Notes on the Magic Mountain

On at least my seventh attempt to read this book. Even though I am only about 1/3 through, I think I shall make it this time. I am sorely feeling my lack of German--the native language of my grandparents, which I heard spoken my whole life.  I could read the segments in French--in the Walspurgisnacht chapter.

I feel that I have hardly time to experiment with books. Masterpieces--a vexed term, of course--urge me on. My very smart colleague Z said that she read MM many years ago and that "it wasn't worth" the labor. It is worth my labor. Perhaps another instance of needing to wait for the right time to read a book (similar feelings about Bronte's "Villette").

'I just realized that I have adopted the posture of the "horizontals" in my reading. They are on balconies in Davos, swaddled in camel hair and fur  against the cold. I am in my drafty house (in the Deep South! humid as opposed to the dry winters of Davos). So I have taken to reading in my bed, with the heating pad at my feet.

I sorely miss being a student of a good teacher. I was lucky to have more than a handful. Unlike my students--who scarcely read anything now and depend on internet analyses to write their papers and provide relevant passages from primary and secondary texts--I do not find Sparknotes and the like particular helpful.

BUT I did find a one hour lecture given by a University of Chicago professor for "Humanities Week." Meant for non-specialists--that would be me--he provided a framework for the book. I am writing this for me, but in case a reader is on a similar quest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaZZcRB01kQ.

The rest cure on the balconies becomes an occasion for reading (chapter called Research) and, even more, for intense daydreaming. I have always been  (too) prone to that. Even more than usual, I lay the book on my chest and drift off.

Perhaps internet meanderings are a form of day dreaming. While meandering about other works by the UC professor, I learned that he is, or perhaps was, married to someone I knew slightly in college, a woman I am sure would have no recollection of me. And that led to a memory, which came out of nowhere.

The woman was very friendly with the daughter of an old-style Hollywood star, though we were all too cool to ever mention it. I was slightly friendly with the daughter. One night I was invited to a small gathering at the home of one in their crowd. Also attending--a charismatic and smart and heavy drinking fellow who later married the daughter of the star. They were all incredibly heavy drinkers. I left early. I could not keep up. One is now a physician, one an attorney....

How strange...

on commence....trois

Little pieces of paper with notes everywhere

From December 2019: student finishing up final exam at a desk outside my office. "C's hands trembling. Heartbreaking." Test anxiety PLUS he acknowledged that he had skipped some of the reading.

The real heartbreaker is that I can't remember the student, though I probably could if I looked at my roll from last semester, which now is on-line complete with photos.

Coming to end of teaching one way or another. The title of Jan Kott's famous essay reverberates: "King Lear or Endgame."

Starting new semester with a schedule  (worst of career) so frighteningly difficult that two of my acquaintance asked if the department head was trying to get me to retire. I don't think so. But see the academic classic "Stoner," where a chair uses a schedule as a weapon.

Picked up a long-neglected copy of Walter Benjamin's "Illuminations" in my office. Folded inside was the first page of a paper I wrote for a comparative lyric course in 1978. Before theory! Title: "'Time's trans-shifting' and the Lyric Imagination." It was on the subjunctive in poems by Spenser, Ronsard, and ????. The paper was written for Frank Warnke (who was a guest teacher in summer 1978), of esteemed and beloved memory. It received an A+. Two of my friends/frenemies asked me how I did and when I said "fine," their eyes sparkled. So I knew that FJW had sprinkled many A+s throughout the class--so there I and D! Both became quite famous, especially D in the field of literacy studies.

The paper came complete with an epigraph from Wallace Stevens. The title came from a poem by Robert Herrick.

The whole production is sooooooo 1978.

"The Argument of his Book" from Hesperides.

I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, 

Of April, May, of June, and July flowers. 

I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, 

Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. 

I write of youth, of love, and have access 

By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. 

I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by piece 

Of balm, of oil, of spice, and ambergris. 

I sing of Time's trans-shifting; and I write 

How roses first came red, and lilies white. 

I write of groves, of twilights, and I sing 

The court of Mab, and of the fairy king. 

I write of Hell; I sing (and ever shall) 

Of Heaven, and hope to have it after all. 

Frank J. Warnke, a former chairman of the department of comparative literature at the University of Georgia, died Monday of injuries suffered when he was struck by an automobile in Antwerp, Belgium. He was 62 years old.

