Meme: Seven Degrees of Separation

In my short time having this blog,   I’ve discovered my Astro Sis (waves hello to  Digital Dame).  And now, in the wee hours of the morn, I have learnt of my Telepath Sis: LeftyWritey.

This afternoon, while I was procrastinating  taking a break from writing, I went over to Ms. Uppington’s Blog. (All  Things Good) Scrolling down, I came across a post that somehow I’d missed.  She’d written a Meme back at the end of January, and further, she’d Memed me.

So, today I spent some time wondering what little  tidbits to reveal. And just short moments ago,  at 2 a.m. in the morning, I received an email from Ms. Lefty.  Out of the friggin blue, she asks if I know I was Memed a month ago, and am I going to write one?

Um.  Yeah.  I am.

Let’s see…

1.   If I wasn’t aiming to be a full-time writer, I’d want to be a professional researcher of some sort.  Whether it be anthropologist, archeologist, historian, or parapsychologist.  The wonderful thing about writing fiction is I can combine my never-exhausted imagination with my interest in these fields of study.  

2.  I love chess.     Bring it on.

3.   I collect Agatha Christie novels.   Didn’t intentionally set out to, but having discovered  I owned almost all hers in English, and a few in German,  I figured I should get them all.   And that older pulp covers would be fun to get too…

4.  I never go anywhere without a book in my purse.  (except like last week when I ran to Customs to pick up a package and ended up in the waiting room for two hours)

5.  I’m superstitious.  Never open an umbrella inside or walk under ladders.   I figure people must have had some reason for these warnings; and hey, better safe than sorry.

On that same note: I believe in the Sock Fairy and the Pen Fairy.  Really.  They exist.  Buy a new package of socks and see how long it takes before half of ‘em disappear.   Now, the Pen Fairy, rather than being an all-out thief like her cousin, always returns the pens.   She just likes to put them back where they never were.  Or, hours later, where they were supposed to be, but weren’t.  

6.   I love Farscape.   Otherwise known as “Crack TV”.   And, like any self-respecting addict, try to hook others.   You want rich storylines filled with complex, realistic characters?  TV episodes filled with drama, laughs, romance, adventure, goofiness all rolled in one?  Just start watc…

7.    I much prefer  old black and white films to modern.   Often feel as though I were born in the wrong time, except I want today’s conveniences and Rights.   So, basically I belong in some alternative history/ Steampunk novel.

 So.  There.  Done.

I’m not going to Meme people as I’m not sure who’s been tagged already.  But if you feel like procastinating, this is a fun way to do it.   So carry on…

The House of Seven Gables

The oldest surviving mansion in the United States was built in 1668 for Captain John Turner in the historic seaport of Salem, Massachusetts.   This house inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne to pen his 1851 classic novel.

Hawthorne’s relatives, the Ingersolls, acquired the house after John Turner III lost the family fortune.  During several visits, Hawthorne’s reclusive cousin, Susannah Ingersoll, entranced him with stories of its lore.  According to papers, the impressive dwelling once boasted seven gables.  This seemingly innocent fact stirred Hawthorne’s imagination.

When creating the novel’s villian, Nathaniel  had only to turn to his own family ancestry.  One infamous ancestor was Colonel John Hathorne, a judge at the Salem Witch trials.   He presided at the trial in which  Sarah Good swore: “I’m no more a witch than you’re a wizard!  And if you take my life God will give you blood to drink!”  In the novel, the character, Matthew Maule, sentenced to death as a wizard, hurls similar words to Judge Pyncheon who falsely accused him in order to steal his land.  After Judge Pyncheon’s sudden and mysterious death, his descendants move into the house.    His evil deed holds a subtle but affective hold on each passing generation.

When the novel opens, the current inhabitant, spinster Hepzibah Pyncheon, has been reduced to opening a shop to make ends meet.  Reclusive, she has become as lifeless as the faded curtains and darkened timber.  Her only real companion is Holgrave, the radical daguerreotypist who rents a room in the house.

Into Hepzibah’s carefully guarded world comes bright, country cousin Phoebe (less of a person than symbolic of the free world beyond Seven Gables). Not long after Phoebe’s arrival, Hepzibah’s feeble-minded brother, Clifford returns home after being released from prison.   Clifford had been falsely accused of a crime by their cousin, Judge Pyncheon, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the Puritanical judge of long ago. Things come to a climax when Judge Pyncheon threatens to send Clifford back to jail unless he discloses the whereabouts of hidden wealth.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a member of the literary movement, Dark Romanticism, which included  Byron, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allen Poe,  Emily Dickinson, and Herman Melville.  As with Gothic fiction before, their stories often involved vampires, ghouls, and haunted houses.  While the earlier Gothic writers concentrated on sheer terror, the Dark Romantics explored the dark nature of man and universe.

