Wednesday Reading Meme
Aug. 12th, 2020 08:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Sadly, there is no more “I’m buying you a house whether you like it or not” drama in Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but Rose Wilder Lane remains a spitfire up through to the end. She semi-adopts yet another fourteen-year-old boy, Roger Lea McBride; this one sticks around to the end of her life, which is how he ends up with the copyrights to the Little House book, which is how television got its hot little hands on the property and turned it into the series Little House on the Prairie.
This TV series crushed me as a child because it was so completely unlike the books. I saw about one episode before revolting against not merely this particular show but, briefly, the entire medium of television. Why is their house gigantic? Why do the episodes revolve around Pa rather than Laura? Why doesn’t Pa have whiskers?
It turns out that the answer to all these questions is Michael Landon, who played Pa and was the producer of the series and might be even more self-aggrandizing than Rose Wilder Lane herself, which is saying a lot. Landon turned himself into the star of the series, refused to wear whiskers because he felt he didn’t look good in them, and also did not wear underwear under his britches because he felt that the world deserved the chance to ogle his hindquarters. He also insisted on a gigantic “little house” because he didn’t want his imaginary TV daughters to be, gasp, poor. Clearly the whole point of the books went RIGHT over his head.
I also read James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk, which I might have skipped if I had realized it revolved around a false rape accusation, although it becomes clear that the accusation was masterminded by a racist white cop with a grudge against our hero Fonny. The cop basically tricks a rape victim into fingering Fonny by placing him in a lineup otherwise composed of white and light-skinned black men. He’s the only one with the right skin tone, so the victim (who didn’t get a good view of her attacker otherwise) picks him.
(There’s a good section where Fonny’s fiancee Tish and her sister discuss why the victim would do this, and why she’d stick to her identification afterward: Tish’s sister argues that the woman is not consciously lying, she really believes her identification because it lets her get a sense of closure about the incident.)
I’m glad I didn’t skip it - it’s by James Baldwin, so of course it’s worth reading - but I didn’t think it was quite as good as Go Tell It on the Mountain or Giovanni’s Room. In particular, I was puzzled by Baldwin’s decision to tell the book in the first person narration of Tish, Fonny’s girlfriend, who keeps narrating scenes that she not only did not witness but that it’s difficult to imagine anyone describing to her. Would Tish’s mother give her such a detailed blow-by-blow description of her attempt to talk to the rape victim? Would Fonny really describe his parents having sex to his girlfriend? Would Fonny, for that matter, tell his girlfriend about masturbating in prison?
These parts of the book would have made so much more sense if Baldwin had simply put those parts into third person. Many of them are very close already, with just the occasional jarring reminder that Tish is narrating; it would have been easy enough to just drop the conceit for those sections so you don’t have that moment of “Wait, but why is Fonny giving a detailed description of his prison masturbation habits to Tish?”
And finally, I finished Jeanine Basinger’s The Movie Musical! The exclamation point is part of the title, but it also feels like appropriate punctuation for this sentence, because this is a hefty book. I suspect ultimately that this is a book meant to be dipped into (“What was it about those Judy Garland/Andy Rooney musicals?”) rather than read straight through, but I did end up with a long list of musicals to watch this way.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve begun Deborah Yaffe’s Among the Janeites: A Journey through the World of Jane Austen Fandom. I feel like Yaffe is maybe trying a little too hard to dissociate herself with the Austen fans who were drawn in by the wet shirt scene, but nonetheless it’s interesting reading about all the different ways that Austen mania manifests itself.
I’ve also been rereading David Blaize, as research for a story I’ve been poking at (I’ve been poking at a lot of stories this month, I can’t seem to settle down for one) which actually takes place entirely after boarding school, but our heroes originally met in boarding school so obviously it’s important for BACKGROUND. Then they trooped off to fight in World War I, lost a limb or two, reconnected in a convalescent home etc., banged in a cottage on the coast of Cornwall.
What I Plan to Read Next
littlerhymes and I have been discussing what to read after we finish the Swallows & Amazons series (although we’re only on book six, so this eventuality is a long way off). I commented that we’ve done England (Swallows & Amazons), Canada (two L. M. Montgomery series, Anne and Emily), and Australia (Billabong), so maybe New Zealand next… if we can find an early to mid twentieth century series of beloved New Zealand children’s books. Or even a single book, if no series is in the offing. Anybody have a suggestion?
