American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever

I'll just say it straight out, I loved American Bloomsbury by Susan Cheever published 2006.  What a marvelous group biography of Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau.  Some may ask why did the author choose these particular writers for a group biography? What connection do they have with each other?  You would be suprised.  I know I was. 

For starters all five writers, to a greater or lesser degree, were part of the transcendentalist movement.   Trancendentalism was a philosophy that began in New England in the 1830's, and as Susan Cheever explains:

The Concord group of transcendentalists was part of a wave of liberalism and a passion for freedom that seemed to be sweeping through the new United States. After decades of Puritan striving and dour farmers rising at dawn to tend to the necessities of crops and barns now nature was a friendly environment to be enjoyed. The world was shifting. It was time to kick up our heels ... Even the dour, handsome Nathaniel Hawthorne was not immune to this exuberant mood. “I want my place, my own place, my true place in the world,” he wrote; “I want my proper sphere, my thing.”

After discussing trancendentalism Cheever moves on to the major focus of her book detailing the lives of these brilliant American writers liiving near each other (in the case of the Alcotts and the Hawthornes right next door) in Concord, MA during the 1840's to the 1860's.  These writers also lived elsewhere at different points in their lives but they always returned to Concord.  The  exception tragically was Margaret Fuller who drowned in a shipwreck with her husband and infant son off the coast of Fire Island, New York.  Hawthorne and Emerson were deeply affected by Margaret's death. Thoreau and Louisa May Alcott were horrified as well and Susan Cheever's recounting of the shipwreck makes for powerful reading.

American Bloomsbury brings home throughout the book how connected the lives of Alcott, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Emerson and Fuller were.  The young Louisa May Alcott went on boat rides with Thoreau and Cheever tells us the character of Laurie in Little Women is based on him.  Hawthorne was quite taken with Margaret Fuller and she may have been the inspiration for Hester Prynne in The Scarlett Letter.  When Louisa May Alcott returned to Concord an invalid after working as a civil war nurse the Hawthornes and the Emersons went right to the Alcott's home asking how they could help.  That's understandable since Louisa had leant a helping hand caring for the Emerson and Hawthorne children when they were growing up.  

I don't want to reveal too much more because I want people to read American Bloomsbury for themselves and there is much more to discover.  I can't close though without saying a few words about Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was a wealthy man and a generous one.  He helped his friend Thoreau out financially throughout his life.  The Alcotts and the Hawthornes would eventually be able to live comfortably but for a long time they needed Emerson's help and he always gave it.  Suffice it to say without Emerson such American classics as Walden, Little Women and The Scarlet Letter might never have been written. 

I finished American Bloomsbury determined to read and in some cases reread the works of these classic American writers and I highly recommend American Bloomsbury, a fascinating and inspiring book of American cultural history.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult

"Suddenly Peter felt his stomach turn to ice. What if kindergarten was not as great as he’d imagined? What if his teacher looked like the witch on that TV program that gave him nightmares sometimes? What if he forgot which direction the letter E went and everyone made fun of him? With hesitation, he climbed the steps of the school bus. The driver wore an army jacket and had two teeth missing in the front. “There’s seats in back,” he said, and Peter headed down the aisle" 

Jodi Picoult is a bestselling, critically acclaimed novelist who I have been meaning to read for some time.  She has published 28 novels that have been translated into 34 languages. Her books often touch upon hot button, ripped from the headlines issues.  And in 2007 she published Nineteen Minutes a novel centering around a mass shooting at a high school.  It's a subject that tragically hasn't aged in the fifteen years since the novel was published.  If anything it's gotten worse. 

The shooter at the center of Nineteen Minutes is seventeen year old Peter Houghton who  walks into Sterling High one morning and opens fire on his classmates.  Ten students are killed including a teacher.  Nineteen Minutes deals with the aftermath of the shooting but also the years that led up to why Peter snapped and did this terrible thing.   There is no excuse for what Peter did but we are shown over the course of the novel how serious an issue school bullying is.  How it can change a person and it certainly changed Peter who was physically and verbally assaulted by the school bullies starting in kindergarten.  

At first Peter has an ally in his friend Josie Cormier.  She protects Peter from the kids who pick on him daily but as they go through grammar and high school together Josie begins to drift away from Peter joining the popular crowd.  She feels bad about this since she likes Peter but it becomes clear that to remain friends with him will end up making her an outcast as well.  So Peter becomes increasingly isolated and actually if the jocks and the bullies left Peter alone he could live with that.  But these kids are sadistic and cruel.  They will not leave him alone and it eventually ends in disaster.  

