writing – Ripple Effects

Try to remember the kind of September…

My few weeks of hiatus from the Pond led me to the bustling city of Toronto. Just the second weekend of September there were over 80 events planned across the city: festivals, concerts, food fares, cultural celebrations… In the downtown core, road closures, frenzy and chaos. The main attraction with international focus of course is the Toronto International Film Festival. Since this is the first in person TIFF after two years of Covid measures, I chose to avoid the huge gatherings and stay closer to nature, far from the madding crowd… I’ll have to wait to watch the selections hopefully later in the year.

Then came the sad news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, 70 years on the throne, the longest reigning British monarch and the longest female sovereign in history. Politics aside, being born and raised during my formative years in the former British colony of Hong Kong, I much appreciate the freedom to grow up in an environment where East meets West, unlike what Kipling had surmised.

I studied both classical Chinese as well as English literature in school, donning a uniform in cheongsam (do google it if you’re not sure what it is) but wore bell bottom pants when out; grew up watching numerous kung fu movies while following closely all James Bond flicks; savoured home cooked Chinese meals as well as those from international sources; yes, and love the fusion of Hong Kong style western cuisine, street foods and snacks. A prime example is Hong Kong style milk tea with condensed milk, best to pair with a pineapple bun with a piece of ice cold butter in the middle, oh, and egg tarts.

Pineapple bun with butter, egg tarts at back.

Looking back, it was a period when I was free to explore different world views and thinking. I still remember following a classmate to a secondhand bookstore in an obscure alley after school, looking up books on psychology and philosophy; or one time, catching another classmate secretly reading her own book held under her desk during class. When I asked her later out of curiosity what she was reading, no, it wasn’t a comic book or a teen magazine, but Somerset Maugham’s short stories. That was my intro to the wonderful writer.

My nanny loved Chinese operas. She was a versatile, middle age woman who lived in our home and acted almost as my substitute mother. She read Dream of the Red Chamber at night before she slept, daytime too busy for her. I grew up reading Chinese translations of world literature for children and some Enid Blyton, while also saved up enough pocket money to buy my Mad Magazine. I learned to play the piano and listened to The Beatles and The Monkees. The first LP album in our home was My Fair Lady.

What do all these memories have to do with the Queen? For me, it was a period of growing up experiencing both East and West in a British colony that didn’t require its citizens to sing “God Save the Queen,” or demand The Union Jack be hoisted in schools. I’d enjoyed the freedom to explore despite a rigid home environment. If I were to write a memoir some day, it would likely be in the theme of a growing up where East meets West, where the fusion of the two is exciting and appealing, and where opportunities are plentiful, and I was free to live life in an interesting, borderless fusion of cultures.

So, it was the end of an era when the Queen passed. Now the world seems to have grown polarized, tempers flare when people of opposite views confront, and where the ominous observation by Kipling is becoming all the more acute as autocracy begins to prevail.

As I was wandering the lakeshore in Toronto, I caught sight of some lively monarch butterflies. It was a pleasant surprise, as I wasn’t expecting seeing them in such an urban environ. From one Monarch to another, may these monarchs be free and lively as they migrate thousands of miles south, following the instinct endowed by their Creator’s design.

From one Monarch to another:

***

Easter 2021

“April is the cruellest month…” says T. S. Elliot in The Waste Land. He has his reasons. For me, April teases us with uncertainties, so in that sense, it’s a bit cruel. Just when you think it’s spring, a snow storm cometh. And just as that snow has melted and the temperature goes way above freezing and you step out to that bright sunshine, the brutal wind blows your optimism away and drops you back to sub-zero chill.

Just like this frequent visitor to my backyard. Crept underneath the fence to hide in her favourite spot under the spruce tree, uncertain which coat to wear, winter or spring, white or brown:

Just as our world has lived through a pandemic year, now with vaccines in hand, here come the new waves of variant outbreaks, bringing more uncertainties.

I wrote this poem at Easter exactly ten years ago. At that time I was dealing with a bit of a writer’s block, some kind of brain freeze while facing the real freeze outside. The next time I re-posted the poem a few years later in 2016, I was stressed out dealing with the post-surgery care of a family member. Thanks to all who had commented then, we got out of it slowly and experienced the grace of healing.

