Wednesday Reading Meme
Apr. 18th, 2018 08:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Because I liked Frances Little’s The Lady of the Decoration so much, I decided to read another one of her books, Little Sister Snow - and discovered on the very first page that it was illustrated by a fellow named Genjiro Kataoka, an early twentieth-century Japanese-American illustrator who was tremendously popular for Japanese-themed books, including Yone Noguchi’s The American Diary of a Japanese Girl, which I have marked down for further reading.
It’s fortunate that I got so much enjoyment out of Genjiro Kataoka’s existence (and his lovely illustrations), because the book itself is a bit of a wash. I was pleasantly surprised that The Lady of the Decoration was so refreshingly low on stereotypes, but evidently Little was saving them all up to use in Little Sister Snow. The book is in the POV of a Japanese maiden who attends an American missionary school, and even with the missionary school connection, it seems that was just a bridge too far from her own experience for Little to grapple with successfully.
However, the award for “most racist book read this week” definitely goes to Jean Webster’s The Four-Pools Mystery. I really had no reason to expect better of Jean Webster, but I love Daddy-Long-Legs so much that I did. The book was published in 1908 and takes place on a post-bellum Virginia plantation and is steeped in the racial attitudes of the time, although at the end it struck me that Webster intended the book to be anti-racist.
Or, as her New York reporter detective explains to the Virginians at the end, his ability to solve the crime that baffled them “proves another thing… which is a thing that you people don’t seem to have grasped; and that is that negroes are human beings and have feelings like the rest of us. Poor old Colonel Gaylord paid a terrible price for not having learned it earlier in life.”
You see, a black vagrant murdered Colonel Gaylord because he was mad that the Colonel had given him a thrashing. The Virginians couldn’t imagine that a black man might hold a grudge about getting thrashed (“it comes natural to niggers to be whipped and they don’t mind it,” the sheriff informs the skeptical reporter) so they didn’t consider the vagrant as a suspect.
Now I realize that racists have believed a lot of weird things, but I just don’t believe that racism has ever rendered anyone incapable of pinning a crime on a convenient black vagrant.
To add insult to injury, the mystery itself is poorly done, too. The narrator is clearly intended to play Watson to the reporter-detective’s Holmes, but a Watson needs to be at least as smart as the reader, not a total bozo who can’t figure out the most obvious things.
I also read D. E. Stevenson’s Celia’s House, which I really liked (it turns out that it’s a stealth retelling of Mansfield Park, and this version actually has enough time for the Fanny & Edmund characters to fall in love at the end. Also, no one is against plays qua plays), but I’m too worn out from writing about the others to write about it properly. Maybe I should do a separate weekly Obscure Old Books post to space things out a little.
What I’m Reading Now
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. Short stories are generally not my thing, but I’ve been enjoying these, in a “I would probably like any one of these more if it were a novel and I had more time to get to know the characters” sort of way. So far my favorite is “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine.”
I’ve also begun listening to Kevin Henkes’ Junonia, which is not bad. Olive’s Ocean wasn’t bad either. I was going to say that this would be my last Kevin Henkes book, because there’s not enough time in the world to waste it on “not bad,” but it turns out he got a Newbery Honor for The Year of Billy Miller, so there’s at least one more in my future.
What I Plan to Read Next
The Year of Billy Miller, probably. (I’ve decided to get cracking on my Newbery Honor project.) Should I read it on paper, or listen to it as an audiobook? An important question.
In fact it looks like most of the recent Newbery Honor books are available as audiobooks. I’ll need to give this some thought.
Because I liked Frances Little’s The Lady of the Decoration so much, I decided to read another one of her books, Little Sister Snow - and discovered on the very first page that it was illustrated by a fellow named Genjiro Kataoka, an early twentieth-century Japanese-American illustrator who was tremendously popular for Japanese-themed books, including Yone Noguchi’s The American Diary of a Japanese Girl, which I have marked down for further reading.
It’s fortunate that I got so much enjoyment out of Genjiro Kataoka’s existence (and his lovely illustrations), because the book itself is a bit of a wash. I was pleasantly surprised that The Lady of the Decoration was so refreshingly low on stereotypes, but evidently Little was saving them all up to use in Little Sister Snow. The book is in the POV of a Japanese maiden who attends an American missionary school, and even with the missionary school connection, it seems that was just a bridge too far from her own experience for Little to grapple with successfully.