Dr. Warnke, who was still on the University of Georgia faculty, was teaching at the University of Antwerp in an exchange program.

He leaves his wife, Janice; two sisters, Ruth Lancetti of Alexandria, Va., and Margaret Macdonald of Washington, and a brother, Paul, also of Washington, a specialist on disarmament.

Summer Reading: The Line of Beauty

I had wanted to read this for a while. Forgot about it. Then saw a library copy at my daughter's house. I picked it up and she said that she didn't like people starting books she was in the middle of reading.

Forgot again. Then I came upon a copy during the closing days of the wonderful Friends of Library building a short walk away. The building has since been torn down. The land had become very valuable and a little book sale was a relic from another time.

As it happened, I was not very engaged by the book, which is set in the early 80s in London. The main character is a young gay man, supposedly working on a thesis on Henry James (several of whose books I reread this summer). He is living in the home of a very wealthy power couple, the parents of a college chum.

Percolating through the book is the advent of AIDS--and I remember those days well, though from a distance. Since the book was not engaging, I did what I have started to do: jumped to the end.

The main character has been kicked out of the house and is preparing to get another test for AIDS. He imagines that the results will be positive.

The time had come, and they learned the news in the room they were in, at a certain moment in their planned and continuing day. They woke the next morning, and after a while it came back to them. Nick searched their faces as they explored their feelings. He seemed to fade pretty quickly.He found himself yearning to know of their affairs, their successes, the novels and the new ideas that the few who remembered him might say he never knew, he never lived to find out.

This passage got me back to read the whole book that I was about to abandon. I thought of the Alumni Bulletin (one) sent by my college, perhaps in the late 90s or early 00s. As I read through the names, I saw many Ls and Ds. L was for LOST. D was for DEAD.

Nearly all the Ds of the years around my graduation were the gay guys. I remembered a few: Marty B, with his pony tail and smile. He went into advertising in San Francisco. Steve J, who had a crush on me for a while and then confessed that he hitchhiked and had sex for money with the men who picked him up, Bob C, who was so smart and confident. He became a dancer in Boston. He wrote his thesis on Richard Crashaw.

I could not find any mention of them via the internet. I thought of all they had missed.

Stanley Plumly

I saw an obituary for the poet Stanley Plumly.
I have never read one of his poems.
His work is "not in my field"--loathsome concept.

When I taught at a college in Texas, grad student and friend VC (who was about 45--so 15 years ahead of me) took me to a poetry reading. She had owned a bookstore before returning to school.
SP was a handsome and distinguished fellow. Perhaps he taught at University of Houston at the time.
VC sat next to me with tears running down her face.
It turned out that she--smart, beautiful, and wealthy, though troubled--had had a brief affair with SP. He had spurned her.

That was 35 years ago. VC is close to 80. If we passed in an airport (I have met several people from the past in airports), we would not recognize each other.

I just read a few poems by Stanley Plumly. And a few by one of his wives, who jumped off a building at UMass, dying at 59.

I would like to read his work on Keats. Will I find the time?

Perhaps I should retire.

Infidelity

The two-toned Olds swinging sideways out of
the drive, the bone-white gravel kicked up in
a shot, my mother in the deathseat half

out the door, the door half shut--she’s being
pushed or wants to jump, I don’t remember.
The Olds is two kinds of green, hand-painted,
and blows black smoke like a coal-oil fire. I’m
stunned and feel a wind, like a machine, pass
through me, through my heart and mouth; I’m standing
in a field not fifty feet away, the
wheel of the wind closing the distance.
Then suddenly the car stops and my mother
falls with nothing, nothing to break the fall . . .

One of those moments we give too much to,
like the moment of acknowledgment of
betrayal, when the one who’s faithless has
nothing more to say and the silence is
terrifying since you must choose between
one or the other emptiness. I know
my mother’s face was covered black with blood
and that when she rose she too said nothing.
Language is a darkness pulled out of us.
But I screamed that day she was almost killed,
whether I wept or ran or threw a stone,
or stood stone-still, choosing at last between
parents, one of whom was driving away.

Infidelity

Stanley Plumly, 1939 - 2019

The two-toned Olds swinging sideways out of
the drive, the bone-white gravel kicked up in
a shot, my mother in the deathseat half

out the door, the door half shut--she's being
pushed or wants to jump, I don't remember.
The Olds is two kinds of green, hand-painted,
and blows black smoke like a coal-oil fire. I'm
stunned and feel a wind, like a machine, pass
through me, through my heart and mouth; I'm standing
in a field not fifty feet away, the
wheel of the wind closing the distance.
Then suddenly the car stops and my mother
falls with nothing, nothing to break the fall . . .