Easter 2021 is none like others. Distressful situations have multiplied, their magnitude in epic scale. As with everyone else in this world, I’ve lived through a pandemic year, which alas, still has no end in sight with the outbreaks of variants. And personally, I’m wary even just walking in public, not only for Covid risk, but having to look out to avoid being spat at or punched in the face due to all the unprovoked violence against Asians, or women, or both. Face masks may help protect us from a physical virus, but not that stemming from the human heart. Looking out to the world political stage, looming conflicts breed like a plague.

That first Easter wasn’t a celebration but an execution. A dark day, a torturous public punishment, Crucifixion. It was there in the middle of the world––signifying the centre and reaching to all––one sacrificial death unleashed the power of divine love to save us from ourselves, a concept I’m beginning to grasp as more and more urgent and relevant now. After death came the ultimate miracle, resurrection. That same resurrecting power today can raise the deadest of soul to a brand new life.

_______

An Easter Poem

April is the month of empty dreams
Half the days gone
waiting for words and spring
still frozen ground
and on the screen
a frigid page as white as snow.

Brown could be the color of hope
After the white
for all I know
green is too much to wish for
I’m contented to see a patch
of dry and withered brown.

The sun is a perpetual sign
that there’s still hope
But it’s no herald of the seasons
for its presence comforts all year long
warming my blank and barren state
as I await for words and spring.

But Easter is an apt reminder
that The Word had come
spoken clear to half-frozen ears
His body hung on a lifeless tree
Blood and water flowed
onto parched and dusty earth

So what if no words come to me
That dreaded writer’s block
reigning the winter of sterility
numbing senses,
snatching thoughts,
seizing any sign of spring.

It’s not about a post or a blog,
Or even buds and melting snow.
The Word had come
lived and loved among us,
broken, bled, died and rose,
melting frozen hearts to greet
a new dawn and eternal Spring.

–– Arti (April, 2011)

________

That historic Event in the past overrides all uncertainties in the future. He is risen!

HAPPY EASTER!

‘Edith’s Diary’: Madness, Escape, or Creativity?

“I’ve had lots of troubles, so I write jolly tales.” ––– Louisa May Alcott
.

Edith's Diary My point of contact with Patricia Highsmith’s work is mainly in the movies: Strangers on a Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Two Faces of January, and Carol based on her novel The Price of Salt which I’d read. Edith’s Diary, first published in 1977, is a very different work from all the above.

As the book begins, Edith Howland, 35, her husband Brett, and their ten year-old son Cliffie have just moved into small town Brunswick Corner, Pennsylvania, from New York City. The year is 1955. The reason for the move is for Cliffie to grow up in a country environment with more space to roam. Edith’s diary is a precious possession wherein she records her experiences.

Edith is quick to immerse in the community and makes a few friends. With Gert, she successfully revitalizes the local paper Bugle, and she continues with her freelance writing. It’s Cliffie that’s her main concern. Cliffie isn’t a normal boy. He keeps to himself, is indifferent to his parents, unkind to their cat Mildew, makes no friends and doesn’t do well in school. That’s enough for alarm, but Edith’s attitude is concern mixed with appeasement.

Not long after they’ve moved into their house, Brett’s elderly uncle George comes to live with them, a decision not from mutual consent between the couple. Edith has to take care of George, cook and bring his meals to his bedside, keep the house in good order, write for Bugle and pitch to magazines, all while keeping an amicable social front.

Ten years gone by, life hasn’t aligned much with Edith’s wishes. Far from it. Cliffie can’t make it into any college, no full-time job and turns to alcohol and drugs to pass his days. Old George still hangs in there needing more of Edith’s time and attention. Most devastating to her psyche is Brett, who has left her and moved back to NYC to a new life of his own by marrying his young secretary. Highsmith is meticulous in detailing the psychological world of Edith’s, her frail personality, appeasing her son and yielding to her husband.

But as life’s burdens become heavier and things get gloomier, Edith’s entries in her diary shift to a more and more uplifting tone. She creates a different life for her son in her diary entries, imagining Cliffie successfully graduates from Princeton and begins a good career, marries a sweet girl who later bears her a grandchild.

