What are you reading: summer remix.

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What are you reading right now? Any recommendations?

Have you ever gone through the Modern Library book list and seen how many you've read? What about the corresponding Feminista book list? I don't think either of those lists is a very good representation of the best 100 books of the last century, but I suppose it's a start.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001

Answers

Finally tally: 12 books from the Modern Library List; 17 books from the Modern Library Reader List (which looks as though it was possessed by Scientologists and ex-hippies, and don't get me wrong, I love the Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series as much as anyone, but it doesn't belong on the best of anything list); and 6 from the completely lame Feminista list (lame because they failed to see that _Ceremony_ by Leslie Marmon Silko is an infinitely superior book to the one they like and also lame because the entire Jeanette Winterson catalogue should be listed).

I would also like to give much respect to the beautifully bound and printed Modern Library collection, of which _Don Quixote_ and _Vanity Fair_ sit in my gotta read this summer pile. This morning on the train, I finished a history of Ancient Greece, the text of which can be read for free at the Perseus Project (http://perseus.tufts.edu) and the other day, I finished _Trojan Horses: Saving The Classics from Conservatives_ by Page DuBois which was, in a word, weak. Her kung fu is not the best. I'm writing my own review of the book at the moment, taking her vapid charges head on and grinding them into a fine powder.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001


I've actually finished 28 of the Modern Library list and 23 of the Feminista list. P.G. Wodehouse's "Leave it to Psmith" is my vote for the best novel of the 20th century. This summer I'm going to read Kavalier & Clay.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001

I think the Feminista list is weak mostly because they only listed one work by each author. I love Anne Tyler but I don't think she belongs on that list; I'd have preferred to see multiple works by some of the better authors, instead.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001

22 on the Feminista List, 25 on the Modern Library's Board List, and 30 on the M. L.'s Reader List. Some of those books sucked. I recently read Kavalier and Clay, The Painted Bird, and Horse Heaven. All good, well-written reads. This summer I plan on browsing Ian's thousands of books and reading the good ones, Pale Fire being the first, as soon as it is unpacked. Speaking of Ian, hi, glad to see you are having a nice day at work. Your puppy met a mean cocker spaniel at the park.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001

Modern Library's reader's list is cracking me up.

I like Stephen King and Charles de Lint and Robert Heinlein as much as the next geek, but how many books do they both have on there? And L. Ron Hubbard? Big chunks of Hubbard! I love that people who put Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence on this list are also reading The Sound and the Fury, and anything at all by Joyce. Hee.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001



Oh, and 40 on the Radcliffe list, which I just found. Quick show of hands: how many people have read Finnegan's Wake? I know a pile of reading geeks, and only 2 of them have gotten through it. Sure, I bet it's a great accomplishment, but I can't help but think that the number of people who voted to include it on these lists is significantly greater than the number of people who have actually read it. Or is the list based on prestige?

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001

I just counted. I've read 30 of the ones on the readers' list. I feel a little dirty now.

Where's this Radcliffe list, h?

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001


Ah. Found it. (And suffered mightily to get the about.com header off of it, too. I hate that place.)

I've read 50 of those.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001


Oh yeah? I read 38 on the reader's list! Ha! I'm dirtier than you! Or something.

This is especially sad because I've only read 19 on the regular ML list, and only 22 on the Feminista list. And I call myself a reader.

Best Only has a bunch of "top 100 books" lists, including the Radcliffe list.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001


I find the Readers' list interesting - I'd be interested to see what "poll" it was culled from. The strong Hubbard/sci-fi bent makes its objectivity (not what you ever get in a poll anyway) non-existent. Though I have to say that growing up with a sci-fi reading father means I read lots of those books during bored summer vacations! Final tallly:
Board list 17
Readers' list 43 (dirty, dirtier, dirtiest!)
Radcliffe 54 (probably the most representative of a literature-heavy education)
Feminista 28. All of which really just means I read. A lot. And always have.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001


Can I confess something wacky? Moby Dick is really good. Who knew? I thought I had tried to read this multiple times in the past, but all I remember is "Call me Ishmael." I've definitely never read any of the rest of this before.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001

20 on the Radcliffe list - but, at last, _Death Comes for the Archbishop_ by Willa Cather is listed! _My Antonia_ gets far too much credit. I still think it's a shame that neither _Our Town_ or _The Bridge Over San Luis Rey_ is mentioned anywhere.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001

Moby-Dick is the best novel ever written! Ever ever ever. If anyone ever finished "The Adventures of Augie March," let me know. I sure didn't.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001

Oh, were we only supposed to count books we'd actually FINISHED?

