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Dead or Alive: What Makes a Good Reading Year? – Thornfield Hall
Was 2024 a good reading year? Every year is a good reading year because I am picky-picky-picky. I don’t finish a book unless it is (a) fascinating, (b) well-written, and (c) works some kind of spell on me. You know, Girls just want to have fun! But we also are earnest. I don’t care if…
A Comic Masterpiece : Kingsley Amis’s “Difficulties with Girls” – Thornfield Hall
Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim may be the greatest academic satire of all time, and he won the Booker Prize in 1986 for The Old Devils. I recently discovered his 1988 comic classic, Difficulties with Girls, another splendid showcase for his mordant wit. This loosely-structured satire skewers the publishing business, modern poetry, marriage, adultery, psychiatry, and…
“The End of the Dream”: Philip Wylie, Literary Witness of Climate Change – Thornfield Hall
Philip Wiley Philip Wylie’s last science fiction novel, The End of the Dream (1972), ought to be a cult classic. On the other hand, if the book had attracted more readers, he might have been arrested. He was put under house arrest in 1945 after the publication of his short story, “The Paradise Crater” (1945),…
What the Freaks Gave Us: Classics, Criticism & Ecology – Thornfield Hall
Here’s what you do not know about the 1960s: no one used the word "hippie." It was meaningless, it was very TV. This media-generated term first appeared in The San Francisco Examiner in 1965 and should have evaporated. Never in conversation did anyone say “hippie.” Never did anyone identify herself as a "hippie." Some called…
Goats & Things: Christmas Gifts on the Wild Side – Thornfield Hall
Goats for Christmas? The year we did not receive our Harry & David’s Tower of Treats for Christmas we were disappointed and dumbfounded. That year, our friend decided to buy us a goat, maybe two goats, for a family in Africa, for just pennies, in our name. I believe the concomitant catalogue said the goats…
Don’t Think Twice: Hapless in Paradise – Thornfield Hall
“If I have my books and records, I’ll be all right.” I said with a lopsided smile. I was telling the optimistic side of the story. The pessimistic version was that I cried every night because I couldn’t sleep. In photos the right side of my mouth smiled higher than the left. I tried to…
The Community Center Dad – Thornfield Hall
Avoid stress by celebrating the holiday at home! In a tiny midwestern town we strolled to the community center to play ping pong after Christmas lunch. The women were cleaning up, but I followed my dad out the door. The brick building was shabby, the kind of place that does become a community center in…
Editor vs. Editor: “Office Politics,” by Wilfrid Sheed – Thornfield Hall
First, let me say that I never worked for a radical magazine like The Outsider, which, according to Gerald Howard in his preface to Wilfrid Sheed’s comic novel, Office Politics, is based on magazines such as The Nation, Dissent, and The New York Review of Books. When I worked in an office, I never noticed…
Dreaming in Latin – Thornfield Hall
If you dream in Latin, it means (a) you have memorized too much Virgil, (b) you fell asleep over Robert Harris’s Imperium, the first novel in a trilogy about Cicero, or (c) you are almost ill over the violence in an obscure epic poem by Valerius Flaccus, I was lucky to find a Latin copy…
Does Gender Matter? And The Strangest Book I’ve Read This Year – Thornfield Hall
Change is inevitable. So they say. At this point, near the winter solstice, on a cold, gloomy, short day, tucked under a quilt, I look over my book journal and make a discovery: I no longer care about the writer’s gender. Gender was an important literary issue before women busted into the canon in the…
Dreaming in Latin, 2: Why We Need New Translations – Thornfield Hall
There is nothing like an obscure Roman poet to curl up with on a dark winter day. I have been reading Valerius Flaccus, a poet seldom read even by Latinists. Very little is known about Valerius Flaccus. Quintilian mentions a writer of that name who died in 95 CE. He writes, "We have recently lost…
Great Reads of 2024: Something for Everybody – Thornfield Hall
I have read many remarkable books this year, too many to list, but here are five favorites. At our house we find NYRB Classics irresistible. I belong to the NYRB Classics Book Club, which sends me a new book every month. Talk about great 20th century literature: I really enjoyed Dino Buzzati’s The Singularity, and…
Great Reads of 2024: Something for Everybody – Thornfield Hall
I have read many remarkable books this year, too many to list, but here are five favorites. At our house we find NYRB Classics irresistible. I belong to the NYRB Classics Book Club, which sends me a new book every month. Talk about great 20th century literature: I really enjoyed Dino Buzzati’s The Singularity, and…