Edith’s diary is an imaginary narrative that’s totally different from her real life. Towards the end, madness takes over and Highsmith’s ending is both shocking and dismissing. No spoiler here. However, reading the book makes me think of a quote from Little Women‘s author Louisa May Alcott:

I’ve had lots of troubles, so I write jolly tales. ––– Louisa May Alcott

What’s the difference between Alcott writing jolly tales and Edith’s detailing an alternative life in her diary? If Edith isn’t writing into a diary, which is supposed to be ‘non-fiction’, isn’t she just creating a work of fiction? Where’s the line between escape and creativity?

Highsmith drops obvious clues for us describing Edith’s sinking deep into the slough of madness as she actually prepares for her imaginary Cliffie’s visit to her home for dinner with wife and son in tow. So, it looks like Highsmith is showing us the demarkation, when the two lives, the imaginary and the real, merge into one, therein lies madness.

But, is Edith’s diary an evidence of madness, or an imaginary work of fiction? Hmm… that would be my question to Highsmith if I were a journalist interviewing her. Now, just let me dwell on that thought some more…

***

Edith’s Diary by Patricia Highsmith, Grove Press, New York, 2018. 393 pages.

Note: Patricia Highsmith’s own diaries will be published in the coming year. Now that would be an interesting read.

Middlemarch: You be the Screenwriter

It’s a wrap. Here’s my finale for our Middlemarch in May Read-Along.

You may be a print purist, don’t want to see a movie made. Just take this as an imaginary writing exercise then:

You’re offered the job of writing a screenplay, the tall order of turning Eliot’s 800-page novel into a movie. The task at hand is to choose from the numerous storylines and just focus on a few that your feature will cover.

The following are some of the main storylines and thematic matters in Eliot’s Middlemarch. This list is just off the top of my head, feel free to add in. Which ones would you select and elaborate?

Sisterhood between Dorothea and Celia

Dorothea’s marriage to Casaubon

Celia and Sir James Chettam

Mr. Brooke’s political involvement

Politics, power and influence in Middlemarch

The mysterious cousin of Casaubon: Will Ladislaw’s backstory

Relationship between Casaubon and Ladislaw

Newcomer Lydgate: the young, aspiring doctor

Old vs. New: The introduction of new ideas and methods and their reception or rejection in Middlemarch

Lydgate’s character: idealism vs. practice

The Vincy family: Mr & Mrs., Fred and Rosamund

The Caleb Garth family: Mr. & Mrs., Mary Garth

Fred Vincy and Mary Garth

Fred’s lifestyle, his love and dreams, and his change

Rosamund’s lifestyle, her love and dreams, and her change (or, has she?)

Featherstone: The subjective construction of will and estate

Mary Garth’s moral dilemma in dealing with Featherstone’s order regarding his will

Farebrother and family: Farebrother’s role in joining Fred and Mary despite his secret love for her.

Raffles the disruptor of Bulstrode’s life: the wages of sins, or, the consequences of actions that last beyond the statute of limitations

Ladislaw’s true identity and Bulstrode’s dark history

Raffles’ falling ill and Bulstrode taking him in for fear of reverberation, hence leading to the suspected ‘wrongful death’ incident and the presumed guilty of bribery between Bulstrode and Lydgate.

Will Ladislaw being victim of class discrimination and racial prejudice in the provincial town of Middlemarch

Family finance, debts and gambling endangering a fragile marriage between Fred and Rosamund

How to choose a mate, keys to a happy marriage

Difference between romance and love, looking at three pairs of relationships: Lydgate and Rosamund, Fred and Mary, Dorothea and Will

And for that matter, how about intellectualism vs. passion, the marriage of Dorothea and Casaubon

Choices of actions of the characters based on values (or lack of), principles, and plain gut

Poverty, welfare, and social actions, responsibilities of the rich

Male/Female relationships in marriage and society, and how Dorothea both fulfills prescribed duties and overrides expectations.

Finally, probably the most important element in a movie, the emotional impact it elicits in your viewers: Which of the above storylines will you focus on to bring out such effects?

We all love the Finale of the book. But why does Eliot spend so few pages in describing the love relations between Dorothea and Will? They are seldom seen together, and in the rare occasions that we do see them, they’re caught in awkward and embarrassing situations. Would you give them more screen time together in a positive light?

I think one reason Eliot doesn’t elaborate on their courtship could be because she doesn’t want to mislead her readers that this is a ‘romance novel’. Rather, she brings out a kind of sublime love between the two, particularly on the part of Dorothea, a noble love that motivates her to give up her wealth, position and the familiarity of Middlemarch. These in Dorothea’s views are but shackles restraining her to do what she wants and to love freely.

