Old Young Movies Deux

In case anyone is wondering where we are in our Sunday Night Old Movies:

• Singing in the Rain Huge Hit!
• The King and I Not as popular, and then all those wives to explain....
• Some Like it Hot Record Breaking Box Office
• How Green Was My Valley What's not to love? Death, Slave Wages, Striking Coal Miners,Black Lungs, Adultery, Child Abuse....we had to turn it off.
• South Pacific Too slow and dragged out. And what's with all those tinted lenses?
• Roman Holiday A moderate hit although Liv is not big on Bittersweet endings. She likes her ending Sweet---hold the Bitter.
  

Only Connect...

Only Connect! George has suggested it is a good AT&T slogan so the E.M. Forster Estate may want to look into negotiating with them. But E.M. Forster perhaps had loftier notions for the phrase. I just re-read Howards End.

So many clever things in it.

"Pity was at the bottom of her actions all through this crisis. Pity, if one may generalize, is at the bottom of woman. When men like us, it is for our better qualities, and however their liking, we dare not be unworthy of it, or they will quietly let us go. But unworthiness stimulates woman. It brings out her deeper nature, for good or for evil."

"So deep already was her sympathy that when he said, 'I am asking you to be my wife" she made herself give a little start. She must show surprise if he expected it. It was indescribable. It had nothing to do with humanity, and most resembled the all pervading happiness of fine weather. Fine weather is due the sun, but Margaret could think of no central radiance here. She stood in his drawing room happy, and longing to give happiness. On leaving him she realized that the central radiance had been love." (italics mine)

"Charles and Tibby met at Ducie Street, where the latter was staying. Their interview was short and absurd. They had nothing in common but the English language, and tried by its help to express what neither of them understood."

Oh E.M. was a clever clever man!!!

The Heart is a Boring Hunter

I started listening to Carson McCuller's Heart is a Lonely Hunter because it was read by Cherry Jones, who has the most lovely rich voice. She is a stage actress and you can tell. The first chapter was heartbreaking about an very unequal friendship between two deaf mutes, Singer and Antonapoulos, "an obese and dreamy Greek". Other characters are trotted out, a tomboyish 12 year old named Mick, a black doctor and his very sweet daughter Portia, a restaurant owner named Biff, a labor organizer and no one is as compelling. Singer is presented as a blank slate who everyone puts their dreams and hopes in to. At some point short of sitting in my car for 8 hours I gave up on the CD's and got the book. Things got worse without Cherry there to lure me in with her voice. In the end I couldn't wait to put it down. I thankfully tossed it aside three days ago wishing that it had only contained deaf mutes. Read the first chapter---skip the rest. Go see Cherry Jones in a play someday!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Julie saw this on my "to read" list and very nicely lent it to me. I had actually given it as a gift a couple of times already to friend's children based on all the good reviews. I have to say I loved how the story would be proceeding along in writing and then suddenly like a person speaking halting English suddenly breaks into their own native language to tell the story better and quicker, the author would break into pictures to tell the story. Sadly though it was not such a great book storywise, things happen too suddenly and with no basis. A mean old man suddenly is a gentle genius, a father is missing and then forgotten. But--hey--it's a kid's book and the drawings are clever.

A Future Blogger

Untold Romance

In Paper Cuts, a blog put together by the NYTBR and admitedly a bit better than mine, last week on Valentine's day someone solicited from it's readership Romance found in books. The readers mention the Fountainhead (!), the Alexandria Quartet, Walden (romance of nature), Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, Lolita and even from Claire Tomalin's bio of Thomas Hardy with Hardy and his wife living completely separate lives until she dies alone in her room and he suddenly realizes he loves her, has her corpse propped up on his bed and writes mournful poetry about her for the rest of his life.

Romantic? Anyway my perverse idea of romance in books is not much better since what came to mind was John Bayley and Iris Murdoch in Elegy for Iris. Of course it is very depressing with John Bayley watching her dwindle away, but their love affair was very passionate in the begining and whatever it was, however unequal it was, it worked. It reminds me of that book by Ann Patchett about her friend Lucy Grealey Truth and Beauty where she has written it to convince you what a great person Lucy was and all you see is what a good friend she actually was to put up with the insufferable Lucy. John Bayley is competely besotted with Iris and wants you to be too, and in the end you are besotted with him, not her.

Hmm what does this say about romance for me? Well now I have another romantic entry, Untold Stories by Alan Bennett. It's a book of memoirs, thoughts, diary entries etc that he put together while going through chemo instead of writing another play. He is a wonderful writer and the first piece is on his parents and their very quiet love affair. The father was a butcher and the mother is the quiet reserved sister of two vivacious and vulgar aunties. There is something so timid and gentle about the parents and the way they cling to each other through everything, somehow they make a perfect pair and there is something very romantic about it.

When the mother suffers from mental illness the father visits her daily without fail, anxiously arriving right at the moment visitor's hours start and sitting holding her limp hand until the last moment again. There is something very beautiful and quiet in the romance of Alan Bennett's parents, much more so than the arrogance of the love affair in the Fountainhead or the dysfunctional Alexandrian Quartet tangles, and no hypocrisy like Thomas Hardy clinging to his ignored dead wife.

Stay Back in 1942, No Need to Follow Us

Elizabeth Goudge is a 1940's British writer whose books look like something I should be reading. They also look like no one has taken them out of the library in a long time. Maybe she's like an undiscovered Barbara Pym and I could have a happy time reading through her ouevre, I innocently thought. Like back in the first flush of excitement when I discovered Pym and there were like 14 more to go through. So I grabbed The Castle on the Hill and began reading. In the first frenzy of my discovery I even ordered a book of hers off Amazon, The Scent of Water. All boded well.

Alas, however, she should not be dragged forth into the next century with Barbara Pym and Angela Thirkell, let her stay in 1940's Britain where a perfectly noble and giving spinster Miss Brown can offer the elderly Mr.Birley a proposal to be his housekeeper, nurse or wife or all three, "whichever you like" when she finds out the owner of the castle where she is housekeeper is going to be living in assisted living in an apartment for the rest of his life after a bomb and taxes split the castle into bits. Instead of gratitude, he reacts with horror '...astonishment, bewilderment, mirth, dismay, and then again overwhelming the other emotions, horror.' The horror is due to the fact that she is from a different class. Miss Brown sees the horror in his face and gracefully allows him to wiggle out. He is allowed to retire unsullied by her lower caste to be tended to by a manservant while Miss Brown goes on to form an alliance with a homeless street musician who USED to be a gentleman, but was also a JEW (frequent references to the King of Israel in his presence). Not sure what social class this puts him in, but it must be ok since they get to live in the carriage house with the two absurdly named war orphans Moppet and Poppet and he takes in pupils and Miss Brown continues smocking their dresses.

Elizabeth Goudge, you can stay put.