Posts Tagged ‘books’

Happy National Library Week!  In light of that happy event and my Friday appearance at the Boulder Book Store’s Revival of the Classics event, I’ve got classics on the mind.

When people hear that The Heroine’s Bookshelf deals with “classic” authors and books, there are two normal reactions:  the thrilled intake of breath…or the heaving, miserable sigh.  You know the one.  It’s the sigh that says “oh, GOD, here we go again.  She’s going to force a bunch of dowdy, out-of-date, unreadable yet somehow supposedly relevant trash down my throat.”  You can almost hear the death rattle.

To this I usually say something like “RELAX!  Books can’t bite!”, which is true.

But there’s more to the story.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. - Dorothy Parker

Blame terrible high school English teachers or The Academy or what you will, classics have a bad reputation these days.  Somehow, over time, living books got thrown in the vast garbage dump of memory, acquiring all of the sour non-appeal of books unread, unwanted, and unloved.  And while I have a teensy-tiny problem with the idea of naming an entire group of books “classic” while leaving another set of books entirely out of the equation, I don’t think classics are half bad.

Yes, this is coming from someone who read Jane Eyre for the first time at the tender, too-young age of 8.

But it’s also coming from someone who is frustrated with the status quo.

The accepted definition of classic seems to go something like this:

Old + Boring + Critically Acclaimed + [bonus points if written by a man] = CLASSIC

Yeah.  Not so much. Who says a book has to be old and boring to be classic?

I propose that we reverse the paradigm…shake things up a bit…give credit where credit is due.  I’d like to reframe classic as something that matters and excites.  After all, that’s how I think of my favorite books.

In the world of Erin, CLASSIC = Timeless + Fearless + Engaging.  This paradigm looks for relevance and signs of life.  It also renders books such as Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (a supposed Classic we are all told we must read and love) non-classic, while elevating a book like Jacqueline Susanne’s deliciously trashy Valley of the Dolls to Classic status.  And I’m at peace with that.

So…what do you think of my formula?  Can a classic be new, “trashy,” or non-canonically accepted? Let me know.

Cathy Earnshaw as imagined by the incomparable Fritz Eichenberg.

Isn’t there something amazing about the power of a great adjective?  Not a gratuitious one, or a self-indulgent one…I’m talking those words that grab you at the throat and put a twinkle (or a tear) in your eye.

Take the word “incorrigible.”  There’s a reason Stephanie Burgis‘s book is so well-anticipated stateside…it has an immediately evocative title!  Then there’s Scarlett, who is described as “arresting,” “gallant,” and “forward” at turns.  And then there’s a heroine who’s been on my mind lately, not least of all because she challenges and often upsets me…Cathy Earnshaw of Wuthering Heights:

A wild, wicked slip she was… At fifteen she was the queen of the countryside; she had no peer; and she did turn out a haughty, headstrong creature!

Would we feel as tempted and as threatened by Cathy if it weren’t for Emily Brontë’s carefully-selected descriptors?

So tell me…what are your favorite words these days?  What descriptions make you drool (or drive you mad)?

P.S. – Isn’t it appropriate that Kat won Stephanie’s copy of Kat, Incorrigible?  I think so.

One of the questions I get asked most often is “I’m a fan of [insert author here].  What books and resources should I read to find out more?”

When I wrote The Heroine’s Bookshelf, I very deliberately decided to make the book as accessible as possible…which meant excluding a bibliography or academic footnotes.  However, the history major in me demanded a very rigorous research process, and I consulted multiple books and primary sources for each chapter.

Rather than bore you with my long, snarled list of primary sources and books, I’d like to recommend some great further reading to serve as an entree into the lives of my literary heroines.  Please bear in mind that I could have written an entire book on the research materials alone, so this represents a very truncated list!

Jane Austen: If you’re looking for a comprehensive guide to all things Jane, by all means start at The Republic of Pemberley’s most impressive Selective Jane Austen Bibliography.  Great starting places include Jane’s Fame:  How Jane Austen Conquered the World by Claire Harman and A Memoir of Jane Austen: And Other Family Recollections, by James Edward Austen-Leigh, a great period document that informs Jane bios to this day.

Zora Neale Hurston: Nobody wrote about Zora’s life quite as well as Zora herself, notably in Dust Tracks on a Road, but I particularly enjoyed Valerie Boyd’s Wrapped In Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston and Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit by Deborah G. Plant.

Lucy Maud Montgomery: Maud scholarship is making huge strides, thanks in part to the L.M. Montgomery Institute and the Lucy Maud Montgomery Literary Society.  I found true inspiration and great information in Irene Gammel’s Looking for Anne of Green Gables, Mary Henley Rubio’s Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings, and the lovely Annotated Anne of Green Gables edited by Wendy Elizabeth Barry, Margaret Anne Doody, and Mary Doody Jones and published in a gorgeous edition by the Oxford University Press.