One of those moments we give too much to,
like the moment of acknowledgment of
betrayal, when the one who's faithless has
nothing more to say and the silence is
terrifying since you must choose between
one or the other emptiness. I know
my mother's face was covered black with blood
and that when she rose she too said nothing.
Language is a darkness pulled out of us.
But I screamed that day she was almost killed,
whether I wept or ran or threw a stone,
or stood stone-still, choosing at last between
parents, one of whom was driving away.

From Boy on the Step by Stanley Plumly. Copyright © 1989 by Stanley Plumly. Reprinted by permission of The Ecco Press.

Just some notes

Tonight we went to an art opening downtown. Our dear real estate agent is the president of the Art Association. He asked us to come. He said there would be a nice set up of cheese and fruit (he knows me).

I always think we don't know anyone around here, having lost most of our friends from the school days of our children. And I feel extremely alienated among the upper-class Trump voters who are the culture vultures here. But in a small town, one knows many people. Even recluses like Tom and me. The artist for instance: he is excellent and I have long admired his work. But I have a little spot of resentment, from something almost 20 years ago. The artist is somehow affiliated with the Benedictine Monastery nearby. I was teaching a Shakespeare course  at the seminary college there. He and another older fellow sat in on the first two sessions--looking extremely bored and almost contemptuous. They threw me off my stride. Of course, they voted with their feet and never returned...

I saw two people we know from school. And a very good artist/teacher who retired some time ago. From afar, I saw a New Orleans cultural bigwig, who always surprises me--he remembers me from a brief period when he ran an Arts Administration program at our school. That memory for people must be why he is so good at his job--in the stratosphere of New Orleans musical culture.

Best of all, I ran into a former student--she is about my age. She must have been in my class more than 20 years ago. A few years ago, I saw one of her pieces in a gallery. It was outstanding! And then there she was. I was surprised that she remembered me. And she was surprised that I remembered her. I run into  her now and again.

Tonight she asked me when I planned to retire. I must have started stuttering...something or other. She told me I should rechannel my creativity and recommended a book called "The War of Art," which is about overcoming resistance to creativity. She suggested that I teach something at the Art Association in retirement. And recommended that I start journaling. Hence this little piece of writing.

I mentioned that idea to my pal the President of the Art Association. He said "Why not do something on poems that are about works of art, like "Ozymandias?" This guy is a fount of unexpected knowledge. We told him that such poems are called "ecphrastic." He is always happy to learn a new word (we had a little tiff recently about the meaning of "penurious"--we were both right.)

I remembered an essay that blew me away in college: "Ecphrasis and the Still Moment of Poetry, or Laocoon Revisited" by Murray Krieger. I found the article because it was mentioned in a footnote in a book by Rosalie Colie, a critic whose works taught me so much about how to read and set me on a path to studying the English Renaissance. Those kind of accidental discoveries--in footnotes, in a book NEXT TO the book you were seeking on a library shelf--were the hallmark of my studies in the days before the internet. And thank God for that, because my students tend to do internet searches for the EXACT thing they are writing on, and seldom if ever wander down the meandering paths of literature and essays on literature . . .  and on other things.

So Ozymandias, Ode on a Grecian Urn, the shield of Achilles, that poem by Auden about the Brueghel painting ("Musee des Beaux Arts")--I'm sure I'll think of some others.

Thanks to Maggie for setting me down this meandering path of memory.

GTD: Haiku

Once I was at a conference with GTD in Asheville. We went to a hip restaurant with a verrrry long line. We were definitely the oldest people there. I struck up a conversation with the people in front of us. They were members of a rock band. They asked me about G. I said, "He looks like a regular middle-aged guy, but he's really neat. Kind of a Zen Catholic." So taken were they with my description that they invited us to share their table.

G's favorite writer Thomas Merton also had an interest in Buddhism and Japanese culture. It is perhaps no wonder then that G went to teach English in Japan. M was his student and he fell in love with her.

I once asked him how he wooed her. He said "I wrote her a haiku." He proceeded to recite the haiku. It was in JAPANESE. He then recited it in English; it was beautiful even in translation.

