Two Literary (Re) Discoveries

Good morning, readers! two interesting literary "discoveries" on the internets yesterday:

*Jezebel reminds us of an unpublished excerpt of Edith Wharton's sexually explicit erotica--but maybe it was unpublished because it was, erm, about incest? Warning: this content is NSFW, even though it was written by Edith Wharton (I always said that her novels simmered with thwarted desire)

*In the Guardian, a discussion of the last Ted Hughes "birthday letter" a poem which he wrote about Sylvia Plath's death but never published.

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The Glimpses of the Moon

The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton


My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you're comfortable dealing with the assumptions Edith Wharton makes about money and the classes who have it (basically the premise that the green stuff is worth writing about, thinking about, being torn up about, etc etc) then her often-painful observations are beyond brilliant. And what carries you through those observations is this exquisite sense of longing and desire that permeates each page. At the beginning it's more of a longing to escape, but in her later novels it's distinctly sexual and romantic--possibly related to the eye-opening affair she had in Paris.

As I've started delving deeper into her oeuvre, I've noticed a lot of things changed from the House of Mirth onward. Her sense that the social order will be victorious doesn't change, but becomes less fatalistic and more bitter. There's a hint of rebelliousness. Such is the case with "The Glimpses of the Moon" a simple, less plotted but very compelling romance between two characters who, as many have said, have a resemblance to Lily and Lawrence of the House of Mirth. Suzy is a fine person who has been dulled by having to charm and sneak her way through life, living on the kindness of richer friends. Nick is a detached observer who is nonetheless uninterested in directly challenging the social set he sponges off. Attracted to each other and chummy, they make a pact to get married and have a one-year period of paradise, drifting from big European house to big house, counting on the kindness given to honeymooners. If either comes across a more advantageous match, they agree to break things off amicably.

At first their plan works out beautifully, but then they each face a crisis of conscience as the cost of living off a system of lies becomes clear. Meanwhile, the kind of moneyed-matches that might rid them of their mooching habits forever begin to appear.

SPOILERS

While the book is lighter in some ways than her other books, even the "happy ending" has a note of compromise and tragedy to it.

END SPOILERS

But it's a beautiful little book with some wonderful truisms about trying to live a somewhat moral life in the midst of a society that seeks to corrupt you at every turn. Wharton sweeps you along with her strong characterizations and sense of dread and desire even with very few twists and turns. A great read for those who like drawing-room stories or novels of manners.

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The Buccaneers (Book Review)

The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton


My review
rating: 4 of 5 stars


I've fallen in love, readers!

It took me about 12 hours from start to finish to read the last of Wharton's novels, left unfinished for decades and then completed in Wharton's style by scholar Marion Mainwaring. As I mentioned earlier, I've watched the PBS series three times now and there's something about it that gets to me. Perhaps because it's sexier and funnier and looser than what one would expect from the era, and because [SPOILER ALERT:] its ending which actually arises from Wharton's notes, is decidedly un-Whartonian. I'm terribly moved by the idea that at the end of her life, Edith Wharton would decide to write a novel about a heroine who behaves in the exact opposite way of nearly all her other major characters, who--to put it quite frankly--doesn't give a shit about social convention and flouts it utterly. I like to think of it as the author's reconciliation to romance, her final, deathbed middle finger raised to the rules and hierarchies with which she had such a deeply-tortured relationship.

Reading The Buccaneers is a dream for those who like comedies-of-manners for their own sake. Wharton will never be Austen: she takes ten lines to explain the social relationships that Austen dispatches with a sentence (this, I think, is evidence of Wharton's psychic struggle with society). But the first two thirds of the book, written by Wharton without revision, each page dropped off the side of her bed as she finished it, are blithe, satirical, sexy and both funny and sad.

The many scenes where the characters forge connections over poetry and art as well Nan St. George's stifling marriage and post-marital sexual awakening make me feel as though this is Wharton's Persuasion. And like that novel and other novels with heavy autobiographical elements--Copperfield, The Song of the Lark, etc. it has an emotional immediacy that feels startling and gives it a value different from a more controlled, classically perfect novel.

