 and attended Howard University, eventually becoming editor of the college newspaper.  A serious lack of funds forced her to leave Howard before graduating, yet she continued to write through lean times.  She married, raised a family and became Sarah Wright Kaye, pursued political and literary passions, and worked as a bookkeeper.  This Child's Gonna Live came deep from Wright's personal experience of growing up along the Maryland shore, introducing an overburdened but still spiritual heroine named Mariah Upshur.  Death and poverty are intertwined in Wright's fictional Depression-era Tangierneck, Maryland, and Mariah struggles to keep her troubled world together: 

Mariah commenced into wrestling with Satan on that long road -- road that stretched on forever.  Went into her secret closet praying, "I'm in your service, Lord.  Clean my soul.  Clean my mouth that I may speak your words."

Sarah's husband noted in her obituary that a Tangierneck trilogy was planned and considerable work had been put into a second novel.  But she had kept progress on the project to herself, and the pages now are in the same box they were placed in by their author before her death.  And whether Sara Wright of the 1946 Eisenstaedt photo is the same Sarah E. Wright whose full life was detailed by the NY Times -- This Child's Gonna Live is a pearl of a novel worth discovering, along with Wright herself.

the razor's edge and oscar gold

W. Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge is one of my favorite books, with many fine turns of phrase and dialogue and memorable main and side characters.  The 1944 novel was made into a 1946 film starring romantic leads Tyrone Power and Gene Tierney, along with Herbert Marshall as Maugham himself, gliding in and out of scenes as the worldly but not always present narrator.  Clifton Webb as shrewdly snobbish and haute Uncle Elliott Templeton steals the show, as does Anne Baxter in the more tragic role of Sophie.  Baxter earned an Academy Award for her performance; Webb was nominated but didn't win an Oscar (he did, however, score a Golden Globe).  The 1946 film is very good but doesn't totally capture the essence of the novel -- though that was unlikely to happen in Hollywood at the time.  The 1984 remake with Bill Murray seemed to have high hopes to come closer to the book, but didn't quite make it either for different reasons.

As noted, the original novel is full of great quotes and descriptives, but one of the best lines from the 1946 movie is Elliott's frank observation: "I do not like the propinquity of the hoi polloi." And regarding Maugham's character being invited to dinner, Elliott advises his guests:  "He's an English author. He's quite alright. In fact he's quite famous. So pretend you've heard of him even if you haven't."

Indeed.

(Pictured:  Clifton Webb as Elliott Templeton snobbing it up while Herbert Marshall/Somerset Maugham listens.)

peering through the high window

Raymond Chandler's 1942 novel The High Window isn't his best-known or even his best work, but it is one of his better glimpses into the soul of Chandler's celebrated anti-hero/private eye Philip Marlowe.  There's a very rare coin, an elderly, port-drinking, ethically twisted bulldog of a wealthy widow, the widow's ineffectual son, a fragile and fractured secretary, a wannabe detective, along with the usual beautiful yet cold-hearted women, flinty cops, hoods and other memorable Chandleresque characters.

The plot fabric stretches a little thin at times and the ending has more humanity than dramatic payoff, but all in all, reading Raymond Chandler is a wonderful experience.  His narrative and dialogue are just so good that each page is enjoyable.  Chandler was undoubtedly a writer who adapted well to the screen -- as especially evidenced by The Big Sleep and Farewell My Lovely -- but it's a whole other experience to actually read his work.  Cinematic detective voiceover narration can only capture so much of the finely honed words and descriptions, and when it comes to using voiceover in movies, less always seems better than more.  But would you really want to miss snippets like these:

"From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class.  From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away."

****

"A large black and gold butterfly fishtailed in and landed on a hydrangea bush...moved its wings slowly up and down a few times, then took off heavily and staggered away through the motionless hot scented air."

****

"She looked as flustered as a side of beef."

****

"I had a funny feeling...as though I had written a poem and it was very good and I had lost it and would never remember it again...."

****

Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. -- Raymond Chandler

american hustle, george f. babbitt style

As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering, "Guess better hustle." All about him the city was hustling, for hustling's sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another trolley a minute behind, and to leap from the trolleys, to gallop across the sidewalk, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food which cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, "Jus' shave me once over. Gotta hustle." Men were feverishly getting rid of visitors in offices adorned with the signs, "This Is My Busy Day" and "The Lord Created the World in Six Days—You Can Spiel All You Got to Say in Six Minutes." Men who had made five thousand, year before last, and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year; and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered. 

Among them Babbitt hustled back to his office, to sit down with nothing much to do except see that the staff looked as though they were hustling....

Babbitt -- Sinclair Lewis (1922)

at sea with katherine anne porter

Katherine Anne Porter's 1962 Ship of Fools is one of my favorite novels, not because it's a particularly life-affirming or uplifting story, but more because it's strongly character-driven and on cruise control like the great boat that carries everyone aboard.  From August to September of 1931, various classes of people of various nationalities are passengers on the Vera, headed from Mexico to Bremerhaven, Germany.  World War II and the rise of Hitler are inevitable but not yet in full global force, though on the Vera, Germans like the obnoxious Lizzie Spöckenkieker and Siegfried Rieber freely offer Nazi-tinged attitudes and opinions seemingly every chance they can.  One of the few admirable characters is Dr. Schumann, the ship's physician.  Dr. Schumann displays more professional humanity and empathy than the majority of the other passengers, but even he notes with unhappy detachment how evil comes into being due to a "consent by default...with nine-tenths of us half-asleep and refusing to be waked up."

