Defined by Books

Simon of Stuck-in-a-Book tagged me in his ten books meme three weeks ago and I am only now getting around to posting; both another cookie crumbles and JoAnn of Lakeside Musings tagged me in the honest scrap "ten things" award so this is also a response to them with ten bookish things about me.

Simon's rules:

1.) Go to your bookshelves...
2.) Close your eyes. If you're feeling really committed, blindfold yourself.
3.) Select ten books at random. Use more than one bookcase, if you have them, or piles by the bed, or... basically, wherever you keep books.
4.) Use these books to tell us about yourself - where and when you got them, who got them for you, what the book says about you, etc. etc.....
5.) Have fun! Be imaginative. Doesn't matter if you've read them or not - be creative. It might not seem easy to start off with, and the links might be a little tenuous, but I think this is a fun way to do this sort of meme.
6.) Feel free to cheat a bit, if you need to...

Seeing as Simon fully sanctioned cheating ... I did. To be fair, I instinctively know where all of my books are so I couldn't have picked them unknowingly blind but I did choose them at random by looking at the bookshelves and quickly choosing ten books from ten different shelves, one or two of them as intentionally representative of something about me.

Everything I Needed to Know about Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume: this title is self-explanatory and true. I could have shared one of my Judy Blume books but instead I thought this was far more revealing about me. I loved Judy Blume as a girl and still hold a soft spot for some of her books (Just as Long as We're Together, Here's to You Rachel Robinson, Tiger Eyes, Deenie ...)

Trumpet by Jackie Kay: there are several books that I could have used to tell you that I am from Glasgow but none quite as beautiful as this one, in which the 1960s sections are set in my home-city (Kay also grew up there).

The Collected Stories by Katherine Mansfield: I was first introduced to Katherine Mansfield by a beloved English teacher at school who gave us "The Doll House" to read, which remains one of my favourite short stories because of its apparent simplicity yet also inexplicable quality. This book reveals not only a cherished bookish memory from school but also that I own a replica Victorian dollhouse (I used to own two, but my sister now has my first one) and collect miniature furniture, including books, a Swan Lake screen, a tiny Tiffany lamp (post-dating Victoriana but too cute to resist). Furthermore, it reveals my obsession with silver Penguin Modern Classics, of which this one is a favourite.

Bold Girls by Rona Munro: another set text from school (for Higher English), Rona Munro is a Scottish playwright although this play concerns four women in war-torn Belfast. I loved this play when I studied it and a friend bought me my own copy and wrote a dedication inside likening me to one of the characters (whose part I had read in class). I am a huge fan of drama; I don't read or see as many plays any more as I used to but I have a full shelf on my bookcases dedicated to plays and that doesn't include my numerous books by and about Shakespeare. I forget that readers of my blog probably don't know that I am an English Literature graduate (I also have my Master's) but it is an intrinsic part of me.

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter: I couldn't define myself using books and not include Angela Carter. Anyone who doesn't know that I am a Carter devotee hasn't been reading my posts closely enough! Nights at the Circus was the first book of hers that I read and hence meaningful.

Mog's Christmas by Judith Kerr: along with Dogger by Shirley Hughes this was my favourite picture book as a child. My much-loved and dog-eared copy was handed down to my sister and is still at home but my boyfriend bought me a lovely mini hardback copy a few Christmases ago.

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them by Francine Prose: another perfect gift choice by my boyfriend, this book is indispensable and I love close-reading a chapter at a time over and over. The subtitle is revealing as I am both of those people; the book sits on my writing shelf, where I have writing style handbooks, creative aids, and a number of short story volumes by writers included in the book.

The Brontës Went to Woolworths by Rachel Ferguson: I began to consciously collect the original green-spined Virago Modern Classics in April 2008 and very early on I coveted an elusive copy of this book. Shortly after looking at expensive copies online, I went into an Oxfam Books in Glasgow, purposefully seeking a copy; I instantly honed in on a green spine (a skill known by all that collect these editions) and it was the one I was looking for! Priced at a wonderful £2.49. Very surreal and quirky, this book bears re-reading but I know that I am never going to part with it, even if Bloomsbury have re-issued it in a particularly lovely ice-cream copy.

