Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Matt Phelan’s Snow White: A Graphic Novel, a stylishly gothic retelling set in 1930s New York City. Did I love it? Of course I loved it. Everything about that description is made for me.

Snow White is the daughter of a financier; her stepmother is a Ziegfield girl; the seven dwarves are orphaned street urchins, and the glass coffin is the Macy’s department store window, which the street urchins sneak Snow into as, I think, a way of honoring this girl who has been so nice to them.

But of course she turns out not to be dead. As a nod to the original fairy tale, a police detective kisses her cheek, but as there’s been no magic so far, probably the stepmother just miscalculated the dosage when she injected the poison into an apple with a hypodermic needle. And then Snow uses the fortune she inherited from her father to adopt all seven of the urchins. Happy end!

And I dived back into the world of Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax with The Elusive Mrs. Pollifax and A Palm for Mrs. Pollifax, the latter of which includes the delightful and characteristic line “Her knowledge of army hierarchies had never been very clear and it had always seemed to her that generals tended to multiply like corporative vice-presidents or rabbits.”

Oh! And I read Mary Stewart’s The Little Broomstick, because I was puzzled that I found the recent movie adaptation (Mary and the Witch’s Flower) so underwhelming, because most of Mary Stewart’s work feels like it would be really easy to adapt to a movie. The plots of the book and movie are quite similar - the movie gives Mary’s new friend Peter a bigger role, because of course it does; movies always beef up the boy’s role - but the movie raises the stakes for a big flashy climax, and the book plot that is perfectly serviceable for lower stakes buckles under the strain.

What I’m Reading Now

Charles W. Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition, per evelyn_b’s suggestion. This is an anti-racist novel from 1901 (Chesnutt was an African-American author and lawyer, in case you were wondering) and I am therefore waiting braced for everyone to suffer horribly. There was just a lovefest between Mammy Jane and her former masters, which ended with Mrs. Carteret gushing “We would share our last crust with you,” so I’m pretty much expecting the Carterets to throw poor Jane over and leave her to die in the poor house by the end of the book.

I’ve also begun Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, which I tried to read in high school but gave up because it felt so despairing. This time around, it no longer feels like a pit of despair - or maybe I just haven’t gotten to the despair part yet? Will share further thoughts once I’ve finished reading it.

What I Plan to Read Next

The Christmas season is almost upon us! As per thisbluespirit’s instructions, it’s time to put Elizabeth Goudge’s The Dean’s Watch on hold.

Comments

[asakiyume]

That Snow White graphic novel sounds wonderful, but so much depends on the art--so I went and looked at it on Amazon, and the art is gorgeous!! Love it.

[osprey_archer]

I had never heard of the book before I saw it on the library shelf, and the simple Art Deco classiness of the cover stopped me in my tracks. Baffled that I hadn't heard of it earlier - you'd think something that pretty would get more buzz.

[marycatelli]

It has quite interesting art. Does some fun stuff with colors.

[ancientreader]

Oh, gosh, Charles Chesnutt! I haven't read him extensively but I did do a great deal of skimming in connection with a recent work project; it struck me that he had a remarkably sharp tongue and that he didn't often turn it loose. I noted a couple of lines I especially liked, one from The Marrow of Tradition: "In early life Mrs. Ochiltree had been accustomed to impale fools on epigrams, like flies on pins, to see them wriggle." Another, I found in The Conjure Woman: "My wife and I were seated on the front piazza, she wearily but conscientiously ploughing through a missionary report, while I followed the impossible career of the blonde heroine of a rudimentary novel." "A rudimentary novel," isn't that just great? I also read a couple of the stories in The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color-Line, and those I found leaden -- "worthy," pious. It feels wrong to criticize that quality -- it seems so obvious why he would feel the need to take a serious and humorless tone -- but, speaking at least for myself: how grateful I would have been to read more of his writing in which he deployed that sharp wit. At least as far as I can make out from his Wikipedia entry, it doesn't seem as if his correspondence has been collected -- I wonder what he sounded like when he wrote to friends.

[osprey_archer]

I've noticed that some authors who write perfectly competent novels have trouble in the short story format, often for the very reason you mention - the short stories seem moralistic in a way that their novels don't, perhaps because the novels give them more space to work out their moral ideas? And when they try to cram the same amount of moral thought into a short story, the whole thing becomes top heavy.

Of course, now that I've written this, I can't think of an example author off the top of my head. But I know I have seen it elsewhere.

