In Praise of Small Houses

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In the early 21st century, when I was hospitalized for an unidentified illness, which manifested such symptoms as necrosis, Clonus, and hallucinations, the team of doctors, who were experts in their fields, comforted me with humor and optimism. 

“Trial and error,” one said cheerfully.  “I feel we’re getting close.”

“Closer and closer,” said another. 

That was a Paul McCartney song.

“This might be your lucky day.” My favorite doctor handed me a Chinese fortune cookie that said “It’s your lucky day.”.

I still have that fortune. It is in my lucky blue jar, a blue ceramic jar with a bird flying off the lid.

The next day he told me,  “f you were a horse, I’d bet on you.”

“I’m a tired horse right now.”

“Bet you $5 you won’t go downstairs to the cafeteria in your pajamas.”

“Bet’s on, Cookie, dear!” I called him Cookie because of the fortune cookie. I did feel ridiculous in the cafeteria, but I went down in my jams, pink robe and slippers.

And then one day I woke up and was completely well.  No one knew how or why.  The doctors said some cases were like that: they experimented with drug cocktails until they found  the right one. Cookie gave me a pack of peanut M&Ms:  “I know they’re your favorite.”

While I was lying in bed I finally stayed up long enough to read Thoreau. Thoreau was the ultimate downsizer, and I was thinking about downsizing. I imagined us leaving our big, rambling house in a dicey neighborhood plagued by “white flight” to live in a smaller house in a safer neighborhood.

I don’t mean I wanted to live in a shack like Thoreau, but I thought in a smaller house we would live closer together and take up less space.  We would live more simply; we would ultimately be happier. Perhaps I was thinking like Bronson Alcott, the impractical Transcendentalist dreamer who started a vegetarian commune and forgot to plant vegetables. I sincerely hope I am more like his daughter, Louisa May, who wrote a satire of the commune, Transcendental Wild Oats.

Eventually we found a house. It’s not a tiny house, mind, it’s just small, and there are trees in the backyard, and one started out as a weed tree and grew into a tall walnut tree. Our house might be a Sears Roebuck house, or so a carpenter told us. From 1908 to 1942, Sears sold house kits that came with blueprints and the materials to build the house. 

Sometimes we feel cooped-up here in winter. It’s small, it’s too cold to sit on the porch, there’s too much ice on the sidewalk, he wants to watch sports, I would prefer a rom-com – you know how it goes.  But overall, I think it’s better for the soul, it’s a better way to know the truth, it’s a charm against the competitive trampling that goes on in our society, and a way to live without chasing down the dream of a suburban mansion with a turret, a tower (I want that), two porches (I want those), a gazebo, a billiards room, a library (I want that), several boudoirs, and the mysterious three garages. 

The Great Books:  What Were They Thinking?

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We got kicked out of Junior Great Books. We’d signed up of our own volition but were incredulous when we got the boxed set of books. Like Dorothy Parker, we wondered, “What fresh hell is this?”

“Aesop’s Fables. Ugh!”

“I draw the line at The Jungle Books.”

Let me put this in context:  we were eclectic readers, fans of Catcher in the Rye, Rebecca, The Martian Chronicles, and the Betsy-Tacy books.

There was mass rebellion over Treasure Island.  The leaders were “disappointed” to learn that no one had read it.  We were all kicked out.   Banned at 10.

The Junior Great Books debacle was a turning point for my friend Nancy and me. Neither of had ever been kicked out of anything. Nancy, a rebel and a rabble rouser, was thrilled.  Although we spent most of our time listening to Monkees records (“Last Train to Clarksville,”  “Daydream Believer”), we almost got kicked out of a movie for talking loudly. 

When she moved away, I lost touch with her.  Years later, someone told me she’d died in her forties of cancer. Even now it seems impossible that Nancy isn’t making satiric remarks and writing incisive political columns.

One day in the early 2000s, I went to another Great Books meeting. The group was discussing Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. 

“Oh my God, there are Faulkner fans here.”

Few were fans. One reader found it “disgusting.” Another said it was “unrealistic.”  And then there was the guy who said it was “irrelevant.”    

