Emily From Different Angles

There is no frigate
like a book
To take us lands away,
Nor any coursers
like a page
Of prancing poetry.
This traverse may
the poorest take
Without oppress of toll;
How frugal is the chariot
That bears a human soul!

by Emily Dickinson
American Poet
1830 - 1886


Young Girl Reading
by French artist Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1732 - 1806


Emily Dickinson

We think of hidden in a white dress
among the folded linens and sachets
of well-kept cupboards, or just out of sight
sending jellies and notes with no address
to all the wondering Amherst neighbors.
Eccentric as New England weather
the stiff wind of her mind, stinging or gentle,
blew two half imagined lovers off.
Yet legend won't explain the sheer sanity
of vision, the serious mischief
of language, the economy of pain.

by Linda Pastan, American Poet, b. 1932


A couple of novels for E.D. fans:

EMILY DICKINSON IS DEAD by Jane Langton

Who: Assorted Emily Dickinson followers and Detective Homer Kelly
What: A college town murder mystery
Where: At an Amherst poetry / history symposium
When: The centenary anniversary of Emily Dickinson's death
Why: Envy, classism.

Years ago I saved a review of this book but only recently obtained a used copy and actually read it, then happily passed it on to one of my murder - mystery - loving fellow readers. The text honors Emily Dickinson and her admirers but also takes into consideration the community at the outer fringes of Emily's circle of intellectual and economic privilege. This observation has stayed with me long after finishing the novel:

"Oh, it was all very well, reflected Homer, for Miss Emily Dickinson of Main Street in Amherst to sit in her garden, basking in eternity, but what about the Jesse Gaws of the town of Ware, and people like that? They had surely done very little basking. For the working people of Ware, life must have been an endless succession of long days in the mills, fastening heavy soles to leather uppers, or endless days at home, weaving palm-leaf hats by hand. Of course, sometimes the monotony was varied by national strife. Homer winced, remembering all the gold stars on the memorial tablets in the Quabbin Cemetery. In the grim company of Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Gaw, the ethereal respectability of Emily Dickinson seemed a cruel irrelevance. For an instant Homer saw a new Emily, cross-eyed with mystical rapture, clasping her hands at butterflies while her brother paid a substitute to fight in his place in the Civil War and her father drove hard bargains in his office in the Palmer Block. Homer snarled, and wrenched the car to the side of the road. "This doesn't feel right. I'll bet we've gone too far." (204 - 05)

That last sentence might be a metaphor . . .


THE DIARY OF EMILY DICKINSON by Jamie Fuller

Slightly confusing until you immerse yourself in Fuller's project; the words here are Fuller's, but written in the style of Dickinson. The fabricated diary entries range from Emily's spiritual meditations, to her reflections on the natural world, her apprehensions about sharing her writing, and her internal conflict over her role in the family -- all as imagined by Fuller:

"Housewifery is wearisome -- but Devotion shapes the task. As we all sat at table -- so different in our longings and secret sorrows yet joined by Love's mysterious adhesive power -- I thought again how holy a place is home. For though we share meals more easily than minds, in no other ground could my seed take root. Here no man times my toil and I answer to none for it. Though I must do my part for the family's comforts, yet I have the freedom -- and solitude -- for my truest work . . . There is safety in their familiar affection -- demonstrated warily. To ask for understanding were -- perhaps -- ingratitude." (25)

THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX by Maggie O'Farrell is a novel about sibling rivalry, Alzheimer's, and madness -- not about Emily Dickinson. However, while thinking about what stays fixed in a woman's memory even as her sanity slips away, Esme shares an Emily-like thought about the ritual of housekeeping: "It is always the meaningless tasks that endure: the washing, the cooking, the clearing, the cleaning. Never anything majestic or significant, just the tiny rituals that hold together the seams of human life." (2)

Esme's conclusion seems perfectly applicable to a woman's saner moments as well. Why, for example, do household tasks so often come across as a peculiar self-indulgent hobby rather than a way of keeping the house holy and holding the seams together? Is Emily ungrateful to wish her family understood her talent? Or selfish to desire their gratitude for her plain old everyday wearisome necessary housework? Better to have a calmer heart (more like solitary Emily), learning to appreciate for one's own self the "Devotion" which shapes the perpetual tasks, the tiny rituals.

