Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

A wild entry of Books I Have Abandoned appears! In the interests of completism I decided to read Mary Renault’s North Face, which I have heard is her weakest book, and on the basis of the fact that I barely dragged myself through two chapters, I certainly agree. I skimmed the rest, and it appears to tell the story of two middle-aged women competing over a sad mountaineer, who is so utterly indifferent to their interest in him that at the end of the book he and his dishy young lover agree to invite them to the wedding, as they’ll surely take an interest!

The joke being of course that these women will both be crushed, only our lovers are too indifferent to realize. It seems mean-spirited and curiously airless - as much minute psychological detail about every chess move in every conversation as a Henry James novel.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I’ve gotten my sticky paws on another William Heyliger novel! For those of you who were not yet around for previous installments of the Great Heyliger Quest, William Heyliger was a writer for boys in the first half of the twentieth century who wrote epically earnest sports stories, Boy Scout stories, and stories about boys trying to find their vocation, as in today’s book Quinby and Son, wherein young Bert, dissatisfied with working at his father’s clothing store, tries to start a new store with his father’s clerk (a steadfast disciple of the book The Secrets of Business Success), only to swiftly find himself in far over his head.

Generally I think Heyliger’s school sports and Boy Scout stories are stronger, but I did enjoy the subplot about Bert’s friend Bill, who loses his leg while jumping the trains on a lark, but discovers a path forward in life as an artist of natural history sketches.

What I’m Reading Now

I made the grave mistake of reading through Dracula Daily’s list of other books that are being serialized on email, and now on top of Whale Weekly (a weekly installment of Moby-Dick in your inbox!) and Letters from Watson (the Sherlock Holmes short stories, in roughly chronological order), I’ve signed up for Literary Letters, which serializes obscure epistolary novels of the past, starting with The Lightning Conductor: The Strange Adventures of a Motor Car. As you know, I can’t resist an obscure old book…

Our heroine Molly (with Aunt Mary breathlessly in tow) has just descended on England, bought a motor-car from a Gorgeous Man (capitalization in the original; I bet he is either the villain or the romantic lead or possibly both), acquired a chauffeur named Rattray, and attempted to learn how to drive… only to promptly crash into a haberdashery! All in just three letters. Delighted with the heroine’s voice: like a particularly flighty Jean Webster heroine.

What I Plan to Read Next

DELIGHTED BEYOND RECKONING to find that archive.org has a treasure trove of William Heyliger books, including the long-yearned-for The Spirit of a Leader, a book about high school student government, an excerpt of which was my Heyliger gateway drug! At last I can read the whole story.

ALSO delighted to inform you that I found an article about William Heyliger, in which I discovered that he also wrote a few books under the pseudonym Hawley Williams, including Batter Up!, which is available as a Google book! The article (it begins on page 15) includes a lengthy quote from an autobiographical sketch by Heyliger, with this passage which captures for me the appeal of his books: “I have tried, to the limits of my particular craft, to be a romantic realist. I am never particularly interested in what my characters do; I am always interested in why they do it. My stories do not move in the sense of physical action; they do move thru the medium of psychological action.”

Comments

[kore]

Yay letters from Watson!

Is there a place I can chat to other people on the mailing list?

Yes! Join the community discord!

....oh.

[osprey_archer]

I will be posting about the stories here! Perhaps we can make ourselves a mini Sherlock Holmes forum...

[kore]

Aww that would be lovely!

[genarti]

It really would! I signed up for Letters from Watson too, a while ago. I've always been distantly fond of Holmes fandom (and deeply fond of the Holmes stories themselves) but intimidated by the prospect of doing more than lurking on the edges of the actual fandom, so a mini forum and discussion group here sounds delightful.

[kore]

I think Dreamwidth is so much better suited to actual discussions than Discord, too -- whenever I've tried Discord the timing always feels wrong and I don't think people comment much on older conversations, altho you can scroll back and see them.

[genarti]

I think it depends on the Discord -- if you have a group that are all on board with it, you can get some good asynchronous/slow-paced discussions ticking along in a group chat, I'd think -- but you're right that it doesn't lend itself as well to either long comments or to commenting on an older conversation without full-on reviving it into the current main topic.

