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The Substack Trend:  Whom Does It Benefit?

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 I know little about Substack, and am oblivious of Patreon, too. 

I had no idea that such newsletters were controversial until I received an excerpt from a Substack newsletter in my email.   A  book columnist had responded to the writer Lauren Groff’s scathing criticism of  Substack.  The whole thing was a bit confusing, but then I don’t subscribe to Substack.

I loved Groff’s first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, though I have not kept up with her work. And I admit I’m puzzled by her animosity to Substack, though her remarks seem to have been taken out of context. In the quotes below, she is, I think, talking about Substack’s effect on new literary writers and on the closure of literary magazines. 

Groff writes, “Substack is an inherently pro-individual, anti-community, anti-new-writer technology and is responsible for the death of so many excellent small literary venues.”

And Niko Stratis says, ‘We are rapidly losing the outlets where new writers can learn to shape a voice, where they can cultivate skills beyond quick news hits and PR with the guidance and mentorship of strong editors and the benefit of a trusted name, and it’s such a loss for writers and readers alike.”

Groff says, “I blame Substack. The single worst development for the literary world in the last few decades.”

Strong language, I say.  But I gently differ. Much more damaging than Substack (many of the newsletters are fascinating and well-written) has been the rise of Facebook (Meta), where people blithely learned to give their identities away.  Even worse is Twitter ( X), which originally limited communications (tweets) to 114 characters, and finally raised the limit to 280 characters in 2017.  This kind of dumbing down is the short road to illiteracy. But I did read that with a premium subscription you can now write long posts at X.

There used to be a greater sense of community online. What I miss are the book groups. There were book discussion boards at AOL, Yahoo groups, and various now defunct book websites. Many academics as well as common readers were involved in discussions of Proust, Edith Wharton, Jane Austen, and Virginia Woolf.  At these venues, people wrote in full sentences, paragraphs, sometimes even essays. I love Goodreads, but its book group discussions are in the form of super short sentences.  But I highly recommend the reader book reviews at Goodreads, which are often thoughtful and brilliantly-written.

Of course I am a blogger, and my blog is free. In the early 2010s journalists and editors complained that bloggers were the Devil. OK, they didn’t use those words. But they did claim we were putting book reviewers out of business.  Since I was writing a book blog, not book reviews, it seemed a big laugh to me.

There are many, many factors in the death of book review pages and newspapers.  People began to read news at Facebook and at other venues on the internet.  (I’m  not on Facebook, but so I’ve been told.)  In addition to blogs, the internet has sites like Politico.  And so  Pulitzer Prize winning-newspapers folded, or the remaining reporters devote more time to the State Fair than the war in Ukraine. 

I imagine the worst effect on new writers on Substack would be lack of subscribers, unless they have friends, or “friends” online who are willing to support them. Still, from my point of view, Substack is an excellent venue for established writers to reach their audience and make a little money.

Now if only we readers could find what we’re looking for…  unless it’s a Jane Austen book club, I haven’t the faintest idea what that might be.

But one of these days I’ll subscribe to a newsletter.

Elizabeth Strout’s “The Things We Never Say”

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Elizabeth Strout’s elegantly-written new novel, The Things We Never Say, centers on the modest, likable 57-year-old character, Artie Dam, an award-winning history teacher respected and well-liked in the community. His approach to teaching is creative and, though he tells himself he is not very smart, he uses the Socratic method brilliantly, and he also teaches from  primary sources:  the students learn about the Civil War by reading  letters written by soldiers and nurses during the war. 

But he also creates a mini-society in the classroom: he emphasizes the need to respect others, and he does not tolerate casual cruelties.  He kicks a boy out of class for using the word “faggoty” to describe the pillow case where Artie stores students’ phones. (No phones are allowed in his classroom.)

As usual, Strout’s prose is lyrical and exquisite. She is always thoughtful, but this time around she has also written a dark political novel. It begins in 2024, right before the election, and the small town in Massachusetts is so divided between Trump and Harris that a fight breaks out at a school sporting event..