A Couple of Domestic Goddesses

MY KITCHEN

JULIA CHILD'S KITCHEN
AT THE SMITHSONIAN

With the year two thirds over, it looks like I have finally described every book that I read in 2007 and am ready, at last, to move on to 2008 (saving the 2009 books for 2010).

I started off in January of 2008 with four books by two earnest comediennes, who half-seriously, half-jokingly call themselves "The Slob Sisters."

SIDETRACKED HOME EXECUTIVES
GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER
THE SIDETRACKED SISTERS CATCH-UP ON THE KITCHEN
THE PHONY GOURMET

All by Pam Young and Peggy Jones

Slob Sisters or Domestic Goddesses? You decide. These gals really are sisters and they really are the greatest! I love their books and their humor and their advice on life & happiness. Their message covers so much much more than keeping the house running smoothly, though it must be said, they are good at that too!

In Catch-Up on the Kitchen, Pam and Peggy reveal their grandmother's "simple yet profound way of looking at life." Whenever she had a problem or listened to someone else's problems, she'd always say one of two things: "It don't matter" or "He don't mean nothin' by that." Excellent advice for not taking everything so personally that you end up feeling hurt by every stray remark and frustrated by every little snag in your schedule (83-84). According to Granny, one of these two answers would always apply, no matter how bad the situation was, and no matter who was involved (unless it happened to be Hitler or similar; a third remark was reserved for such as these).

Sidetracked Home Executives includes the Slob Sisters' highly entertaining rendition of "The Night Before Christmas." I'll save the complete poem for December, but here's a sample:

"I . . . turned the oven on to bake;
I had nut breads and cookies and puddings to make.
I opened the freezer and filled up with fear,
For what to my wondering eyes should appear?
But the turkey, still frozen -- how could I forget?
My excuse was a good one: I must be St. Nick!"

I had to laugh, for indeed who doesn't feel like an over - extended St. Nick when contemplating the holiday "to do" list? It turns out that I already do one of the Christmas things the Sisters suggest for eliminating clutter -- turn all your vacation souvenirs into tree decorations; that way you enjoy them once a year and they retain their reminiscent nostalgia rather than just becoming dusty background items.

Their signature concept for organization is a file card system, which I must confess I have not adopted, even though I enjoyed reading about it. I can say, however, that for years and years I have implemented another of their suggestions, using a file box for addresses so that I can update the cards as needed -- never an address book! Somehow, I guess I intuited that one on my own!

Something else we've done around our house that reminds me of their approach is have a big chore day on the first Saturday of each month. My kids complete their list of chores (very modest if you ask me) then receive their allowance (very modest if you ask them). We have a built - in reminder because every first Saturday at 11 am, there is a community - wide test of our city's VERY LOUD tornado siren. So just in case we have overlooked Chore Day, we are suddenly reminded and jolted into action.

After reading Get Your Act Together, I decided that I should make that first Saturday a regular chore day for myself as well, an appropriate time for attacking all the big scary things. That way, we're all in it together. As for my husband, he is always so busy on the weekends -- painting, plowing, putting up drywall, pouring concrete -- that we never have to worry about him! He is always modeling exemplary upkeep behavior!