Nathaniel Hawthorne told his publisher he wished to write passages, “with the minuteness of a Dutch picture.”   Indeed, the house and shop are so finely described that one can hear the old stairs creaking, the window shutters banging, the shop door opening.   Readers see poor Hepzibah, frightened, out of her depth, yet determined as she meets her first customer  (a little boy who wants a gingerbread).  They watch as  Phoebe reads to the child-like Clifford and walks in the garden with Holgrave as they quietly fall in love.

The chapter, “Judge Pyncheon” is a poetic tour de force on death.  “The shadows of the tall furniture grow deeper, and at first become more definite; and then, spreading wider, they lose their distinctiveness of outline in the dark gray tide of oblivion, as it were, that creeps slowly over the various objects, and the one human figure sitting in the midst of them.  The gloom has not entered from without; it has brooded here all day, and now, taking its own inevitable time, will possess itself of everything.  The Judge’s face, indeed, rigid, and singularly white, refuses to melt into this universal solvent.  Fainter and fainter grows the light.”

The novel is not without its flaws.   The conclusion comes too quickly and easily.  Also, while Hawthorne richly describes the characters of Seven Gables, the reader is still kept at an emotional distance.  The camera lens zooms in to study them like an impassive scientist.  One explanation for this is Hawthorne struggled with his desire to be a writer, considering it “unmanly”.  Throughout the novel he keeps himself tightly leashed, afraid to reveal any part of his inner being.

The House of Seven Gables is not a frightening tale of any kind.  In fact,  it has sprinkles of quiet, macabre humor throughout.  It is not a passionate novel.  It won’t raise anyone’s temperature.  Yet the house and its inhabitants linger in the mind of the reader long after they’ve turned the last page.

Agatha Christie-Books

In my previous post- I listed a few of my favorite novels.  I decided to give the Queen of Mystery her own space.  After all this time, no one has surpassed her intricate plots or  stunning conclusions.  No matter how surprising the ending may be- she never cheats.  One can always look back and say,  “Oh, yes!  How did I miss that?”

And even after you’ve gotten good at figuring out, “whodunnit”- they’re always fun to read.

Ms. Christie wrote over 80 novels.

Here are a few of my favorite ones:

1. And Then There Were None- 10 strangers all accused of murder are killed one by one on a remote island

2.  The Hollow

3. A Holiday for Murder

4.  After the Funeral

5. Cards on the Table

6. Murder at Hazelmoor

7. Crooked House

8. Towards Zero

9. Ordeal by Innocence

10. Five Little Pigs

11. Easy to Kill- the killer is quite easy to spot, but this is one of her creepiest reads

12. Hickory Dickory Dock- a sentimental favorite since it was the first I read

13. Seven Dials Mystery- change-of-pace comedic mystery

14. A Murder is Announced

15. Death on the Nile

My favorite BOOKS

I am an eclectic reader who enjoys books in several different genres.  They’re are so many wonderful books to be discovered- I will never understand why so many people limit themselves! 

Here are some of my faves.  (couldn’t possibly name them all!) Perhaps one will also be your cuppa tea.

1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

3 Someplace to be Flying by Charles de Lint (urban fantasy)

4. Memory and Dreams by Charles de Lint (urban fantasy)

5. Widdershins by Charles de Lint (urban fantasy)

6.  Little Big by John Crowley (fantastical, surreal novel about a family connected with fairies)

7. Watership Down by Richard Adams- classic novel about rabbits searching for a new home.  Beloved by children and adults

8.  Fingersmith by Sarah Waters- set in 19th century England.  orphaned girls, mistaken identities, prisons, and lunatic asylums, love and betrayal.

9. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson- eerie, ambiguous haunted house tale

10. We’ve Always Lived in the Castle- by Shirley Jackson- Merricat is interested in witchcraft.  Her older sister recently returned from prison after poisoning several members of their family.  Or did she?  A gothic novel filled with macabre humor

Wuthering Heights- Book Review

It’s been called the most passionately written novel in the English language.  The love between the foundling Heathcliffe and his foster father’s daughter, Catherine, turns to hate when she forsakes him (and herself) to marry for money.

