Photos of Muriel Spark's Edinburgh

In anticipation of the commencement tomorrow of the Slaves of Golconda discussion of Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, here are a few photos from my recent trip to Edinburgh.



“I was born in Edinburgh, at 160 Bruntsfield Place, the Morningside District, in 1918.” (Muriel Spark, Curriculum Vitae)



“From where I lived the school was a ten-minute walk through avenues of tall trees.” (Muriel Spark, Curriculum Vitae)



“I spent twelve years at Gillespie’s, the most formative years of my life, and in many ways the most fortunate for a future writer.” (Muriel Spark, Curriculum Vitae)



“They were crossing the meadows, a gusty expanse of common land, glaring green under the snowy sky. Their destination was the Old Town, for Miss Brodie had said they should see where history had been lived; and their route had brought them to the Middle Meadow Walk.” (Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)




“They approached the Old Town which none of the girls had properly seen before, because none of their parents was so historically minded as to be moved to conduct their daughters into the reeking network of slums which the Old Town constituted in those years.”(Muriel Spark, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie)



For my thoughts on The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, click here.

Harry Potter Imperatives

I’ve been following the Harry Potter Must Die/Harry Potter Must Live debate with mounting irritation. I get the fun of the fan speculation about what will happen in the final volume and I have no problem with J.K. Rowling catering to that by dropping a few hints. But I’m frankly appalled at literary folk issuing imperatives to Rowling, particularly when the spectre of “letting down her fans” is invoked. She’s the author. It’s her book. Let her write the damn thing the way she thinks it ought to be written. We can chew over our responses to what she’s done after we’ve read it. I realize that much of the commentary is intended to be in fun. But even in jest the idea of prescribing how an author ought to proceed with a work-in-progress raises my hackles.

Virginia Woolf on the Responsibilities of Readers

Virginia Woolf on the Responsibilities of Readers:

[I]f to read a book as it should be read calls for the rarest qualities of imagination, insight, and judgment, you may perhaps conclude that literature is a very complex art and that it is unlikely that we shall be able, even after a lifetime of reading, to make any valuable contribution to its criticism. We must remain readers; we shall not put on the further glory that belongs to those rare beings who are also critics. But still we have our responsibilities as readers and even our importance. The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal into the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work. An influence is created which tells upon them even if it never finds its way into print. And that influence, if it were well instructed, vigorous and individual and sincere, might be of great value now when criticism is necessarily in abeyance; when books pass in review like the procession of animals in a shooting gallery, and the critic has only one second in which to load and aim and shoot and may well be pardoned if he mistakes rabbits for tigers, eagles for barndoor fowls, or misses altogether and wastes his shot upon some peaceful cow grazing in a further field. If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people reading for the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching.

From Virginia Woolf, “How Should One Read a Book?” (1926).

Anne or Emily?

I’m back home from the L.M. Montgomery conference but I’ve got plenty left to say about it. So expect a few more posts on the subject over the next couple of days, beginning with this one.

The second keynote speech of the conference, “Anne, Emily and the Finnish Women,” was delivered by Suvi Ahola and Satu Koskimies. They spoke about an anthology of Finnish reading experiences of Montgomery’s Anne and Emily books that they had co-edited titled The Girls of New Moon and Green Gables. Montgomery’s books have been widely read in Finnish translation since the 1920s and the call for contributions to the anthology elicited a vast array of responses. All but one of the contributors are female, but in other respects they are a diverse lot. They range in age from eleven to eighty; some are academics but most are general readers; the majority are employed as teachers or writers but many other occupations are represented as well.

The anthology sounds fascinating and I wish that it was available in English. Even apart from the Montgomery connection, I love the idea of such a book devoted to exploring reading experiences. I was very interested in the discussion of the translation of Montgomery’s books into Finnish and also of their translation into Finnish culture. But I was struck when the contents of the anthology were described by the extent to which I, and others in attendance at the conference, could relate to the responses of this group of Finnish women to Mongomery’s books.

Many of those who answered the call for contributions, and readers of the anthology once it was published, responded with gratitude to the legitimation that the project offered. Some had been a bit ashamed of their deep connection to, and particularly their continued adult reading of, these books classified as being for children. It was reassuring to them be “given permission” to continue to enjoy the books, to have them validated as “good literature” and even “world literature.”

Linked to the foregoing is the conflicted relationship many readers had to the books, trying to reconcile their wholesale love for the books as children with their adult responses to many aspects of them that they could no longer accept. Did their continued fondness for the books signal a reactionary nostalgia? How could this be reconciled with their identities as 21st century Finnish feminists? Ultimately, for many, the point at which their lives as 21st century Finnish women intersected with those of Montgomery's turn-of-the-last-century Canadian characters was in the continued need to make difficult choices in relation to love, marriage, children, and career ambitions.