One Valentine's Day, G announced to the people in our hall that he wanted to show us the card he got from M. We huddled around. It was a regular looking Valentine's Day card. When he opened it, it played Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire."

In Memoriam: GTD aka Merton

GTD, colleague and frugal friend, died on July 13. We arrived back from our trip on the 17th and went to his funeral the morning of the 18th. I had planned to speak, but then decided not to. At the service, few people spoke. His widow, dear M,  said "I thought more people would speak." I remembered a little adventure G and I had had--one of many. So I got up and recounted it.

G and I were chatting late one afternoon. Tom probably had a night class and we had office hours, It was a happy day for me when I got to move into the office opposite G--and not just because I got a rare window.

We decided to get some coffee from the Writing Center. We walked into a meeting in progress. As we got our coffee, we were asked if we wanted some cake (!). So G and I decided to stay.

The little celebration was for a group of ESL students who had just completed a program. The instructor mentioned that funding for the program was cut...so she would be leaving. The program would end.  Students were invited to speak. Many had prepared pieces about what the program had meant to them. Others read poems they had written. Still others read pieces written by others.

G and I were asked if we wanted to present something. I said OK and read Shakespeare's sonnet 73 from the Norton Anthology. Of course, I added a short explanation--a teaching moment!

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,

Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou see'st the twilight of such day

As after sunset fadeth in the west,

Which by and by black night doth take away,

Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire

That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,

As the death-bed whereon it must expire,

Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,

To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Then G got up and read from Volume 2 of the Norton. He picked Gerard Manley Hopkins's "Spring and Fall." G was very brainy--a linguist--and wore his learning lightly. A rare thing. His choice was brilliant. First of all, it picked up on the themes and language of MY poem: leaves, leave-taking, mortality. Second of all, it reflected his deep love and practice of Catholicism.  Hopkins was a Jesuit priest. My name for G--Merton--is a tribute to his favorite writer: Thomas Merton. G was so taken by Merton's "Seven Storey Mountain," which recounts his journey to monasticism, that he went to Merton's Abbey at 17 and asked if he could be admitted. The monks told him to go to college, learn Latin, and then return. He did all but return. Because of G, I read a whole bunch of Merton too and we would discuss Merton and grocery bargains. Frugal friends are hard to find.

At the service, I did not read the sonnet by Shakespeare. Much to my amazement (since I've never taught it), the text of "Spring and Fall" jumped into my head. So I recited G's poem from memory. I only missed two lines.

Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow's springs are the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.

In Memoriam: FJW

A few months ago, I had a dream about FJW. I was so happy to see him again. He died in 1988, when I was pregnant with my first child. He was hit by a car; he was younger than I am now, FJW was a famous (as such things go) literary scholar. I told Tom that I had dreamed about F. He said, "That's wonderful. I bet not too many people dream about him any more." It was a kind and understanding comment, attesting to the short (in so many ways) life of teachers and teaching. So I was happy to have this man of infinite kindness and humanity--along with intelligence--in my life once again, even in a dream.

I met Frank in an odd way. I was on an airplane going to Portland. The plane was filled with interior decorators who had attended a conference in New York City. A woman sat down in the seat next to me, exclaiming "Thank God, someone reading a book. Can I sit next to you?" J was a woman of incredible refinement and intellect. She said "My husband would love you! Come to Seattle and meet him."

I didn't think much of this. I told a few of my teachers about the encounter and they said "He's famous! Do it!" So I took the train to Seattle and spent an afternoon with them.

Of course, I lost touch. Then, when I was in grad school, I had to take a summer course on a particular topic. To my amazement, he was the teacher--brought in as a visiting eminence! He didn't remember me, though J did. He was so amiable and encouraging, not just to me, but to everyone in a large class. He wrote me a letter of recommendation.

F and I shared a love of seventeenth century prose. He told me that he had taught Sir Thomas Browne in a class on metaphysical poetry. I said, "But it's not poetry." He said that it was the only way he could get students to read Browne--through subterfuge.

I wrote a paper on Browne in graduate school. The course was team taught. One of the teachers was remote and somewhat forbidding. The other was a young fellow, who was verbally abusive to students. I reported his abuse to my (female) mentor. He ended up not getting tenure--probably because of lack of publication and not because of my report.

F remains for me a beacon--he was among the few truly supportive of women students in those days.

I was rereading Thomas Browne--marveling at my notes and annotations, my efforts at understanding a complex text.  My paper for F was on the subjunctive mood in lyric poetry (Ronsard, Spenser, Herrick and a few others...). Still I thought of him all the while I was reading Browne.

