URL change/update

Hi to my readers from the great state of Vermont, where I'm immersed in my ten-day prose reading and writing extravaganza. I'm having a truly amazing time, and will detail more later--but suffice it to say that it's mind-blowing for this Harvard grad to be surrounded by people who are serious and brilliant but not particularly competitive. I'm a bit bewildered, to be honest, at the lack of backstabbing, but I could get used to it.

I realize I owe my faithful readership a lot of book reviews: Alice Munro, Guernsey Literary, and the new Sookie. And the New Yorker fiction issue. I will try to return to regular blogging upon my return.

Oh, and this blog has moved: the new URL is egalitarianbookworm.blogspot.com. The RSS feed should be the same, and the redirect from sarahmselter.com. But if you're not getting updates, please re-subscribe here.

And ALSO, I'm tumbling a lot more these days. It's pretty random and occasionally personal stuff, but should you be interested it's fellowette.tumblr.com.

Til we next meet!

#Bloomsday Round-Up

• At the Forward, I talk about Jewishness and feminist stuff in Ulysses.
• At VF.com, Juli recaps Ulysses in tweet-sized bits.
• Also, I'm tweeting #Bloomsday links all day!
• And here are my pictures from when I was actually in Dublin during Bloomsday festivities.

Recuerdo, and update

So this is where I've been, what I've been doing, what I've been recovering from.

Slideshow from our outstanding photographer, Scott :

I've been back in reality for a while--as soon as the nups were concluded, it was back to intensely prepping two highschoolers for exams. Plus my first book review assignment post-wedding was a 600 page behemoth about the middle east conflict...perfect timing right? But now I'm making my way through the fiction issue of a certain well-regarded locally-produced magazine (a mixed bag thus far) and then it's time to snatch a bit of summer reading (Guernsey Literary/Potato Peel etc) before I start wading through the heavy stuff for my writer's retreat at VCFA at month's end.

What have you been reading during this EBC hiatus, dearest friends o'th'blog?

What can one even say about this? AUSTEN v. BRONTE WARS.

We really ought to start keeping a tally of how many mainstream news outlets start writing stories about how Bronte is the new Austen. Because they are coming in fast and furious. It's the 2010-2011 meme.

Seriously, this is a sexist way of looking at things. Do we ever get articles about how Dickens is the new Trollope? Hemingway is the new Joyce? MOVE ON OVER Faulkner, it's Fitzgerald's time to shine! Have you heard the news? MARLOWE IS IN. JONSON IS OUT.

The media needs to get over the fact that these 19th century women are really really popular. They always have been, they will be, they are.

Just my indignant two cents.

Literary Birthday: Daphne DuMaurier

Today, in 1907, that obsessive reader of "Brooding Hunx Weekly" and biggest Bronte fan EVAH, Daphne DuMaurier, was born unto this world. Her unstoppable pen gave us "Rebecca" and "Jamaica Inn" and "The Birds" and dozens of chilling settings and smoldering heroes and pseudo-retrograde, pseudo-feminist counter-narratives and subtexts. Most importantly, she gave us the kind of books that are utterly un-put-downable and so hard to replicate--and she lived a haunted life worth obsessing over on its own.

Literary Linkage du jour

Around the web to-day:

*Me, on the new Sookie Stackhouse, here.

*My college classmate Nicole Cliffe, on the House of Mirth as a choose your own adventure novel. This is a must-read LOL for Wharton fans. Sample question:

2. Upon leaving Selden’s apartment, you run into the unfortunately Jewish, and hence socially dead, Simon Rosedale who asks what brings you to a street consisting entirely of male rooming houses. You…

A) Tell him the reasonably innocent truth, and butter him up by accepting his offer of a lift to the train and making friendly conversation.
B) Make up a weak story about visiting your dressmaker, and butter him up by accepting his offer of a lift to the train and making friendly conversation.
C) Make up a weak story about visiting your dressmaker, then insult him by jumping into a hansom cab and dashing off.