One pervasive feature of the anthology which elicited chuckles of recognition from the audience when described to us was the passionate identification of contributors with either Anne or Emily, but almost never both. If you were a Montgomery fan as a child, which was it for you? Anne or Emily? I was an Emily girl myself. I strongly identified with her literary ambitions, but also with her pride, her independence, and her reserve. It was Emily’s early efforts to get her poems and stories published that first emboldened me to send mine away to magazines. Oddly, though, I have not revisited the Emily books as an adult. Getting back to the point about the conflicted relationships we may have as adults with books we loved as children, I’m not sure whether I fear that the books will have lost their power for me or that they will have retained it. I think perhaps now I’m prepared to venture back into them and find out.

Adele Wiseman on Aiming High

Adele Wiseman on aiming high:

In my own work, which has for me the force of a vocation, to aim for other than the highest would be not only self-destructive but worse, boring. To aim for and miss the highest is only failure. Not to aim for the highest is betrayal.

From “Memoirs of a Book-Molesting Childhood” (1987).

Reading Well in Charlottetown

I had a happy browse this evening in The Reading Well Bookstore. Tucked away in an historic building on Water Street, it offers an eclectic mix of new and used books with an emphasis on works by local authors. The selection is excellent and the ambiance everything one hopes for in an indie bookstore. There were at least ten books that I wanted, but I exercised a bit of restraint and came away with just two: The Ego is Always at the Wheel: Bagatelles by Delmore Schwartz, and The Diary of James Schuyler.

I find Delmore Schwartz’s work to be wildly uneven. His “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities” is possibly the best short story I've ever read. His “The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me” is one of my all-time favourite poems. Others of his stories and poems leave me indifferent. But if he's that good when he's good, it's easy to overlook the dross. The Ego is Always at the Wheel is a collection of short personal essays that were collected together and published as a book only after his death. In the foreword, editor Robert Phillips describes them as “light-hearted and mocking views of the poet himself, of the literary world, and of the world-at-large.” I anticipate that there will be at least a few gems among them.

The Diary of James Schuyler is a book that I persist in thinking I already own despite the fact that I can never find it on my bookshelves. I suspect that the day I bought Schuyler's Collected Poems I almost bought the diary as well, then in a moment of misplaced economy left it behind at the till. In any event, I definitely have a copy now. If it proves to be a duplicate, I’m quite sure that one of my pals will gladly take it off my hands.

It occurs to me that putting these together with last week’s purchase of Auden’s The Dyer’s Hand, I’m on a bit of a prose-by-poets binge.

Taking Off the Rose-Coloured Glasses

This morning’s keynote address by Margaret Anne Doody was wonderful. Anyone who has read Lucy Maud Montgomery’s journals, particularly the later ones, knows that she was not all sweetness and light. The journals reveal the many difficult, sometimes tragic, events that she endured over the course of her life. They also reveal some disquieting attitudes that she held and disturbing behaviour that she engaged in. When I saw that the title of Doody’s address was “Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Darker Side” I expected a biographical angle.

Not so. Doody focused squarely on Montgomery’s fiction. It’s true that Montgomery created the terminally optimistic Anne, that she was given to rapturous descriptions of nature, and that she acceded to the romantic convention of a happy ending every time. But there is much more going on in her books, not just under the surface but right out in the open. Doody pointed out that Montgomery’s books are rife with murder, suicide, alcoholism, poverty, child abuse, and psychological torment. Montgomery’s characters commonly exhibit malice, cruelty, jealousy, and obsession. “Emotional incest” is one of her key themes. Doody provided many choice quotations to back up these assertions and we all nodded (and sometimes laughed — plenty of black humour in Montgomery) in recognition.

Why then is Montgomery persistently dismissed as a writer who viewed the world “through rose-coloured glasses”? It’s quite clear from the foregoing that she held few illusions about the ills of the world and that she generally did not shield her characters from them. Perhaps it’s the readers who are wearing the rose-coloured glasses, particularly if our impressions of Montgomery’s work are mediated by nostalgia about our childhood reading or by sanitized television and movie versions of her heroines. I recommend taking off the rose-coloured glasses and giving her fiction another look.

A Different Side of L.M. Montgomery

The house in the photo above is the one on which L.M. Montgomery modelled Green Gables, and I’m off to Prince Edward Island to have another look at it. Of course, there’s much more to PEI than its association with Montgomery and her creations. It’s the birthplace of at least one other literary giant: Milton Acorn, known throughout Canada as “the people’s poet.” Many talented contemporary Canadian writers make their home there, for example, J.J. Steinfeld. It’s even home to one of my favourite fictional poets, young Lawrence Campbell, narrator of Lynn Coady’s excellent novel Mean Boy. And outside the literary realm, there’s that whole cradle of Canadian confederation business.