Finally, any casting suggestions?

A huge thank-you to all participants and spectators for your input, comments and posts. It’s been a pleasurable ride, even though the length and numerous storylines and characters may have bogged us down occasionally. I appreciate the pebbles thrown into the Pond to make all those ripples.

Enjoy your summer!

In Other Words: Lahiri’s Reconstruction of Self

In Other Words book cover

A couple of years ago, I was surprised to read about Jhumpa Lahiri moving to Italy to live, even just for a few years. Author of four works of fiction – Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Lowland – at the prime of her writing and teaching career, having received the O. Henry Award in 1999, the Pulitzer in 2000, and her latest The Lowland shortlisted for the Booker in 2013, Lahiri decided to uproot her family and move to Italy to totally immerse in the Italian language. That means speaking, reading and writing in Italian.

In Other Words is Lahiri’s brave and candid account as a language learner. It compiles twenty-one essays and two short stories which she wrote in Italian. She uses the metaphor of swimming out into the lake instead of safely hugging the shore to refer to her Italian language learning experience. From her descriptions of the challenges and risks, the loss of anchor, the inability to express herself and be literate, let alone literary, the disorientation, the total humbling, her Italian venture is more like jumping off a precipice to billowy waters of unfathomable depth.

My hat off to Lahiri’s honest revealing of her frustrations and strive for a new identity; yes, after all, language is a major determinant of identity, one which is, unfortunately, superseded by one’s outer appearance and racial features. So it is heart-wrenching to read that despite her love of the Italian language, her total devotion to adopt it not just to live but as a tool of her trade as a writer, she is often seen as an outsider, a foreigner, barred from acceptance. Even when she speaks to Italians fluently in their language, they would respond to her in English.

English, that’s the rub. I was surprised to read that, while the author had achieved so much in her literary career as a writer in English, she chose to discard it to totally immerse in Italian. In the chapter entitled “The Metamorphosis”, she candidly admits that her writing in Italian (which she had been learning in America for some twenty years before) is a flight:

“Why am I fleeing? What is pursuing me? Who wants to restrain me?
The most obvious answer is the English language. But I think it’s not so
much English in itself as everything the language has symbolized for me…
It has represented a culture that had to be mastered, interpreted. I was
afraid that it meant a break between me and my parents. English denotes
a heavy, burdensome aspect of my past. I’m tired of it….”

Of course, that’s also the language that she loved, and succeeded with. The conflict in identity, first as an Indian immigrant with Bangali as her mother tongue, then as a writer in English who had garnered the Pulitzer Prize – an award that she felt she did not deserve – had shrouded her with unresolved tensions. Lahiri had felt deeply the tug of war between her parental heritage and adopted land. A rejection of both had silently crept in. Italian provides a way out:

“Italian offers me a very different literary path. As a writer I can demolish
myself, I can reconstruct myself, I can join words together and work on
sentences without ever being considered an expert. I’m bound to fail when
I write in Italian, but, unlike my sense of failure in the past, this doesn’t
torment or grieve me.”

Unbelievably surprising and honest, written in Italian and translated by The New Yorker editor Ann Goldstein, the bilingual book opens up to a dual English and Italian version. The short essays chronicle the progress of not only an insightful identity search and reconstruction of selfhood, but an invaluable personal documentation of second – no, additional – language learning journey. If this book was published a couple of decades earlier, I would likely have another topic for my thesis in my graduate work on second language learning; not only that, my view of English being the lingua franca, the language holding linguistic hegemony, would have completely changed as well.

After reading In Other Words and my surprising discovery of Lahiri’s ‘tormenting sense of failure’ with the English language (for all its symbolic meaning) or even her ‘undeserving’ feeling towards her award in her writing, I am relieved of a hidden burden. I don’t feel so badly about having had to constantly check and re-check my English: prepositions, idiomatic expressions, phrasal verbs usage, subject verb agreement… All the hurdles that confront me every time I write a post or an article. If Lahiri can be so candid about her frustrations and errors when it comes to language learning, why can’t I?

~ ~ ~ ~ Ripples

***

My thanks to Asian American Press for allowing me to post my book review here on Ripple Effects. The last paragraph is added in just for my Ripple readers.

