Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece by Michael Gorra

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Anyone who is at all in love with Henry James, as I am, must read Michael Gorra's book. It is insightful, erudite, challenging, and deeply engaging. Of course it's better if you've read Portrait of a Lady, even many years ago (as many of us have), but I assure you Gorra's elucidations and ruminations will send you to James's masterpiece once more to find and savor all those special moments he discusses. But more than just a story about a story, Gorra's book presents Henry James and his writing as truly ground-breaking, paving the way for the likes of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence in the 'original' use of a character's self-consciousness, and in the presentation of a novel not as a series of events that toss the characters here and there, but as the study of "character" that must respond to, or act upon, life as it happens -- choices that are made that spring from the person's character.

Intelligent in the highest and best sense of that word, sensitive, and full of wonder -- The PORTRAIT OF A NOVEL is simply magnificent.



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A Few Nights in Tuscany

Three weeks ago, we spent two nights at an agritourismo farm in Tuscany, lodged in a former mill of stone and wood, but very comfortable! The second morning was the start of local wild-boar-hunting season, so the 'pop' of guns and the baying of hounds woke us up early. Wild boar ragu at dinner that night! Here are some of the scenes we marvelled at during our stay.

Built in 1870's

The Mill House, where we stayed, from a distance.

Achille, the farmhouse dog

The Twelve Rooms of the Nile - Super!

The Twelve Rooms of the Nile by Enid Shomer

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Who could have imagined that Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert would be so good together? Apparently, Enid Shomer did just that, and her debut novel is thoroughly engaging, witty, philosophical, sensual and intellectual. From the bare coincidence that both Nightingale and Flaubert spent a summer sailing up and down the Nile in 1850—but on separate boats, with no indication that they ever met at any point—Shomer has written an epic but personal tale of the meeting of two exquisitely intelligent people (much too smart for their own comfort, or those of their families as well). Florence is desperately searching for a way out of her upper-middle-class prison, having disappointed her severe mother by refusing to marry; she feels a call to something higher but she’s not sure what it is. Gustave struggles with the memory of past mistresses, a domineering but beloved mother, and his own desperate need to do nothing in life but write—and yet he falters, believing he has no talent and nothing to say. In the mostly “uncivilized” lands along the Nile, the two meet again and again as their parties track each other to sites of ancient ruins and across the desert. The effect of living unconventionally both releases their spirits and pulls them into a vortex of sensual discovery that opens the eyes of both these exceptional persons to a new understanding of their own experiences as well as empathy for another. This is a book to be savored and read with a calm spirit of openness and acceptance of the new and the strange. - from my review for the Historical Novel Society Review journal, Summer 2012.



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The Protestant Cemetery in Rome - Where Poets Lie Easy

I was rambling this morning through the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, in the Testaccio neighborhood, because it was a place revered by Henry James, who tenderly placed his candidly shocking little American heroine Daisy Miller in its hallowed precincts: "Daisy's grave was in the little Protestant cemetery, in an angle of the wall of imperial Rome, beneath the cypresses and the thick spring flowers." I wandered to the grave of Keats with its modest epitaph, and then searched for some minutes and found another grave, that of Constance Fenimore Woolston, an American writer, grand-daughter of James Fenimore Cooper, and intimate friend of James. She reportedly committed suicide in Venice, throwing herself out the window of the Palazzo Semitocolo (I took a photo of that, too, when I was in Venice 10 days ago), where James soon after the melancholy event visited and burned all of his correspondence to her, among other things. The scene, and his feelings about it, are tellingly, dramatically, movingly portrayed in Colm Toibin's magnificent book The Master. Percy Bysshe Shelley is buried there, too, along with the sons and daughters of many illustrious "non-Catholic foreigners": Goethe and Bach among them. A melancholy and beautiful place, well worth the long walk outside the Eternal City to visit the remains and think about time passing. 

But a final, more modern note! It came as a complete surprise to me to find the grave of Gregory Corso, the Beat poet, who died in 2001 - his epitaph is well worth remembering and pondering.

The Known World - Mapping a Different Time

The Known World by Edward P. Jones

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I found a copy of this book in the apartment in Rome where my husband and I are staying for a week, after touring other parts of Italy (Florence, Siena, Venice, Orvieto). I wouldn't have even started reading it except that we both came down with colds and needed to 'stay put' for a day or two -- WHAT a fantastic book! Of course, it's a Pulitzer Prize winner, but I had never heard of it. Jones' historical/magical-realism about the fictional Manchester County in Virginia, is a masterpiece of engaging characters, subtle language, fancy and fact. I just saw a quote from Hemingway that said something like a writer's object is not just to tell someone a story, but make the reader feel as if he or she had actually lived the story -- and that's just what Jones' book does. The characters of his black people -- slaves and free -- are enticing and very real, very human; the white folks just the same: good, bad, religious, sacriligious. The fact that there were free black people, former slaves, who went on to own land and then their own slaves is a troubling and astounding theme of the book, and very well presented from many sides of the question. Jones plays with time and events, shifting from present to future to past but seamlessly and effortlessly (it would appear). A remarkable book, worthy of time and thoughtfulness as you read it. So glad it serendipitously appeared to engage me during my 'downtime' in Rome. Now it's off to St. Peter's!



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Haight Street Fair

Went to the 35th annual Haight Street Fair today -- I was at the first one, in 1977, a year after I moved to San Francisco from Chicago. Not as trippy now as it was then, but still lots of fun. Check out the video!

Also, my friend Steven, whom I've known since practically my first week at college, was there with me too--and he bought a hat! Yay, Steven!

Stroll on the Beach

It was a rare sunny day at the beach in June in San Francisco--lots of sand dollar shells, rocks and pebbles. The winds have been fierce of late. I went to Ocean Beach in search of fragments of old tombstones that became visible after high winds moved the sand around. In the 1930's, the City decided to move all the "residents" of the city cemeteries down to Colma, and although it paid to move the coffins, the families had to cough up the money to move the gravestones! Unclaimed and abandoned grave markers were used for breakwaters and rip-rap along the ocean beach, and every few years, one of them is uncovered. Alas, even though I went to the beach only two days after this was reported in the local news, the winds had re-wreaked its havoc, and bulldozers had shifted the sand, once more covering the gravestones. But at least I had a lovely walk!