Wharton's contrast of Laura Testevalley, who gives up on romance and sacrifices her chance of happiness so that Nan can run away with Guy Thwarte, and Nan, who finds happiness with Guy after having giving up on it in her role as duchess, fascinates: one feels that Wharton is both Laura, in middle age loosening her scruples, and Nan herself.

Mainwaring's best contributions are a number of concluding love scenes that are satisfying (if not as satisfying as the wheat-field fornication in the film ;)) and a deft weaving-in of the horribly sexist divorce laws of the time that existed to punish women, humiliate them, and treat them as property. Marital rape is legal, and Nan's refusal to "produce heirs" for her huband after becoming emotionally estranged from him is a pivotal plot point.

This was definitely the best read I've embarked on in a while. I couldn't recommend it enough for Wharton fans who have long desired a less "thwarted" ending for her characters. I'd add that picturing Greg Wise in the romantic leading role definitely added a lot to the reading experience.

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Just re-watched Ep 1. of Masterpiece's "The Buccaneers"

Anyone seen it? This is my third time embarking down the 7-hour path that's this miniseries full of conniving, double-crossing, sex, scandal, and all kinds of other proto-gossip girl stuff. Based on Edith Wharton's last (and unfinished) novel, it tells the story of four "nouveau riche" American girls who find more acceptance in London than in Old New York, whose money buys them entree into a society of dissipated landed gentry still obsessed with rules of decorum but desperate for money. Really, liberally adapted (marital rape! gay subtext! syphilis!) and with a tacked-on ending, it's quite juicy, but it's tempered with a sober dose of hatred for the marriage-prison and the hypocrisy of the British landed classes as befits Wharton. Connie Booth (aka Polly from Fawlty Towers) and Mira Sorvino make appearances along with a number of BBC staples and a few American actresses including Carla Gugino, who's much more likeable here than she was as an agent/love interest for Vince in Entourage.



I know there are some Greg Wise fans out there... in this series he plays Guy Thwaite, which is a great role. Basically he gets to be Willoughby, but a good Willoughby. I'm looking forward to watching the rest soon!

Movie and Book Scenes that Always Make You Cry

So for some reason, the end of The House of Mirth always gets to me. I recognize that it's a contrived ending and not Wharton's most realistic, but I have never read the last few pages or gotten to the last ten minutes of the (amazing, amazing, amazing) Terrence Davies film without losing it.

I say this because "THOM" was on TV last night and I thought that since I was only watching the last half and I'd seen/read it so many times I'd be immune. But when Gillian Anderson's Lily goes to Selden's rooms and cries and says "I have tried! But I am a useless person," and he doesn't realize what she's about until it's too late I teared up so reliably, I mean streaming right down my face, it was like clockwork.

[Then I started remembering an embrarassing Amtrak train-ride from Boston to New York in which I was re-reading THOM for class and got so upset by the ending I had to hide my face from my fellow passengers. Ah, youth.]

The other movie moment that does this to me is "Sense and Sensibility "'95, when Elinor is leaning over the feverish Marianne saying "don't leave me dearest." Emma Thompson's performance is so good that when her facade of calm and control cracks, mine always does too.

In fact there's a similarity between those two moments: both women struggling so hard to remain calm in impossible circumstances that you, the viewer, don't realize how much tension has been built up throughout the film. And then when they break down at last it's a huge whoosh of emotion.

As for books, I've never read the end of most of the Anne of Green Gables books, particularly #1 and Rilla of Ingleside, without wanting to curl up in a ball and sob for a few hours. Pride and Prejudice usually has me sniffling with happy tears at the end, (but the '95 miniseries doesn't--it just makes me grin like an idiot.)

And then of course, there's Little Women. I've stayed away from re-reading it for a few years because Beth's fate always provokes too strong a reaction, ever since I was 7 or 8 and I went into the living room and said "Mommy, what's going to happen to Beth?" and in the moment of indecision on her face as to how to answer me, I SAW IT ALL. Oh, and here's an addendum: In the Winona Ryder movie version, I start crying when she rejects Christian Bale/Laurie and keep going through Beth's death, but that brings up a separate thread, which is "literary couples who should have just gotten together already!"

So what books or films make you cry no matter how many times you've seen them?