From Religio Medici, a favorite.

Now for my life.  It is a miracle of 30 years, which to relate were not a history, but a piece of poetry and would sound to common ears like a fable. 

For the world, I count it not an Inn, but an Hospital and a place not to live, but to die in. 

The world that I regard is myself.  It is the microcosm on my own frame that I cast mine eye on, for the other world, I use it like my Globe and turn it round sometimes for my recreation.

Men that look upon my outslde, perusing only my condition and fortunes, do err in my Altitude, for I am above Atlas his shoulders.  The earth is a point, not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of that Heavenly Celestial part within us.

That mass of flesh that circumscribes me, limits not my mind.  That surface that tells the Heavens it hath an end, cannot persuade me I have any.  I take my circle to be above 360, though the number of the arc do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind.

Whilst I study to find how I am a Microcosm, or little world, I find myself something more than the great.  There is surely a piece of Divinity in us, something that was before the Elements, and owes no homage to the Sun.

Nature tells me I am the image of God, as well as Scripture.  He that understands not thus much hath not his introduction or first lesson and is yet to begin the Alphabet of man.

I am the happiest man alive.  I have that in me that can convert poverty into riches, adversity into prosperity.

I am more invulnerable than Achilles.  Fortune hath not one place to hit me.

In brief, I am content, and what should Providence add more?  Surely this is it we call Happiness and this do I enjoy.  With this I am happy in a dream, and as contet to enjoy a happinesss in a fancy as others in a more apparent truth and reality.

For Me: Poem of the Day "The Waking"

Yesterday, Emma and I made a poshmark (love) sale to someone whose code name is "wake to sleep." This reminded me of the Theodore Roethke poem. I never teach this because in my department, courses in English lit (and that is where I'm at) can NOT include anything outside that category. No boundary violations!* No thematic courses! So I found my book, sat down, and read the poem over and over, as I used to do all the time, and still sometimes do. And should do more.

*All cultures have boundary conventions. In Paris, Tom and I wandered through Monoprix and a grocery store looking for aspirin. Non! Only available in pharmacies--behind the counter. 

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?   

I hear my being dance from ear to ear.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?   

God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,   

And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?   

The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do   

To you and me; so take the lively air,   

And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.   

What falls away is always. And is near.   

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.   

I learn by going where I have to go.

   This is a villanelle. In a good one, the pattern of repeated lines always makes me teary-eyed (why, I do wonder). This is a good one. The last two lines come together with the beauty of inevitability, or perhaps, the inevitability of beauty.

Pillow Case

Ceci n'est pas a blog, folks.
I've been writing about various trivial things and will post here as I complete. They are for me.
Older posts remain.

Note to self and universe: I have had to give up thrift stores for the greater good of decluttering. It is tough. Approaching 6 months.


Another difficult part of my decluttering process is LINENS. I love percale sheets, the kind that used to be ordinary and are now impossible to find--200 or so thread count COMBED cotton percale. So I pick them up when I see them. Since they are white, they can be bleached. If one cares. I do not.

I have such linens bursting out of baskets in the few storage areas of my old house. I made a pile, Marie Kondo style.

Well, I didn't get rid of many. I have a lot. Everything sparked joy, sadly. Even the old Cannon twin sheets marked with a hospital laundry code. I figure I won't have to buy linens again for the rest of my life. I did separate by size and function.

My best surprise was at the bottom of a pile. It was a king size case (I don't have a king bed or pillow). Of course, I have no recollection of buying it. It was yellowed. It felt so good. I peered inside to see if there was a label. There was: D Porthault. A $200 pillow case. I imagine its mate was thrown out because of some minor damage and the orphan went to the thrift store where it was sold for 99 cents. 

I washed it and put it on my pillow, a down pillow that was likewise thrifted after I learned that you can wash down items in the machine in hot water. You can. There are loads of down pillows available because pillows have the "EWWWW" factor written about by many thrifting experts. The pillow case looked ridiculous as it is way too big for the pillow. My pillow will not be featured in Architectural Digest. 

Still, it felt delicious.

Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,

The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath, 

Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 

Chief nourisher in life's feast.

Harder Books

I was perusing a post by the divine Duchesse; she discusses ways to keep your aging mind working. She mentioned a post she wrote a few years ago on reading harder books, so I took a look. There was my comment about just having read Louise Erdrich's "Round House."