But this isn’t “Mr. Chips in Massachusetts”: it is a novel about politics, and Artie’s increasing depression mirrors the political scene.  No one understands he is depressed, not only by politics but the  tragedies in his family’s past.  Somehow the two threads become intertwined, and he begins to plan his suicide. He believes it would be easiest to stage a sailing accident, but instead nearly drowns in an unintentional boating accident.  And so he is relieved and happy to be alive, for a while at least,  and befriends the Trump supporter who rescued him. 

The theme of suicide is never abandoned, though.  Artie observes at one point that society is “committing mass suicide.”  Later, a minor character commits suicide, in part because the changes in education make it impossible to do his job.  And a rich neighbor’s mother attempts suicide in Florida.

Strout’s gruesome account and analysis of the political changes in the last two years are as thorough as anything in a newspaper, and it is so well-written that I would not be surprised if it were nominated for the Booker Prize.  But for me, it makes for grim reading, and I much prefer the Lucy Barton books, which are dark in a more personal way.  I prefer the personal to the political, even when they are all mixed up. The Things We Never Say may be the grimmest novel I read this year unless I elect to read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, a fictional account of the meat-packing industry. 

Release Date:  Improbable Wishes in the 21st Century

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“No light, but rather darkness visible…” Milton, Paradise Lost

The other day I burst into tears. I am convinced it’s a change-of-life thing.  I don’t mean menopause. That was the year I stopped quoting Dylan’s Idiot Wind: “Blood on your saddle.” No, this is a non-menopausal breakdown.

I was gobsmacked to realize that I will not have time to live an alternative life. I will not ride my bicycle in the Tour de France, not that I wanted to, but still… I’m not even riding my bike to Chicago!I probably will not travel again to Europe. I used to be a fearless flyer, but now doors  and bits of the wings fall off the planes in mid-air. I’m less than sanguine about the shortage of air traffic controllers. In March, when TSA workers were on strike, ICE agents may have filled in. I’m not sure that actually happened, but it was at least considered.

Excuse me while I swear comic book style: Imagine a bubble above my head with lots of punctuation marks and emoji.  I JUST WANT TO SEE THE WALL PAINTINGS IN POMPEII, DAMN IT!  WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE’S NO DIRECT FLIGHT TO POMPEII? 

And then there’s the glum realization that everyone hates Americans now. About 10 years ago, during my Henry Jamesian trip abroad, reality broke in when a shop clerk lectured me about the broken American election system – preaching to the choir –  and then trashed Obama. Naturally, I praised Obama’s achievements, and also prophesied that the Democrats would dominate in the upcoming election. I proved I am no political pundit.  Apparently a patriot, though!

Now I don’t want to sound like an ingrate. I want you to know I’m very thankful for all I have.  The miracle of shelter, running water, electricity, books, etc.  I don’t mean to complain.

But dreams are dreams. I realized I will never live in a small house in the country – a renovated chicken coop would do – and yet I’ve always wanted to live in the country. But, no, there are no city buses in the country! How would I get to town?

And then I started thinking of the dream houses of my parents’ generation. One of my mother’s friends longed to build a new house in the suburbs, but her husband refused. He was comfortable in the apartment house they owned, and couldn’t see why she wanted to spend all that money, yadda yadda yadda. Ironically, when her mother retired from the business she built a house in the suburbs. And so my mom’s friend never had that house: she spent her income on stylish clothes, going to a posh hairdresser, the musical theater in Missouri, and dining at all the restaurants in town. The last time I saw her in my mother’s hospital room,, she had just come back from the hairdresser.  “Well?  Am I beautiful?” I loved her attitude.

My back-up housing dream, which is never going to happen either, is to buy my grandmother’s big, rambling old house.  It’s just an ordinary house, but I used to love sitting in the den reading McCall’s and Ladies’ Home Journal, and when I spent the night I got to sleep in my mother’s old room, which had a small balcony. For some reason, even though the neighborhood is run-down now, this house, and all the houses near it, are absurdly expensive. Shouldn’t the dicey neighborhood be factored into the price? The price of real estate is scandalous!

