3.08.2006
Little House
I read The Age Of Innocence by Edith Wharton, which I liked more than the Ambersons but didn't love as much as Wharton's House of Mirth. I had many scintillating thoughts about Americans and America and Americanism while reading The Age of Innocence but I didn't write any of them down. I'll come back to it. Swear.
I ordered up another round of pulizer winners from the library and while waiting for them to come in had an orgy of Laura Ingalls Wilder reading. Read every single little house book I had in my possession, and even replaced a few that had escaped my clutches. These books may not be masterpieces of literary form, but they are true (which is not the same as being excrutatingly factual) and they are simple and they are books that people love. They make me feel good and want to be better than I am now.
An excerpt from a letter from Laura Ingalls Wilder to school children, written in 1947:
The Little House books are stories of long ago. The way we live and your schools are much different now, so many changes have made living and learning easier. But the real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.
I ordered up another round of pulizer winners from the library and while waiting for them to come in had an orgy of Laura Ingalls Wilder reading. Read every single little house book I had in my possession, and even replaced a few that had escaped my clutches. These books may not be masterpieces of literary form, but they are true (which is not the same as being excrutatingly factual) and they are simple and they are books that people love. They make me feel good and want to be better than I am now.
An excerpt from a letter from Laura Ingalls Wilder to school children, written in 1947:
The Little House books are stories of long ago. The way we live and your schools are much different now, so many changes have made living and learning easier. But the real things haven't changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.
2.26.2006
The Magnificent Ambersons 3
I found the Ambersons. And I'll sum up by saying, Georgie Minafer turned out to be a real asshole, got heated up over some shit that was really none of his business, and turned everything into a shitfest. He did it all in a very typical and apparently enduring adolescent male fashion. He didn't want his mom to date Mr. Morgan - Lucy's father - who was obviously really nice and truly cared for her, and threw a bunch of fits and acted horribly and tore them apart. Which is definetely something my brother has done, but my mother is certainly less accomodating than Mrs. Minafer was and we have no fortune to lose, so things turned out better for us even though we remain un-magnificent.
George eventually sees the error of his dickfaced ways...but only after he has distroyed his relationship with Lucy and his mother dies still too impressed and enamored of him to make any but the feeblest gesture to indicated that yeah, she would have liked to marry that guy after all...or at least see him one last time before she kicked the bucket. George tries to make amends, caring for his aunt by taking a very risky job involving nitroglicerin and bumpy roads. He eventually gets run over by a car, which leads to a tearful reunion in the county hospital between him and Lucy and Mr. Morgan. George has been suficiently beaten by life to conceed that maybe he doesn't know everything, maybe he could use a little help, and maybe he'll manage to see past himself and love someone else. I guess the lesson about america is that everyone will eventually be taken down a peg. Its too big and too constantly growing for anyone to rule the place for very long without their wanton hubris being exposed and the tide of bigger, better, cheaper, newer wresting power from them. What comes next may be questionable, but good or bad, nothing lasts forever in the USA.
George eventually sees the error of his dickfaced ways...but only after he has distroyed his relationship with Lucy and his mother dies still too impressed and enamored of him to make any but the feeblest gesture to indicated that yeah, she would have liked to marry that guy after all...or at least see him one last time before she kicked the bucket. George tries to make amends, caring for his aunt by taking a very risky job involving nitroglicerin and bumpy roads. He eventually gets run over by a car, which leads to a tearful reunion in the county hospital between him and Lucy and Mr. Morgan. George has been suficiently beaten by life to conceed that maybe he doesn't know everything, maybe he could use a little help, and maybe he'll manage to see past himself and love someone else. I guess the lesson about america is that everyone will eventually be taken down a peg. Its too big and too constantly growing for anyone to rule the place for very long without their wanton hubris being exposed and the tide of bigger, better, cheaper, newer wresting power from them. What comes next may be questionable, but good or bad, nothing lasts forever in the USA.
1.20.2006
The Magnificent Amersons - 2
I seem to have misplaced those pulizer prize winning Ambersons. If we have learned one thing from this project it is that a pulitzer prize is no guarantee against my negative library book karma. We're giving the apartment a thorough cleaning this weekend, I'm sure it will turn up and i'll be right back on track.
1.02.2006
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington - 1919 Pulizer Winner
The opening pages of The Magnificent Ambersons are witty and specific and a really fantastic start for this Pulitzer project. Tarkington starts his novel with a description of the social customs of the town in which Major Amberson lived when he "made a fortune" in 1873, making it easy and interesting to see how his fortune and the way he spent it was different, and yes, ostentatiously, magnificently so. I wonder if this way of being so specific about the custom of a time and place, and yet by doing so, delineating American society in much larger scope is something that will be common to all the novels in this project. Whether or not it is, I like the formal approach Tarkington takes to the task (I also love the name Booth Tarkington).
With the time and place and type of people set - the frame of reference firmly nailed in place - the novel moves in even closer, to focus on Georgie Minifer, grandson of Major Amberson of the aforementioned fortune and a real spoiled fucking brat. His first notable action at age 11, is to tell a Reverend who chastises him for fighting to "go to hell!" As Georgie gets older, he loses none of his amazing, oh yeah, magnificent arrogance and sense of priviledge. Just now, he's met a girl - Lucy Morgan - who is probably more intelligent than he is and definitely has a less clouded view of the world and her place in it. But as much as I hate Georgie, I have to admit I envy him. Telling Lucy of his studies at college, he calls it all useless. When she asks why he doesn't study something that would prove useful in a career - business or law, he answers he does not expect to have any profession. "Lawyers, bankers, politicians! What do they get out of life, I'd like to know! What do they ever know about real things? Where do they ever get?" Lucy, impressed with his passion, feels like he must have some grand, noble calling in mind instead and asks what he would like to be instead. He answers promptly "A yachtsman."
And here I sit, typing away from the confines of my "profession", always quietly raging, so quiet that it turns into mere complaint, that I don't have enough time or freedom to go out and think my real thoughts, to really get myself somewhere. Georgie is randomly priviledged enough to eschew work and rich enough not to give a shit what people say about it. What a magnificently ignorant ass. And I am jealous.
With the time and place and type of people set - the frame of reference firmly nailed in place - the novel moves in even closer, to focus on Georgie Minifer, grandson of Major Amberson of the aforementioned fortune and a real spoiled fucking brat. His first notable action at age 11, is to tell a Reverend who chastises him for fighting to "go to hell!" As Georgie gets older, he loses none of his amazing, oh yeah, magnificent arrogance and sense of priviledge. Just now, he's met a girl - Lucy Morgan - who is probably more intelligent than he is and definitely has a less clouded view of the world and her place in it. But as much as I hate Georgie, I have to admit I envy him. Telling Lucy of his studies at college, he calls it all useless. When she asks why he doesn't study something that would prove useful in a career - business or law, he answers he does not expect to have any profession. "Lawyers, bankers, politicians! What do they get out of life, I'd like to know! What do they ever know about real things? Where do they ever get?" Lucy, impressed with his passion, feels like he must have some grand, noble calling in mind instead and asks what he would like to be instead. He answers promptly "A yachtsman."
And here I sit, typing away from the confines of my "profession", always quietly raging, so quiet that it turns into mere complaint, that I don't have enough time or freedom to go out and think my real thoughts, to really get myself somewhere. Georgie is randomly priviledged enough to eschew work and rich enough not to give a shit what people say about it. What a magnificently ignorant ass. And I am jealous.
12.31.2005
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