I protested mildly, but felt down-hearted. What would Oprah have said?  In 2005, she chose three books by Faulkner, among them As I Lay Dying, as her summer book club selections.

If Nancy had been around she would have said,  “You know what’s irrelevant, they’re irrelevant!”

I try not to take things too seriously anymore.

Mary McCarthy’s “Birds of America”

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“How can we not write satire? ” Juvenal asked in the second century CE.

That’s why I appreciate Mary McCarthy.  I recently reread her brilliant novel Birds of America (1971), set in the 1960s in Rocky Port, Massachusetts, Paris, and Rome. 

McCarthy aims her savage wit at American politics (the 1964 presidential election and the Vietnam War), the rise of “canned” culture, literally canned and frozen food, the creation of faux history in American small towns, and the growing mistrust of the American government in the U.S. and Europe.

The protagonist, Peter Levi, a birdwatcher and amateur philosopher, moves to Rocky Port with his mother after she separates from her second husband, a Berkeley professor.  They had enjoyed a stay in Rocky Port a few years ago, but the small town is no longer idyllic: it has been infected by urban culture, the disappearance of fresh vegetables in stores,  and the death of the Great Horned Owl at the nature preserve, which only Peter mourns.

But the changing American traditions, old and new, are most sharply illustrated by McCarthy’s descriptions of two Thanksgivings, one in Rocky Port, the other in Paris.

Thanksgiving in Rocky Port is the most fun, because Peter’s mother, who plays the harp and is a professional musician, organizes it. She resolves to make a tradtional Thanksgiving dinner using only ingredients available to the Pilgrims and indigenous Americans of the time.

And still she can’t find a bean pot!  Peter wonders,”Can’t you use a casserole?” Fortunately, a neighbor provides one. And of course the unique traditional meal is scrumptious, and both family (Peter’s cynical aunt and joyful cousins), and friends (lonely Mrs. Curtis, who takes most of her meals at the Portuguese diner), enjoy the food and have fun. 

And then there’s another Thanksgiving dinner in Paris, where Peter spends his junior year abroad. He is acquainted with a general attached to NATO, and his wife invites Peter to “partake of turkey ‘n’ trimmings” on Thanksgivlng.  Naturally, the victuals at Thanksgiving in Paris are of the all-American kind, of the modern frozen tureky era, because the general’s Southern wife wants to be as American as possible.

But Peter is appalled when the general’s wife holds forth on Thanksgiving. 

He observes,

“Then, at table, she actually explained the principle of Thanksgiving to the French. ‘It isn’t a social event, you see.  It isn’t exactly a family event, either…  It’s the day when we Americans – help me, Chuck – as we thank God for our blessings trying to gather under our roof some of our fellow countrymen who might be lonely….'”

Peter, a little tired of being a waif, can’t resist saying, “It’s just a harvest festival, isn’t it?”

And that’s the thing about Peter: he is philosophically prepared, from reading Kant and living with his radical mother, who gets arrested in Rocky Port for refusing to post a faux historical plaque on her house, to jeer at undercooked thought and oppose American imperialism.

McCarthy also mocks Peter’s American obsession with European toilets:  In his rooming house in Paris, he is so disgusted by the filthy toilet that he rises early every morning to scrape the shit off the seat and walls. In Rome, he has to repeat the process.  He had hoped for better. So it’s not only America: France and Italy are also full of shit. (No, I’m only pretending to parse the text. That’s not at all what Mccarthy means!)

McCarthy’s slings and outrageous arrows strike everything in sight, not just American smugness but French chauvinism and tourism in Italy. In the process she makes you laugh aloud, but she also reveals both affection and criticism of flawed American culture.

This is one of my favorite books.

Was I Censored?  Women & Sexuality

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It started when I mentioned Cynthia Heimel’s humorous book, Sex Tips for Girls. She includes a six-page section on how to give a blow job.

And then Ellen mentioned “fellatio” in a comment: the comment disappeared. I found it in the trash; I rescued it.  It  disappeared again; I rescued it again.

And then the entire post disappeared.

I republished it. I hope it’s still there.

In the post, I mentioned the censorship of D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was banned until 1960 in England.