RELEASE DATE

Did you know that Tuesday is the release date for new books? Years ago a woman online wrote about her attempt to charm a bookstore clerk into selling her the new Sue Grafton on a Monday night. “Please, please, I know you’ve got it here. What does it matter if I buy it now or tomorrow? I mean, I’m here now!”

Of course the clerk didn’t crack, but I do know how she felt. We can pre-order the book now, and it makes us feel we’ve got a head start though it arrives on the release date anyway!

Books in Progress; “See You on the Other Side” & “Lawless Republic:  The Rise of Cicero & the Decline of Rome”

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These books are still in progress, and are the kind of book to read when you’re almost too busy to read. The first is a novel about a couple in their sixties sheltering in place during the Covid pandemic in Manhattan. The second is a page-turning biography of Cicero. (I wonder if that phrase “page-turning biography of Cicero” has ever been used before!)

I am halfway through  Jay McInerney’s See You in the Next Life, the fourth novel in a tetralogy about an upper-class Manhattan couple, Russell Calloway, the charming owner and editor of an independent publishing house, and his intelligent wife Corinne, the director of a large food charity. 

Set during the Covid pandemic, the novel begins in the spring of 2020 when Italy was locked down but Covid cases were still rare in New York.  No one knows much about the virus, and Russell and Corinne attend their friends’ thirty-fifth wedding anniversary party. Corinne is apprehensive about the crowd, but Russell is not concerned.

Soon the ramifications for the business world are clear: Russell must postpone the publication of books and cancel book tours or move them to Zoom. And Corinne’s food charity depends on donations from restaurants, so when the governor orders the restaurants to close, she must use emergency funds. And then she catches Covid. The anniversary party had been what would later be called “a super-spreader event.”

Really a sad book, not as light as it seems as first, but I recommend starting with the second or third book before reading this new one. The second in the series, The Good Life, is the best 9/11 novel I’ve read, and a good introduction to Russell and Corinne. I also recommend the third book, Bright, Precious Days. (I have yet to read the first, Brightness Falls.) You can read See You on the Other Side as a stand-alone, but I was glad I already knew the characters.

 Josiah Osgood’s Lawless Republic:  The Rise of Cicero and the Decline of Rome is a page-turning biography with an irresistible gossipy tone. For instance, Chapter 5, “Poison Is Detected,” is the story of Cicero’s fascinating murder investigation and court case. Cicero defended Cluentius, a wealthy man accused of poisoning three men, including his stepfather, who died, and his stepfather’s son, who survived.

Here’s an example of Osgood’s lively style and brillaint grasp of details: “For the Romans, poisoning was the most deceitful crime.  It reminded them how vulnerable they were. The cup of wine your spouse handed you might have toxin mixed in.  Or the medicines administered by your own doctor. …  If a poisoner were sly enough. they would never be caught at all.”

This is an entertaining biography, even if you know nothing about Cicero, the famous Roman orator, gossipy letter writer, and down-to-earth philosopher.

And I hope you’ve all been reading entertaining books and enjoying the mild spring days.

Books to Get Us through the Decades

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Time is a a capsule. It’s a bomb, it’s a card. My 1980s Webster dictionary uses two columns to define time, but what we need is Einstein. 

The time card

 Pop culture defines time in terms of decades and generations:  the ’80s, the ’90s, the 2000s, as if specific trends can define a time period; and then there are the randomly assigned generations, the Silent Generation, Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, and Gen Z, who may or may not be accurately described by eager sociological journalists.

Because of the internet, we’re always in a rush, comparing ourselves with people on social media who read 300 books a year. But Festina lente (“Hurry slowly”), as Augustus said. Speed is not the essence. Why not devote a week or a month to reading a classic?  It is the reading, not the numbers, that matter. And great literature does help you slow down time.