Related Posts on Ripple Effects:

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri: Book Review

The Namesake (2006, DVD): Movie Review

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Reading the Season: The Book of Ruth

For the past seven years, I’ve a special post at Christmas which I’d named Reading the Season, just to help me dwell on the Reason behind all the festivities. Some past authors I’d read include Marilynne Robinson, C. S. Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, Luci Shaw. This year I’m going back to the source material, The Bible, for my Christmas read. And no, my selection isn’t from Luke 2, which Linus so eloquently delivers every year in the delightful A Charlie Brown Christmas.

I reread the little love story in The Book of Ruth, one of the earliest parallels pointing to the Christmas story. This time I found it particularly relevant. So here it goes…

moonrise

A long time ago in a land far, far away a man named Elimelech and his wife Naomi, together with their two sons Mahlon and Chilion, had to pack up and leave their hometown of Bethlehem in Judah to escape from a famine in the land. As migrants, they travelled to a foreign country called Moab.

Alas, Elimelech died soon after and left behind Naomi and their two sons. Years passed, the sons married two Moabite gals, Orpah and Ruth. Could it be the food there, for not long after Naomi’s two sons also died. Bitter and despondent, Naomi sent her two daughters-in-law back to their own family and began her lone journey to return to Bethlehem.

But Ruth was adamant to follow Naomi back to where she came from with this moving vow:

Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.

Touched by her loyalty, Naomi let Ruth travel with her back to Bethlehem. She was like a migrant all over again. To the people there Naomi, if anyone still recognized her, was now widowed, sonless, bitter and destitute. The two women didn’t even have a refugee camp to take shelter.

To survive, Ruth went out to the fields to glean the grains left by the harvesters. It happened that they were in the fields of a kind landowner Boaz, who after noticing Ruth and hearing of her love for her mother-in-law, told his workers to leave more grains in the fields for her to glean. Yes, it just happened that she’d come to the right field.

When Naomi learned of Boaz, she saw a glimpse of hope. Definitely this was more than the food bank; this generous landowner actually was a relative belonging to her late husband’s clan. Out of desperation, she sent Ruth on a risky mission: to go to Boaz at night and approach him tactfully, letting him know of their ties in kinship.

Lo and behold, Boaz, an honourable and compassionate man, was harbouring a deep and ardent love for Ruth. That night, though surprised to see Ruth, he received her readily and with respect, restraining and keeping his torrid passion well under wraps, umm like… Mr. Darcy.

According to the law of the land, the closest relative had the first right to redeem the lands that Naomi’s late husband Elimelech had sold and to marry Ruth to carry on the family line. But lo, Boaz wasn’t that person; instead, he did the honourable thing, extending the first right of redemption to the closest relative, yes, like umm… Mr. Collins.

And it happened that Mr. Collins was willing to buy back the land but wait a minute, he couldn’t take Ruth as a wife. There could be reverberations, for Ruth was a foreigner, a Moabite. Further, the land was for her to continue with Naomi’s family ownership, and would not be under his name. “I pass,” he said in the sight of ten elder witnesses. Phew!

So only then did Boaz declare not only his willingness to redeem the land once owned by Elimelech, but also his desire to take Ruth as his wife to save her from destitute, poverty, and childlessness. How marvellous it was that Boaz, a legit kinsman redeemer according to the laws, was also truly, madly, and deeply in love with his redeemed.

And we are definitely indebted to the two lovers for producing the line of descendants, for Ruth later became the great grandmother of David, from whose ancestral line generations later came Jesus.

With this beautiful ending I come back to Christmas 2015, and ponder on the lowly birth of Christ at the manger, to become our Kinsman for the ultimate purpose as Redeemer.

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us… full of grace and truth.” – John 1:14

The Risk of Birth

This is no time for a child to be born,
With the earth betrayed by war & hate
And a comet slashing the sky to warn
That time runs out & the sun burns late.
That was no time for a child to be born,
In a land in the crushing grip of Rome;
Honour & truth were trampled by scorn–
Yet here did the Saviour make his home.
When is the time for love to be born?
The inn is full on the planet earth,
And by a comet the sky is torn–
Yet Love still takes the risk of birth.