I found interesting Peggy's lament in Sidetracked Home Executives that "I tried to make up for all my shortcomings [in organization & tidiness] by being affectionate and lighthearted" (117). Funny, my problem is almost exactly the opposite. I try to make up for all my shortcomings [in lightheartedness & optimism] by being excruciatingly organized and on top of every little detail. If only, if only, if only I can do enough things correctly! This is the fretful role I have carved out for myself in the family, not to mention my hopeful (hopeless?) strategy for gaining admittance into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Yes, Pam and Peggy are Domestic Goddesses; yet they make clear that an organized household is not an end in itself but a way to free yourself up for your REAL work, your TRUE mission, the THING YOU WERE BORN TO DO ON THIS EARTH. My existential dilemma is that I'm still not entirely sure just WHAT this could be. Every day I wait for the Epiphany. While waiting, it's far too easy to turn running a homestead into a higher calling, which it surely is not, but what is? In the meantime, I'm trying to live in the present and not get sidetracked.

I feel pretty sure that the Sidetracked / Slob Sisters would appreciate a couple of my favorite "Maxine" cartoons:

"I find it helps to organize chores into three categories: Things I won't do now; Things I won't do later; Things I'll never do."

AND -- "Age doesn't make you forgetful -- having way too many stupid things to remember makes you forgetful."

Pam and Peggy's books help you work your way around and through and out of any number of stupid, fretful, forgetful-making things, freeing up your mind and your time for worthier pursuits. And they know how do it not only with file cards, charts and recipes, but also with references to Shakespeare, Emerson, and William James. Well worth reading.

SUMMER MAKE BELIEVE

"We'll talk of sunshine and of song,
And summer days, when we were young;
Sweet childish days, that were as long
As twenty days are now." --Wordsworth

Sure, these are kids books, but I like reading them, particularly in the summer, when the time is going so fast. That's when you can use a book that goes fast also -- one that you can start and finish on the same day.

In 2007, I read, for the first time, two of many by Zilpha Keatlety Snyder:

THE EGYPT GAME All you have to do is look at the picture on the cover (kind of like the photo above!) to know that this book is going to be fun: great kids, great themes, great costumes!

THE VELVET ROOM Slip-covers made from moon fabric -- how lyrical is that:

"That night Robin decided to go to bed early so morning would come more quickly, but it was hard to get to sleep. It was a bright moonlit night, and it stayed warm much later than usual. . . . After a while she gave up trying to go to sleep and pulled her cot over against the window. Everything was strangely beautiful. The dusty yard with its pile of auto parts looked different. And the rest of the Village, too, seemed less ugly and makeshift. It was as if the whole world had been slip-covered in the strange, soft fabric of moonlight. Robin had never liked nighttime much. She wasn't too brave about the dark, and then, too, things had a way of growing from bad to worse if you thought about them in the night. But suddenly she saw things quite differently. How wonderful it was that day ended -- that there would always be hours that were soft and secret and dim to hide things for a while from the hard brightness of day. She sat and watched until it was quite late; then a cool breeze began to blow in through the open window, and she went to sleep" (THE VELVET ROOM, 74).


And a mere two of the many terrific novels by E. L. Konigsburg:

THE OUTCASTS OF 19 SCHUYLER PLACE Some reviews call OUTCASTS a follow - up to SILENT, but really it's a pre-quel, and you should read OUTCASTS first, even though it was written second. The shero is twelve - year - old Margaret Rose (see the rose on the cover of the book?), whose eccentric, loving uncles teach her to stand up for herself and to love old houses. Her little half brother Connor is born at the close of the story.

SILENT TO THE BONE You'll love what Margaret Rose has done with the house on Schulyer Place. And you'll admire the way she helps Connor, now a teen-ager, when life goes wrong.


Plus, two long ago favorites by Franklyn E. Meyer:

ME AND CALEB & ME AND CALEB AGAIN As youngsters, my brother and I read these books many times, especially the first one. Who wouldn't want to spend the summer getting into lots of trouble with Bud & Caleb? After all, they lived somewhere in the Missouri Ozarks, not far from us, so maybe we could visit! I looked everywhere for these books in the 90s, hoping to read them aloud to my kids, only to discover that the titles were out of print. In 2006, they reappeared at long last and are just as good as I remember!