D. H. Lawrence is one of my favorite writers, but now he’s my favorite writer, because I’ve been banned!

I may have used the other f-word on my blog before, but perhaps i just said the “f-word.”  I wrote more graphically about sex only in the context of Cynthia Heimel’s books.

Ellen said in her comment:

“I hated doing fellatio on Jim. It was humiliating to me. I disliked Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly. Never read The Group or Fear of Flying. Never will.”

Ellen, I think fellatio is more a guy thing. There were the oral sex scandals of the ’90s: Bill and Monica, and Hugh Grant and a hooker. This “news” was a major invasion of privacy. However, I preferred not to read about it with my morning coffee. 

And now a few thoughts.

Yes, this is old-fashioned, possibly mawkish but.. Isn’t face-to-face sex more personal, more romantic? Can’t we just make love?  Can’t we look each other in the eye?

Can’t we stop reading Cosmopolitan?

Can’t we…?

In Which We Go to a Club:  Who Were Those Men with the Boat?   

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Not a club exactly but it captures the spirit.

It started at the grand opening of a club. 

I was given two tickets, and what else was I doing on a Friday night?  I begged Captain Nemo to come with me, but the only club he liked was a dingy warehouse where we had once heard 10,000 Maniacs and Talk Talk for free.

Anyway, what he really liked, and what I liked, too, was lolling on the couches in our living room (we had two) and reading Proust. It was a sweet scene:  there is no doubt about it.  We had bought a set of of Proust (Modern Library) for $5.  I’m still on Volume VI…

But my charming friend Rosie, who had never been to a club, was willing to go. We dressed up, put on costume jewelry, and tried to tame our hair, which was difficult when the humidlty was 70%.

Anyway, the club was very crowded. There must have been at least 200 people. Once we got inside, we milled and thronged, hovered over the buffet, and ate standing up because there weren’t enough chairs.

And then two strange men approached us. Rosie and I had not expected this! 

Dorothy Parker wrote: 

Men seldom make passes
At girls who wear glasses.

 I guess these guys never heard that one.

Anyway, the men chatted, and we smiled, but we hardly talked at all.  AND THEN THEY ASKED US TO GO OUT ON THEIR BOAT.

“Um, er.  Shall we go to the restroom first?” I said, smiling

And so we retired, giggling, to the restroom. According to Rosie, I looked  “vampish.” I looked at myself in the mirror with a sinking sensation. If I hadn’t let the clerk at a department store pick out my party dress, this would not have happened. But my friend Emma was truly beautiful, and I was a sweet bookish woman in disguise, so I can only say they had good taste.

And then we sort of lost them in the crowd.  I know, I know:  we should have turned them down and told them we were married.  But I sort of froze.  Maybe you know what I mean.

“So this is what it’s like to be single,” Rosie said.  “Joe and I met at a fraternity dance.”

“The captain and I met in a Latin class.”

“Kat, you’re such a nerd!”

“Yes,” I said, satisfied.

Although I wish I had been courteous, and tactfully turned down the men’s invitations, I comfort myself with the knowledge that there were hundreds of women there who would want to go out on their boat!

Who’s on Prozac, Who’s Not?

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I used to think I could walk down the street and identify people on Prozac (by which I mean antidepressants in general).  It turned out I was wrong. The handsome, impeccably dressed middle-aged man who held the bus door open for us appeared on the street corner one morning wearing  “beggar clothes” (tattered jeans, a soup-stained sweater, and a small ski jacket that may have belonged to his wife, if he had one).

“Can you spare money for a cup of coffee?” he asked.  Of course I could and did. I handed him $7, in case he craved two cups of coffee or a latte.  Under other circumstances, I would have dircted him to the best place to get a latte, but it would be a miracle if he made it to any coffeehouse.

I asked the neighborhood security guard if the man, now apparently a beggar, would be okay.

“Yup, when the pills kick in. His house is a block away.  And if he beds down in the alley in that sleeping bag, we take him home in the car.”

“Where does he get those beggar clothes?”  I asked. The security guard said he’d wondered, too.

And a few days later, sure enough, the man wore his suit again and  helped us onto  the bus.  I almost asked him about that imaginary latte but stopped just in time.