Anyway, forget about the clock and the card. Below is a list of books that take you out of time.

The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing, an experimental novel about the fragmentation of women’s lives in the 20th century.  Anna Wulf, a blocked writer, experiments in her notebooks with barely fictionalized accounts of her life, ranging from her years as a communist during World War II in Africa to her literary success in London and affairs with mostly married men.  The book is tied together by intermittent scenes in which  Anna and her best friend, Molly, an actress, discuss their lives as “free women.”

Anything by Charlotte Bronte.  Start with Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre (governess falls in love with Mr. Rochester but learns he has a mad wife in the attic), and then on to Villette, her best book, in which mousy, unemployed, penniless Lucy Snowe desperately travels to Belgium to seek work and finds a job as an English teacher. But the creepy headmistress spies on her, a fussy Catholic domineering male teacher becomes obsessed with her, and she falls in love with a doctor who does not find her attractive: he regards her as a friend. Much edgier than Jane Eyre, plus two psychedelic scenes, one of which occurs at night after Lucy is drugged by the headmistress.

Two Novels by Margaret Drabble.   I am a great fan of Drabble, and especially admire her early work. My two favorites, published respectively in 1972 and 1975, are The Needle’s Eye and The Realms of Gold. 

In The Needle’s Eye, set against a sophisticated sociopolitical background, we meet Rose, an idealistic heiress who gave away her millions to live ethically in a slum with her children. An unhappily married lawyer meets Rose at a party, and falls quietly in love. But this is not a love story.

In The Realms of Gold, Drabble again explores class and politics. Frances, a celebrity archaeologist and single mother of four children, left the provinces and invented a new life. Her career flourishes, but she suffers intermittently from depression, and has lost touch with her lover, Karel, a frazzled community college professor: a lost postcard delays their reunion. Frances also counters depression by daring to explore her roots, revisiting her unattractive hometown in the Midlands, recognizing the good and bad of the past. And part of the narrative is devoted to Frances’ second cousin, Janet Bird, a housewife with no real education or options. But for the grace of God… Time and place matter.

Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy.  Anna Karenina, the most sympathetic adulteress in literature, ironically falls in love with handsome Vronsky on a trip to Moscow to negotiate peace between her adulterous brother and his wife, Dolly. A huge cast of characters is affected by the affair of Anna and Vronsky, including Kitty, Dolly’s younger sister, who had thought that Vronsky would propose to her, and Levin, a landowner rejected by Kitty because of Vronsky’s flirtation. And then there is Anna’s successful but unattractive husband, Karenin, who loses the respect of colleagues because of the stigma of his wife’s adultery. Karenine punitively forbids Anna to see their son, which devastates both mother and her son. 

I once read an essay by (or interview with?) Ian McEwan, who said that as he grew older he wondered how much time he had left to reread Anna Karenina. The late novelist Robert Hellenga said that he reread AK every year. I can’t compete with that, but I have read it more than once.

So these are some of my favorite books that do seem to slow down time when I read them. Do tell me about any absorbing books that do the same for you!

The End of Classics

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Once upon a time, a long time ago, I read Richmond Lattimore’s translation of the Iliad for an English class.  The professor was a medievalist whose hobby was Greek literature, and it was unclear whether or not he knew Greek. Certainly, his teaching was uninspired and his observations trite.

And so I enrolled in Greek, and then in Latin, and spent hours, then years, reading the mysterious Aeschylus, the enchanting Homer, witty Catullus, brilliant Virgil, bubbly Ovid, etc., and then  I had a master’s degree in classics.

I am awestruck that I made this excellent decision.  I could have been another English major (I love English literature), but classical literature is gorgeous, profound, and pertinent, the poetry, plays, and philosophy of ancient civilizations that shaped western culture and literature, and still remain, in some ways, alien and unknowable. Without the universities, we would have been like Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure: Jude teaches himself Greek and Latin in a desolate village, and when he finally makes it to Hardy’s fictitious counterpart of Oxford, the professors decline even to meet him.