Period Literary Adaptation Hotties, # 10-6

Here's round two. Be ready for the top five, and the post-2006 five later this week.

Who steals our hearts in the big or small screen dramatizations of Wharton, Austen, Bronte and Bronte, James, Forster, Eliot, and more? Part 2.

#6-Daniel Day-Lewis

Makes the list for his embodiment of the early-modern romantic hero in the Age of Innocence. As in, he plays that epitome of wealthy indecision, the New York son of fortune Newland Archer--who is caught between Winona Ryder's sweet intended fiancee and Michelle Pfeiffer's sensual countless Olenska. From the first scene in Scorcese's underrated film where Day-Lewis puts the opera glasses on and sees Pfeiffer across the massive opera house, to the final scene with leaves falling in a wistful shot of Paris, he's melencholy and pondering and yes, we realize, the Victorian era is long gone. In A Room With a View, Day-Lewis plays the safe fiancee himself, Cecil Vyse, unable to understand why Helena Bonham carter has a thing for Julian Sands' George Emerson (and more on him, later).

#7--Timothy DaltonWe're bonded to this rather gruff and severe actor because he's gone where no one, not even Sir Lawrence himself has gone. To the moors...twice. To play Bronte anti-heroes Rochester and Heathcliff. His Heathcliff was particularly brutish, growling, and, well... dirty. And that's why he deserves a spot.

#8-Anthony Hopkins
What? Anthony Hopkins? Think about it. He lights up Merchant Ivory productions, and is equally at home on a manor lawn as he is feasting on brains. Obviously, he particularly dazzles in the tear-jerking, understated butler role that's one of the best roles in literature or film... like, ever ever ever...The Remains of the Day opposite Emma Thompson. And he does Forster proud as the less-than-honest Wilcox hubby in Howard's End opposite....Emma Thompson. Plus, he also plays this really erudite guy named Hannibal.

#9-Samuel West
Who the heck is he? Only the unprecedentedly dishy Austen anti-hero Mr. Elliot, so beautiful, so charming, that when he looks up at his cousin Anne on the beach and doffs his hat, staring wide-eyed at her reborn beauty, everyone knows that he's about to become a player for her heart. West also plays Helena Bonham-Carter's ill-fated working class love interest Leonard Bast in Howard's End. And anyone who has an affair with B-Carter while she's in Corsets is, like, seriously Major.

#10-Matthew MacFayden
I wasn't going to put him on this list, because of my general opposition to the liberties the new "Love Actually... And Pride and Prejudice" Kiera Knightley -heaving-bosoms-in-the-mist film version takes with Austen's text (I don't have the same problem with Ang Lee's equally rapacious S&S, but I'll explain that another time). But MacFayden is damn good, kind of mixing sneering and sniffing with a bit of adorable lip-trembling. And I hear he plays Sir Felix in the Masterpiece Theater Mini-series of the Way We Live Now, which I'm currently reading [fall '06], so that's why he's grudgingly up here. [NOTE: He is also the star of Little Dorrit, and I think he's kind of perfect for its hero, Arthur Clenham.]

Period Adaptation Hotties, #11-15

In honor of Masterpiece classic re-booting this month, I'm re-posting this series of my favorite leading men from costume-drama literary adaptations. After I post all 15, I will add a fourth post with my top 5 favorites from 2006-2008, mining the fertile field that has been the past few seasons of adaptations.

WHAT I SAID THEN + my current comments in brackets:


Julian Sands as the "beauty!" and "joy!" loving George Emerson who rocks Helena Bonham Carter's world in "A Room With a View" ]plus, there's that scene where "La Rondine" is playing in the background and they kiss on the hill in Fiesole]




Alan Rickman, as the staid Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility (remember how he paces back and forth when Marianne is sick and says: "Give me something to do or I shall go mad!"?)
Hugh Grant as the annoyingly weak-tempered but very sweet Edward Ferrars in the same.


Rufus Sewell, now known as the crazy would-be emperor in The Illusionist, for his stunning, stunning Will Ladislaw (my favorite literary hero ever, even more than Darcy) in the Masterpiece Theater production of Eliot's Middlemarch. [Even though Andrew Davies ruined the ending.]