However, Montgomery is the draw for me this time around. Over the next couple of days I’ll be attending a conference titled Storm and Dissonance: L.M. Montgomery and Conflict. I look forward to hearing presentations with such tantalizing titles as “The Darker Side of L.M. Montgomery,” and “Projecting Dissonance: The Real and Virtual Landscapes in Anne of Green Gables and Dracula.” And to making a presentation of my own which marks a bit of a departure in my academic work.

Time and internet access permitting, I’ll check in with occasional bulletins from the conference. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with an entry from Montgomery’s journals, dated February 1922, to whet your appetite. This is hardly scandalous, but perhaps not what you expected from the author of Anne of Green Gables:

[Captain Smith] was here both Saturday and Sunday nights and we spent both evenings talking of a thousand subjects. It is such a delight to have a real conversation with a companion of intellect and sympathy. Captain Smith is one of the few people I have met with whom I can discuss with absolute frankness, any and every subject, even the delicate ones of sex. Sex is to men and women one of the most vital subjects in the world—perhaps the most vital subject since our total existence is based on and centres around it. Yet with how few, even of women, can this vital subject be frankly and intelligently discussed. It is so overlaid with conventions, inhibitions and taboos that it is almost impossible for anyone to see it as it really is.

(From The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery, Volume III: 1921-1929.)

Small Press Spotlight

There was a lot of talk at the BookExpo Canada Conference about the branding of books and the branding of authors. But there appeared to be general agreement among the various panellists that, at this point in time, the branding of publishers is a dead end.

Kevin Smokler, in a presentation titled “Brand New World,” offered some reasons for this. He listed trust as the key ingredient of a successful brand and asserted that trust can’t be created from the top down. Contemporary readers don’t trust that a book is a good one simply because an established publisher says so. Indeed, just as in politics, in the contemporary marketplace there’s a general attitude of suspicion toward large institutions and their pronouncements. Readers are much more likely to trust word-of-mouth recommendations from unofficial sources than to accept the word from on high.

Carol Fitzgerald took a similar line. In a breakout session, she asked what the success of The Da Vinci Code had done for Doubleday. Certainly it was good for their bottom line, but had it raised their profile? Apparently, most readers, even devoted fans of the book, when asked couldn’t name the publisher.

At least as far as large, mainstream publishers are concerned, I think I’m inclined to agree. Consumers trust them to the extent that they’re more likely to assume a baseline level of quality in a book from an established publisher than to take a chance on a self-published book. But I don’t think that there are many readers who, in trying to decide which of two books to purchase, will make their selection based on the fact that they prefer Random House to HarperCollins. Indeed, in an industry rife with takeovers and mergers, often two apparently distinct publishers turn out to be part of the same company anyway.

But I don’t think that the same is true of small/indie presses. By definition, small presses have small publishing programs. With discrete, carefully chosen lists, it’s possible for presses to maintain consistency both in quality and in editorial vision. Certainly there are a number of small presses whose books so consistently impress me that I’m willing to pick up any book that bears one of their logos on its spine and give it a chance regardless of whether I’ve heard anything about the book or the author.

This is something that small presses could capitalize on more. Indeed, I think that this is precisely what a number of enterprising small/indie presses are doing with the introduction of subscription programs, for example, BookThug in Canada, and soft skull and clear cut press in the U.S.

With all of this in mind, I’m launching a new feature on this blog called “Small Press Spotlight.” At least once per month, I’ll shine the spotlight on a different small/indie press whose books I think deserve your attention. I’ll tell you a bit about the history of the press and, where editors are willing to talk to me, its editorial vision. Then I’ll highlight three or four recent titles that have convinced me that any book the press publishes is worth a look.

Watch for the first instalment of “Small Press Spotlight” next week. The first few that I’ve got lined up focus on Canadian small presses that I’ve long known and loved. I’m always willing to be seduced by a new press though, so if there’s one out there whose books you think I ought to be reading and writing about, please let me know in the comments section or via the Email address on the sidebar.

Interviews of Bloggers at Box of Books

Ella of Box of Books is away on vacation, but she did some advance work to ensure that her blog would keep buzzing in her absence. She interviewed several fellow litbloggers and will post those interviews, one per day, beginning today and continuing until July 1st. The first interview is of me. Click here to read it, and keep checking back at Box of Books for the others. Over the next two weeks I expect to learn more about some of my favourite litbloggers and perhaps to encounter some new ones.