However, the award for “most racist book read this week” definitely goes to Jean Webster’s The Four-Pools Mystery. I really had no reason to expect better of Jean Webster, but I love Daddy-Long-Legs so much that I did. The book was published in 1908 and takes place on a post-bellum Virginia plantation and is steeped in the racial attitudes of the time, although at the end it struck me that Webster intended the book to be anti-racist.
Or, as her New York reporter detective explains to the Virginians at the end, his ability to solve the crime that baffled them “proves another thing… which is a thing that you people don’t seem to have grasped; and that is that negroes are human beings and have feelings like the rest of us. Poor old Colonel Gaylord paid a terrible price for not having learned it earlier in life.”
You see, a black vagrant murdered Colonel Gaylord because he was mad that the Colonel had given him a thrashing. The Virginians couldn’t imagine that a black man might hold a grudge about getting thrashed (“it comes natural to niggers to be whipped and they don’t mind it,” the sheriff informs the skeptical reporter) so they didn’t consider the vagrant as a suspect.
Now I realize that racists have believed a lot of weird things, but I just don’t believe that racism has ever rendered anyone incapable of pinning a crime on a convenient black vagrant.
To add insult to injury, the mystery itself is poorly done, too. The narrator is clearly intended to play Watson to the reporter-detective’s Holmes, but a Watson needs to be at least as smart as the reader, not a total bozo who can’t figure out the most obvious things.
I also read D. E. Stevenson’s Celia’s House, which I really liked (it turns out that it’s a stealth retelling of Mansfield Park, and this version actually has enough time for the Fanny & Edmund characters to fall in love at the end. Also, no one is against plays qua plays), but I’m too worn out from writing about the others to write about it properly. Maybe I should do a separate weekly Obscure Old Books post to space things out a little.
What I’m Reading Now
Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies. Short stories are generally not my thing, but I’ve been enjoying these, in a “I would probably like any one of these more if it were a novel and I had more time to get to know the characters” sort of way. So far my favorite is “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine.”
I’ve also begun listening to Kevin Henkes’ Junonia, which is not bad. Olive’s Ocean wasn’t bad either. I was going to say that this would be my last Kevin Henkes book, because there’s not enough time in the world to waste it on “not bad,” but it turns out he got a Newbery Honor for The Year of Billy Miller, so there’s at least one more in my future.
What I Plan to Read Next
The Year of Billy Miller, probably. (I’ve decided to get cracking on my Newbery Honor project.) Should I read it on paper, or listen to it as an audiobook? An important question.
In fact it looks like most of the recent Newbery Honor books are available as audiobooks. I’ll need to give this some thought.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-18 03:37 pm (UTC)Not in 1908 Virginia, that's for sure. That's peak Clansman-era racial panic territory. You'll still get plenty of passive stereotypes in books and "comic" newspaper columns, but they're certainly not going to dissuade any actual white people from detaining (or lynching) any non-fictional black people; that's nonsense.
I was really impressed by the one Jhumpa Lahiri short story I read - the more so because it was about wealthy present-day professionals and their marital problems, a subject with little intrinsic interest for me. I should probably read some more!
no subject
Date: 2018-04-19 02:06 am (UTC)It's not a coincidence that the short story I've liked best so far involves no marital problems at all, and has a child narrator.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-18 03:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-19 02:03 am (UTC)Actually I think the Jean Webster papers are in an archive somewhere, so this is probably an answerable question.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-18 04:40 pm (UTC)Yikes.
Anti-racist stories that end up just being differently racist are extremely frustrating, and also I'm afraid not all that rare.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-19 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-18 04:46 pm (UTC)I also read D. E. Stevenson’s Celia’s House, which I really liked
That sounds intriguing indeed!
I'm sorry about the seemingly-inevitable racism, though. The perils of too many old things, alas... :-/
no subject
Date: 2018-04-19 02:12 am (UTC)I've discovered that nineteenth and early-twentieth century novels set in the American South are just not worth it. (There's an exception here for Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, but it's really dispiriting to see how completely white authors failed to live up to her example for the next eighty years or so.) Generally if the word "Virginia" slips from the author's pen then it's time to drop the book and head for the hills, because nothing good ever comes of it.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-19 07:51 am (UTC)Heh, it sounds unfortunately likely to be true. :-/
They are gorgeous! The world of early twentieth-century illustration is so fascinating and I always mean to read more about it, but there are so many other things in the world that I always get distracted.
Well, I'm glad you discovered this one, as I really did love looking at those yesterday.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-19 02:33 am (UTC)I know this is the line everyone else is quoting, but I LOLed so hard I had to tell you. :)
no subject
Date: 2018-04-21 01:58 am (UTC)