Finally:

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS (#7) Everyone read this in Summer 2007, right? Well, now it's time to re-read. But first, re-read ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (#5) & THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE (#6). Come on, it won't take all that long!

My Favorite American Historians

ALL-AMERICAN BOYS: FOURTH OF JULY, 1996
BLAND AMBITION: FROM ADAMS TO QUAYLE -- THE CRANKS, CRIMINALS, TAX CHEATS, AND GOLFERS WHO MADE IT TO VICE PRESIDENT

ALMOST AMERICA: FROM THE COLONISTS TO CLINTON: A "WHAT IF" HISTORY OF THE U.S.

Both by Steve Tally

You know all those books that are supposed to be more fun, fair, lively, and wise than your high school history book? Well, I've tried a number of those, and they all make me feel just like I did in history class: drowsy! But not Steve Tally's books! I stay wide awake for these and read out all the jokes to whoever will listen because they are just too entertaining to keep to myself.

As soon as I finished Bland Ambition (well, maybe even before I was done), I ordered five additional copies to give as Christmas presents. Yes, I enjoyed it that much, and felt sure my friends and family would too. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a new edition that will include Tally's thoughts on Gore, Cheney, Biden and near - miss Palin.

My favorite chapter in Almost America is the one on The Articles of Confederation. What if States' Rights took precedence over the Union? Surprise! The "what if" scenario is a description of what really did happen during the Civil War, the most comprehensible explanation I've ever read.


TAKE THE CANNOLI (part memoir, about growing up in the Midwest: Oklahoma, Montana, then Chicago; part American History, tons of wit)
PARTLY CLOUDY PATRIOT (how to love the United States of America, even when you're feeling sad and worried)
ASSASSINATION VACATION (about Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley)
THE WORDY SHIPMATES (Pilgrims & Puritans)

All four by Sarah Vowell, all excellent. I've never loved American History so much! Between Steve Tally and Sarah Vowell, I've learned more American History than I ever did in grade school, high school, and college put together.
P.S. MORE BY VOWELL
UNFAMILIAR FISHES
LAFAYETTE IN THE SOMEWHAT UNITED STATES

Memoirs to Read in the Summertime

American Flag Pie: Homegrown Rhubarb & Black Currant
MISS AMERICAN PIE: A DIARY OF LOVE, SECRETS AND GROWING UP IN THE 1970s Margaret Sartor: My girlhood was very little like the one described here. All the boyfriends, and drinking, and using the f--- word, the horseback riding and rah-rah pom - pom beauty queen stuff -- none of that was me (me, I was a Girl With Glasses!). But one thing I did love about this young heroine -- she has my crazy frizzy hair! On 2 November 1976, she writes, "Jimmy Carter was elected president and Daddy said he won because it was such a beautiful day all over the South. This would seem to suggest a connection between the presidency of the United States and the frizziness of my hair" (198). Now that made me laugh! Reminded me, in fact, of the boy at my high school graduation (a day of high humidity) who said, "Kitti, your hair looks like the Wrath of God." Gee, thanks!

GIRL WITH GLASSES: MY OPTIC HISTORY Marissa Walsh: What a smart, funny memoir and darling cover photo (take a look on amazon). Pretty sure I had that exact same outfit in 4th grade! Maybe we all did -- Haha! Reading in public because you just can't help yourself, or maybe to avoid human interaction? Walsh calls this "the girl-with-a-book thing" (148). She experiments with contact lenses, only to learn that even with her contacts in, she is still "the girl with glasses" (53). And she quotes Scooby-Doo, that episode when Daphne asks, "Velma, do you have a book for every occasion?" And Velma (a girl with glasses) replies, "Actually, yes." I love the idea of a life story chronicled by sequential eye-wear choices. You could also do it with footwear, winter coats, cars, hair, you name it. Fun!