Many people open this novel with false expectations.  This usually comes from having viewed the classic film version starring Sir Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.  As gorgeous as that film is- it is not the book.  Not only  is the second half of the story missing-  the characters and themes are  also greatly watered down.

In the film, Heathcliffe is the tragic hero- heartbroken and brooding over the woman who left him.  It never goes into the horrific emotional and physical abuse he unleashes onto the second generation.   Catherine is  portrayed as a spoiled, narcisstic child.   The film doesn’t dare go deeper into her troubled psyche which causes her to will her own death.

Emily Bronte dared.

Charlotte Bronte said, ”liberty was the breath of Emily’s nostrils; without it, she perished.”

Indeed, much of Emily’s poetry deals with personal freedom.

One of her famous lines from a poem is:

“I’ll walk where my own nature would be leading:

it vexes me to choose another guide.”

Catherine commits suicide the moment she allows societal opinions to dictate how she should live.  It takes her body some years more to follow.

The last lines of Emily’s poem, Light up thy Halls- seems a forebearer to Heathcliffe’s grief and rage:

“And yet for all her hate, each parting glance would tell

A stronger passion breathed, burned, in this last farewell.

Unconquered in my soul the Tyrant rules me still;

Life bows to my control, but Love I cannot kill!”

Many critics claim the second part of the novel- concerning the relationship between the second Catherine and Heathcliffe’s adopted son, Hareton, is weak.  Is it less passionate than the first part?  Yes.  Weak- no.

The first part of the novel is a thunderous storm.  The second part details the breaking of the clouds- and at last- the calm.

What Heathcliffe and Catherine did wrong- Hareton and Catherine the 2nd, set right again.

Nature restores itself.

Wuthering Heights is not for everyone.  While it is a love story, its dark themes of vengeance, abuse, madness, and necrophelia- is not of the Harlequin sort.

People hate this novel with the same passion others love it.

Emily probably doesn’t care.

It is doubtful anyone ever forgets it.

Victorian History Library

To write my novel which is set in 19th century New England, I immersed myself into that world of red damask curtains, lace, and crinoline.  I’d always been fascinated with the Victorian era and the more I read about how life was really like back then- the more I fell in love with it. (warts and all)  How different  people were from  the moralistic novels written back then.  I won’t dwell much on the subject now.  That’s for a future post.   I’ll just give you an example:  a large number of babies were born prematurely.  (read between the lines, folks) 

For those interested in Victorian History, here are some book recommendations:

1. Inside the Victorian Home by Judith Flanders.

covers everything from interior design, occupations, eating habits, fancywork, hygiene, fashion, funerals, servants, dating rituals, and marriage. 

2. Victorian London by Liza Picard

Topics include: smells, streets, education, amusement, religion, crimes and punishment, and much more…

Here is a quote from Chapter 1. Smells:  “Imagine the worst smell you have ever met.  Now imagine what it was like to have that in your nostrils all day and all night, all over London.  But it was worse than that.”

 Another quote: “The Thames stank.  The main ingredient was human waste.”

Ah, it gets even better!  “Sometimes chamber pots were upended out of windows on to the luckless passers-by, or on to the streets, their contents adding to the rich mix of dead dogs, horse and cattle manure, rotting vegetables.”  (So next time someone rear ends your car- remember things could always be worse!)

3.Victorian and Edwardian Fashion A Photographic Survey by Alison Gernsheim

Detailed descriptions of the changing fashions for men and women throughout the era.  Beards were a much bigger issue than I’d ever have thought.  Fabulous photos of everyday people.

4.Inventing the Victorians by Matthew Sweet

read about real-life daredevils Blondin, Madame Genieve, and Selina Young.

picture shows and freak shows

chamber of horrors and drug use

(you’ll never look at the 19th century the same way again)

5. The Worm in the Bud by Ronald Pearsall

premarital sex, birth control, pornography, homosexuality, bondage and discipline.  (much of it enjoyed by the middle and upper classes)

6. The Darkened Room by Alex Owen

interesting study on Spiritualism in the late 19th century

7. Daughter of Boston: The Extraordinary Diary of a Nineteenth-century Woman by Caroline Healey Dall

I’d been having horrible luck finding books on 19th century America.  Oh, there were plenty of books on the Civil War, of course…but I needed books about how average people lived from day to day.  Then, I stumbled upon this gem.  Written from 1840 to 1865, it covers everything from her views on feminism, religion, abolition, and marriage.  It also chronicles her meetings with famous members of the Transcendentalist Circle including: Elizabeth Peabody, Margaret Fuller, Emerson, and Theodore Parker.