Porter was exceptionally skilled at short stories and novellas, and Ship of Fools was her first and only major novel. Written over two decades, the final published book weighed in at close to 500 pages.  Initial critical reviews were not quite unanimously glowing, but no one could deny that Porter was an excellent stylist and observer of the human condition.  Ship of Fools was a bestseller and quickly pursued by Hollywood.  And then Ship of Fools the 1965 film came into being, directed by Stanley Kramer and starring the likes of Vivien Leigh, Jose Ferrer, Jose Greco, Elizabeth Ashley, George Segal and Lee Marvin.

I've never felt that the movie really captured the essence of the book, but then maybe that essence isn't something that can be captured.  Michael Dunn, however, was excellent as Herr Glocken, the hunchback, and Oskar Werner was wonderful as usual in his portrayal of Dr. Schumann.  At age 40 or so, he was too young to play a 60 year old and a bit physically at odds with his love interest, Simone Signoret as La Condesa, but he did have Dr. Schumann's "crookedly healed dueling scars on his left cheek" and eyes with "an abstract goodness and even sweetness in them."  Oskar was nominated for an Oscar for his performance, but Porter herself wasn't thrilled with the filmed version.  She nonetheless earned a hefty sum for the movie rights, and I'm sure sales of the book resurged once the film came out.  Not bad for a novel that came about from Porter's own ship of fools journey, which she described as:

...the story of my first voyage to Europe in 1931. We embarked on an old German ship at Vera Cruz and we landed in Bremen twenty-eight days later...I don’t think I spoke a half-dozen words to anybody. I just sat there and watched—not deliberately, though. I kept a diary in the form of a letter to a friend, and after I got home the friend sent it back. And, you know, it is astonishing what happened on that boat, and what happened in my mind afterwards. Because it is fiction now.

the lady killer

Masako Togawa, author, actress and chanteuse, was born in Tokyo in 1933 and it appears she will be rounding age eighty in March of this year.  (Imdb.com cites a birth year of 1931, but Wikipedia counters with 1933 -- whichever may be true, continued health and happiness to her.)  Among Togawa's novels is the mystery The Lady Killer, nominated for Japan's Naoki Prize when it first came out in 1963.  This is a twisted tale, and one that I found especially enjoyable since I'm a fan of things Japanese -- I kept visualizing it as a Japanese new wave film like Pale Flower or Crazed Fruit.  And an old 1989 item from the L.A. Times notes how The Lady Killer was once slated for filmdom, but it doesn't seem that this ever came to be:

Lewis B. Chesler, executive producer and creator of pay-TV's "The Hitchhiker," has purchased film rights to 1963 Japanese novel, "The Lady Killer" by Masako Togawa, a highly controversial and erotic thriller that dealt with role of women in that society. Screenwriter Robert J. Avrech ("Body Double") will adapt the book, and Carl Schenkel ("The Mighty Quinn") will direct. "Crimson Cabaret," the title of the film version, will film in Japan and possibly Hong Kong this spring. . . .

Well, that's a shame.  The 1985 Dodd Mead American edition was translated from the original Japanese by Simon Grove, who seems to have done an excellent job in keeping the cultural backdrop and tone of early 1960s Tokyo while also maintaining the intrigue of the plot.

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.

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

the great summer solstice

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips, the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

"Why candles?" objected Daisy frowning.  She snapped them out with her fingers.  "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year."  She looked at us all radiantly.  "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it?  I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

things that people do in books

There are many swanky editions of F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1920 breakthrough novel, This Side of Paradise, but one of my favorites is the Dover Thrift paperback, still a bargain at just $3.50.

Somewhere in his mind a conversation began, rather 

resumed its place in his attention. It was composed not 

of two voices, but of one, which acted alike as 

questioner and answerer:

Question.--Well--what's the situation?

Answer.--That I have about twenty-four dollars to my name....

Q.--Can you live?

A.--I can't imagine not being able to. People make money in books and
I've found that I can always do the things that people do in books.
Really they are the only things I can do. 

This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald 

captain alatriste

A paperback copy of this appeared mysteriously on my desk at work and I never did find out who left it there -- so to begin with, the novel had an aura of real life intrigue beyond the already swashbuckling story of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste in 17th century Spain.  It's not annoyingly swashbuckling or adventurous, however, and has fine notes of dark humor and character throughout.  In fact, when I first discovered the book I flipped through it and was hooked by this passage:

It was evident that he and his companion had seen death face to face, with no soft lights or heroic drumrolls, but in the dark, and nearly in the back, like rats in an alleyway and several leagues from anything resembling glory.

The original was published in 1996 and this is the Plume/Penguin 2005 translation.  Arturo Pérez-Reverte is also quite interesting to follow on Twitter, if you habla español and enjoy Twitter being used in a fun and historical-literary way.

moon and sixpence

This pictured Penguin edition of W. Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence seems to be from 1979, with a colorfully collaged but maybe vaguely racist cover.  Maugham's 1919 novel focuses on Charles Strickland, a British stockbroker who leaves his comfortable, business-oriented lifestyle to pursue a passion for painting.  The story parallels the true quest of Paul Gauguin, though Strickland doesn't really have the same charisma that Gauguin did -- or at least not for me.  Like many of Maugham's tales it involves the amiable and neutrally observing Maugham-narrator, who usually happens to stroll into an unfolding major drama and then becomes everyone's confidant.  Such as how Mrs. Strickland (Amy) asks our narrator to go find her husband in Paris after he suddenly abandons his family.  Our narrator protests, as he often does:

"But I've not spoken ten words to your husband.  He doesn't know me.  He'll probably just tell me to go to the Devil."

Still, Mrs. Strickland persists even though she doesn't know our narrator too well either, and of course he goes to Paris and beyond and that's how we get our story.