Book Review - "Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey" by Washington Irving

Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey
By Washington Irving

So it turns out that the author of Sleepy Hollow - Washington Irving- was also an investigative journalist/biographer.

In this book he details a weekend stay with the famous Sir Walter Scott, author of Ivanhoe. Scott actually lived the romantic life of a big time, celebrity author. He lived on a massive estate where he built his dream “cottage”. He had a happy family life and pack of faithful dogs who were very close to him. There are more paintings of him with his dogs than his kids.

It’s fascinating to see his daily life and to hear thoughts of the time. For ex he once saw a Sequoia tree from America which he revered as being similar in value to the obelisks from Egypt in that they similarly protected the natives. He was a Scottish nationalist who honored the border clans for keeping Scotland safe from England and treasured the Scottish culture. This is a painting of an out building on his lands.

Part 2 covers Newstead Abbey located in Sherwood Forest - Lord Byron’s ancestral home. The abbey is like all things Byronic - from afar they look boldly romantic, but when examined closely they’re tawdry and underwhelming. His is a tale of inherited near-wealth, unearned privilege and aggressive laxitude. Not entirely due to his fault, only a few rooms of the abbey were actually furnished and liveable. The others were used for fun and games - including digging up skulls and placing coffins about. He left England to help the Greeks defeat the Ottoman empire during which fight he died early. Again, sounds heroic, but he left also to escape debts and babies and scandal. And despite that gloriously romantic photo we have of him, he was overweight and treated women poorly.

It is though valuable to read Irving’s account as he visits the home just a few years after Byron’s death. ( The housekeepers who knew him and even the dog that accompanied his body back to England were still alive. ) Also, Irving gives an account of the relics of Robin Hood’s haunts in Sherwood. Those are less convincing chapters, but whether true or lore, that part is actually romantic.

BYOB - Bring Your Own Book - The American Dirt Controversy

k 

“American Dirt” - if you don’t like it, don’t read it. People get to write the fiction they want in the same way people get to read the fiction they want.

A novel is imagined. It is not a documentary or a memoir or a true account. It is absurd that the writer has to be the person they write about. First, if that were true, how could you. populate a novel? It has many people. ( And if you believe Virginia Woolf and FS Fitzgerald, each character shares one thing in common- and that is a bit of the author. There is no escaping the author’s fingerprints and that includes when a person of color writes about a person of no color.) Second, no argument can be sustained that this is a requirement when we know that with great success Flaubert wrote about Madame Bovary and Tolstoy wrote about Anna Karenina and Wharton wrote about Ethan Fromme and Christie wrote about murderers.

What is does take to write a worthy novel that’s well beyond your direct experience is one of two things: being a masterful writer with a strong imagination OR being a masterful writer who knows the subject area well because you have lived very, very near to it. Like the distance and view between you and it is like that of a window screen. Let’s use Harper Lee as an example of that when she wrote Mockingbird.

When a writer selects a subject it is because it has caught her eye. When you read a novel you are looking through an authorial eye. Quentin Tarantino never had a stunt double in his life. But one day he noticed a stuntman and his actor talking on set and had a, dare I say, novel idea. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was birthed.

A writer of literary intent is not writing a story for you. A writer writes what works for them. There is just no other way to do it. And that makes sense: there are many of “you” and only one writer. Think about Game of Thrones. The writers had one ending to their story. You and I and the neighbor had others. The story must spring from one voice: the author. Miraculously, every now and then the author’s story as told through her eye is so emotionally and psychologically true and beautiful that it is effective for many others. That is why there are a few masterpieces and then everything else of varying degrees of quality and value.

If American Dirt is a competent, but not great novel, it may be because even the five years of research the author did cannot replace the unconscious sensibility that one who sensibility that one who has lived it / almost lived it has. Still, there are many ways to approach this novel. You can read it as an immigration story told from the authorial pov of a white upper middle class American. The protagonist is not in what we think of as the usual immigrant situation, so this can be read as a telling of a rarely examined immigration story. No one can say that this would never happen or that the more common immigrant stories are so important that this one is unworthy.

Or it may be that American Dirt is a novel of little merit. IMHO that is about 88% of what is sold anyway so what’s the uproar about? If the beef is that the publishing industry ignores certain voices, there are better remedies than damning the creative efforts of one writer and extending that damnation into the dangerous territory of decreeing who can tell what story.

There are many, many stories and storytellers. We will never run out. If you don’t like this one, read some something else. Or write one. And hope for a miracle.

Wuthering Type: “they” is the Word of the Year, so they say

Wuthering Type: “they” is the Word of the Year, so they say: The proponents of they/ them never fully answer how we clear up the non- gender significance of the word: plurality. They argue that they wa...

“they” is the Word of the Year, so they say

The proponents of they/ them never fully answer how we clear up the non- gender significance of the word: plurality. They argue that they was used in the singular centuries ago. I argue that there was a reason for its falling out of favor which may be the confusion when you are trying to distinguish between one non binary person and a group  of people  - binary or not. I am Ok with the non- binary thing. Just wish they had picked pronouns that didn’t currently already mean something else.  In this podcast a supporter essentially dismisses the confusion with “I guess.” But the avoidance of confusion is the primary reason for language. I know.

TV Review - Holiday Heist

You could be forgiven if you forget that Lifetime’s excellent film Holiday Heist (produced by Mar Vista Entertainment) is a Christmas movie. There is sibling love, parental love, friends in love, “cute meet” love, middle age love, black love. If there were not already a film called “Love, Actually” this would be it.

Oh, and then there’s the heist. Most films of this scope get it wrong by having an overly big crime plot. This one is well set up and goes down like a perfectly sized and spiced gingerbread cookie.

While the cast is up to the task of this film, the writing and cinematography are the stars. There is a pleasingly tempered tension in the story. Rather than the being set in the usual Anyplace, USA, this film feels situated with generous references to Chicago - which it gets right. ( While hot dogs may be picnic fare everywhere else, they are year round there. ) It hits all of the Christmas romance notes - woman falls into man’s arms, current lover is a red herring and the second lover is maddeningly irresistible and the main character has suffered a personal loss.)

But, this is not the typical pretty snow globe  of a movie where a slight upset raises flurries that settle as softly and quickly as they arose. In this movie, Christmas is what happens while you’re living in December. Decorations are put up, parties are danced and sh*t happens. Which is how most of us experience it.
Well worth the watch.

(Lifetime December 14)

The Waves - film review

The Waves
A very real family drama that deals with grief as it exists both before and after a tragic event. Very well written with fresh characters, strong acting and a wonderful music track. It’s a movie that’s deeply about all the characters - the way a family is.
Highly recommended.

JoJo Rabbit - Film Review

“JoJo Rabbit”
A wonderfully inventive film. It made me think about the choices that young children make every day in their natural search for morality- and how that search becomes bewilderingly difficult in a time of war.