The humanities are in jeopardy now. One wonders if future generations will have the pleasure of reading Latin and Greek classics.  I do not say this lightly. Several universities and colleges have eliminated classics programs or severely cut department budgets.  The University of Chicago is winnowing its classics program and will not accept new Ph.D. students in classics in the 2026-2027 year. 

According to Jeffrey E. Shulman in his article, “Cuts to the Liberal Arts Will Backfinre.” in Real Clear Education,  “The University of Chicago prides itself on teaching obscure and dead languages. Although most lack their own major or minor, the Classics Department—which offers ancient Greek and Latin—counts 12 enrollees a number insignificant compared to a STEM subject like computer science, with 382 enrollees. Such numbers are typical at other elite universities: Harvard University’s 2024 graduating class included 10 classics majors and 184 computer scientists. “

The numbers were about the same in my day. But then It was a given that the value of classics and other humanities courses was beyond numbers and money.

Let’s hope some powerful people will save classics.

Too Many Favorite Books:  The Interviewer’s Dilemma

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“What’s your favorite book?” I asked when I interviewed local writers for my friend’s newsletter, which was aimed at local writers. 

I did not have time to do these interviews, but my friend was often in crisis. “Please, please, please. No one will help me.  Couldn’t you interview somebody, anybody?”

“Somebody, anybody! What a request!”  I loved the idea of interviewing somebody, anybody.  Perhaps I could approach a person in a suit and sneakers.  “Excuse me, have you ever written a  memo?  Well, see – you are a writer.”

Soon I had interviewed everybody in the small local community of writers.  Friends, friends of friends, frenemies, friends of frenemies, enemies of friends or frenemies…   

Then I started calling PR people to set up phone interviews with writers who hailed from our city or state.  The writers were gracious, but weary of being asked the same questions in interviews.  Did they write by hand or on a computer?  Almost everyone said by hand.  When did they write?  In the morning.  Nobody wrote in the afternoon.

My favorite question was:  “What’s your favorite book?” But that was a naive question, I learned, and much too specific.

“So many books,” they always said.  “I can’t narrow it down to one.”

I felt humble.  I was so simple that I  could narrow it down to one. 

They kindly mentioned some favorite books, always at least one new book, sometimes a cult classic, and they also plugged books by friends.

I often helped her out, for the sake of friendship. It was volunteer work. There was a dearth of volunteers!

I doubt she got paid much, if anything, for editing and writing that newsletter.  She also worked part-time at a demanding job, reviewed books, and was a talented fiction writer. But she died young, in her forties, before she finished her book.

…atque in perpetuum, soror, ave atque vale..

The End of the Book Group

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The last time the book group met was in my back yard in 2000.  We ate chicken, a salad, and dessert (something from the neighborhood bakery), and desultorily discussed John Updike’s Rabbit Is Rich. 

I remember their faces, but can’t remember their last names. 

Time passes. Details drift away, unless one needs to remember. And yet we met for four years, and I felt close to them.  I had met these people at a support group. We socialized sometimes.

And so I organized a monthly book group, and I picked the books. We read some dazzling memoirs and novels, among them Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, Lisa Zeidner’s Layover, John Thorndike’s Another Way Home: A Father’s Memoir, Mick Jackson’s The Underground Man, Kaye Gibbons’ Sights Unseen, and Jay Neugeboren’s Imagining Robert.

One evening a cartoonist showed up at book group.  She hilariously skewered one of my favorite novels, and was so witty that I hiccoughed with laughter.  Really, it is and is not ideal to have a cartoonist in your book group!  

At that last meeting, I was distracted, still packing for the move.

“You shouldn’t move.  You have a lot of friends here,” said one of my favorites.

“I’ll miss you a lot. You’ve got to keep the book group going.”

“We won’t,” he said glumly.

But there must have been someone bossy enough to take over. I’d phoned them, arranged transportation (I’m a master of bus schedules and carpooling), and occasionally sent out a newsletter to remind them of our selection of the month.