Just kidding. I've never even started that one. My ex-boyfriend read a lot of Saul Bellow, which was enough to make me stay away. Same reason I've never read any Doctorow.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001


Gabby, The Bridge of San Luis Rey is on the Modern Library list (number 37). I agree that Our Town should be on some list, but there are a lot of things that I feel should be on the top 100 of somesort list.

I think part of the question is whether this is a list of the 100 best books based on the writing, the story, or the impact or influence they've had. There are books that are way at the top of my "best books ever" list because they're amazingly written, wonderful stories, and other books that would top my "top 100 books" list because they're influential works of Literature (note the capital L) and everyone who claims to be well-read should have at least some familiarity with them.

Then again, it may be my literature-happy liberal arts-lovin' Intellectual Snobbery that says that you really should understand literature and its relation to history and geopolitics throughout modern history if you want to claim that you're well-educated. Even if it means that you have a propensity toward long convoluted sentences with structure that would make an editor cringe. Heh.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001



30 from the Modern LIbrary list, 34 from the reader's list (I think sci fi fans and libertarians stuffed that ballot box) and 23 from the Feminista list.

I just today finished a biography of Vanessa Bell, sister of Virginia Woolf and a painter. I'm about to start a memoir by her daughter which gives a pretty negative view of Bloomsbury (these are both re- reads.) I like reading about these people but haven't liked any of the Virginia Woolf I've read. I'll probably read a few more biographies after that.

-- Anonymous, June 29, 2001


I am pathetic. I shouldn't even call myself a Lit. major(maybe that's my problem though, too much time on Poe, Leatherstocking Tales, and other such rot...) Here's the sad stats: ML-5, ML Reader's List-6, Feminista-9, and that last one got 12. Okay so I'm a fantasy novel junkey and never got around to the real moderns...I'm a sad, sad girl.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

I read a lot, but I'm not sure what category I'd fall in to. I haven't read many on these lists (10-20, in general) and very little Real Literature. I read what I think they call "trade paperbacks", in general. I can't stand romance novels, or anything close ("Bridges of Madison County"? gack!). Occasional mysteries. Oprah books are getting on my nerves. Perhaps I'll try Moby Dick this summer. Anyone got any good recommendations to ease me in to Real Literature?

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

Final tally: 14 from the MLA list; 19 from the Readers list (L. Ron Hubbard?? Everything Charles de Lint ever wrote, except the short story collections?); 20 from the Radcliffe list; 8 from the Feminista list.

I hated Wide Sargasso Sea with a passion. It's on every single list, so maybe I missed something, but I'll take Jane Eyre every time.

To ease into the classics, Susan, I'd suggest The Great Gatsby - or, if you've never read them, The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter and To Kill A Mockingbird, both of which I read for the first time this year. How I got through high school without being assigned Mockingbird is a mystery for the ages.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


Reading from at least the Modern Library list is my goal for this year. I had read, as of mid-December, 27; now I have read 44. I absolve myself of all Henry James and most D.H. Lawrence; I don't see how they and E.M. Forster each rate three separate titles. Any list that includes Deliverance but not To Kill a Mockingbird is obviously too macho to take seriously.

Also I'm supplementing from the Feminista and Radcliffe lists--I'd read 28 of the former by December, now 35, and am within sight of the end of The Golden Notebook, 36; and of the latter 55, now 63, and am on the 9th of 10 tapes of a 64th.

I'm obviously not doing as well as I intended.

The Modern Library readers' shows that Objectivism and science fiction and Christian Science lend themselves to zealotry and ballot-packing. Any list of the 20th century's best that doesn't include Ulysses in the top ten, when it redefined literature and writing and thinking about language--even for those books on the Feminista list (that was tongue in cheek, folks) is invalid.

Beth, not to invade on exboyfriend issues (those being why I will never read Tom Robbins, though actually that's a girlfriend of exboyfriend issue), but Doctorow's Ragtime is really good. The Group is excellent, and if I can make any sense out of The Golden Notebook I'll be really glad to have read that too. Also glad to have finished it. Macho or not, Deliverance is a pretty good book, though hardly in the same class as Mockingbirg, and Ironweed is among the best books I have ever read.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


Currently, still at it with Tad Williams' Otherland, volume 4, Sea of Silver Light. I'm also working my way through the Jane Austen mysteries which are good light reading for the train home.