Don’t Think Twice: Hapless in Paradise – Thornfield Hall
“If I have my books and records, I’ll be all right.” I said with a lopsided smile. I was telling the optimistic side of the story. The pessimistic version was that I cried every night because I couldn’t sleep. In photos the right side of my mouth smiled higher than the left. I tried to…
Does Gender Matter? And The Strangest Book I’ve Read This Year – Thornfield Hall
Change is inevitable. So they say. At this point, near the winter solstice, on a cold, gloomy, short day, tucked under a quilt, I look over my book journal and make a discovery: I no longer care about the writer’s gender. Gender was an important literary issue before women busted into the canon in the…
The Community Center Dad – Thornfield Hall
Avoid stress by celebrating the holiday at home! In a tiny midwestern town we strolled to the community center to play ping pong after Christmas lunch. The women were cleaning up, but I followed my dad out the door. The brick building was shabby, the kind of place that does become a community center in…
Goats & Things: Christmas Gifts on the Wild Side – Thornfield Hall
Goats for Christmas? The year we did not receive our Harry & David’s Tower of Treats for Christmas we were disappointed and dumbfounded. That year, our friend decided to buy us a goat, maybe two goats, for a family in Africa, for just pennies, in our name. I believe the concomitant catalogue said the goats…
What the Freaks Gave Us: Classics, Criticism & Ecology – Thornfield Hall
Here’s what you do not know about the 1960s: no one used the word "hippie." It was meaningless, it was very TV. This media-generated term first appeared in The San Francisco Examiner in 1965 and should have evaporated. Never in conversation did anyone say “hippie.” Never did anyone identify herself as a "hippie." Some called…
Editor vs. Editor: “Office Politics,” by Wilfrid Sheed – Thornfield Hall
First, let me say that I never worked for a radical magazine like The Outsider, which, according to Gerald Howard in his preface to Wilfrid Sheed’s comic novel, Office Politics, is based on magazines such as The Nation, Dissent, and The New York Review of Books. When I worked in an office, I never noticed…
“The End of the Dream”: Philip Wylie, Literary Witness of Climate Change – Thornfield Hall
Philip Wiley Philip Wylie’s last science fiction novel, The End of the Dream (1972), ought to be a cult classic. On the other hand, if the book had attracted more readers, he might have been arrested. He was put under house arrest in 1945 after the publication of his short story, “The Paradise Crater” (1945),…
Dreaming in Latin, 2: Why We Need New Translations – Thornfield Hall
There is nothing like an obscure Roman poet to curl up with on a dark winter day. I have been reading Valerius Flaccus, a poet seldom read even by Latinists. Very little is known about Valerius Flaccus. Quintilian mentions a writer of that name who died in 95 CE. He writes, "We have recently lost…
Dreaming in Latin – Thornfield Hall
If you dream in Latin, it means (a) you have memorized too much Virgil, (b) you fell asleep over Robert Harris’s Imperium, the first novel in a trilogy about Cicero, or (c) you are almost ill over the violence in an obscure epic poem by Valerius Flaccus, I was lucky to find a Latin copy…
A Father’s Cruelty: Dickens’s “Dombey and Son” – Thornfield Hall
“My dear Paul! He’s quite a Dombey!” I love Dickens's seventh novel, Dombey and Son, an inter-class portrait of characters connected, however distantly, to Mr. Dombey, the rich, glacially-cold owner of Dombey and Son. Dickens’ wit and satire radiate from the axis of Mr. Dombey’s draconian manners. Dombey is one of Dickens's most misogynist characters,…
A White Thanksgiving – Thornfield Hall
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and a lovely snowfall enhances it, but even white Christmases are rare. In December, there used to be heaps of snow dumped at intersections by snowplows. Not till January nowadays. Still, I remember one “white Thanksgiving” when there was a foot of snow. The sky was beautifully white, nature in…
Willa Cather’s Peers: Neglected Midwestern Women Writers – Thornfield Hall
If asked to list midwestern women writers of the early 20th century, you might be perplexed momentarily. Then you remember Willa Cather, the Pulitzer Prize winner, and the effect of her brilliant novels on generations of women. Her masterpieces, A Lost Lady, The Professor's House, and Lucy Gayheart, are incomparable, deftly mixing tragedy and humor.…
THE THORNFIELD HALL NEWSLETTER – Thornfield Hall
November/December 2024, Issue 3 THE HOLIDAY SHOPPING & READING GUIDE: Glam Literary Prize Lists and Great Reads Happy Capitalism! You may despise capitalist Christmas shopping, but you certainly can luxuriate in holiday reading. While the turkey is in the oven, peruse a gripping 87th Precinct mystery by Ed McBain, and after you've baked a pie…