I had no recollection of reading that book. So I looked at a plot summary on wikipedia. I still have no recollection. That is depressing.

Another reason to keep teaching. I teach "harder books" all the time. And I teach them over and over again. I know them quite well. So well that I could do all the quizzes on the Iliad and the Odyssey on a great Harvard mooc by classicist Gregory Nagy even though I haven't taught those works for many years.

I started teaching a Shakespeare course after the fellow who "owned" the course retired. I felt somewhat rusty at first, but I can now say--after 15 years--that I know the plays quite well.

I just completed the Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante. I do remember them (so far).

It turns out that I remember my reading of Proust (took me over a year). That might be because I listen to an audiobook on the way to work.

Two harder books that I have been unable to finish because they are so painful: The Radetsky March and Austerlitz. I keep returning to them. I can only read a little at a time.

Perhaps re-reading is the key. One Erdrich book I loved and remember quite well is The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse.  I read it several times in a short space because I loved it so much.

Ditto for the master of harder books Henry James: Wings of the Dove, Portrait of a Lady, The Golden Bowl. The harder the better as far as I'm concerned.  Same for his somewhat less-difficult friend Edith Wharton: Age of Innocence and House of Mirth.

And how can we forget Middlemarch and Mill on the Floss?

Does re-reading help keep one's mind at work? Or is it the book and the reader's mind? I remember some Trollope. But I REALLY remember lots of Dickens.  I read about eight books by Anita Brookner recently but barely remember anything--except a sense of melancholy.

What to read next?

Comfort Reading: Dashed

Is there no escape?????

From Laurie Colwin's "More Home Cooking" (1993). I've probably read this book, or parts of it, 100 times. Top 1% in the Comfort Reading Pantheon.

If I had a dollar for every time someone said to me, "I don't have time to bake bread anymore," I would be as rich as Donald Trump used to be.


No escape.

More Comfort Reading: Some of the Books that Fell on the Floor

I have been much in need of comfort reading. It is difficult to find the right book. I like cookbooks with a personal sensibility (Diana Kennedy, John Thorne, many others); I like reading organization books (though it would be better if I actually followed some of the recommendations); I like Diana Phipps (a frugal countess!). Fiction is hard. I don't like reading most best sellers, even those of higher brow (sorry Ann Patchett; I do like your essays on owning a bookstore and I love that you spoke about my favorite clothing shop UAL, which has a branch in Nashville). 

So to continue the list I started a few days ago: my efforts were interrupted by the falling down of a teetering pile. 

John Mcmcgahern: The Leavetaking (a book I bought at a library sale, had never heard of author---WONDERFUL)

Coln Toibin: The Master (a fictionalized bio of one of my faves--Henry James. The book has a creepy sense of repression, perhaps appropriate to its subject)

Somerset Maugham: The Painted Veil (We saw the film based on this. The book is ok, but I got bored and skipped a lot--a privilege of age. What is so great about Maugham??? Not feeling it)

Maugham again: The Razor's Edge. (See above)

Lily King: Euphoria (a loan from a colleague. She said "Don't give it back." OK, but I can hardly believe that the main female character would submit to....spoiler. Must find someone to give it to.)

Deneice Schofield: Confessions of an Organized Housewife. (A Mormon mom of 5 who is super-organized. Worst tip: chop suey recipe containing canned mushroom soup and bean sprouts. Best tip: use dish pans for easy and cheap shelf storage--genius).

More on the floor, alas. 

What is my Gift?

Thinking about retirement. The thing about frugal people. We don't fear retirement (TOOOOO MUCH) because if the stock market tanks, we can always be MORE frugal. Though, of course, we'd rather be less frugal. That's why I've been frugal all these years.

Reading/Literature: LOVE
Teaching literature: LIKE, sometimes a lot
Doing Academic things: not so much anymore

The only one I can't do in retirement is #2. And no, running book discussions at the library is NOT the same and, in fact, I don't like doing that.

One of my favorite things to teach is Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. One of my favorite lines in the play is this one:

What is yours to bestow is not yours to reserve.

Viola, disguised as Cesario, is urging Olivia to reciprocate Duke Orsino's love. The larger point is a Biblical one (from the Parable of the Talents): what is yours to give is not yours NOT to give.

You need to use your gifts.