As you can see, I have a clear memory of my bossiness, and/or powers of organization, and it makes me laugh. I remember the group vividly, but I wish I had a photo.

Seneca and Time:  Stoicism and the Brevity of Life

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Writers and publishers are savvy about readers’ needs. There is a market for self-help books, and now, more charmingly, for books on Stoicism. Hundreds of books on Stoicism have been published in recent years:  David Fideler’s Breakfast with Seneca: A Stoic Guide to the Art of Living, Tom Hodgkinson’s How to Live Like a Stoic:  A Handbook for Happiness, and many books with titles like Think Like a Stoic, How to Think Like a Stoic, and Live Like a Stoic.  And then there’s the ever-popular Meditations by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.

Am I or am I not a Stoic? It’s both more complicated and simpler than you think.  The Stoics recognize four emotions, pleasure and pain, desire and fear.  If you want to lead a good life, and that is the goal, reason must conquer emotions. But the system is more complex than that:  it is logic, physics, and ethics. 

The three main stoic virtues are fides, virtus, and pietas, and if you have read Virgil’s epic poem, The Aeneid, in Latin, you are familiar with them. Fides means faith and trust. Virtus literally means “manliness” (the first syllable, vir,  means “man“), but also excellence, courage, or the best in any endeavor.  Then there’s pietas, the recognition of obligations to the gods, one’s nation, and the family.  Virgil’s Aeneas, forced by pietas to sacrifice personal happiness after the fall of Troy, is a reluctant leader of the surviving Trojans in their journey overseas to found a new homeland in Italy. This will bring no happiness to Aeneas’ generation. The brutal ending of the epic, when Aeneas erupts in rage during a battle, throws the concept of pietas into question. 

I used to fancy myself an Epicurean, but I recently returned to Seneca, a Stoic philosopher, graceful writer, satirist,  tragedian, and tutor and political advisor to Nero.  I read Senecus’s Letters in graduate school,  and was delighted by his elegant, pointed style, lucidity of explication, and the slight edge to his wit.

In his philosophical treatise, De Brevitate Vitae (On the Brevity of Life), Seneca explores the concept that life is too short. (The following is my translation from the Latin.)

“We do not have too little time, but we lose much.  Life is long enough, and is granted generously for the accomplishment of the greatest things, if the whole life is well-spent; but when life slips away through debauchery and carelessness, and when life is applied to no good cause, and when the final necessity compels the end, we realize that our life has passed without our understanding it was going.”

Seneca has no sympathy for the complaints of working men who do not use their time well.  Too many devote themselves to pointless tasks. Some waste time networking with men who do not think well of them. And then there are the high officials who don’t retire gracefully: they die in court or in the midst of a financial transaction. But the most astonishing story is that of Sextus Turannius, a canny old man who was forced to retire at 90. He insisted that his family deck him out like a corpse, wear mourning, and conduct funeral rites until his boss hired him back.

Seneca is a critic, but he is also a comic genius.  Take his satiric portrait of the dandy who wastes hours of his life at the barber.  The following is my translation from the Latin:

“You call them leisurely who spend hours of their lives at the barber’s, where any hair that has grown in the night is plucked, a council is held about each individual hair, where either a dislodged hair is replaced, or one thinning hair is combed over the forehead…”

 Reading this in Latin was a charming experience.  Whatever else Seneca was, whatever he did or not do during Nero’s regime, he was a brilliant writer whose letters and philosophical writings have fascinated and comforted readers for centuries.

Recommended Spring Reads:  Daphne du Maurier’s “The Parasites” & Maria Semple’s “Go Gentle”

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Everyone loves Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic novel, Rebecca.  “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” the novel begins. I first read that sentence when a friend returned from a miserable archaeological dig and said Rebecca had kept her sane at night while her roommates played Mah Jong.

