Happy 179th Birthday, Louisa May Alcott! (And Bronson, Too)

Louisa May Alcott 129 years ago, when she was 50.

"November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year," said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden.
"That's the reason I was born in it," observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose.
Little Women (1868)

November 29 is Louisa May Alcott's birthday.  She'd be 179, a far cry from her days as a little woman.  Coincidentally, she was born on her philosopher father's 33rd birthday, so Bronson Alcott, who seems so typically Sagittarius, gets his own cake with an infernal 212 candles.  Better make it apple or carrot cake -- or maybe just an apple or a carrot.  Bronson was a hardcore vegan way before it was in vogue.

I really didn't expect to be saluting Louisa May on the anniversary of her birth. Earlier this year I was ticked off at her when I read that she worked really hard to get my beloved Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn banned in Massachusetts.  Yes, it's true, Huck has got those problem chapters towards the end that make readers want to dig Mr. Clemens up and rap him on the head with Aunt Sally's thimble, but book-banning!?  Yikes.  That was a hard pill to swallow (I snarled through most of my rereading of Little Men), but Louisa May and I are okay now.  I'm just going to pretend that it was one of the horrible side effects of the mercury poisoning.

I'm all warm and sunny about Alcott again because I have just finished Eden's Outcasts:  The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father by John Matteson.  This 2007 dual biography nabbed a Pulitzer the following year and rightfully so.  Matteson is everything a reader wants in a biographer.  He's done his research (sometimes painfully, as in reading through everything Bronson Alcott wrote -- he should have gotten an award just for that), he doesn't feel that he has to shoehorn all of that research into the book, he's a wonderful blend of intelligence and warmth (He really responds to his subjects and their writings.  I had to smile at how relieved he seems as he shows evidence that Bronson, like all of us, gets better as he gets older), and he's a wonderful storyteller.  Matteson can write.  There's nothing of the visual glue pudding that research-based writing so often resembles.  Would it be wrong of me to whine and cajole and order people to their bookstores or computers to get this book immediately?

I'm now reading An Old-Fashioned Girl, Louisa May Alcott's 1870 follow-up to her smash hit Little Women.  I shied away from it for years (as I did most of Alcott's other fiction; if Jo wasn't in it, I couldn't be bothered), but since John Matteson liked it, I'm reading it on his say-so, and am about halfway through.  Dude was right.  I'm enjoying it.  Polly Milton, a small-town girl goes to visit her best friend's family.  Mr. and Mrs. Shaw and their three children are well-off but a little too caught up in their own individual lives.  Compared to her own family, Polly finds them a little dysfunctional and finds ways to brighten their lives during the six weeks she's there. After she leaves, the story jumps ahead six years.  Polly comes back to Boston to make her own way as a music teacher and her life intersects with the Shaw family again.  There are some preachy parts (Alcott could have fit with ease into a pulpit, if women had been allowed back then) but overall, she tells a pretty good tale.

My Alcott shelf is still pretty full.  I've got Moods, a novel that Louisa May Alcott always felt dissatisfied with -- According to my new crush John Matteson, she revised it at least twice.  I also have her 1873 novel Work (I remember reading an excerpt in my undergraduate Women's Literature class); Pauline's Passion and Punishment (not sure when it was written, but it must be some of her A.M. Barnard stuff, judging by the title) and another biography, Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women by Harriet Reisen.  I'm scared that I won't like the Reisen biography because I loved Eden's Outcasts so damn much.  Ooops.  Maybe I should refrain from using swear words in Alcott's birthday post.

Understood Betsy - Dorothy Canfield Fisher

 Understood Betsy (1916) is the story of nervous, sickly city kid Elizabeth Ann, who is an orphan living with her two aunts.  One of the aunts is elderly and in poor health.  The younger one is kind of high-strung and very much a helicopter aunt, although this was the days before helicopters.  One day, the older aunt gets really sick and must be cared for full-time.  Elizabeth Ann is shipped off to her mother's cousins who live on a farm in Vermont. In less than a year, quailing Elizabeth Ann is transformed into healthy, hearty Betsy who has survived and thrived in the country life and in a country school.  She has changed from being afraid of everything (including having to use her own brain) to being quite clever, resourceful and aware of the world around her.

