Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Susan Coolidge’s A Guernsey Lily; or, How the Feud Was Healed. The subtitle suggests a feud-forward story, but in fact it is 90% about the Wreford family traveling to the Channel Isles (for Mama’s health, you know!) with a little wisp of a feud that shows up about halfway through, about which Coolidge cares so little that she can’t even be bothered to marry the eldest daughter of one feuding family to the eldest son of the other.

Honestly Coolidge is 100% correct: I am down to read a travelog to the Channel Isles at any time. Bring on the ever-blooming flowers and the tidal cave alive with anemones! Also delighted by the fact that on Guernsey, the Wrefords rent their home from Mrs. Kempton (wife of a sailor constantly away on long voyages to South America) and her friend Elizabeth, who met in service, bought the house together for the purpose of renting it out, and as far as I can tell live there together as the landladies.

I also finished E. Anthony Rotundo’s American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era, which I must confess I bought mainly because it includes his article “Romantic Friendship: Male Intimacy and Middle-Class Youth in the Northern United States, 1800-1900” more or less unaltered. Sometimes you just want to read about early- to mid-nineteenth century youths sleeping in their BFF’s arms after a long intense chat about their feelings, you know?

(It’s always kind of weird reading straight men’s writings about this because you can kind of feel them vibrating with longing that never actually makes it on the page because there is no way to say “if only my BFF and I could snuggle and talk about our feelings” that will not sound gay to a modern audience.)

And I finished James Herriot’s All Things Bright and Beautiful, a lovely and soothing read as all James Herriot books are. I especially enjoy the dog and cat stories, possibly because I am familiar with dogs and cats but have never had the opportunity to become personally acquainted with a cow.

What I’m Reading Now

Bruce Catton’s A Stillness at Appomattox. Our boys in blue are marching into the Wilderness and the pages are thick with the promise of the horrible slaughter to come!

What I Plan to Read Next

In the afterword to The Friendly Young Ladies, Mary Renault scorned Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness as an excessively glum picture of lesbian life and recommended Compton Mackenzie’s Extraordinary Women instead, and after some resistance (is it really WISE to read a book recommended in The Friendly Young Ladies) I have succumbed and ordered Extraordinary Women through interlibrary loan.

(I really ought to read The Well of Loneliness at some point but everything I read about it suggests that it is indeed lugubrious, and ugh.)

Comments

[legionseagle]

Extraordinary Women is a massive piss-take of Radclyffe Hall and her circle, most of whom appear as characters (to be fair to Compton Mackenzie, his wife was having an affair with one of that circle, so as reactions from cheated-on husbands, it could be a lot worse.)

[osprey_archer]

Oh my GOD. The book arrived today, so I guess it will be an experience! (And I kind of wish it had annotations so I could know who each character is supposed to represent.)

[legionseagle]

i think there is a key, somewhere (possibly in the afterword if it's the Hogarth Press edition you've got.)

[osprey_archer]

I have an edition straight from 1928 (!), and they probably didn't include a key back when the major players were still alive. I bet I could google it, though.

[legionseagle]

I have read one novel by Radclyffe Hall, The Unlit Lamp which Hall thought should have been called Octopi . It's very much of the "My mother made me a lesbian..." genre.

[regshoe]

I have read The Well of Loneliness (which I remember enjoying, but it was a while ago and I have a fairly high tolerance for literary lugubriousness :P) but not Extraordinary Women—I look forward to hearing what you make of it!

Sometimes you just want to read about early- to mid-nineteenth century youths sleeping in their BFF’s arms after a long intense chat about their feelings, you know?

*nods* Yeah, I know. But it sounds like a very interesting history book!

I loved the Channel Islands scenery in Sir Isumbras at the Ford, and A Guernsey Lily sounds lovely! Sea anemones and happy co-landladies, what ideal contents for any book.

[osprey_archer]

I think I'm going to end up reading The Well of Loneliness for a fun (?) game of literary compare-and-contrast with Extraordinary Women and The Friendly Young Ladies. This may end in regret.

I actually did find American Manhood quite useful for the project I'm working on, but I would also absolutely read a whole entire book which was entirely focused on Romantic Friendships of Nineteenth Century Youths. It need not have any deep thoughts about the history of friendship or the development of ideas about human sexuality or anything, really. No thesis! Only snuggling, sharing confidences, holding hands by the fire, dancing together, and walking arm in arm by the riverside in moonlight!