Alice Walker: Alice Walker is still living out her own biography.  I enjoyed Alice Walker: A Life by Evelyn C. White and Alice Walker: Critical perspectives past and present, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and K.A. Appiah.

Betty Smith: I was disappointed at the dearth of biography on this amazing figure of literature, and hope that more authors take up the call to document Betty’s life in greater detail.  That said, I devoured Valerie Raleigh Yow’s Betty Smith: Life of the Author of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and found Carol Siri Johnson’s online dissertation on Betty Smith to be quite helpful.

Colette: Though she was a formidable, fascinating figure indeed, Americans don’t tend to pay too much attention to Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, and many of her biographies are out of print.  I enjoyed Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman and found interesting information in Michele Sarde’s Colette and Colette: A Life by Herbert R. Lottman.  If anything, any book on Colette is worth peeking into for ravishing photos of the famously beautiful Colette!

Margaret Mitchell: Peggy Mitchell was notoriously…unreliable when it came to relating her own biography.  That said, Ellen Firsching Brown and John Wiley have done a stunning job with their recently-released Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller’s Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood. Darden Asbury Pyron’s Southern Daughter is an entertaining starting point for more biography on Peg as opposed to the book for which she is famous.

Harper Lee: Nelle was the only other living author featured in my book, and she is notoriously private about her life to the chagrin of her fans and the detriment of her biographers.  That said, it is hard to find a biography as lovingly researched and thorough as Charles J. Sheilds’s Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee.

Laura Ingalls Wilder: Laura’s another writer who is currently undergoing a scholarship renaissance, helped along by the amazing folks at Beyond Little House and Laurati who are doing interesting work nationwide and even worldwide.  I was particularly entranced by Laura Ingalls Wilder: A Writer’s Life by Pamela Smith Hill, which is hands-down my favorite Laura biography.  Other great bios include John E. Miller’s Becoming Laura Ingalls Wilder, Anita Clair Fellman’s Little House, Long Shadow, and the ever-controversial The Ghost In the Little House by William Holtz, which chronicles the life and work of Rose Wilder Lane.  As far as Laura expertise, you can’t be savvier or more well-informed than the legendary William Anderson, who has made a place for himself as THE Laura expert of the ages.  Click here for a bibliography of his books and pamphlets on Laura.

Charlotte Brontë: Charlotte’s one of those women who has had books written on the books about her…there’s that much incredible information about the Brontë family.  I personally love Elizabeth Gaskell’s warm, chatty memoir about her friend, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, though it’s been criticized for its insistence that Charlotte was proper rather than passionate.   In case you care to read a biography on Charlotte not written in the nineteenth century, you can’t go wrong with Rebecca Fraser’s The Brontës or Lyndall Gordon’s Charlotte Brontë: A Passionate Life.

Louisa May Alcott: On last count, I personally own over 10 books about Louy.  My favorites include the very innocent, anachronistic yet informative Invincible Louisa by Cornelia Meigs and John Matteson’s unforgettable, Pulitzer-prize-winning double biography of Louisa and her father, Bronson…Eden’s Outcasts gets special mention as one of the only biographies that has both made me cry and that I have dreamt about.  Highly recommended.  That said, 2010 was a banner year for Alcott scholarship, producing both Harriet Reisen’s Louisa May Alcott:  The Woman Behind Little Women and Susan Cheever’s Louisa May Alcott:  A Personal Biography.

Frances Hodgson Burnett: “Fluffy” Burnett was another woman I found it hard to research, since she has been shunted off to the kidlit category by many dismissive biographers.  Her lovely autobiography, The One I Knew Best of All, is barely worth mentioning for its obvious unreliability.  That said, we must content ourselves with Anne Thwaite’s dual Frances bios and Gretchen Gerzina’s Frances Hodgson Burnett, and with Gerzina’s perceptive biographical notes in the W.W. Norton Annotated Secret Garden.

Six days until Heroine Love and the prizes have started rolling in!

This is a mere sample of the wonderful prizes donated by me, my amazing guest bloggers, my venerable publisher HarperCollins and the very generous and fabulous Blackstone Audio.

And physical and audio books aren’t the only literary treats to come…not by a long shot.

What can you do to spread the heroine love?

Share with your friends on Facebook (just go to the event, click “I’m attending,” and then click “Share”)

Tell your friends on Twitter with this shortened link: http://ow.ly/3LlqA

Download pretty gifs, logos and more to share with friends on your blog or website.

Invite friends to Heroine Love on Goodreads!

Okay, back to writing, scheming, and planning to make this the best event ever.