Nineteen Minutes focuses on school bullying mainly but other issues are discussed too, the easy availability of guns, violent video games, mental illness.  And one thing that really struck me in this novel is how hard it is to be a parent.  Your heart breaks for Peter's mother Lacy.  She is a good woman and she loves her two sons but she makes a mistake early in the book when she goes to see Peter's teacher.  Peter is about seven and the teacher tells Lacy that the other kids are picking on him.  Lacy is horrified and expects the school to put the bullying to an immediate stop. 

But the clueless teacher tells Lacy that this kind of thing happens in schools and therefore the best thing for Peter would be learning how to stand up for himself.  Lacy in her heart is bothered by this advise and yet she is intimidated into thinking maybe the teacher knows best. A big mistake since the bullying doesn't stop and going forward Peter begins to withdraw further and further and never shares with his parents again about how things are really going in school.  

Nineteen Minutes is not a beach read but it is wonderfully written, thought-provoking and heart-breaking.  And one lesson the author drives home is that from the moment a child leaves for kindergarten and on through high school, parents have to stay involved and ask questions.  Teachers have to be on the lookout as well because kids that are bullied often don't say anything. 

The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster

"From a scene of constraint and confinement, ill suited to my years and inclination, I have just launched into society. My heart beats high in expectation of its fancied joys. My sanguine imagination paints, in alluring colors, the charms of youth and freedom, regulated by virtue and innocence. Of these, I wish to partake ... I recoil at the thought of immediately forming a connection, which must confine me to the duties of domestic life"  - The Coquette

The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster (1797) is based on the true story of Elizabeth Whitman who came to the Bell Tavern in Danvers Massachusetts in the spring of 1788.  She was pregnant and told the owners of the tavern she needed a place to stay and that her husband would be along shortly.  He never arrived and Elizabeth Whitman died a few months later after having given birth to a stillborn baby.  

The local newspaper printed this tragic story but when Elizabeth's real name became known (she had been staying at the inn under the name Walker) it became a national story since Elizabeth Whitman came from a relatively prominent family and so how could she have ended up pregnant and alone and who was the father?

The author Hannah Webster Foster, a distant relation of Elizabeth Whitman, decided to write a novel, The Coquette published in 1797, about this matter. The book takes a sympathetic view towards its protagonist Eliza Wharton modeled after Elizabeth Whitman.  The author tries to explain how a well brought up, virtous woman could end up in such a predicament.  The Coquette is also a cautionary tale advising young women to steer clear of rakes and scoundrels and certainly in Major Peter Sanford, the father of Eliza's baby, we have a scoundrel.  Upon first meeting Eliza he writes to his friend:

"Were I disposed to marry, I am persuaded she would make an excellent wife; but that you know is no part of my plan, so long as I can keep out of the noose. Whenever I do submit to be shackled, it must be from a necessity of mending my fortune. This girl would be far from doing that. However, I am pleased with her acquaintance, and mean not to abuse her credulity and good nature, if I can help it."

In The Coquette, Eliza is faced with a choice.  There is the decent respectable Reverend Boyer who all her friends are urging her to marry and then there is Peter Sanford who her friends are telling Eliza to stay away from.  They know his reputation and the young women prior to Eliza who he has deceived and then cast aside.  

But Eliza is young and feels that her friends have misjudged Major Sanford.  She had been set to marry Mr. Hoyer, her parent's choice but he became ill and passed away.  She admired Mr. Hoyer but didn't love him. And now Eliza wants to take her time, enjoy the company of friends, attend parties etc before immediately settling down.  

Given the time in which Eliza lives a young woman sowing her oats is not the best course of action. Eventually Mr. Boyer catches Eliza in a compromising position with Peter Sanford.  Boyer storms off, ends their relationship and now only Sanford is left, a man who has no interest in marriage and is skilled in the art of seduction.

Though Eliza is not too smart when it comes to suitors in other ways she is quite smart, independent and vivacious.  She also has a good heart and when her reputation begins to take a hit I am pleased to say her friends and her mother do not abandon her.  

The novel is well written and told in letter form, most of which are written by Eliza.  I enjoyed this novel which I found superior to Charlotte Temple by Susannah Rowson, published around the same time.  Charlotte Temple may have been more popular in its day but I felt The Coquette gives a more realistic look at the lives of young women in the 18th century and how central the subject of marriage and therefore guarding one's reputation was in a woman's life.  