– Madeleine L’Engle

***

Previous ‘Reading The Season’ Posts:

2014: Lila by Marilynne Robinson

2013: Poetry by Madeleine L’Engle

2012: Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

2011: Walking on Water by Madeleine L’Engle

2010: A Widening Light, Luci Shaw

2009: The Irrational Season

2008: The Bible and the New York Times by Fleming Rutledge

2008: A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis

Write Where You Are

During my New England road trip, I’ve visited several literary places. Now these are my own way of storing my memories. Whatever site I’ve been that relates to a literary figure, I categorize it as such. And it’s interesting to note the different sources of inspiration.

Thoreau went for the minimal, the Spartan way of existence. So he built a log cabin in the woods and kept only the simplest furniture. Why he only stayed for two years two months and two days may be self-explanatory. But no matter, we’re glad he had tasted the bare minimum for us so we can read all about it in his book.

By comparison, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, who owned those woods where Thoreau had his experiment, lived in relative luxury and comfort. Here’s his residence, not a mansion but still a handsome house.

And inside the Concord Museum I saw his study with a flashy fuchsia decor which Thoreau might not have raved about. Just might not, but one never knows. They were friends.

Ralph Waldo’s grandfather The Rev. William Emerson’s house, The Old Manse (Scottish term for ‘Minister’s House’), wasn’t shabby either. Quietly situated by the river, a historic residence where literary figures gathered and where Ralph Waldo had lived for a while and wrote Nature, which sparked the Transcendental Movement (1834-35).

Nathaniel Hawthorne had lived in the same house too for a few years (1842-45), writing a book called Mosses from an Old Manse. He enjoyed the garden immensely; it was planted by Thoreau in 1842 to celebrate Hawthorne’s marriage to Sophia Peabody. Hawthorne could have found inspiration right there among the beets.

Longfellow, on the other hand, was intrigued by an old tavern and boarding house he had stayed one time in 1862. A homestead made into a lodge for itinerant farmers and transient guests had put stories in the mind of the creative, hence the publication of the Poet’s Tales of a Wayside Inn. For its namesake, the premises had since been named Longfellow’s Wayside Inn.

Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House looks like a warm haven for story brewing too, even though the family could have used more material goods than their philosophically-minded father had provided:

Back to Nature, the aspiring young poet Edna St. Vincent Millay climbed to the top of Mt. Battie in Camden and beheld the magnificent bird’s eye view of Penobscot Bay. Sky and water pressed close into the impressionable mind of young Edna, triggering a catalyst reaction of permanent change.

For another, it’s the connection with the land, the toiling of the soil, the gathering of its fruits that inspired. He might have many roads to choose, but aren’t we glad Robert Frost had chosen orchard tending in Vermont and not the ones he did not; we get plenty of thoughts.

And for those born into affluence and wed into more, life was a choice of how to use the resources one gets. I’m glad that Edith Wharton had spent her fortune on something that can be left behind for me to set foot on, yes, The Mount.

I learned too that her legacy had been more than literary pleasures and architectural delights, but something more altruistic after she moved to Paris.

As WWI broke out, Wharton could have gone back to America for safe haven. But she stayed in France, and poured herself in the war efforts, which was inspiration in itself. Here I quote from The Mount’s webpage:

“She set up workrooms for unemployed seamstresses, convalescent homes for tuberculosis sufferers, hostels for refugees, and schools for children fleeing war-torn Belgium. In the first seven months of her efforts, nearly 900 refugees were cared for, “including the nuns and about 200 infirm old men and women, who are ‘children’ too … and could not be left alone in the ruins.” (Edith Wharton, New York Times, 1915)”

and the story didn’t end there… Click on the above link to read more.

Where does one find inspiration, motivation? The answer can vary as much as asking what I should eat today. But one thing I’d experienced on this trip was that life can be lived in myriads of ways, and with it comes inspiration; it could be as simple as a leaf on the ground, or as huge as a war. But I’ll choose the leaf, thank you.

Wherever I am, that’s a good start.

***

My New England Road Trip Series:

Out of the Budding Grove

When I picked up Swann’s Way earlier in March, I had no idea that 2013 is the 100th Anniversary of its publication. Now in hindsight, I’m all the more excited with this serendipitous selection for a Read-Along. And what discoveries I’ve made reading Proust!

Six months later in September, I started Vol. II Within A Budding Grove, allowing myself and any fellow reader two months to finish this 730 page volume.