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf: I adore this essay by Woolf and love to pick it up and luxuriate in her words and thoughts. As a feminist I love to read about Woolf walking on the lawn of Oxbridge and adore her creation of Judith, Shakespeare's sister. Although I am attached to this Penguin edition I am somewhat obsessed with the earlier purple and cream striped one; I own most of the Penguin merchandise that imitates the iconic edition: the bookbag, the notebook and poster and I covet the postcard and mug.

Love by Toni Morrison: this is the book I'd rescue from a burning building, not because of the book itself but the inscription inside; my boyfriend bought me this for our first Christmas together and wrote something beautiful to me. This is one of several books that have something meaningful written to me inside but this one, above the others, is incredibly special; if I shared it online, it would betray my boyfriend and I would never do that.

Did you learn anything new about me from this meme and did you notice that all of my books are written by women?

To the Lighthouse

I meant nothing by The Lighthouse. One has to have
a central line down the middle of the book to
hold the design together. I saw that all
sorts of feelings would accrue to this but I
refused to think them out, and trusted that people
would make it the deposit of their emotions - which they
have done, one thinking it means one thing another another.
I can't manage Symbolism except in this vague, generalized way.

So said Virginia Woolf of her novel To the Lighthouse. "[O]ne thinking it means one thing another another" is the essence of the Woolf in Winter read-alongs, where we read a Woolf novel (or two, or three, or all four) and "make it the deposit of [our] emotions". To say what Woolf means is reductive, I find, and I approach her emotionally; I savour her beautiful prose and I connect to the words, the representative -as opposed to symbolic- images and the tone. I don't read Woolf to understand but to appreciate; her books are not the type that are easy to review and I'm not going to attempt to but give my impressions instead.

Starting in medias res, Mrs Ramsay tells her son, James, that they will go to the lighthouse tomorrow if it is fine; a page later Mr Ramsay says that it will not be fine and by the end of the first volume they do not go to the lighthouse; in the third volume, years later, James and his father and his sister take a boat trip to the lighthouse. A basic premise, the lighthouse itself signifies nothing but is representative of so much emotion and history; the first volume, 'The Window', is a glimpse into one day of the Ramsays' lives and those of their guests; the lighthouse is one single memory (of various people) acting as a cohesive idea holding it all together. With its occasional twenty-seven line sentences containing such resonant images of beauty, "so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again", the stream-of-consciousness 'The Window' volume was by far my favourite and a reminder of why I love Woolf.

To the Lighthouse is an elegy to Woolf's parents and contained in it is such a sense of palpable, heartrending grief and pain. At many points, I found rage in the tone, in the pounding of the waves (the recurrent water imagery of Woolf at play), and the bitterness of the characters. There is a violent potency to the masculinity presented in the novel, a hyper-sexed desire to produce and a fear of barrenness and failure, and the calming, maternal, female influence at its centre; To the Lighthouse is a precursor to Woolf's feminist polemic, A Room of One's Own and in it I see a man who is lost without the strength of his wife and the feminist Lily Briscoe who rails against Tansley's accusation that as a woman she cannot write or paint, both lost without Mrs Ramsay and one finding her way.

I read "The Fisherman and his Wife" by the Brothers Grimm, the story Mrs Ramsay read to James, in an attempt to find some illumination; I wonder if the tale of a bullying, greedy wife who railroads her husband was arbitrarily chosen or is another of Woolf's representations ... can it be reduced to the age-old phrase that behind every great man there is an equally great woman?

Structurally I found the first volume the strongest and I preferred its style; I would have enjoyed To the Lighthouse more -as opposed to enjoying the first volume and appreciating the second and third- if it had all been in the stream-of-consciousness style of the first but, as it was, the technical 'Time Passes' stunned me in its beauty and mastery and 'To the Lighthouse' resolved the novel for me. It wouldn't be Woolf though if it was a simply an enjoyable novel, something profound is always at work and I come away wowed. Of the Woolf in Winter choices, To the Lighthouse was the one of the four novels that I hadn't yet read and had always wanted to; I also intended to read it for my Bucket List and for the Women Unbound challenge. It has been some time since I have read any Virginia Woolf and I have missed her; I am now wondering where to now ... do I reread Orlando for the next volume of the Woolf read-along or do I attempt one of the three novels of hers I have not yet read, the early The Voyage Out and Night and Day or the later The Years? Alternatively I could read A Writer's Diary or the Hermione Lee biography, both of which I have only dipped in and out of so far.