Sadly, there is no more “I’m buying you a house whether you like it or not” drama in Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder, but Rose Wilder Lane remains a spitfire up through to the end. She semi-adopts yet another fourteen-year-old boy, Roger Lea McBride; this one sticks around to the end of her life, which is how he ends up with the copyrights to the Little House book, which is how television got its hot little hands on the property and turned it into the series Little House on the Prairie.
This TV series crushed me as a child because it was so completely unlike the books. I saw about one episode before revolting against not merely this particular show but, briefly, the entire medium of television. Why is their house gigantic? Why do the episodes revolve around Pa rather than Laura? Why doesn’t Pa have whiskers?
It turns out that the answer to all these questions is Michael Landon, who played Pa and was the producer of the series and might be even more self-aggrandizing than Rose Wilder Lane herself, which is saying a lot. Landon turned himself into the star of the series, refused to wear whiskers because he felt he didn’t look good in them, and also did not wear underwear under his britches because he felt that the world deserved the chance to ogle his hindquarters. He also insisted on a gigantic “little house” because he didn’t want his imaginary TV daughters to be, gasp, poor. Clearly the whole point of the books went RIGHT over his head.
I also read James Baldwin’s If Beale Street Could Talk, which I might have skipped if I had realized it revolved around a false rape accusation, although it becomes clear that the accusation was masterminded by a racist white cop with a grudge against our hero Fonny. The cop basically tricks a rape victim into fingering Fonny by placing him in a lineup otherwise composed of white and light-skinned black men. He’s the only one with the right skin tone, so the victim (who didn’t get a good view of her attacker otherwise) picks him.
(There’s a good section where Fonny’s fiancee Tish and her sister discuss why the victim would do this, and why she’d stick to her identification afterward: Tish’s sister argues that the woman is not consciously lying, she really believes her identification because it lets her get a sense of closure about the incident.)
I’m glad I didn’t skip it - it’s by James Baldwin, so of course it’s worth reading - but I didn’t think it was quite as good as Go Tell It on the Mountain or Giovanni’s Room. In particular, I was puzzled by Baldwin’s decision to tell the book in the first person narration of Tish, Fonny’s girlfriend, who keeps narrating scenes that she not only did not witness but that it’s difficult to imagine anyone describing to her. Would Tish’s mother give her such a detailed blow-by-blow description of her attempt to talk to the rape victim? Would Fonny really describe his parents having sex to his girlfriend? Would Fonny, for that matter, tell his girlfriend about masturbating in prison?
These parts of the book would have made so much more sense if Baldwin had simply put those parts into third person. Many of them are very close already, with just the occasional jarring reminder that Tish is narrating; it would have been easy enough to just drop the conceit for those sections so you don’t have that moment of “Wait, but why is Fonny giving a detailed description of his prison masturbation habits to Tish?”
And finally, I finished Jeanine Basinger’s The Movie Musical! The exclamation point is part of the title, but it also feels like appropriate punctuation for this sentence, because this is a hefty book. I suspect ultimately that this is a book meant to be dipped into (“What was it about those Judy Garland/Andy Rooney musicals?”) rather than read straight through, but I did end up with a long list of musicals to watch this way.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve begun Deborah Yaffe’s Among the Janeites: A Journey through the World of Jane Austen Fandom. I feel like Yaffe is maybe trying a little too hard to dissociate herself with the Austen fans who were drawn in by the wet shirt scene, but nonetheless it’s interesting reading about all the different ways that Austen mania manifests itself.
I’ve also been rereading David Blaize, as research for a story I’ve been poking at (I’ve been poking at a lot of stories this month, I can’t seem to settle down for one) which actually takes place entirely after boarding school, but our heroes originally met in boarding school so obviously it’s important for BACKGROUND. Then they trooped off to fight in World War I, lost a limb or two, reconnected in a convalescent home etc., banged in a cottage on the coast of Cornwall.
What I Plan to Read Next
littlerhymes and I have been discussing what to read after we finish the Swallows & Amazons series (although we’re only on book six, so this eventuality is a long way off). I commented that we’ve done England (Swallows & Amazons), Canada (two L. M. Montgomery series, Anne and Emily), and Australia (Billabong), so maybe New Zealand next… if we can find an early to mid twentieth century series of beloved New Zealand children’s books. Or even a single book, if no series is in the offing. Anybody have a suggestion?