*Media megastar Tyra Banks is writing a YA novel series that is a self-described cross between America's Next Top Model and Harry Potter, taking place at "an exclusive academy for 'Intoxibel las' -- who are the most exceptional models known to humankind and harbor unknown powers." Umm, word?

*The awesome Margaret Atwood speaks up against cultural boycotts. I agree with her, FWIW. Economic boycotts are another thing altogether.

The "Charade"

That Simon figured out.

["first" and "second" are SYLLABLES--mini-words making up the word which is the answer, the "third"]

Here are the clues we were given by Arnie Perlstein: the answer has three syllables; the name of the housemaid is the same as the name of one of the housemaids in Emma; the "second" word which itself is two syllables, refers to the kind of real world event many Janeites believe was never referred to by Austen in her novels, although it was mentioned in Northanger Abbey.

Any guesses?

Mother's Day Weekend

Three generations of women in my family, all enthusiastic bookworm chicks.

Greetings, readers. This weekend, for some incomprehensible reason, I'm reflecting on mom characters in literature. Mother figures tend to be pretty reviled or absent in literature, but is there any literary mama more beloved than Marmee, who gave life and love to Jo, Meg, Amy and Beth? Mrs. Morland, Catherine's mom in Northanger Abbey, is another exception. Lily Potter gave up her own life for baby Harry's, (kind of like Jesus and Mary in reverse.)

But it's hard to think of too many sainted moms. The mind immediately wanders to the far more plentiful monstrous mommies who devour their young--and their close literary kin, a veritable parade of Wicked Stepmothers. We've got Mrs. Bennet, Paul's smothering mother in Sons and Lovers, and Mrs. Clenham in Little Dorrit, a perfect example of the latter. There's also the immortal Sethe in Beloved who straddles the line between good and bad mother so memorably.

Who are your favorite mother characters, good or bad, in literature? HuffPo has a slideshow of twelve of the worst, and they are baddies indeed.

My first JASNA meeting

Last weekend, Simon and I went to our first Jane Austen society regional meeting right here in our neighborhood, at local Fancypants U's swanked-out faculty house.

So I pulled out a string of nice fake pearls I hadn't worn since the bar-mitzvah era, put on a pair of heels and a cardigan, and elegantly hobbled over. The day began with a scrumptious, and free, three course-lunch with wine for new members, most of whom were ahem! a bit older and more female than Simon but who were delightful. During the course of the luncheon, names like Mary Eliot and Jane Fairfax were bandied about as though they were mutual friends of all of ours, which in a way, of course, they were. These characters and their tales were the major threads that knit us together. As the wine kept coming and the Prada chocolate cake came out, things got very loose indeed as we debated whether Mary knew that Charles had proposed to Anne first.

After lunch the gentlemen retired to the library for brandy and cigars--err, that is, we all went up stairs and listened to a provocative lecture on the secret subtext of Emma, from Arnie Perlstein. Perlstein is convinced and has a stack of evidence to prove that all Jane Austen's books have secret pregnancy narratives embedded within the text. He thinks that Emma is oblivious to the fact that Jane Fairfax is knocked up throughout the nine months of her time in Highbury. While the exact details of Perlstein's counter-narrative didn't always sit well with me, I think he was picking up on the screening-effect of Emma's limited perspective, and on the fact that Jane Fairfax is the heroine of an alternate story. In fact, many people have noted that in a more typical Austen tale Jane would be the heroine and Emma her meddlesome, spoiled foil. But the way Emma hews so tightly to the almost myopic perspective of the titular lady does give the novel a mysterious feeling--a feeling of a plot unraveling. Still I think there's more of an emotional component to this: it's the mystery of how the world works being gradually revealed to a young person who has a self-centered view of things and later learns to expand her line of vision. The lecture made me appreciate the subtle genius of St. Jane all the more.

Also, we began the session by solving the "charades" or riddles from Emma. We also tackled one riddle posed long ago by Austen's brother Henry. Simon was the only person in the 70-person or so crowd to solve it off the top of his head. I am all the more convinced that I will soon be making a most fortunate alliance.