SHE GOT UP OFF THE COUCH AND OTHER HEROIC ACTS FROM MOORELAND, INDIANA Haven Kimmel: ZIPPY is as cute and funny as ever (see below, 2004: GROWING UP SMALL & 2006), but by the end of this installment, she is wising up, sadly, and falling from innocence. Not that she ever loses her winsome sense of humor. She thinks that maybe she will have a detective agency with her sister when they grow up. Okay, says her sister: "'I would be the brains and you could do all the gross stuff.' I sighed. She had just named my dream life" (146).

In this book, Zippy's mother is the one who gets up off the couch (where according to Zippy she has spent the last few years "eating pork rinds and reading books from the bookmobile" 36) and enrolls at Ball State to complete a degree in English. Zippy's mom is a Girl With Glasses! Zippy observes that her mother "was forever quoting someone [James Joyce, for example], I can't describe how powerfully vexing it was" (261). Kind of like Velma, in Scooby-Doo.

In an evocative passage, Zippy recalls visiting the Laundromat with her parents, the smell of Tide & Downy, climbing into the large rolling laundry baskets:

"Plus you could buy individual boxes of detergent and fabric softener, even bleach, and there was nothing that made me grind my teeth with pleasure more than a real thing shrunken down small. The first time my dad showed me a toothache kit from a box of equipment from the Korean War and I saw the tiny cotton balls (the size of very small ball bearings), I nearly swooned. . . . Miniaturization was a gift from God, no doubt about it, and there it was, right in a vending machine in the place we used to do our laundry in New Castle, Indiana" (155).

Kimmel's description of Miniaturization nearly made ME swoon! Particularly since one of the most exciting books of literary theory I've ever read is Susan Stewart's ON LONGING: NARRATIVES OF THE MINIATURE, THE GIGANTIC, THE SOUVENIR, THE COLLECTION, which inspired my own book on the role of dolls and miniatures in fiction.

Email from a friend: "I agree with everything you said about ZIPPY; your comments are practically word for word what I nearly wrote down to you earlier today but then just didn't take the time to send. Doesn't it feature so many things that you remember from growing up, not only clothes and toys and household items, but also an almost non - specific feeling of the time. That is what I loved. It felt like it was my life without all the drama around it. The references to all the toys and songs and games: yes, it really did seem like she was describing our life in St. Charles, County. As for how she captures that detached, bemused voice -- so utterly charming, so critically astute yet nonjudgmental about her own life-- I just wish I knew! Similar to the narrative voice of Scout in TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD or ELLEN FOSTER? Absolutely adorable.

Also, glad to hear I'm not the only one who found some of the time references oddly out of synch (e.g. no Barbies in 1972)! Wow! Even us poor kids in Missouri had Barbies in what -- 1964 or 65! Still, she made me laugh a million times:

"I had some disappointments with Santa, but not many. The only clear one I remember is the year I asked for a Skipper doll, who was an early, extra - perky friend of Barbie. Nobody had Barbies in Mooreland, and this could have posed a problem for the social Skipper, which might have been what Santa was thinking. Skipper was not the kind of girl to thrive in solitude. She wasn't doing much looking inside" (p. 266).

Before leaving this topic, I must say that I thought Skipper was Barbie's sister. I know that Barbie has a tiny little sister now (can't remember name? Chelsea? Tutti?), but I truly did think that Skipper was their middle sister, not a friend. I vividly remember my sister Di's Skipper doll who had long red hair and a red sailor style bathing suit -- very cute! And this was in the Midwest in 1965 or 1966. Apparently in Mooreland, however, no one has a Barbie in 1972 (?).

One thing that struck me when reading ZIPPY is that although the narrator is 8 years younger than I, it could easily be the other way around; so much of the descriptions seemed to be from the childhood of someone maybe a decade ahead of me, but then Kimmel does say that people in Mooreland were "not so much behind the times as they were confused about the times." I loved that!

*****************
And lastly . . .
LOOKING BACK: GROWING UP OLD IN THE SIXTIES (1973)
AT HOME IN THE WORLD: A MEMOIR (1998)
Great autobiographical / social commentary by Joyce Maynard.