The Coquette fulfills the Back to the Classics Category - choose a classic written prior to 1800.

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote

"What I've found does the most good is just to get into a taxi and go to Tiffany's. It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's, then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name" - Breakfast at Tiffany's

For the 2022 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic from a place you would love to visit I decided to go with Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote published 1958.  I love New York, lived there most of my life, and would certainly like to go back to visit and stay there actually.  Also having seen and enjoyed the classic film based on the book and Audrey Hepburn's enchanting portrayal of the beautiful, quirky NYC party girl Holly Golightly I wondered how the Holly of the book might differ.  

To start with. the novel is exceptionally well written which having read Capote's In Cold Blood years ago did not come as a suprise.  And as for Holly in both the novel and the film she makes her living through men who buy her things and pay her bills.  But she has a harder edge in the book.  Here she is for example explaining to her upstairs neighbor how she visits Sal Tomato, an organized crime figure, in prison once a week and gets paid $100.00 a visit for an hour of conversation: 

You can do as well as that on trips to the powder room: any gent with the slightest chic will give you fifty for the girl's john, and I always ask for cab fare too, that's another fifty. But then he told me his client was Sally Tomato. He said dear old Sally had long admired me à la distance, so wouldn't it be a good deed if I went to visit him once a week. Well, I couldn't: it was too romantic.  I don't know. It doesn't sound right.’‘ She smiled. ‘‘You think I'm lying? .... I'm supposed to be his niece.’‘

In the film Audrey Hepburn gave Holly a much more naive waif-like appeal but in the book she is a coniver.  Money means alot to Holly.  She does take a liking though to her upstairs neighbor, a writer who reminds her of her brother Fred who she adores  Her upstairs neighbor is also the narrator of the book.  Unlike in the movie these two do not end up romantically involved.  

Instead the narrator is reflecting back on the year in which he knew Holly.  And we learn a good deal about her life before she came to New York.  Born Lulamae Barnes in rural Texas her childhood was one of abandonment and abuse.   By the time she arrives in NYC, age nineteen, she has totally reinvented herself.  As I was reading the book and noting how Holly Golightly was living her life, the parties, men in and out of her apartment and no regard for her future I kept thinking this can't end well.  But like the cat she found abandoned by the river and took home, Holly is a survivor and I closed the book smiling at how she got herself out of a bad situation that arrives near the end of the novel.

Breakfast at Tiffany's is not very long, 85 pages.  I can't say you will like Holly but based on her difficult childhood I think you will understand and root for her.  That said she is not a blueprint in how to live one's life.  A real life version of Holly Golightly would be headed for trouble.

Books and Beyond - 1958 Goodreads

I am always creating book lists for myself.  And so I decided to look up novels published the year I was born which was 1958.  I  typed in 1958 Goodreads and up popped Most Popular Books Published in 1958.  It was a list of about two hundred books.  I scrolled through the list and chose the following ten:

1.  Nine Coaches Waiting by Mary Stewart

2.  Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe

3.  Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe

4.  Ice Palace by Edna Ferber

5.  Anatomy of a Murder by Robert Traver

6.  Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton

7.  Web of the City by Harlan Ellison

8.  Glass of Blessings by Barbara Pym

9.  Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

10. Breakfast at Tiffanys by Truman Capote

I was surprised by the high quality of the novels published in 1958 and I suspect anyone who types in their birth year followed by Goodreads into the search engine will have the same experience.  Really great books are published every year.

As for the ten I chose I may not post about all of them but I will try to read them all and Breakfast at Tiffany's is already on my Back to the Classics list.  Six of these writers I have read before, though not their above novels.  The remaining four (Alan Sillitoe, Robert Traver, Anya Seton and Chinua Achebe) I have yet to read but I am looking forward to doing so.  

Finally, the fun of choosing from Goodreads ten of the most popular books published the year you were born is you end up with an interesting mix of novels.  I was pleased to see Harlan Ellison published a novel in 1958.  I am not a science fiction fan but Harlan wrote non-fiction as well which I very much enjoyed.  He was not only a talented writer but quite an interview guest! 😄  He passed away recently and his writing and his voice are greatly missed.