I reiterate, I’ve encountered thickets blocking the way through the budding grove, but I must say, the enjoyment I’ve reaped from slashing and plowing through it is greater than my frustration. All in all, coming out of it feels like finding my way through a corn maze. Out I come dazed but gratified.

I’ve posted some thoughts on Part One of Within A Budding Grove here. This latter part is about Balbec, a seaside resort the adolescent narrator travels with his Grandmother to stay for the summer to recuperate his health. Like his memories of Combray, Proust’s description of Balbec is detailed and colourful. He relays to his reader his journey, the scenery, the Grand Hotel they stay in, its guests and their social hierarchical interactions, his new-formed friendship with the painter Elstir who introduces him to the band of girls the young narrator admires but is too shy to greet on his own, Albertine, Andrée, Rosemonde, Gisele…

The original title of this volume is In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs) which I think is spot on. But, the budding grove is an apt metaphor too for his adolescent self discoveries of love and passion. And in one hilarious scene with Albertine, Proust has shown he can be a writer for Saturday Night Live any time. Too long to quote here but well worth the read. (p. 700-701 in case you want to skip the first 699 pages.)

And young Marcel is ever in-touch with his own feelings for these girls, especially Albertine. Here is his honest analysis:

At the start of a new love as at its ending, we are not exclusively attached to the object of that love, but rather the desire to love from which it well presently arise (and, later on, the memory it leaves behind)… (p. 676)

Ahh… romancing a desire and a future memory.

What about Gilberte, Swann’s daughter, with whom the young narrator is so obsessed earlier? To his credit, young Marcel has a full grasp of his own psyche. Why? It’s all a matter of Habit, he reasons. Since Gilberte has snubbed him, he needs to forget her and let go of any form of Habit reminding him of his previous life in pursuing her. This trip to Balbec takes him away from the familiar and replaces his memories of Gilberte, and a static existence, with fresh experiences and revitalized senses. Getting out of his home in Paris and going away might just be the best medicine:

… one’s days being paralysed by a sedentary life, the best way to gain time is to change one’s place of residence. My journey to Balbec was like the first outing of a convalescent who needed only that to convince him that he was cured. (p. 301)

Even before he gets to Balbec, while on the train stopping at a station, the sensitive and observant narrator is already filled with delight as he sees a young milk-girl carrying a jar of milk walking to the train at the break of dawn:

She passed down the line of windows, offering coffee and milk to a few awakened passengers. Flushed with the glow of morning, her face was rosier than the sky. I felt on seeing her that desire to live which is reborn in us whenever we become conscious anew of beauty and of happiness. (P. 318)

My own memories of the changing hue on those Bohemian Waxwings come to mind. Proust has effectively conveyed the power of association, the linking of words on a page to the reader’s own memory and the joy it had once elicited.

Proust in Cabourg copy 1 — Photo Source: franceculture.fr

Proust insists that In Search of Lost Time is not autobiographical, but said “The pleasure that an artist gives us, is to introduce us to another universe.” No matter, his writing relates closely to his life experiences, parallel universe if you will.

Balbec is the fictitious reconstruction of Cabourg, a seaside resort town in the Basse-Normandie region of France where Proust frequented between 1907-1914. While Proust explores voluntary and involuntary memories in his long work, he could well be weaving memories with imagination, fusing fiction with real life experiences, creating an intricate tapestry.

Lydia Davis, translator of the most recent edition of Swann’s Way (The Way by Swann’s), offers this insight: “this novel is not autobiography wearing a thin disguise of fiction but . . . fiction in the guise of autobiography.”

Right.

Whichever way you slice it, it’s still as delicious as madeleines dipped in tea.

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Some Relevant Links:

The TLS blog: French literary anniversaries, part 4 – Du côté de chez Swann

CLICK HERE to a webpage on Cabourg where you can see the video of The Grand Hotel, with Proust’s room still being kept there.

Proust in Cabourg

In The Shadow of Young Girls in Flowers, from The Modernism Lab at Yale University

Photo Source: franceculture.fr

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Related Posts on Ripple Effects:

Half Way Through a Budding Grove

Swann’s Way Part I: Combray

Parts 2 & 3: Swann In Love

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Munro and Movies

Thanks to the Swedish Academy, Alice Munro doesn’t need a blockbuster movie to raise awareness of her works. Described by The New York Times as ‘Master of the Intricacies of the Human Heart’, and with her story settings mostly in rural counties and small towns, the 82 year-old writer must have known how the small and intimate can have far-reaching effects.

