The idea of travel always seems attractive, doesn’t it? To leave behind our humdrum, everyday world and enjoy life as a tourist. To picture ourselves in an exotic environment and perhaps, be transformed by our time in that place? Fortunes have been made over the years in books on this subject: A Year in Provence; Eat, Pray, Love and Under the Tuscan Sun are just three examples. But the fact is, wherever we go, we take ourselves with us and most travelers come back home. Lucy Honeychurch would be the first person to tell you that. Lucy is one of those Edwardian, English girls who will tell you real travel isn’t the flight of fancy you’d imagine. She’s supposedly on this trip to Italy, to pick up some of the culture and sophistication of the continent but she hardly allowed within speaking distance of anyone truly Italian. Her irritating, old-maid cousin is always at her side, the hotel’s land-lady has a cockney accent and all the other guests there are English as well. To make things worse, the reservations got mixed up and she didn’t get A Room With a View. That’s the opening situation in E. M Forster’s story…
He was in my very first high school class, a wiry, little guy behind a lectern, with gravity-defying hair and feverish-looking eyes. He wasn’t much taller than the lectern and it probably weighed more than he did. The stranger stared at us briefly before introducing himself as Mr. S___, taking the roll and passing out Literature text books. “Another first-year teacher,” I thought with dismay,”this class will eat him alive.” Then the little man barked out an order and half the class jumped. For a small man, this guy’s voice was loud. “Mr. So-and-So” he boomed at one of the better-behaved boys in class, “What have you got there? Bring it to me.” The poor kid named slunk his way toward the front of the class while I cowered in my seat and revised my opinion of the instructor. This guy would control the class but I didn’t like him and doubted if I’d learn much from him either. Little did I know I was facing the greatest teacher I’ve ever meet. Mr. S. taught my favorite subject, English, but I never would have told him something that personal. The man was far too intimidating. We were in an era…
Families are such funny things. Find a man in his late thirties or early forties surrounded by his kids. Around them, he is the paterfamilias. The Father. The Ultimate Authority (besides Mom). Now transfer him to his family of origin and watch him interact with them. There he’s not recognized as a dad but as a brother or child and the definition has an effect on his personality. His air of authority is gone. Maybe an old squabble is raked up with a sibling. If his children are watching, they have a rare glimpse of their Dad as a boy, momentarily spinning like an electron from their immediate family into the family of their grandparents. Around the molecules of generations, Dad becomes a covelant bond. As a writer, Anne Tyler knows this better than most and the idea stands out in her novel, A Spool of Blue Thread. This is the story of the Whitshanks, another eccentric Baltimore family (Anne is the literary patron saint of both the city and eccentric families) with an recurring, dynamic. Each generation has one member with the drive to attain a goal above their expectations even though success will not make them happy. Every…
The relationship between writers and readers is an odd one. The writer sits in a garret (or on the top of Mount Parnassus, depending on your point of view) and labors to create a work of lasting value. If it’s good enough and all the stars align, the readers let the work of an author’s imagination into their own and reward the author with praise, treasure and enough allegiance to read writer’s next story, as long as the author keeps the the writer-reader contract. What, you thought what I just described was the writer-reader contract? Au contrair, mes amis! That is merely the description. The writer-reader contract is an old and long one that is modified only as literature evolves. One of the basic tenets of this implied agreement is that, however complex the plot or intricate the fictional universe in the story is, the author knows everything that is going on in the story and can explain how this imaginary world makes sense. For example: Like most of the reading planet, I adored J. K. Rowling’s fantastic Harry Potter series. It’s a mammoth accomplishment and a brilliantly planned series. Elements of the entire saga start appearing immediately although their…
There’s a moment in Alan Bennett’s play, The History Boys when an exasperated (female) teacher declares: “History is a commentary on the various and continuing incapabilities of men. What is history? History is women following behind…with a bucket.” The Cover I can’t help but wonder if Jane Hardstaff had this quote in mind when she wrote her excellent children’s novel, The Executioner’s Daughter. It may be fiction, but our heroine is forced to trudge through the disasters of history and scoop up the mess left behind with her basket. Meet Moss, an eleven-year-old girl and permanent resident of The Tower of London. On good days, her father is the blacksmith in the tower, creating and repairing any piece of metal needed for Henry VIII’s court and government and Moss stays in the forge. On bad days, execution days, her father wields the ax. If judicial murder and the blood lust of the crowd aren’t bad enough, Moss has be present at each death. Her job is to stand below the executioner’s block and catch the prisoner’s head in her basket once her father cuts it off. One execution would be enough to traumatize a child but because of the King’s battle…