According to the National Institutes of Health, approximately 16 percent of Americans take antidepressants.  That does not seem like an inordinately high number to me. In fact, it seems like a lowball number.

Because who isn’t depressed these days, even if not clinically?  Americans seem more isolated than ever since the pandemic. They sheltered in place, and worked at home, but the work-at-home trend, though convenient, has also weakened the sense of community among  workers. They used to meet daily and chat in their cubes and offices about Netflix, the weather, and on rare occasions, politics. I’m not saying people shouldn’t work at home, but perhaps they should put in an appearance once or twice  a week, to reestablish a sense of community.

Meanwhile, it’s okay to take Prozac if you need it.

Women and Sexuality in 20th-Century Literature:  Cynthia Heimel,  D. H. Lawrence, Mary McCarthy & Erica Jong

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Why, one wonders, this sudden interest in sex?  As a woman of a certain age, I already feel I could write an instruction manual. But as I laughed over Cynthia Heimel’s Sex Tips for Girls (1983), I was astonished by her detailed instructions on how to give a blow job.

There’s no casual hopping into bed in a camisole and gym shorts, then shedding layers. Heimel is a diva obsessed with oral sex. It’s as if she suddenly decided to rewrite The Joy of Sex in the middle of her book.  But of course she’s very witty, albeit perhaps too detailed in her instructions.

And so I began thinking about the portrayal of women and sexuality in 20th-century literature, about what worked and what didn’t.

D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover is his best-known novel, and that’s a shame: it was far from his best.  But of course it’s very popular, because it was banned in England for the sex scenes till 1960.

It is a novel of sexual unhappiness. Sex is always important to Lawrence, and this is one of the few books where he doesn’t philosophize about it. But the characters are very sad: Lady Constance Chatterley married her husband in 1917; he came back from the war a paraplegic.  There is no sex: Constance is unhappy; he is unhappy, everyone is unhappy.  But then Constance begins an affair with Mellors, the virile gardener, and she and he are ecstatic.  Lawrence is always brilliant, but I must admit the sex scenes are slightly comical, because Mellors refers to their genitals as Lady Jane and John Thomas.  If you’re a Lawrence fan, you should read it; and if you’re not a Lawrence fan, start with something else.

His better banned book, Women in Love, is much more complicated, and one of the main characters, Rupert, philosophizes about sex, but there is also much humor. His girlfriend Ursula tolerates his orations and grounds him. They are the perfect couple.

Mary McCarthy’s The Group, a novel about eight women who graduate from Vassar in 1933,  was a best-seller, and no wonder: it is the perfect beach book. Everyone apologizes for liking this book.  I’m not sure why.  Some of McCarthy’s intellectual friends (she was political, outspoken, and made a lot of enemies) deemed it too commercial.

But is it too commercial?  That’s not how I remember it.  Although I prefer Birds of America, her satiric novel about a young American abroad in the 1960s, The Group is a fascinating portrayal of an earlier generation with fewer choices. In one memorable scene, two women put on fake wedding rings before going to a doctor to be fitted for diaphragms. And, if I remember correctly, the diaphragms zoom around like frisbees as they practice inserting them. Perhaps they were easier to insert by the time I got mine! But the characters in The Group can’t take birth control for granted: if they’re not married, the doctor might refuse to prescribe it.

Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying was a sensation when it was published in 1973. The heroine, Isadora Wing, is afraid of flying , but accompanies her psychiatrist husband to a conference in Germany anyway. She is tired of her marriage, and on the lookout for the “zipless fuck,” as she calls it. (She finds it. )And she finds it again in a couple of sequels, which I actually preferred to Fear of Flying. 

All four of these writers were groundbreaking in their approach to women’s sexuality.

Cynthia Heimel’s Humor Columns & Essays

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“The eighties weren’t our fault.” – Cynthia Heimel (1947-2018)

Rearranging my bookcases is one of my favorite pastimes.  I never know what I’ll find, and today I ferreted out a treasure trove of Cynthia Heimel’s humor books, Sex Tips for Girls; But Enough about You; If You Can’t Live without Me, Why Aren’t You Dead Yet?, and Get Your Tongue out of My Mouth, I’m Kissing You Good-bye! 