So dear readers, 'twas a success! I'm excited to be joining JASNA just as the NY chapter begins to gear up for hosting its national general conference in 2012.

Shakespeare's Birthday~!

William Shakespeare. 1564–1616

It was a Lover and his Lass (from As You Like It)

IT was a lover and his lass,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
That o'er the green corn-field did pass,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;	5
Sweet lovers love the spring.
Between the acres of the rye,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
These pretty country folks would lie,
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,	10
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.
This carol they began that hour,
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,
How that life was but a flower	15
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.
And, therefore, take the present time
With a hey, and a ho, and a hey nonino,	20
For love is crown`d with the prime
In the spring time, the only pretty ring time,
When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the spring.

Oh, and here's a big article on "Shakespeare Today" in the Telegraph.

Literary Linkage

First of readers, I'm just going to have to apologize. Posting will be continue to be light, light, "lite," until a certain date in May has come and gone.

That having been said, there were a few things on the intertubes I wanted to highlight.

• Were the madwomen in literature really insane, or did society drive them to insanity? via BBC news ("Much madness is divinest sense," we say)
• EBC patron saints Jennifer Weiner and Amy Tan are FORMING A ROCK BAND with Mitch Albom and Dave Barry, via WSJ. How awesome is that?
• JK Rowling writes The Single Mother's Manifesto. You've probably seen this but I thought it was worth a link.

Two bookish blog-posts by yours truly

Can a Baby-Sitters Club Compete With Gossip Girls, Vampires and Our Memories? A BSC Fan Investigates (Essay) - Speakeasy - WSJ

But can the re-issued books, and the new prequel, live up to such vaunted memories? And the question on everyone’s mind: are these homework-completing heroines too innocent for today’s adrenaline and bitchiness-bred young readers?

PBS's Anne Frank and the Heroine Canon – The Sisterhood – Forward.com

For many young readers around the world, Anne Frank fits perfectly into the “heroine canon,” a long list of young adult and classic adult novels with feisty, introspective women at their core.

Review Roundup

Here, for your pleasure, is a collection of EXTREMELY SHORT Catch-up BOOK REVIEWS taking you to the gritty streets of Calcutta, Limerick, Tehran, and elsewhere.

Interpeter of Maladies-- Jhumpa Lahiri's debut story collection (Pulitzer-winning!) is full of sorrowful breakups, cultural confusion, and quiet desperation. These stories take place in India and in the US and are less tightly focused on family and immigration than her other work, although these are still the dominant themes. Her prose here is tight and crisp, without a word out of place, and her stories slowly suck you in with their quiet everydayness and then snap your heart in two with perfect misery. Unforgettable.

Angela's Ashes--I can't believe I didn't read this narrative of Frank McCourt's impoverished upbringing in Limerick the first time around. I wrote about it briefly before, but it's really a wonder. An entire memoir narrated in the unwavering perspective of a child, innocent and full of wonder, poetic and uproarious without being treacly. McCourt never veers too far into sentimentality even through soaring and depressing moments. The benevolence of the narrator towards a world that treated him terribly is perhaps the most astonishing thing. And if you want to get at the pathology and beauty in the Irish relationship to history and the church, this is the book for you.

Persepolis I+II

Marjane Satrapi's beloved "graphic memoir." A long delayed book on my list. It's very similar tonally to McCourt's in the way it mixes riotous, irreverent, laugh-out-loud humor with absolute tragedy. She gives us an incredibly intimate look at the large and small costs of living under political repression. Although Satrapi's anger sometimes intrudes into a narrative that could speak for itself, this humanizes her. Her sparing words and stark illustrations grab your attention and emotional investment right away. She also succeeds in her goal of opening a window into a society that is hard to see otherwise because of political and media distortion.

Loveliest of Trees

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
AE HOUSMAN LOVELIEST of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,	5
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,	10
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.