Eric Stolz as an effete, overwhelmed but passionate Lawrence Selden in Terrence Davies' under-appreciated adaptation of Wharton's The House of Mirth.



And the razzie goes to:
Jonathan Rhys-Myers, a personal favorite, for his miserably churlish and bratty George Osborne in Mira Nair's frustrating but excellent production of Thackeray's Vanity Fair [and now for turning Henry VIII into a churlish, bratty... hmmm. Noticing a pattern?
]

The House of Mirth on Slate's Audio Book Club

I listened to this book chitchat (mp3 here) for a good fifteen minutes yesterday while waiting in my office for a tutee to show up. And I was surprised by how, despite some pretentious allusions to "binaries" (okay, binaries aren't that pretentious) interesting and enjoyable the talk was--particularly the discussion of Lawrence Selden's role as Lily's savior-cum-destroyer. Edith Wharton really loves those paralyzed, almost effeminiate men, doesn't she?

I'm an unbelievably huge fan of the House of Mirth, whose true strength to me is its quality as a re-read and the fact that, as one of the critics said, every time I open it I want Lily to do something different despite my knowledge of her fate, and I always cry at the end.

I also think the Terrence Davies' movie adaptation with Gillian Anderson and Eric Stoltz is even better than Scorcese's stab at Wharton, The Age of Innocence. Here's an interesting interview with Davies in which he talks about the differences between the novels and films. So go Netflix it if you haven't seen it. If you're anything like me, you will weep tears of satisfying bitterness and then rewind to the make-out scenes repeatedly.

HBO premiere night...

Ari Gold on Edith Wharton:

Do you know Edith Wharton? It’s always the same movie; guy can’t fuck the girl for five years ’cause those were the times.

There's Good Books... and Then There's Great Books

<----Michelle and Daniel Day: maybe a bit more explicit than Wharton intended, but not by much.







While nosing around my childhood bedroom on Friday I came upon a dog-eared, crumbling copy of Wharton's The Age of Innocence. I thought I might entertain myself for a few minutes by re-re-reading the first few pages, you know, the ones where Newland Archer takes his opera glasses and scans the crowd, first settling satisfactorily upon May, his placid wife-to-be, and then landing with consternation upon a strange woman in a dress with a too-plunging neckline. But once his eyes, and mine, had made contact with the figure of the Countess Olenska I was hooked again, and spent much of the weekend absorbed once again in Wharton's rigid Old New York, her ironic, deceptive descriptions, and the trapped desperation of Newland's love. I also picked up a few sexual references where I hadn't last time (have I really not read this since high school?) including a key discreetly mailed in an envelope, some wild-oat sowing, and other not-so-veiled overtones. I find the sexuality in this story more realistic than the Selden/Lily interplay in the House of Mirth, and have to wonder if Edith Wharton was more, ahem, experienced in the ways of passion when she wrote it.

Regardless, there was something about reading such a great book that put everything else I've read in the last few months-- all the gripping bestsellers and thought-provoking Pulitzer-Prize winners and sensational debuts--in a different light. My rabid consumption of The Age of Innocence tripped by with such intensity, such belief in every word I was reading, such conviction on my part that I was in strong hands, that I kept putting it down and saying "This is a Book." Does that make me not egalitarian after all, and a snob?
Perhaps. But I don't find Wharton a snobby read-- what keeps me moving through the pages is a constant, bubblng sense of passion and rebellion, that although frustratingly thwarted, carried immense emotional momentum. So yeah, I read it for the sex and anger that never materializes, in other words.

So what of Wharton's insistence on an always-tragic, always disappointed ending? I think she reason she always handed the victory to Society and Morality was evidence of self-hatred on her part, a sort of stockholm-syndrome esque identification with the society that condemned her and choked her when she was younger. And somehow, even though every time I read her books and hope for a better ending, I know they wouldn't be the same books if they had them. They would be fantasies, not realities, or they would birth Anna Karenina or Scarlet-Letter-like tragedies of trangression. (Or am I just justifying?)

Ah well... if I want to read a Wharton story with passions acted-upon, I can always read or watch the Buccaneers, whose posthumously-tacked on ending is entirely un-Wharton-esque and utterly delightful. And Scorcese's adaptation of Age is now No. 1 on my Netflix queue. Word.