aka Grasshopper

The word persuasion appears thirteen times in Jane Austen's first novel, Sense and Sensibility. It appears only seven times in her last novel, although her brother Henry, who published it posthumously, chose it as the title. I'm guessing that Austen might have objected to this because her novel is about so much more than the merits and demerits of pliability as a characteristic. I was struck by many things as I read this poolside in Delray Beach, Florida- a Twenty-First Century Bath. As always, Miss Austen is her wickedly sardonic self, but the tone of the novel seems both elegiac and radical. Her heroine, Anne Elliot has good sense, a kind heart, a delicate, fading beauty...and the worst relatives ever imagined! Her widowed father, a baronet, and her two sisters are vain, vapid narcissists without an ounce of sense between them. Sir Walter is a piece of work, a preening peacock who is as mean-spirited as he is stupid, having squandered the family fortune. Austen is no friend to the nobility - Lady Catherine de Bourgh and Lady Bertram are famous objects of her derision - but no one is as despicable as Sir Walter Elliot, or as duplicitous as his cousin and eventual heir, William Elliot. She has great fun mocking them, but she also reminds us that poor Anne must suffer embarrassment for them, humiliation by them and the loss of her beloved home because of them.

This book has captured the hearts and minds of readers and it has been acclaimed as the novel Charles Dickens should have written. As valid a comparison as that may be, it also reminds me of novels written by the Toms-Hardy, Wolfe, and especially that old voyeur, Peeping. Okay Peeping Tom wasn't a writer but according to the legend he gawked at Godiva as she preened in all her naked glory. Faber invites us to indulge our own voyeuristic fantasies as he deconstructs the rigid mores of Victorian society. Even if you don't have an insatiable interest in other people's business, it's hard to look away as he strips bare the passions, pretensions, and peccadillos of men and women who are bound by a hypocritical belief system and a highly stratified - but irrational - code of behavior. The really interesting stuff is happening behind closed doors. Like a disgruntled housemaid who hopes to catch the gentry misbehaving by surreptitiously peering through keyholes, we stare into a multitude of keyholes: at derelict flophouses, respectable suburban villas, seaside resorts - even a posh finishing school for proper young ladies.

I've never been to Maine. What I knew about it was shaped by a Doris Day movie from the 1950's about a plucky widow whose lobster business is almost ruined by a greedy railroad Titan, and by watching the Bush Presidents cavorting with their kinfolk in Kennebunkport. So until I started reading novels by Elizabeth Strout, the only Maine I knew was a seaside play land for WASP aristocrats and the people who fed them their lobster. Her debut novel,Amy and Isabelle, explores the tensions between a working-class mother and her adolescent daughter over the course of a long, hot, summer. The Pulitzer Prize winning, Olive Kitteridge, is a collection of short stories set in another town in Maine, which are loosely connected by the title character, a no-nonsense high school teacher with parenting issues. Family struggles are at the center of The Burgess Boys also, but Strout sets much of the action in Park Slope, Brooklyn and the families in distress include Somali refugees who have been lured to Maine as part of a re-population effort. 

I need to pay more attention to openings when I read, but I still managed to get 11 correct.

I've read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn many times. First as a teenager, then as a young man in college and until last week, as a thirty-something adult. Each reading brought new insights about Twain's take on the American experience. He created unforgettable and timeless characters, the likes of whom still exist from sea to shining sea. Drifting down the Mississippi River with Huck and Jim is a sublime experience. Twain captures the natural beauty and serenity of the river and uses it as a powerful metaphor for their troubled lives. Both are fleeing civilization because it represents an intolerable set of rules; Huck's life has been shaped by poverty, cruelty and neglect and Jim is an escaped slave. Huck, though still a boy, is an astute observer and social critic and Jim becomes the first and only adult who warrants his respect and loves him unconditionally. 

Cats feed our creativity...

I hope I didn't post this already. If I did, I'll have to lay off the booze for a while ;-)