Laura by Vera Caspary

"The city that Sunday morning was quiet. Those millions of New Yorkers who, by need or preference, remain in town over a summer weekend had been crushed spiritless by humidity. ... Sitting at my desk, pen in hand, I treasured the sense that, among those millions, only I, Waldo Lydecker, was up and doing ... I had gathered strength for the writing of Laura’s epitaph. My grief at her sudden and violent death found consolation in the thought that my friend, had she lived to a ripe old age, would have passed into oblivion, whereas the violence of her passing and the genius of her admirer gave her a fair chance at immortality" - Laura by Vera Caspary

Many years ago I read a review of Dorothy Hughes' classic noir crime novel In A Lonely Place (1947) and I realized that along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain, Raymond Chandler, David Goodis, Chester Himes etc, women also wrote noir fiction in the mid-twentieth century.  I ended up reading In A Lonely Place and loved it and so for this year's Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic mystery or crime novel, I wanted to try another bestselling 1940's noir novel and so I went with Laura by Vera Caspary (1943).  

Laura is set in NYC during the 1940's and when the novel begins we learn that the title character in the novel, Laura Hunt, has been murdered.  Laura was alone in her apartment on a Friday night when the door bell rang.  Laura went to answer it and the killer in gruesome fashion shot her in the face.  The housekeeper Bessie found Laura's body the next morning when she arrived for work.

Mark McPherson an experienced NYPD Homicide Detective is assigned to the murder case but who was Laura Hunt and who would want to kill her?   Laura we discover was a beautiful, elegant, young woman who lived by herself in an expensive Manhatten apartment and had a country house in Connecticut.  What's interesting for the time period of the 1940's is that Laura could afford this all by herself.  She was a modern woman with a successful career in advertising fifteen years before Mad Men.  Laura was also a kind person, generous to friends and coworkers. Could that generosity have led to her death?

Detective McPherson quickly zeroes in on two suspects, Laura's fiance Shelby Campbell and Laura's friend and mentor the high society newspaper columnist, Waldo Lydecker.  Both men claim to have loved Laura but in the novel we are shown that neither man had her best interests at heart.  

Shelby for example is handsome and charming but he's a gigolo.  Walter is very controlling and has tried to subtley sabatoge every romantic relationship Laura has been involved in, claiming that this or that man is simply not good enough.  Detective Mark McPherson is becoming obsessed with Laura as well.  But then, a quarter of the way through the novel, there is a dramatic turn of events which anyone who has seen the film will understand and Detective McPherson now finds himself working a very different case.  I'll leave it there.  

I enjoyed Laura I was interested right through to the last page and that's what you want in a mystery.  The author Vera Caspary led an interesting life as well.  She was born in 1899 and died in 1987 and she once joked that she was accidentally born in the 19th century.  That's true.  Vera Caspary was very much a 20th century woman, maybe even a late 20th century woman, years ahead of her time.  Throughout most of her life she was single and self-supporting, working first in advertising, like Laura, and then as a successful novelist,  Vera Caspary married when she was fifty and it was a very happy marriage. She published eighteen novels during her life in different genres but one consistent theme seems to have been "the working woman and her right to lead her own life, to be independent"  I recommend giving Laura a read...

Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauff

Just finished Glorious Cause by Robert Middlekauff published 1982.  It's the first book in The Oxford History of the United States and it covers American History from 1763 - 1789. It's about 800 pages and the American Revolution must have taken up 500 pages or it certainly felt like that.  The author wanting to be accurate and miss nothing let's us know about every aspect of the war in minute detail.  The end result is that I retained very little except that George Washington was a great general but I knew that going in.  It took me on and off about a year to finish this book and I can't even be sure I read every part of it because I read it in an audio version and at certain points I dozed off while the book kept rolling on.  

I don't fault the author (well, maybe a little) but he did do a tremendous job of research and the book is well written.  It's just that sometimes less is more.  If you go into too much detail regarding a historical period the reader is not going to remember the important events you want to stress.  It will all be a blur.  As to why I have embarked on this American history project it's partly because I don't know that much about American history.  Whatever I may have learned in school I have forgotten and I have come to realize a large part of our country's history I was never taught at all. 

One thing I did get from Glorious Cause is that from America's founding there has been a distrust by the states for the federal government.  The constitution was ratified in 1788 but it almost didn't happen because states wanted their independence and feared a federal government that would be too strong.  You definitely see that playing out today as well.  As for me, I am with Hamilton and Madison.  States going off on their own has not worked out well in our history.