The Woolf in Winter discussion for To the Lighthouse is being hosted by Emily today.

Some favourite passages:

For the great plateful of blue water was before her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right, as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats, the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men.

Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad.

It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his genius, first of all, and then to be taken within the circle of life, warmed and soothed, to have his senses restored to him, his barrenness made fertile, and all the rooms of the house made full of life - the drawing-room; behind the drawing-room the kitchen; above the kitchen the bedrooms; and beyond them the nurseries; they must be furnished, they must be filled with life.

She praised herself in praising the light, without vanity, for she was stern, she was searching, she was beautiful like that light. It was odd, she thought, how if one was alone, one leant to things, inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus (she looked at that long steady light) as for oneself. There rose, and she looked and looked with her needles suspended, there curled up off the floor of the mind, rose from the lake of one's being, a mist, a bride to meet her lover.

Let's Call the Whole Thing Off

Let's Call the Whole Things Off: Love Quarrels from Anton Chekhov to ZZ Packer (notice what the title cleverly does?) selected and compiled by Kasia Boddy, Ali Smith and Sarah Wood brings together some of the best short story writers on the topic of lovers' quarrels. Some of the writers I am very familiar with (Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf and Colette), others I had met but didn't know intimately or had been intending to seek out their work (Jhumpa Lahiri, Dorothy Parker and Natalia Ginzburg) and others I was completely unfamiliar with (ZZ Packer, Arnold Bennett and A.M. Homes). Some of the stories were in translation from Russian, Italian and Welsh, amongst others, and they were cleverly edited into sections -first quarrels, daily arguments, breaking up and the aftermath- and didn't quarrel but compromised and complemented each other.

The stand-out stories for me were "This Blessed House" by Jhumpa Lahiri, "He and I" by Natalia Ginzburg, "Lappin and Lapinova" by Virginia Woolf and "You Go When You Can No Longer Stay" by Jackie Kay; it was difficult to narrow it down in such a strong anthology but these four stories were particular powerful and evocative of the soul-destroying nature of quarrels or a relationship's demise. "This Blessed House" (taken from Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning collection Interpreter of Maladies) is unique in that it takes a newly married couple -Twinkle and Sanjeev- who barely know one another as their marriage was arranged and examines their early days quarrels through which they grow to understand each other. Natalia Ginzburg is an Italian writer whose work I became aware of through the book group that Simon and Kim run; Ginzburg's A Place to Live: And Other Selected Essays of Natalia Ginzburg is a favourite book of one of our members, Armen, and now that I have had a taste of her writing I shall be seeking out more. Ginzburg has a unique style that I instantly admired from the opening lines:

He always feels hot, I always feel cold. In the summer when it really is hot he does nothing but complain about how hot he feels. He is irritated if he sees me put a jumper on in the evening.
He speaks several languages well; I do not speak any well. He manages - in his own way - to speak even the languages that he doesn't know.
He has an excellent sense of direction, I have none at all. After one day in a foreign city he can move about in it as thoughtlessly as a butterfly. I get lost in my own city; I have to ask directions so that I can get back home again.

One could argue that this is a description of opposites attracting or of couples growing estranged and no longer having anything left in common, they are so different.

Woolf's "Lappin and Lapinova" is brutal in its portrayal of a married couple once the honeymoon period is over. The sweet, affectionate way the newly married couple engage with one another is endearing; they liken one another to rabbits named Lappin and Lappinova, which they use as pet-names, and when this is lost, only a few years later, it was "the end of that marriage", a closing line that seems to be at odds with the nuanced writing of the story and yet I found it to be flippantly fitting.

"You Go When You Can No Longer Stay" very funny also brutally truthful. I know Jackie Kay's work from her beautiful novel, Trumpet, which I highly recommend; of the writer I know that she used to be in a relationship with Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. "You Go When You Can No Longer Stay" is about the demise of a long-term lesbian relationship which opens humorously "It is not so much that we are splitting up that is really worrying me, it is the fact that she keeps quoting Martin Amis"; Amis is used effectively for comic relief throughout.