Heimel, who wrote for The Village Voice and Playboy, is one of our best American humor writers. (Library of America, could you publish her books side by side with other women’s humor essays?) Heimel wrote hilariously about not having a boyfriend, the advantages of an all-black wardrobe, and shopping under the influence of PMS.  And, oh, by the way, she says the best place to find a man is Texas.  Don’t ask… I didn’t understand… but where’s your plane ticket? 

It’s odd how, after all these years, I still relate to “The Great Boyfriend Crunch,” an essay in Sex Tips for Girls. Here is an excerpt from Cynthia’s hilarious boyfriend diary.

11:30 a.m.  Wake up.  Realize I don’t have a boyfriend. Go back to sleep again.

12:45 p.m. Wake up.  Realize I don’t have boyfriend but do have intense need for sustenance. Stagger into kitchen.  Make coffee.  Run mind over assorted boyfriend possibilities

1:07 p.m. Greta calls from the office. She went to a party last night and met a cute guy.  Twenty years old, too young. Also has girlfriend, but may be breaking up with her soon.  We discuss starting a newsletter announcing up-to-the-second status of all heterosexual relationships in Manhattan.

And, by the way, when Greta does call up the too-young guy, he doesn’t remember her! 

Heimel’s other books are a little more mainstream, but may seem even more comical and daring, Everyone loves her rants on fashion and aging, because as women we have similar experiences. In the essay, “We Are Not What We Wear” in But Enough about You,  Heimel laments the death of fashion: her all-black clothes no longer identify her as a hipster writer. Clothes no longer signal who you are.

“Back in the old days, when artists used to live in lofts, if one had a ‘look,’ it meant something. Some looks proclaimed, ‘Hi there, I’m a rock star’  or ‘Hello, I’m a black humorist!’ or even Yo!  I’m a drug dealer!”

And then she tells us what we must never wear, including ROCK-STAR MEMORABILIA (she says not even rock stars will wear it), THE ARMY SURPLUS EFFECT, THE PREPPY GAG, RIDING COSTUMES, & ATHLETIC OUTFITS. I’m guilty of the latter. Does this mean I can’t wear sweatpants around the house?

As a Woman of a Certain Age, I appreciate her essay, “What’s a Crone to Wear?” in Get Your Tongue out of My Mouth, I’m Kissing You Good-bye! Heimel loves to shop in New York, where she finds beautiful, interesting clothes, but can’t even find a long skirt in L.A. She says that she’d take out a loan if she could find one ridiculously overpriced garment she could fall in love with there.

But perhaps it’s easier for Heimel to find good clothes than a boyfriend. That said, I used to joke that I had majored in classics and boyfriend, because I have (almost always) had a boyfriend, and usually a husband. But I gather that Heimel had many boyfriends, and possibly a husband, too, at some point. Her writing is personal, but not too personal. She turns it all into humor.

By the way, I have an autographed copy of Sex Tips for Girls!

Pollution in the Midwest:  Booth Tarkington’s “The Midlander”

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Booth Tarkington, Environmental Novelist

We are experts on polluted cities.

We learned from living in cities plagued by air and water pollution, the smoke from the factory stacks, the chemicals lobbed into the river, the destruction of inner-city neighborhoods, and flight to the suburbs and exurbs.

Suburban life is complicated. There were no trains or buses from the far suburbs and exurbs. One person per car: those tens of thousands of cars crawling in on the highways emitting carbon dioxide. In this particular city, bicycling was not encouraged, and there were no bike lanes. One driver left the scene after hitting a bicyclist. She flipped over the handlebars and broke her collarbone and three ribs when she hit the asphalt. But not all drivers are monsters: someone stopped and helped her.

Commuting can even be psychologically damaging. A colleague who commuted 100 miles a day seemed depressed and not all there, but who could blame her? “It’s okay,” she said with that depressed look. I brought her cups of tea, because she seemed completely broken, and, indeed, she lost her job after a few months. She took anti-depressants, but that didn’t seem enough, and I wondered:  do commuters need more psychotropic drugs than other people?  According to the National Health Institute, “Geographic region was significantly associated with use of psychotropic medications. Psychotropic medication use was higher in less urban areas (19.7%) relative to more urban areas (14.2%).” I am sort of right.

