Sioux City, John Denver...and The Heiress of Washington Square

Okay, so here I am in Sioux City, Iowa, where today it actually reached a high of 35 degrees (!) but this morning it was only 4 degrees above zero. Lots of snow on the ground, of course, nothing like Chicago or the upper East Coast, thanks be, otherwise I wouldn't have arrived from San Francisco yesterday via Minneapolis. My best friend moved here a year ago after we both were laid off our jobs in San Francisco, and this is where she was able to find work -- at an ice cream company! (Wells Blue Bunny in La Mars, Iowa, who knew.) So I'm visiting while her husband is taking a break from the midwest for a superbowl weekend in Reno--and she and I drove to Omaha today. 

This is where the John Denver part comes in. YES, we both like listening to John Denver, although we agreed that 30 years ago we would NEVER have admitted we liked the dweeby little grinning folk/country singer--SO sentimental! SO goofy! But lately I have realized that my singing voice has constricted in its already small range to one octave - middle C - and that's what dear old John sings in too! So I can sing along with him perfectly! And I have to say that "Rocky Mountain High" does bring back some fond memories. Cynthia had a CD of his greatest hits in her car, which we proceeded to play all the way back from Omaha to Sioux City (about 95 miles--and the CD lasted the ENTIRE time, which I have to say was probably about eight songs and forty miles too many).

So, back in Sioux City, at her house, eating pizza and watching TV--and "The Heiress" comes on TCM, which is running all the Oscar winners since time began. This is the Olivia de Haviland and Montgomery Clift movie version of Henry James's WASHINGTON SQUARE -- see, I'm still on my current James kick -- and even though it isn't faithful at all to the novel, which I just read three days ago, it's a pretty good movie. Most of James's novels don't really make good movies (I'll get into that one of these days soon) but this one in particular struck me as really unsuitable -- it's so very nuanced and subtle, and everything depends on a tightly delineated non-action -- that it's understandable why the screenwriters made the character of Catherine Sloper much more outwardly emotional, and twisted the end of the film to give her a very active yet ultimately passive-aggressive revenge, which is completely not the case in James's novel.

In any event, having fun in Sioux City!

So I'm on a Henry James kick...again

I picked up a copy of The New York Stories of Henry James the other day, stories selected and with an introduction by Colm Toibin, while I was wandering through the SF State University bookstore. Having read Toibin's THE MASTER about three years ago, I have become entranced by his devoted connection to James, and awed by his insights into both James's writing, and writing as a craft, an art, a way of life. I've read that book three times and will do so again soon. In large part, it helped me as I created the persona of James as he appears in the historical novel I just finished writing (about John Singer Sargent -- now looking for a publisher). And now, Toibin has a new, slim volume of essays he has written (or delivered) in the past, titled All A Novelist Needs -- a phrase from one of James's notebook entries, I believe. I am hooked, lined and sinkered. I love Henry James, always have since I read Portrait of a Lady at the age of 19 way back in my college days. My professor - Sue Shafer - was a James scholar, and fed my obsession with hers. I recently joined the Henry James Society, and hope to attend the annual conference one of these years. The best feeling I'm getting from reading both Toibin and James right now is a renewal of my need to write--perhaps a recognition that I've been dawdling, wasting time, not writing. As James said, "One has prayed and hoped and waited, in a word, to be able to work more...That is all I ask. Nothing else in the world."  Back to work now.

What Alice Knew - A Literary and Literate Mystery Starring Henry James?

Review of: What Alice Knew -- A Most Curious Tale of Henry James and Jack the Ripper by Paula Marantz Cohen

For anyone who reads and loves Henry James (as I do), the very title of this elegant mystery by Paula Cohen evokes contrasting emotions: gratified recognition (James’ novella “What Maisie Knew”) and skepticism (really, Jack the Ripper?). After my initial reaction of an inward ladylike snort, I immediately found myself absolutely captivated by the James siblings—Henry, his philosopher brother William, and their invalid sister Alice—as they come to life in Cohen’s pages. William is invited by Scotland Yard as an early prototype of the modern psychological profiler to help investigate the infamous Whitechapel Murders. With Henry and Alice already resident in London, the three join forces to uncover the identity of the brutal killer. What could have been a preposterous fictional undertaking is from the first a deeply touching story about three very complex human beings, struggling to overcome and somehow resolve their individual pain, longings and life choices through work, love and attention to life’s psychological details.

Various other fin-de-siècle characters drift in and out: Oscar Wilde, John Singer Sargent and his sister Emily, Mark Twain, to name a few, adding wit and verve to the bright and brittle conversations over the sumptuous dinner tables of the Bloomsbury crowd of 1888 London. Cohen deftly weaves in references to various stories by Henry James and quotations from the somewhat dense philosophical studies of William, and decorates the plot twists with characters from paintings by Singer Sargent—a delight to the informed reader, and an incentive to discovery by those who wish to find out more. The novel is literary, philosophical, witty and thoroughly entertaining. Cohen, who has written novels treating both Austenian and Shakespearean themes in modern settings, has presented us with a new standard for the historical mystery story. [Note: this review was first published in the Historical Novel Society Review, November 2010.]