[marycatelli]

Novels are not only longer but thicker than short stories. It affects things

[copperfyre]

Ooh, I loved The Little Broomstick as a kid, but haven't read it in years! I had this very old paperback version that was falling apart even before I started reading it, I remember. (And it took me a very long time to realise that this was the same Mary Stewart who wrote The Crystal Cave and sequels.)

[osprey_archer]

The copy I borrowed from the library had some gorgeous illustrations, too. Children's books from the sixties and seventies often do; it's one of the reasons I love reading them.

[evelyn_b]

Poor Mammy Jane. I'll be interested to hear what you think of her actual fate. There is a lot that is melodramatic in The Marrow of Tradition and some things that are more subtle. I'm not actually 100% sure which category she falls into.

I JUST got recommended The Bell Jar by an excitable 23-year-old at the new bookstore, and it reminded me that I also gave up on it in high school and kept meaning to revisit it. Maybe next year!

[osprey_archer]

In high school I found that the despairing atmosphere of the book really clung to me, so even after I put the book aside it was like I had my own personal Eeyore cloud hanging over my head; that was ultimately why I put the book aside. This time around it had much less of that effect. So perhaps if you do revisit it next year, you too will find it easier to finish now that you are older and wiser!

[kore]

Yeah, I think it's almost more like Catcher in the Rye -- it gets sold as this book which tells "The Truth about the Teenage Condition," but really those are both books by mature authors, and both are really concerned with society post-WWII as well.

[osprey_archer]

I just finished The Marrow of Tradition (will be writing more about it in the Wednesday Reading Meme) and I thought Mammy Jane's eventual fate was well-done. The esteem of a few specific white people (white people of great power and social esteem!) couldn't save her once the lawless mob ran riot, because to the mob she's just like any other black person: just another target.

It's definitely more subtle than my melodramatic "and then the Carterets sent her to the poorhouse!" idea, although I'm not sure where it ultimately falls on the subtle vs. melodrama scale.

[troisoiseaux]

I have to figure out how to get my hands on a Mrs. Pollifax novel one of these days, because it seems right up my alley, but neither of the library systems I'm a member of have any of them in either physical or digital forms!

[osprey_archer]

That's true suffering! Is it possible for you to request them through interlibrary loan?

Alternatively, most library systems have a purchase request form. I don't know if your library would go for it for Mrs. Pollifax, but it's worth a try.

[kore]

WOW, the Snow White book sounds gorgeous.

LOL I mix up Charles Chesnutt with Mary B Chesnut, because I had to read Mary Chesnut's Civil War as one of those Original Documents in a History of AmLit class. Chesnutt sounds very interesting!

I admit I am a huge Plath fan, but I read the Bell Jar in boarding school and I actually think a lot of it is hilarious. There's also bleak depression and sardonic nihilism, but a lot of it is really blackly funny. There are some contemporary impressions that indicate Plath meant some of her stuff to be read as satiric comedy, or that was how she performed it for some close friends.

[osprey_archer]

I definitely looked up Charles Chesnutt specifically to see if he was related to Mary Chesnut, which is how I ended up finding out all this other information about him. I guess maybe Chesnut(t) was just a popular name in the south.

[thisbluespirit]

When I read the Snow White bit, I just assumed you must be talking about this, which won the Kate Greenaway medal ages ago, but apparently then, there are two picture book retellings of Snow White in the 1920s/30s, both set in New York. Why not, I suppose? :lol:

As per [personal profile] thisbluespirit’s instructions, it’s time to put Elizabeth Goudge’s The Dean’s Watch on hold.

Not instructions, now I feel nervous, even though I am pretty sure even though I am hazy on the details, that it was a good read for Christmas in that very Elizabeth Goudge sort of way, when she's at her best. ( mean, YMMV, obviously.)

[rmc28]

Oooh, 'Snow White In New York' is in my local library system, and Matt Phelan's Snow White is currently cheap in paperback at UK Amazon.

(now I just need to find my library card, which is no doubt in a Safe Place somewhere, I just have to find which one)

[thisbluespirit]

Glad to be of use!

[osprey_archer]

Perhaps I should have put it "as per thisbluespirit's gentle suggestion"? Anyway, I've enjoyed the other Elizabeth Goudge books that I read, so I have high hopes of enjoying this one.

[thisbluespirit]

lol, yes, I just doubt myself a lot. :-)