The Gentle Comedy As Antidepressant: Margery Sharp’s “The Foolish Gentlewoman” – Thornfield Hall
A critic for The New York Times Book Review recommended Margery Sharp’s Cluny Brown (1944), a comic novel about a plumber’s daughter who refuses to know her place. He suggested it might help you “stiffen your spine in the face of what and whoever wants to stifle your spirit…” Margery Sharp is not typical NYTBR…
The Great Autograph Series: Oscar Hijuelos to Kat – Thornfield Hall
The Great Autograph Series will consist of occasional posts on autographed books. I can't actually remember which of my books are autographed, but I do come upon them occasionally. Let me start with Oscar Hijuelos, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. He kindly autographed my copy…
My 1995 Interview with Oscar Hijuelos – Thornfield Hall
Oscar Hijuelos: “I consider myself a hip kind of guy with old-fashioned values.” It’s 4:30 in the afternoon and Oscar Hijuelos hasn’t had lunch. Passing through town on a tour to promote his novel, Mr. Ives’ Christmas, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author skipped lunch to tour the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. “A…
To Marmee with Love: The Origins of Mother Words – Thornfield Hall
Little Women (1949) I nicknamed my mother Marmee after we went to a matinee at the second-or-third-or tenth-run theater to see the 1949 film of Little Women. The mother in the movie (Mary Astor) was called Marmee. “Marmee,” I asked "can we go buy the book?" "I've got it at home." Then she looked at…
Dreaming with Neanderthals: Rachel Kushner’s “Creation Lake” – Thornfield Hall
Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said.He said they were prone to addiction, too, and especially smoking. – “Creation Lake” by Rachel Kushner The cold-blooded narrator of Creation Lake, a literary thriller nominated for the Booker Prize and the National Book Award, is a failed government spy, now working as an industrial spy. Sadie Smith,…
Forces of Chaos and Anarchy: The Jefferson Airplane, 1969 – Thornfield Hall
The day after the Woodstock musical festival in 1969, the Jefferson Airplane performed two songs on the Dick Cavett Show. What I find touching about their rendition of “We Can Be Together” is that they seem to be in dialogue with one other, standing close together, sometimes with their back to the audience, as if…
Waiting for the Biography: The World without Doris Lessing – Thornfield Hall
When Doris Lessing died in 2013, I had a hard time imagining a world without her. She was versatile and original and I always wanted to see what she had to say. Now there would be no new books. She had a great influence on my generation, probably even more so on the Second Wave…
Election Blues: Women in the 21st Century – Thornfield Hall
I was looking for a movie at YouTube when the ad popped up: Kamala Harris’s Concession Speech Live. I clicked on the video. Well, the speech was “live” in the sense that I was 45 minutes early. That is the way with concession speeches. No one ever knows exactly what time the candidate will appear.…
Another Day in X City: “The Forsyte Saga” & The Election – Thornfield Hall
The Nobel Prize winner John Galsworthy (1867-1933) is, to my mind, one of the greatest English writers of the 20th century. I gasp with admiration over The Forsyte Saga, by which I mean all three Forsyte trilogies, the others being A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter. Galsworthy is not exactly forgotten - there…
How “Mr. Deeds ” Restored My Mojo – Thornfield Hall
Gary Cooper (Mr. Deeds) and Jean Arthur (Babe Bennett) in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town Don't talk to mirrors. No good will come of it. During a recent draggy illness, I talked deliriously to the mirror. “How the f--- did this happen?” I was startled by the new lines on my face. After a month…
In Which I Read George Gissing’s “The Emancipated” – Thornfield Hall
George Gissing’s eighth novel, The Emancipated, is moderately entertaining, but I recommend it only to Gissing fans. There are too many characters, the whole book briefly disintegrates in the middle, and though Gissing gets a second wind I couldn’t decide whether I liked this or not. Still, there are pleasures to reading The Emancipated. The…
If I’m Not Ms. Manners, Why Are You So Rude? – Thornfield Hall
Well, the good old days may not returnAnd the rocks might melt and the sea may burn – Tom Petty Do you long for your vinyl record collection? I left my vinyl at Mom’s when I moved out. And then a sibling took them, which was fine. By that time I lived halfway across the…
The Arbiter of Taste: Do’s and Don’t’s ln Your Neighborhood – Thornfield Hall
Petronius (Leo Genn), Nero' Arbiter of Taste, and Nero (Peter Untinov) in the 1951 movie Quo Vadis “Yeah, yeah, we have everything here. It’s all about location,” I say cheerily. Despite my boosterish declaration, I am dismayed by a certain lack of decorum. Only a few years ago, you would take walks and admire the…