Personally, I was fascinated by Ms. Cohen's inclusion of Singer Sargent and his paintings, as I have been working on an historical novel about John Singer Sargent during three critical years in Paris, 1882-1884. I've just spent the last four months editing and re-working it from an earlier (supposedly finished, ha!) version, and have just sent it to my literary agent, Krista Goering, with the brightest hopes for publication in the new year! Check out my website for more info! www.maryfburns.com 

Happy New Year!!

Twelve String Guitar, William Blake and Loudon Wainwright III

All right, I'll admit it -- I am an unrepentant, undeconstructed, dyed in the wool hippie from the sixties -- and I can't believe I have just 'discovered' Loudon Wainwright III.  Yes, I've heard his name from time to time, but I wasn't paying attention. I was listening to KFOG (104.5 in San Francisco) the other day, and his song "School Days" came on -- I was transfixed! And of course, it being Acoustic Sunday Morning on KFOG, they just played five or six more songs in a row and didn't say who the singers were! So I jotted down the opening words of the song ("In Delaware, when I was younger") and googled it and bam! Found a great interview and live performance at a Canadian radio station. Apparently Loudon has done a reprise album of some of his best songs from the sixties, School Days included, which obviously I'm going to have to buy. 

Here's the url: http://www.uulyrics.com/music/loudon-wainwright-iii/song-school-days/ 

I seem to have become enamored recently of twelve-string guitar music -- that quintessential sound of the sixties -- you know, The Byrds, CSN&Y, etc. And this song in particular, though written from a guy's point of view in those halcyon college days of long ago -- really resonated to my own experiences in college. You know--peace marches, LSD, free love, William Blake, Les Fleurs du Mal, Aubrey Beardsley posters in the dorm -- all that stuff. But I don't at all wish I were back there--I'm having way too much fun right now where I'm at, writing, creating, living. "Now" is always the most interesting time of life.

One of the best conferences for Historical Novelists...

Registration is now open for the 2011 North American Historical Novel Society Conference, to be held in San Diego, CA from June 17-19, 2011.  I attended the 2009 conference in Illinois (in Schaumberg, a suburb of Chicago) and it was great!  There's a super line-up of speakers, agents and editors this year (again) and great sessions that will get your historical heart pumping. Go to www.hns-conference.org to check out the details and register for this conference. Attendance is limited to 300 people, so get your registration in soon!

Departures - A Stunning Film, Gorgeous Music, Life & Death & Love

Here's a passage from Paul Bowles' book The Sheltering Sky, which I just saw referenced below a YouTube clip from a fascinating, emotional, incredible Japanese film: Departures. Get it now! Watch it! And be prepared to cry and laugh. Cut and paste this link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiyFeT0Tpkk&feature=related) to listen to the film's main theme, a beautiful solo cello piece, as you read and think about this passge.

"...Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? ...Perhaps four, or five times more? Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless...."

Review of a Hemingway Novel - A Man's Man, and then some

Hemingway Cutthroat

by Michael Atkinson

Ernest Hemingway was an infamously unlikeable guy, and Michael Atkinson’s frank portrayal calls for adjusting one’s “empathy” threshold to very low. Atkinson’s premise is that this is what really happened to Hemingway in Spain in 1937, providing the content for his most famous book, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway is a journalist, sending back dispatches to U.S. newspapers about the Spanish Civil War. When a Spanish friend “disappears”, Hemingway throws himself into the fray like the proverbial bulldog clamped onto the bull’s neck, and won’t let go until he finds out the facts.

As a woman reader of historical novels primarily written for women readers, I decided to challenge myself to read a novel about this outrageously macho man, written by a man, to see if the content, style and overall experience could possibly be all that different. Honey, you don’t know the half of it. Atkinson is a good writer and at times, delivers some great sentences; for example, after witnessing a cold-blooded murder, “The inside of his heart was a slightly different country now, cloudier, brutalized by midnights and less beguiled by mornings.” But there’s also non-stop swearing, drinking and passing out, whoring, fighting, beatings, torture, kidnapping, car chases and precious little sleep. The atmosphere is hot, dark, smoky and utterly masculine; the few women who appear are either hard-boiled American dames who cross swords with Hemingway (and lose), or tough Spanish women who defy him then invite him into their beds. Hemingway’s occasional moments of clarity about the meaning and direction of his life, his writing, and his family aren’t enough to make him truly sympathetic, but they help. Occasional observations about the experience of writing are intelligent and interesting; I would have liked more of this and less action-adventure à la Jack Bauer. A challenge for Austenites!

Minatour Books (St. Martin’s Press, New York), August 2010, $24.99, pb, 272 pages, ISBN: 978-0-312-37972-8