A Backward Glance - VI-VIII
(Next, Dec 6 IX-XI)
#whartonbuddyread
Wharton‘s early works, through House of Mirth, but more about her “inner group” - with Walter Berry, and a magical section on Henry James:
“these elaborate hesitancies…were like a cobweb bridge flung from his mind to theirs, an invisible passage over which one knew that silver-footed ironies, veiled jokes, tiptoe malices, were stealing to explode a huge laugh at one's feet.”
Graywacke Also, I didn‘t know Emily Bronte wrote poetry! What a gorgeous poem - Remembrance: https://poets.org/poem/remembrance 20h
Graywacke What did you all think? @CarolynM @Currey @IMASLOWREADER @jewright @Lcsmcat @Leftcoastzen @TheBookHippie (edited) 20h
Graywacke On Walter Berry: “From my first volume of short stories to “Twilight Sleep”, the novel I published just before his death, nothing in my work escaped him, no detail was too trifling to be examined and discussed, gently ridiculed or quietly praised.” 20h
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Lcsmcat I underlined so many sections! I was particularly amused by her description of New York conversation being like the gossip column of a country newspaper. (My NYC daughter would be incensed!) 20h
Lcsmcat “I remember once saying that I was a failure in Boston. . . because they thought I was too fashionable to be intelligent, and a failure in New York because they were afraid I was too intelligent to be fashionable.” 20h
Lcsmcat “None of my relations ever spoke to me of my books, either to praise or blame-they simply ignored them; and among the immense tribe of my New York cousins, though it included many with whom I was on terms of affectionate intimacy, the subject was avoided as though it were a kind of family disgrace, which might be condoned but could not be forgotten.” 19h
Graywacke @Lcsmcat it‘s a gorgeous section. So inspiring and interesting and amusing. I remember these quotes! 19h
Leftcoastzen I especially love the quote about her family not being interested in her books ! Hilarious they are ! As I think she noted if she was in a British or European family it would be of interest! 17h
Leftcoastzen I like how she discusses her friends and mentors. I read a lot of lost generation writers and in their time they seemed to act like they rose out of the ashes of war fully formed, and owed nothing to the earlier generations of writers. 17h
Currey @Lcsmcat Yes, you picked the perfect quotes for this section. I loved the part on Henry James, instead of making him appear more stuffy, it made him more vulnerable, more insecure and therefore more powerful to rise out of that to write how he wrote. And how could a family just ignore the very thing that is the core of you. She does not have much good to say about her husband does she? 17h
Lcsmcat @Leftcoastzen I liked how she gave her mentors and informal editors credit too. And how she was honest about her early stuff. I don‘t have my copy in front of me now, but there was something about not having a personality of her own until the first collection of short stories was published. 16h
Lcsmcat @Currey Yes, Henry James‘ personality really comes through. 16h
Graywacke @Leftcoastzen well - this lost generation were essentially chanting, “down with Edith Wharton” 🙂 15h
Graywacke @Currey @Lcsmcat Henry James comes out so lovable 14h
Graywacke @Leftcoastzen @Lcsmcat that names were so interesting! The social fabric that she sook out by intent 14h
Lcsmcat @Graywacke @Leftcoastzen And she skewered the lost generation too with “the amusing thing about the turn of the wheel is that we who fought the good fight are now jeered as the prigs and prudes who barred the way to complete expression—as perhaps we should have tried to do, had we known it was to cause creative art to be abandoned for pathology.” 14h
Currey @Lcsmcat Ouch 12h
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