Other highlights in the anthology were stories all by writers familiar to me; "The Gilded Six-Bits" by Zora Neale Hurston is a story in Ebonics that tells of a married couple's quarreling as foreplay until the wife's infidelity ceases their quarreling; "Pillow Talk" by the fabulous Alasdair Gray is short and bittersweet -a husband awakes to accuse his wife of leaving him and after she confesses that she wishes he could, he realises it was a dream; "Mr and Mrs Dove" and "A Letter" are written by two of my favourite short story writers -Katherine Mansfield and Colette- and, although not my favourites, each are perfected as always and evocative of playful quarreling; "Here We Are", written by the delightful Dorothy Parker, tells of the petty arguments and jealousies played out between a new couple on their wedding day.

I recommend this volume for its versatility in storytelling, its collection of highly-accomplished writers of the short-story form and its compelling subject matter of lovers' tiffs. This was one of the few short story anthologies that I have been able to read cover to cover without becoming frustrated by its contents.

Katherine Mansfield

During Persephone Reading Week I started to read Katherine Mansfield's Journal and realised that to truly appreciate it I needed to reread those Katherine Mansfield short stories I have loved and read those that are to me. Mansfield has been a popular blog topic in the last couple of weeks and I was inspired to pick up one of my volumes of her stories. Upon doing so I wanted to reread "Bliss".

"Bliss" reminds me of Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. ‘I was jealous of her writing. The only writing I have ever been jealous of,’ so said Virginia Woolf of her friend, contemporary and rival Katherine Mansfield, but only as a posthumous accolade; before Mansfield’s death their relationship was fraught with bitterness and envy. Such a self-deprecating and modest admission to make when one is the female writer at the forefront of the Modernist movement. To read now, that Woolf was jealous of a contemporary’s talent, is as startling as reading the same of Shakespeare. Woolf was the most innovative in style, influential in feminism and literary mode, and as equally famous and infamous of all female writers from the twentieth-century, if not the literary canon. Yet, she was envious of Mansfield; perhaps if the latter had lived to realise her potential , instead of dying tragically young, she would now have held this mantle.

She would certainly be worthy of doing so; her writing and use of language is stunning and her stories each perfected pieces of art. I love her short stories and I have a love-hate relationship with the medium; Katherine Mansfield see-saws heavily on the love side.

I was first introduced to Katherine Mansfield by a beloved English teacher at school who gave us "The Doll House" to read, which remains one of my favourite short stories because of its apparent simplicity yet also inexplicable quality. Mansfield often features details and symbols that resonate within the reading but elude definition; the reader is unable to full grasp the significant meaning of the symbol as with the pear tree in "Bliss" and the little lamp in "The Doll's House", not strictly symbolic as they are not representative of a specific thing but freely open to interpretation, like Woolf's lighthouse, which she meant "nothing by".

Mansfield often employs abrupt beginnings that jar - the reader has to be alert and questioning from the outset, sometimes they even begin with a conjunction. She disposes of tedious descriptions/back story and launches into the midst of the action. Mansfield prompts examination at level of the word: semiotics, word choice and syntax. In "Bliss" she begins in medias res:

Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at-nothing-at nothing, simply.
What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss-absolute bliss!- as though you'd suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe? ...

Immediately I questioned who is Bertha and why is she so blissful? The word bliss and its derivatives are repeated and emphasised throughout the story and begin to describe a sexual awakening and longing for her husband, her best friend. Bertha is brimming over with emotion, desire and the search for fulfillment, a rite of passage that comes to realisation "For the first time in her life Bertha Young desired her husband." Mostly I hoped Bertha would remain in her blissful state but predicted that in the denouement she would be crushed and she is... by an ironic blow.

You can read "Bliss" online here. Please do or alternatively read a volume of her stories.

Flush

Persephone Books are the types of books that go wonderfully well with a cup of tea in the other hand and this afternoon I curled up with Flush by Virginia Woolf (the first sitting occurred in bed this morning -another indulgence) in my cosy grey top and a mug of Earl Grey.