If you love Jane Eyre, you will love Rebecca.  There is a mad wife in the attic in Jane Eyre;  in Rebecca, it’s a contemptuous, unfaithful wife who taunts her husband and is killed.  When The New Yorker published an essay about Rebecca, I realized that the feminist canon had expanded to include women’s novels formerly dismissed as pop fiction.

Rebecca may be du Maurier’s best book, but I prefer The Parasites (1949), a novel about three step-siblings who grow up in the theater.  They have no fixed abode:  they accompany Pappy, a famous singer, and Mama, a famous dancer, all over Europe and the U.S.  And they  don’t seem marred by the experience: on the contrary, they thrive on it.

Daphne du Maurier, the daughter of Sir Gerald du Maurier, a famous actor and manager, certainly knew the theater.  And I am addicted to theater novels:  I also recommend J. B. Priestley’s Lost Empires, Ferdia Lennon’s Dangerous Exploits, and Doris Langley Moore’s A Game of Snakes and Ladders.  In The Parasites, two of the children, Maria and Niall, grow up to have careers in theater and music.  Maria becomes a famous actress, Nial a popular songwriter, and  poor Celia, who loves to draw, is stuck as the caregiver of their alcoholic Pappy. (Mama died in a tragic accident.)

But it’s not just the complicated relationships – and Maria’s and Niall’s is the most complex, being quasi-incestuous – but the narcissism, the selfishness, and the histrionics. 

Take the opening of the novel, written in the first person plural. Du Maurier uses the first person plural at the beginning of several segments.

It was Charles who called us the parasites.  The way he said it was surprising, and sudden; he was one of those quiet reserved sort of men, not given to talking much or stating his opinion, unless upon the most ordinary facts of day by day, so that his outburst…had the force of an explosion. 

Are “we” indeed parasites? Much of this novel is comical – it is not a soap opera – but Charles doesn’t believe acting and song-writing are real work. Mind you, Maria is always acting, so one sees why he tires of it.  In fact, she married  Charles so she could be called the”Honorable”: she loves being an “Hon.” And Niall is a popular songwriter, whose career was boosted by his parents’ eccentric friend, Freada. At a posh school, the music teacher had said he had no talent. Running away from school (several times) turned out to be a wise decision.

Perhaps there is most hope for Celia, who, after years of looking after Pappy and being at Maria’s beck and call, achieves her own creative goal – and it is completely free of the theater.

A brilliant, flamboyant book.  One of my best rereads this spring.

Maria Semple’s new novel, Go Gentle, is charming, funny, and a bit over-the-top.  The heroine, Adora Hazzard, is the author of a best-selling book about stoicism and is leading the good life with her daughter and dog in a chic New York apartment. She has organized a whimsical “Coven” of single and divorced women who live on her floor of the apartment building:  they save money by sharing a dog-walker, splitting packages of vegetables, and even save on ballet and theater tickets

But even if you quote Marcus Aurelius as you walk down the street, you will run into trouble eventually. She loves her work as a philosophy tutor to the sons of a wealthy philanthropist-art collector, but is haunted by an episode of sexual harassment that happened during her stint as a comedy writer in L.A.

At first I didn’t understand how this long episode fit in with the rest of the book. It almost seems like a self-contained novella. Around the turn of the century, Adora’s fellow TV comedy writers, all male, made a bet about how far one of them could sexually maul her during a meeting.  The humiliation ends in her being fired, because the network didn’t want gossip or trouble, and she is given a huge sum of money in exchange for signing an NDA.  And so she went back to school and got her Ph.D. in philosophy.

But it is a turning point for Adora. She reinvents herself as a philosopher. And, of course, we see that Semple can write seriously, just as Adora isn’t restricted to comedy.

Adora stoically understands that, statistically, she is unlikely to marry again. But when she meets a charming, handsome guy, we think we’re in for a romance. But there’s something wrong there, maybe…

And then the novel turns into a mystery, in which Adora tries to resolve her suspicion of an art theft, or similar crime, in her employer’s collection. S

Go Simple is a great read, if slightly baggy. Semple is a  great comic writer, and this is by far her most complex novel.