The Personal Bookshelf: Bedside Stack

Once again, I must note that this is no longer a blog about frugality, but a personal site for my musings about this and that. Older posts on frugality remain. Frugality is timeless!



From Roy Strong, "A Country Life": "The classification of a private library ought to reflect the structure of the owner's mind, and that inevitably changes over the years" (147).

That explains why this book (by the great scholar of Elizabethan portraiture among other things) is in a stack with Ferrante's "The Story of the Lost Child" (I cried to finish this series, but am also angry/annoyed at the cruelty of the ending--to readers?--and the cruelty shown by the narrator to her friend), Laurie Colwin's "Home Cooking" (comfort reading/comfort cooking in these stressful times), library copies of BOTH Marie Kondo books (which are spiritual at core), plus a bunch of others that have now fallen on the floor.

Refugees:" What country, friends, is this"

Note: this space is for personal musings. See older posts for frugality!


"What country, friends, is this?" Shakespeare, Twelfth Night.1.2.

My father's family

Harry G: arrived with mother and siblings in 1910 from Russia. Father Benzi already in America. Benzi died at age 32 from a botched hospital procedure, leaving a pregnant widow and four children. The two oldest children sold candy to support the family. the mother, Rose, opened a grocery store and took in boarders.

Sylvia F: arrived with parents and several siblings from Poland in the teens. They had one baby, the beloved David, in 1920, assuming that a baby born in America would protect their status.

My father B, named for his grandfather, was born in NY in 1928.

My mother's family

Leo O and Emma O and my mother Renee arrived from Vienna (by way of Belgrade and Cherbourg) in 1938.

All refugees, save one. All fleeing persecution.

King Lear and the Cottage: Nothing

I asked my mother recently if I could take some of the furniture from the cottage. Nothing is good or fine, but it is for me imbued with memories and feelings. This is something discussed both by Marcel Proust in his magnum opus and by Marie Kondo in her decluttering masterpiece. These two writers are definitely a pair of incongruous bedfellows. But there they are in the same sentence.

I asked my mother what she wanted from the house.

Answer: "Nothing."

"And your brother doesn't want anything either."

Here we are back in King Lear. After asking his daughters to perform and say which one loves him most, Lear is treated to extravagant declarations of absolute love by the two bad daughters. By the time Cordelia's turn comes, the connection between words and meaning has been so violated that she replies 

"Nothing."

"Nothing will come of nothing. Speak again."

"Nothing."

Learning from King Lear: The Cottage

As a lifelong lover of books, I often--no, always--find something to provide not just intellectual satisfaction but emotional comfort. There is truly nothing new under the sun.

As I was teaching King Lear last semester, I was struck by how much in that play--which deals with old age, loss of power, and the love of children for difficult parents--resonates with my own life. I say to my students, whose faces show disbelief, that they won't really GET the play until they have aging parents or ARE the aging parent themselves. It is true.

As I get closer to retirement, I identify with Lear, who gives away his power and property only to discover that two of his children do not love him, and, in fact, "desire his death." The good child, Cordelia, has been banished. Also banished is his serving man Kent, who returns in disguise to serve his master. When Lear asks Kent what he sees in him, Kent replies "authority." That is precisely what I have as a teacher that might be lost in retirement. 

Now, facing my mother's decision to sell the cottage, I find myself learning from the daughters,  TRYING to act like the good daughter, but sometimes veering to the cruel daughters, whose thoughts are matched with actions of shocking cruelty. They, after all, have the power. Still, even though my fleeting thoughts will never be matched with action, it's often hard to work on one's thoughts.

Like my mother, King Lear is miserable in his old age and occasionally flies into fits of anger and tears. Like King Lear, my mother has made her decision to sell the cottage to "prevent future strife" between her children. She says she will "feel better" when the house is gone. This is the opposite of what Lear does, but the root is the same: to try to keep control over things when one doesn't have that much control in other aspects of life. 

I am trying to prepare myself for the sale. I feel tremendous grief in anticipation. Tom says that is understandable: selling the house will be like a death for me. 

When Lear is reunited with Cordelia late in the play, he tells her "I know you do not love me." He says that she has cause not to love him, though her sisters do not.

She replies (in perhaps the most moving lines in all of literature, at least as I know it) "No cause, no cause."

Needless to say, I don't expect my mother to say anything like what Lear says, nor have I been banished and disinherited like Cordelia. The situation is different. People are more important than things. Love, even when it doesn't "work," is the answer. (A famous essay on Lear is by Stanley Cavell: "The Avoidance of Love.")