(And, selfishly, I find DW more congenial and also have a much easier time replying to comments by email during the workday than I do doing anything by Discord during the workday, when I have to type on my phone to say anything. But mostly it's that this seems more fun than a Discord full of primarily strangers!)

[asakiyume]

Always going to join comment threads like this to say how much I like the LJ/DW format. Nothing else has been as satisfying.

[genarti]

I just signed up for Literary Letters likewise, on the same impetus! Encountered Molly with her haberdashery crashery and merrily flighty description of the difficulties of automobile wrangling; I'm thoroughly charmed already. Although I wouldn't want to share the road with her...

[osprey_archer]

How were we to resist? Obscure old books are irresistible on their own, and when you add in the possibility of actually getting to discuss said book with other people - ! That's so rare in the obscure old book reading life.

Molly is having SUCH a good time crashing into haberdashers and generally causing mayhem. I love her and am glad she is fictional so she cannot crash into MY car.

[genarti]

I haven't even investigated the discussion options! Other than, you know, with you, via the investigative method of commenting here, and I would of course be extremely up for that. Is there a discord or a substack comments community or something as well? And yes, exactly! That is precisely the mood. I do need to go back and reread the start of the story though; there's a delightful window-crashing charm to having this be my introduction to Molly as well, but I'm curious how she got into the driver's seat with this handsomely dubious gentleman...

[osprey_archer]

To be honest my whole discussion plan was "induce DW friends into joining literary serializations, discussions ensue," although it's entirely possible there's an official discord.

Yes, go back and read the first two letters! There is nothing like watching Molly buy a car from a Gorgeous Man.

[genarti]

This sounds like a much more appealing prospect, in any case!

I also signed up for a serialized penny dreadfuls email. I look forward to seeing how the two types of ephemeral mass-market stories juxtapose!

[osprey_archer]

I have so far managed to stand strong on the penny dreadfuls email, although I see they are reading Carmilla.... dangerous.... I will probably break down on a slow day at work when I have nothing better to do but read up on the back catalog of Penny Dreadful posts.

[troisoiseaux]

now on top of Whale Weekly (a weekly installment of Moby-Dick in your inbox!)

Will this finally get me to take a second whack at Moby-Dick? ...........potentially.......

(+1 for the mini Sherlock Holmes forum, though!)

[osprey_archer]

Will I see more in Moby-Dick than when I read it at a forced march in high school? Almost certainly! Will I like it any better? Well... we shall see.

I had originally thought the Sherlock Holmes read through was ALL of Sherlock Holmes, but it looks like it's just the short stories. That's still quite a lot of reading!

[asakiyume]

Wow, Moby Dick, Holmes, AND Literary Letters--that's a lot! But fun.

Gorgeous Man (capitalization in the original; I bet he is either the villain or the romantic lead or possibly both) --LOL!

only to promptly crash int a haberdashery! --Those haberdasheries! Always appearing in the most inconvenient and crash-able places!

"I am never particularly interested in what my characters do; I am always interested in why they do it" --I always feel like a philistine, because I *do* care what the characters do. The why is an absolutely vital piece ... but I care about the actions too. Which isn't to say I need particular actions or want to avoid others--I could be interested (or fail to be interested) in almost anything, but somehow that feels different from not being interested in the specifics. ... IDK I think I'm getting hung up on semantics.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I may find that I've overegged the pudding with too many ongoing reading projects. I have (so far) managed to resist adding Dante's Divine Comedy, but that's not starting till Good Friday, so that's a lot of time for my resolve to slip... At very least I should hold out until Whale Weekly and Letters from Watson start, so I can see if there's really time for yet another.

For an author who claims not to care what his characters do, Heyliger's characters actually do quite a lot! (In The Spirit of the Leader, they run a heated student council election, convince the city government to fix the street in front of their school, rally votes for the money to build a high school athletic field, etc. etc...) But the motive force behind the action is that action changes (or demonstrates) character, not action for action's sake. I think this is why I find Heyliger so readable, when I'm often bored to death by other sports stories from the time period: there's an added layer to the baseball.