The short story as a literary form too must have gained importance and legitimation overnight now that Munro is honored as Nobel Laureate. The novel isn’t the only peak of the mountain of literary pursuits. Readers too, can now be totally comfortable with reading ‘just a short story’.

Back to movies, with our contemporary mega, blockbuster culture, it sure looks like the general public need to see a movie before knowing about a literary work. While I don’t like the idea, I’ve to admit that could well be the case nowadays. But for Munro, can anyone name a full feature movie that’s based on her short stories?

Right. Actually there are four. Edge of Madness (2002) is relatively unknown. Another one interestingly is an Iranian film, Canaan, which won the Audience Awards–Best Film at the Fajr International Film Festival in 2008. A better known adaptation is Away From Her (2006). It remains one of my all time favorite films. The most recent completed production is Hateship Loveship which premiered at TIFF13. I regret missing it when I was there in September. A film based on her story ‘Runaway’ is currently in development.

With Munro winning the Nobel, hopefully we’ll have the chance to see a general release of Hateship Loveship. So there you go, Munro could well be helping to reverse the trend: the writer promoting the film.

To celebrate Munro’s Nobel win, I’d like to repost in the following a review of Away From Her which I wrote in 2008. The film was directed by the young and talented Canadian actor/director Sarah Polley, who was nominated for an Oscar for her adapted screenplay based on Munro’s short story ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’. Julie Christie received an Oscar nomination for her role as Alzheimer’s afflicted Fiona.

You can read Munro’s story ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’ now online, thanks to a timely reprint by The New Yorker.

AWAY FROM HER: A Short Review

How can you turn a good short story into a full length movie without compromising its quality? By turning it into a screenplay written by an equally sensitive and passionate writer, and then, through her own talented, interpretive eye, re-creates it into a visual narrative. Along the way, throw in a few veteran actors who are so passionate about what the script is trying to convey that they themselves embody the message.

Sarah Polley has made her directorial debut with a most impressive and memorable feat that I’m sure things will go even better down her career path. What she has composed on screen speaks much more poignantly than words on a page, calling forth sentiments that we didn’t even know we had. As Alzheimer’s begins to take control over Fiona, what can a loving husband do? Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent stir up thoughts in us that we’d rather bury: how much are we willing to give up for love? Or, how would we face the imminence of our loved ones’ and our own mental and physical demise?

Based on the story by Alice Munro, ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’, Polley brings out the theme of unconditional love not with your typical Hollywood’s hot, young, and sexy on screen, but aging actors in their 60’s and 70’s. It may not be as pleasurable to watch wrinkled faces hugging and kissing, or a man and a woman in bed, bearing age spots and all, but such scenes effectively beg the question: why feel uncomfortable?

Why does love has to be synonymous with youth, beauty, and romance? It is even more agonizing to watch how far Grant is willing to go solely for love of Fiona. Lucky for us, both writers spare us the truly painful at the end. It is through persistent, selfless giving that one ultimately receives; however meager and fleeting that reward may seem, it is permanence in the eyes of love. And it is through the lucid vision of a youthful 28-year-old writer/director that such ageless love is vividly portrayed…. Oh, the paradoxes in life.

~ ~ ~ Ripples

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Chesterton Quotes

I just couldn’t resist. Even though I posted a link to GKC Quotes in my last entry, I’m compelled to share some here for all to savor. As a writer who encompassed social commentary, political satire, literary criticism, philosophical ponderings, Christian apologetics, poetics and plain humor in his writing, G. K. Chesterton’s (1874-1936) wit and wisdom surpassed the social and political environment of his time:

*****

“My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”

“A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

“By a curious confusion, many modern critics have passed from the proposition that a masterpiece may be unpopular to the other proposition that unless it is unpopular it cannot be a masterpiece.”

“Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.”

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”

“Journalism largely consists of saying ‘Lord Jones is Dead’ to people who never knew that Lord Jones was alive.”

“Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.”

“Music with dinner is an insult both to the cook and the violinist.”

“The most astonishing thing about miracles is that they happen.”

“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”

“Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere.”

“If there were no God, there would be no Atheists.”

*****

Links to more GKC quotes:

The American Chesterton Society Quotations Collection

The Quotations Page