But--in my anticipation--I expect my mother to ask me if I am angry with her for her decision. She might not. Or she might say something else.

But I am nonetheless practicing: "No cause, no cause." 

PS: The wonderful Ian McKellen Lear is no longer available free on "Great Performances." But if you have Amazon Prime, you can watch it for free.

A Cottage of the Mind

It occurs to me that like most beloved places, the cottage in Stockbridge is as much a place of the mind as a place in reality. Why does it occupy such a  place in my mind?

It is not simply, I don't think, that it is a beautiful place, though it is. In the Berkshires, on a lake, with a community beach. It is that my beloved relatives lived there: my Aunt Fritzi, my grandparents Emma and Leo. They represented Vienna to me. They lived the life I felt happiest in: very cultured, as people from that time and place tended to be. They loved music and art. My grandmother often sent me cards that she wrote while in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. 

My own life in suburbia on Long Island was--even when I was a child--a place that I did not find beautiful. (It wasn't--and isn't.)  My parents did not listen to music. When I was old enough to take the train to New York City, I got a student membership to the Museum of Modern Art and spent many hours wandering through the collections. I wanted to be an artist then.

It strikes me that the cottage--as a place of the mind--is connected to my love of reading. I was--as a girl--always lost in a book. My best friend for many years (till her family moved and I received a returned letter stamped "Address Unknown") loved reading too: we would read together and swap books. I am the only reader in my family. It is not that my parents weren't intelligent: both were college educated. My father had a PhD in the days when that degree was rare. But they did not read. So I always felt somewhat alien in my family and in the town where I grew up.

Perhaps I read to draw a world closed around me. 

A pastoral world. An enclosed world of art and imagination.

Is it any wonder that when I was in college I wrote my thesis on pastoral poetry?

Or that when I went to graduate school, I ended up doing my thesis on The Faerie Queene and some plays by Shakespeare-- that represented, explored, or WERE enclosed spaces of art and imagination?

So I am somewhat comforted by the thought that--even when the cottage is no longer accessible to me or to my children as a real place that we can visit--I can recreate it by thinking about it, and perhaps by writing about it.

My Proust-loving husband reminds me of a famous quotation by his favorite author.

The only true paradise is a paradise we have lost.

Tom's Gift to Me: Reading Proust

Tom's birthday was Monday. I am uncertain what gifts I have brought to his life, but he has brought me many. I began to be smitten when the person who introduced us remarked "He spent the summer in the woods reading Proust. In French."

And so it began. Tom rescued me from my loneliness. I am a moody person: he continues to put up with that and to soothe me through my many insecurities.

He still reads Proust all the time. After you've read it once, you can dip in anywhere, at any time. You only know that when you're finished though.

I probably would not have had the discipline to read all of Proust on my own. I am an extremely fast reader of prose, probably why I ended up studying poetry, which forces one to slow down. Proust requires verrrry slow reading. Even a slow reader can advance through a two page sentence, get lost, and have to start over again.

I finally read all the volumes two or so years ago. It took me fourteen months. While the madeleine episode is the most famous (it occurs in the first volume, thereby, perhaps, relieving many of the need to labor though the rest) the true great moment of the book is in the last few pages of the last volume, "Time Regained."

There, he says that Gilberte, now grown up, is "like one of those star-shaped crossroads in a forest as in our lives, from the most diverse quarters? Numerous for me were the roads which led to Mlle. de Saint-Loup and which radiated around her."

Then, a few pages later, the end of that paragraph: "But the truth, even more, is that life is perpetually weaving fresh threads which link one individual and one event to another, and that these threads are crossed and recrossed, doubled and redoubled to thicken the web, so that between any slightest point of our past and all the others a rich network of memories gives us an almost infinite variety of communicating paths to choose from." (These are from pages 502-504 in Modern Library translation).

Of course, I don't--or really can't--aspire to anything like Proust's grand cathedral. And I am not writing about my own memories, really. I would like to create a bit of a record for my children (who may not even be interested) of people who died before they were born. I have a few letters, the guestbook, a few photographs, a few documents. Too few.  But I am trying to get a sense of the web. For me, it always centered on the cottage in Stockbridge.

It is interesting that I started writing these little musings right before a realtor came to my mother with a "rich doctor" who wanted to buy the cottage.

Happy Birthday Tom. Thanks for the gift.