This book made me nostalgic for Vermont -- although I've never been there -- and hungry for creamed potatoes and applesauce and oatmeal and all sorts of good, plain cooking.  I developed a bit of a girl crush on Cousin Ann, who is the antithesis of Aunt Frances, the helicopter aunt.  With just a few words, she is able to put Betsy's old-ladyish worrying into perspective.  On the subject of examinations, (which make Betsy a nervous wreck) she remarks how she always liked them because they seemed fun, like 'taking a dare':

 "Someone stumps you to jump off the hitching-post, and you do it to show 'em.  I always used to think examinations were like that.  Somebody stumps you to spell 'pneumonia' and you do it to show 'em."

When Betsy continues moaning about her mistakes, Cousin Ann cuts her off with:  "It [failing the examination] doesn't matter if you know the right answers, does it?  That's the important thing...I guess Hemlock Mountain will stand right there just the same even if you did forget to put a b in doubt."

Betsy's little country school seems to be of great interest to the author and she describes it often in loving detail, contrasting it with Betsy's city school experiences.  The teacher checks Betsy's levels in each subject and puts her in seventh grade reading, third grade spelling and second grade arithmetic.  Then she sets Betsy to helping first grader Molly with her reading lesson.

Betsy is perplexed:  "What grade AM I?"

The teacher laughs.  "YOU aren't any grade at all, no matter where you are in school.  You're just yourself, aren't you?  What difference does it make what grade you're in!"

 After describing the teacher's methods, Fisher ends the chapter by saying significantly, "It was only a poor, rough, little district school anyway, that no Superintendent of Schools would have looked at for a minute, except to sniff."

I should have suspected something, but it wasn't until the teacher encouraged the girls to bring their dolls to school that I smelled me some Montessori.  I was right.  A quick little trip to Wikipedia revealed that Dorothy Canfield Fisher worked with Maria Montessori in Italy a few years before she wrote Understood Betsy.  Fisher introduced the Montessori method to the United States with her book A Montessori Mother (1912).

In the midst of Betsy's being and becoming, there's an odd little chapter about one of her little classmates whose alcoholic father is neglecting him.  The father's not shown as cruel, like Huck Finn's Pap, as in quick with a blow -- it's more like he's too drunk to even notice the boy is alive.  Thanks to Betsy's initial outspoken remarks about little Claude's wretched condition, some of the neighbors finally intervene to find a better place for him to live.

I totally loved this book.  Even Fisher's authorial intrusion didn't bother me as much as it usually does, as it seemed very sensible and knowing and caring like the Putneys.  I love how Betsy's self-confidence and critical thinking skills grow exponentially with each day she spends with Uncle Henry, Aunt Abigail and Cousin Ann.  I loved Understood Betsy so much that I went out and found a couple of other (adult) novels by Dorothy Canfield Fisher:  The Bent Twig (1915) and The Brimming Cup (1921).  I also found Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook.

Shock for the Secret Seven

Photo Credit:  Enid Blyton Society

If I could just forget Helena Bonham Carter and her performance in Enid, I could probably cozy up to Enid Blyton's books -- especially those boarding school ones.

My second outing with Blyton was grand.  I liked Shock for the Secret Seven ever so much better than Puzzle for the Secret Seven.  First of all, there's that nifty publication date, 1961.  Secondly, it seems as if there's a lot more drama in this one.  Peter, who is frighteningly Type A for such a young lad, gets a little too caught up in Secret Seven meeting protocol and provokes Jack into quitting.  The others shame Peter into writing a note of apology (he makes them all sign it -- Scamper the dog, too) but Jack icily replies:

"Dear Secret Six,
Thank you for your note and apology from Peter.  Sorry, but there's nothing doing.  I'm finished with you.  I'm forming a club with Susie [his bratty sister] Binkie [her equally bratty friend], Bony [A French exchange student] and three others.  We'll be the Secret Seven -- and you'll be the Secret Six.
 'Jack'


Oooooh.  Sick burn.