[sovay]

Mary Renault scorned Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness as an excessively glum picture of lesbian life

From the person who brought you the party in The Charioteer . . .

[osprey_archer]

Either The Well of Loneliness is EVEN SADDER or it is sad in a way that Mary Renault, connoisseur of Greek tragedy, found unacceptably bathetic.

...I really am going to have to read the darn book to find out, aren't I? Drat.

[sovay]

...I really am going to have to read the darn book to find out, aren't I? Drat.

I look forward to your reactions.

(If it's catastrophic, there's always Djuna Barnes or Nella Larsen.)

[osprey_archer]

I read Nella Larsen's Passing last fall and... apparently never posted about it? I was doing a buddy read with asakiyume and I must have not have gathered my thoughts for an actual post.

I mean in a way Passing IS catastrophic, but it's catastrophic with beauty and artistic integrity so presumably Renault would approve.

[cyphomandra]

I quite liked the Well of Loneliness, although I do mentally rewrite bits :D I picked up a short story collection of hers recently because I flipped through the first few pages and there was an older lesbian working as a wwi ambulance driver, which I was intrigued by, but then it becomes her time travelling back to the Stone Age and becoming a Manly Man who protects his woman, and I felt somewhat cheated.

[osprey_archer]

time travelling back to the Stone Age and becoming a Manly Man who protects his woman

Oh my GOD that's quite a lot!

[rachelmanija]

but then it becomes her time travelling back to the Stone Age and becoming a Manly Man who protects his woman

What

[cyphomandra]

"You... woman," he murmured contentedly, and the sound seemed to come from the depths of his being.

There's also an extremely elided sex scene that involves a lot of eagles shrieking.

[imbir]

(I really ought to read The Well of Loneliness at some point but everything I read about it suggests that it is indeed lugubrious, and ugh.)

You want a side of racism to go with that? It was what tripped me up the most, and it's something that's largely missing from critical discussions of the novel. Especially didn't like finding out that the concert scene in Paris was based on a real event organised by Hall and Troubridge for their white circle of friends, featuring Emmanuel Taylor Gordon and John Rosamond Johnson (a couple of renowned black singers) singing at Hall's home in Chelsea.

[rachelmanija]

Susan Coolidge! Are you going to read the Katy books? Have you already read them and I missed/forgot about it?

[osprey_archer]

I have read the Katy books! I read the first two before before I was posting regularly about about all my reading, but the others are under the Susan Coolidge tag (although I don't think I ever read the fifth book?)

I did read Clover, though, and it prompted a musing about how modern books should have more picnics.

[asakiyume]

Susan Coolidge: "I thought I wanted to write about a feud, but really what I want to write about is people hanging out on Guernsey."
Readers: "We are so here for it. BRING IT."

“if only my BFF and I could snuggle and talk about our feelings” --Straight white men, I feel for you! Life is not fair! Says I, a more-or-less straight white woman who has enjoyed snuggling with her female friends. True, we had that frisson of it could be more, but we were also happy just as we were. At least I was, LOL! [sudden pang of concern about past friends. MY MIDDLE NAME IS CLUELESS]

[osprey_archer]

TBH I think Coolidge always knew she wanted to write about people hanging out on Guernsey and tossed in the feud as a sop to her editor. "But Susan, what if there was more feud?" asked the editor, and Susan said "Pfff, that would take time away from the cave full of cool anemones!

[lokifan]

(It’s always kind of weird reading straight men’s writings about this because you can kind of feel them vibrating with longing that never actually makes it on the page because there is no way to say “if only my BFF and I could snuggle and talk about our feelings” that will not sound gay to a modern audience.)

Oh ofc it is, wow. I never thought of that but it's obvious. My current fandom, the video game Final Fantasy XV, is very male-heavy, with four main best friends who love each other. They don't actually hug in the game?? But somehow everyone, including the very dudebro side of fandom, is convinced they cuddle all the time, and Youtube and Twitch streams are full of guys being like 'I wish me and my friends could talk like this.'

[osprey_archer]

Oh my god! So interesting to hear this dynamic playing out in a non-academic context! "I wish me and my friends could talk like this and also cuddle but I will leave that part unspoken"