For more on Joyce Maynard

check out my LIST on amazon: Joyce Maynard Treasure Hunt

and see my longer post
"Joyce Maynard Treasure Hunt" (27 May 2009)

on my literary blog of connection and coincidence
(www.kitticarriker.blogspot.com)

MEMOIRS READ IN 2007

ON MEMORIAL DAY: "Ring out the grief that saps the mind for those that here we see no more." --Tennyson

WIT: A PLAY Margaret Edson. An intense treatment of cancer, complete with critical analysis of John Donne as well as touching references to The Runaway Bunny, Margaret Wise Brown's loosely connected companion piece to Goodnight Moon. Until I read Wit I had always preferred Goodnight Moon to Runaway Bunny, but in the same way that Aimee Bender (2014) elevates "Goodnight Moon," Edson's analysis gave me a new appreciation of Runaway Bunny. Who ever knew that this childhood favorite was actually a metaphysical poem? Enough wit and elegance to prepare us for the inevitably sad ending. The main character / patient / professor Vivian Bearing (in the movie, Emma Thompson portrays her perfectly) explains that against immense biochemical odds her "only defense is the acquisition of vocabulary" (44).

Similarly, in THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING Joan Didion writes that "Information is control" (94); and acquiring it is the most important thing she can do for her daughter Quintana Roo (a magical name!). Didion documents her relentless pursuit of knowledge concerning Quintana's illness. A vigilant advocate, she surrounds herself with medical texts, recording and absorbing as much information as possible. But, sadly, knowledge / information / vocabulary cannot always prevent loss. "No eye is on the sparrow" (190, 227).

THE LOVELY BONES & LUCKY Alice Sebold: If you go for true crime, LUCKY is a very sobering non - fiction account of Sebold's rape and the subsequent trial when she was an undergrad at Syracuse Univ. Her first book, THE LOVELY BONES, is a novel, also about the rape and murder of a young girl; the setting is a 1970s subdivision enough like the one my family lived in to give me nightmares. The two books really go hand in hand. I know they sound horrible, but I'm not sorry that I read either of them, despite their heinous subject matter. Sebold has endured with grace. We are lucky to have her on this planet.

Soon to be a movie of LOVELY BONES but not sure I'm ready for that. My least favorite part of the book is when her spirit enters her girlfriend's body so that she can make love with her highschool boyfriend. That reminded me just a bit too much of Ghost, with Whoopi Goldberg, et. al., or even worse Truly Madly Deeply. Sex with the dearly departed? That concept just doesn't work for me.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FACE Lucy Grealy: If you read this one a few years back, now it's time for TRUTH & BEAUTY, Ann Patchett's memoir about her friendship with Grealy. Very sad, very beautiful . . . but true? Important to remember that this is the truth according to Patchett, not Grealy (who is no longer here to comment), and certainly not Grealy's family (check out the web). However, the memoir does include a number of touching, searching letters written from Grealy to Patchett over the years. A compelling narrative that I stayed up until 3am to finish, it had been awhile since I wanted to read something that much!

Lots of insight on depression. Lucy writes to Ann of a discussion with her therapist concerning "the negative self - esteem thing":

"She said this extraordinary thing: I can stop it. I don't have to feel this bad about myself all the time. . . . I was sort of flabbergasted in the way [she] just so categorically said Yeah, we can fix that. Like it was an infection or a bad tooth or something. It was the objectifying of it that startled me, and I'm attracted to it, to thinking it's something you can change, though of course I don't believe it, yet that, according to . . . the shrink, is part of the problem, a bona fide symptom of it. Curious, very curious" (105).

Patchett observes that Lucy "was realizing that the enormous sadness of her life had possibly come from a source other than her face, and that she had never been able to get completely well because she had always been trying to fix the wrong thing" (235-36).