Right after Peter and the gang decide to struggle onward without Jack, a mystery pops up in their little village. Someone is a dognapper, and this person is stealing expensive and valuable dogs.  Among many others, Pam's grandmother's white poodle goes missing, Matt the shepherd's collie Shadow disappears, and then dear old Scamper vanishes in broad daylight while the Secret Sev...Six are having a meeting and trying to figure out who the thief is.  Meanwhile, Jack (who has decided that he'd rather go it alone than form a new Secret Seven) is on the case, and he cracks it wide open.  As Blyton says, "Good old Jack!  Good old everybody!"

Jack graciously accepts Peter's invitation to return to the group, which changes that pesky Six back into Seven and saves the series.  As for the villain, let's just say that I was left with a bad impression of both the Royal Mail and men with small feet.  Oh well, it's nothing that can't be fixed by some gorgeous hot buns and a cup of steaming cocoa.

Canadian Book Challenge 5: The Sisters Brothers - Patrick deWitt

I'm in danger of burbling because I loved The Sisters Brothers so much.  I'll try to keep the squeeeeing! and the exclamation points to a minimum.  I love everything -- the cover, the title, the storytelling style, the story itself, the characters, the setting...I feel like I'm going to squeee! again.

Thanks so much to Jessica and Unruly Reader for bringing this book to my attention.  When Jessica said that it reminded her of O Brother, Where Art Thou? my interest was piqued, but then Unruly said the magic words:  True Grit.  And she was damn right.   It's like Patrick deWitt ate True Grit every day when he was growing up and it's in his cells.  I love when authors internalize a certain book and when they write their own it's so good and, as a bonus, you can see the other one shining up at you like a gift.  It's not copying or being derivative; it's all about creativity, and there's something higher and purer at work.  It's like Margaret Mitchell and Vanity Fair.  It's like that guy who wrote The Laments, George Hagen.  He seems to have slept with The World According to Garp under his pillow every night.

How to describe this delightful picaresque novel about two outlaw brothers so everyone will want to read it?   True Grit meets Pulp Fiction meets The Coen Brothers.   I'm so pleased that The Sisters Brothers has already received a lot of attention and awards.  If it were up to me, I'd hand Patrick deWitt the Pulitzer for fiction right here and now.  He's eligible, isn't he?  Someone say yes!

I want everyone to read this book.  Really, really, really, really.   I'll gladly forego the niceties of conversation from here on out.  This is what my sociolinguistics might sound like until I get what I want or until people start avoiding me: 

Person:  Hi, Susan.  How are you today?
Me:  Hi.  Fine.  Go read The Sisters Brothers.
Person:  OK...what have you been up to?
Me:  I just finished The Sisters Brothers.  It's shit-hot good. You should read it.
Person: Err, OK.  See you later.
Me: Call me after you've read The Sisters Brothers.

I'm guessing that there has already been interest in this novel as a movie project, and I can't wait.  In the meantime, I'm going to seek out Patrick deWitt's first novel, Ablutions.

The DNF Files: The Criminal - Jim Thompson

Anywhere you go, I'll follow you down
I'll follow you down but not that far...

I was so disappointed in The Criminal (1953) that even though it's very short (128 pages) I couldn't bring myself to finish it.  The book started out promisingly enough but instead of sticking with one point of view and following it down whatever brambly path to hell that it might travel, Jim Thompson doodles around with every possible character and angle in a murder case from the accused teenager to his parents to the press to the law.  Holy jumping viewpoint.

He could have pulled it off because he is Jim Thompson, James Myers Thompson, the baddest-assed, nicotine-stained mofo to ever stand at the intersection of Crazy and Corrupt, but he didn't allow himself a long enough venue in which to tell his story well.  The Criminal merely reads like a bunch of rough notes.  I can't even accuse him of phoning it in.  It's more like he sort of scowled at the receiver from across a dingy, badly lighted room.

  If Thompson couldn't be bothered, then I can't be bothered.  I am one damned annoyed broad, but don't get me wrong; I still love the hard-bitten bastard and his twisted world view.