One of the greatest writers on air pollution and urban sprawl is the novelist Booth Tarkington, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Magnificent Ambersons (1918). His best, though little-known, novel is The Midlander (1923), the third in the Growth trilogy. Tarkington chronicles the rise and fall of a midwestern city, which is wrecked by pollution from factories and automobiles. The black smoke from factories and the automobile exhaust casts a fog over the city. People can’t breathe; their clothes are always dirty; and developers are tearing down houses to build more smoky factories.

As I read, I was astonished to realize that urban sprawl was a concern in the first quarter of the 20th century.  And then I remembered E. M. Forster’s Howards End, which is, in a way, about the difficulty of  finding housing in London, and a country house that is rapidly becoming suburban.  Marriage temporarily solves the housing problem, but the real solution may lie at Howards End, in a kind of pre-suburban fugue.

In The Midlander, the protagonist, Dan Oliphant, Is not seeking housing, but planning and building a suburb. He’s a bit of a fool who marries a shallow New York beauty who despises the midwest (which she calls the Far West) and verbally abuses him. Fortunately Dan leaves her at home with his parents (she is nice to them) almost all day and night, while he tries to find investors and digs and lays out the neighborhoods on his land. He foresees that the population will expand in 10 years and move to the suburbs; he even builds a car factory because the suburbanites will need transportation.  What he doesn’t know is that air pollution from factories and cars will drive people out of the city. 

I may not share Dan’s vision – the other characters do not, either, though his parents and next-door neighbor are supportive – but he is fascinating and fanatical about sharing it. We ourselves aren’t really suburban types, but there are old suburbs with beautiful trees, and then the the treeless burbs with ticky-tacky houses. But what we’re looking at in both cases is a place for people to call home.

It’s more convenient and energy-efficient to live in a city if you can, but not possible for everyone, I realize. That’s the end of my rant.

And, may I add, that my unhappiest years were spent in a suburb. All I can say is: I was never so bored in my life. 

You have everything in the city!

But Dan Oliphant in The Midlander would not agree.

What Happened to the Clamshell iBook? The Age of the Cute Computer

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Before everyone emailed and texted, before the invention of the talking refrigerator, most of us lived more or less off the grid, Our idea of high tech was the princess phone. But until I got a laptop computer, my life revolved around the typewriter.  I happily typed papers, articles, essays, reviews, letters, and lists on a Royal typewriter. And I would still be typing on the Royal if everyone had not suddenly bought home computers. They urged me to get one.

“But what is it?” 

AND THEN I GOT A LAPTOP

Some people fall in love with their chatbots.  Gemini pops on on the screen and asks: “Do you need help?” Of course you do need help, but not from Gemini.  You prefer your more distant relationship with the laptop.

You don’t fall in love with your laptop, but you treat it like a casual friend or a cordial maiden aunt. You may think it’s a big phone, but it isn’t really: you can think on a larger scale when you read and write on a larger screen.  You can take it to the coffeehouse to write The Great American Novel, or sit at a picnic table taking notes on a bad translation of The Lusiads, a Portuguese epic poem. At the end of a day as a tourist in a strange city,  you can click on a museum website to read about what you missed: you only glimpsed the Elgin Marbles because it was too crowded.

An evening at a hotel can end in tears or numbness. We recommend winding down by watching a video on how to cut your bangs (but don’t do it!), your favorite band videos, or a soothing book vlog. Also, you should drink the herbal tea in your room. Of course, the savvy traveler brings her own.

 AND NOW FOR A FEW WORDS ON MY FAVORITE LAPTOP COMPUTER:  The iBook Clamshell, released in 1999, was a very cute computer, with a handle like a purse, and made in bright colors (tangerine, blueberry, graphite, Indigo, and key lime). It looked like a charming plastic piece of performance art. Unfortunately, ours broke down years ago, and, for whatever reason,  the charming Clamshell was never revived. And so our computers are gray, or brown. I would prefer something colorful…

Did you have a Clamshell iBook?  Did it break down like mine? What’s your favorite laptop computer?