There is also Patchett's BEL CANTO (which many love, but I've started a couple of times without finishing) & PATRON SAINT OF LIARS (which I wasn't wild about: see my remarks below, 2003). PATRON SAINT was also made into a movie, something I was unaware of until reading TRUTH & BEAUTY. I'm keeping Patchett on my list of writers (along with Anne Lamott, Laurie Colwin & Alice Walker) whose nonfiction is much more appealing to me than their novels.

STILL NOT TOO LATE IN 2007

The March Marigold, c. 1870
by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones
THE EFFECT OF GAMMA RAYS ON MAN - IN - THE - MOON MARIGOLDS Paul Zindel. I must have read this play about a million light - years ago, but I just had to re-read it after seeing the above stained glass representation of the electromagnetic spectrum at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. (You can see the gamma rays, right after the ultra-violets and the x - rays). Tillie is so courageous and steadfast in her scientific method, so accurate and inspired in her understanding of the Universe.

On those quizzes that ask what fictional character you would choose to be like, I always think of Tillie. Of course, my worry is that I'm more like the mundane Janice, who is sure she's going to win, but in fact comes in second at the Science Fair, after Tillie, who is a girl of true vision:

"For one thing, the effect of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds has made me curious about the sun and the stars, for the universe itself must be like a world of great atoms . . . But most important, I suppose, my experiment has made me feel important--every atom in me, in everybody, has come from the sun--from places beyond our dreams. The atoms of our hands, the atoms of our hearts" (101-02).

ANOTHER ROADSIDE ATTRACTION Tom Robbins. Now I know that I read EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES a couple of times in the 70s, and STILL LIFE WITH WOODPECKER a couple of times in the 80s. So why not ROADSIDE ATTRACTION? Luckily, my eldest brother sent me a copy for Christmas last year. If, like me, you missed it in the 70s, it's not too late! The funky restaurant and wacky animal acts were fun, and I appreciated all of Amanda's nature / life philosophies; but what I really loved (and maybe this is true for everyone who reads the book) was the last third of the novel when the criminal monastery subplot takes over and becomes the plot!

It was kind of like "The Da Vinci Code" meets "The Last Temptation of Christ" which, by the way is another one of my favorite novels. Both ROADSIDE & LAST TEMPTATION (by Nikos Kazantzakis)force the reader to question what matters most in Christianity -- is it the death and resurrection; is it to love your neighbor as yourself, is it that the kingdom is within? One thing for sure -- it is NOT what it has become over the centuries. However, if the secret is still hidden somewhere amidst all the distortions and meanness and abuses of power, these novelists come closer to finding and revealing it (to me anyway) than anything I have ever happened across in any church.

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE J.D. Salinger. Holden Caulfield, where have you been all my life? Here's another one that everyone is supposed to read in highschool, but somehow I never did. If you missed this one too, remember -- it's not too late to give it a try! Even at age 50, I thought it was great! For one thing, Holden shares my skepticism of the automobile:

"It's everything. I hate living in New York and all. Taxicabs, and Madison Avenue buses, with the drivers and all always yelling at you to get out at the rear door, and being introduced to phony guys . . . and going up and down in elevators when you just want to go outside, and guys fitting your pants all the time at Brooks, and people always . . . Take most people, they're crazy about cars. They worry if they get a little scratch on them, and they're always talking about how many miles they get to a gallon, and if they get a brand-new car already they start thinking about trading it in for one that's even newer. I don't even like old cars. I mean they don't even interest me. I'd rather have a goddamn horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake" (from Chapter 17).

I just have to love a narrator who asserts that at least a horse is human!

[A decade after CATCHER IN THE RYE, preservationist James Marston Fitch expressed a similar sentiment: "The automobile has not merely taken over the street, it has dissolved the living tissue of the city. Its appetite for space is absolutely insatiable; moving and parked, it devours urban land, leaving the buildings as mere islands of habitable space in a sea of dangerous and ugly traffic." ~ New York Times, 1 May 1960]

PLEASE READ: Praise for Catcher in the Rye (& more) from the amazing Pat Conroy ~ aka Conrack.