Flush is a biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's (the Victorian poet) cocker spaniel, Flush, so not what you would expect from Virginia Woolf and yet also radical in its own way in her characteristic stream of consciousness style. Woolf was inspired by a 1930 edition of the love letters exchanged between the Brownings and the appearance of "their dog made me laugh so I couldn't resist making him a Life." Comedic and charming, the novella is far removed from Woolf's Modernist and seminal texts, but I love both. It is an illuminating insight into Woolf' lighter side and her mocking sense of humour, attributes that are often overlooked when considering such a great writer.

We first meet Flush in 1840 when he belongs to Mary Mitford, who then presents him to her friend, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whom he lives with as a companion until his death in 1854. The narrative follows the relationship between Flush and his owner through courtship, kidnap, and a move to Italy, with many amusing incidents including a bad case of fleas. On the surface an absorbing and lovely tale of a dog it is also an allegory of class and the status of women (and female poets) in Victorian society; Flush is a shameless snob, absurdly obsessed with breeding, and he is also tamed and house-trained. The ways in which Woolf draws comparisons are very subtle and she employs Elizabeth Barrett Browning's only biographical history in order to do it; the feminist slant the work begins to take is hardly surprising in relation to Woolf. Experimental and progressive, Woolf considers the relationship between [wo]man and her best friend and the communication barriers; she also observes the Modern world and city through the eyes of Flush.

Flush is entertaining, cleverly creative, and wonderfully written with passages of distinct beauty, typical of Woolf.

The passage that amused me most:

They entered the bedroom. There was a faint bleating in the shadowed room - something waved on the pillow. It was a live animal. Independently of them all, without the street door being opened, out of herself in the room, alone, Mrs Browning had become two people. The horrid thing waved and mewed by her side. Torn with rage and jealousy and some deep disgust that he could not hide, Flush struggled himself free and rushed downstairs.

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding

I read Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey yesterday and it was a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours on a Saturday afternoon (it is a novella of 119 pages).

Persephone number 38 and one of this Spring's Persephone Classics, Cheerful Wedding for the Wedding, seems to divide bloggers and Persephone lovers. Simon at Stuck in a Book "loved every second" but Nicola of Vintage Reads said that it was "not my cup of tea" and that she wished she had ordered something else from the Persephone catalogue (funnily enough a title that I myself am coveting); I fall somewhere in the middle, siding more with Simon. I enjoyed its dark humour and the underlying despair of the bride, Dolly, and one of the central characters, Joseph, but I found it to be lacking in ... substance? It is a deliciously witty novel and one that I would be happy to reread (which is testimony to my enjoyment) but I must confess to my relief that I caved and borrowed the title from the library rather than splurging on a £12 copy, although I will add it to the collection once I am more flush (the same goes for the Virginia Woolf title of the same name - Flush). Of course, it is the underlying problem with most novellas (or short stories) that we are left wanting more, or it could be simply a result of the bittersweet nature of this one: cheerful it is not, albeit witty in tone.

Speaking of Virginia Woolf, both the reviews linked to above, draw comparison with her work and I heartily agree; the dry yet humorous depictions of people is reminiscent of Woolf and the novella's events occur over one afternoon, reminding me of Woolf's Between the Acts and Mrs Dalloway. Leonard and Virginia Woolf's Hogarth Press published the title in 1932 and Virginia wrote that it was, "a very cute, clever, indeed rather remarkable acidulated story ... I think it astonishingly good ... it is extraordinarily complete and sharp and individual."

I like the absurd touches in Cheerful Weather for the Wedding, the acute yet flyingly sardonic observations of people and the innocuous pet tortoise. It is a brief example of black humour and although hyperbolic in parts it never steps outwith the realms of realism. A bride with cold feet on her wedding day drinking herself to ink stains and flushed cheeks? Sounds prefectly reasonable to me (apparently F. Scott Fitzgerald bettered this motif in The Great Gatsby, but despite reading and studying the book more than once, I don't recall, but that may have something to do for my dislike for the text).

Cheerful Weather for the Wedding is not my favourite Persephone but I did like and enjoy it.

Images courtesy of Persephone Books and Amazon