Recommendations ... if you're into retold fairy tales, have a whack at The Serpent's Shadow by Mercedes Lackey.

As for the lists ... 9 off of the Modern Library board list, 22 off of the reader's list ('cos I'm a skiffy fan) and 8 from the feminista list.

I find lists like these to be interesting, because they definitely show a bias toward the fusty old dudes. On that list, I find many books that were either assigned to me in school or I tried to read on my own for my personal 'edification'. For many of these, I got no further than 20 pages due to stultifying prose that failed to engage me in any way in the story being told. For others, I've read other tomes by authors listed there, but not the particular volume listed. For example, I've read Woolf's "A Room of Her Own" backwards and forwards several times, and I remember reading short stories by Faulkner, Joyce and Hemingway in school.

I keep telling myself I should give some of the fusties another go ... but that hasn't happened yet.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


ML Editors list - 40, ML Readers' List - 35, Feminista list - 38.

Deliverance is a pretty good book. You can tell that James Dickey was also a poet. It's downright lyrical at times. I'm not sure I would have put it on the list, though. I've read a lot of Faulker --- had an entire class dedicated to him in college. I wouldn't read him now for love or money. (Overexposure, I guess.)

I'd say about 3/4 the books I've read on the ML editors' were assigned reading.

Right now, I'm reading Blue Angel, by Francine Prose, and The Map of Love, by Ahdaf Soueif. The first is good fun and I'm enjoying it. The second is slower going.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


Y'all are too literary for me. I am reading Stephen Macauley's latest book, "True Enough" (He's the guy who wrote the book "The Object of My affection", which is far better than the decent film). It makes me giggle. And I am going to continue to find books to make me giggle. Maybe I'll try to tackle "White Teeth" again. I'm dying to read "Comfort Me With Apples" about the further adventures of a food critic, but it has to come out in paperback. Its nice of Nick Hornby to have a new book out for us for the summer, though the reviews haven't been great. I wish I'd saved Candace Bushnell's "Sex and the City" stories for now. They are good: sadder than the tv show. Sure its not great literature, but its fun. On the non- fiction end I want to read "Fast food nation" and "Movie Wars", about how hollywood conspires to keep us from seeing good flicks.

I would be a lot more into the "Feminista" list if instead of "Ethan Frome" they had "The House of Mirth" or "The Custom of the Country" as an Edith Wharton representation. I do love Jane Smiley's "The Age of Grief" in a big way; that was a nice choice. "Anagrams" is pretty good Lorrie Moore but I happen to like her story collections more. I would say that "Their Eyes were Watching God" is a fabulous book that makes great summer reading. I don't usually like those lists, but they are a nice jumping off point.

And as for the Modern Library, of the top 10 I would only fathom considering "The Great Gatsby" during a hot and humid July. Maybe "Sons and Lovers" if it has some good Lawrence sex. I would think about reading some more Fitzgerald and maybe "Under the Volcano" this summer, but I doubt it will happen. I've been trying to read a bunch of Henry James, but frankly, its time for some short stories, as far as I am concerned. i think of those books as serious winter books.

The best summer book I ever read was "A Suitable Boy" by Vikram Seth. Its very very long, very funny, very smart, but not philosophically heavy at all. I guess he thought of it as a 1948- 1952 version of Middlemarch, set in India. Its so good and yummy and long, you'll be happy you have it at the beach.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


Oh, I forgot the book I consider this summer's archetypal summer book: "Kitchen Confidential" by Anthony Bourdain! Its now in paperback. All the dirty secrets of a chef. And a hot author, to boot!

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

In all the furor of talking about the lists, I forgot to list what I'm currently reading...

There are over a hundred books on deck (I know, buying books is a sickness of sorts with me). I'm in the middle of both The Shipping News and Animal Husbandry. I like them both, but I'm not finding the latter very funny. It was recommended to me as funny. Did anyone else read it?

I've had Anna Karenina on the nightstand waiting for a month or so - I hate to admit that I haven't picked it up yet because it looks so. long. If it made someone's top ten list, though, it has to have merit, especially when that person is Beth (lovers of A Tree Grows In Brooklyn get extra points in my book). I also keep bypassing Washington Square, which I bought because I've never read any Henry James.

I recently read and loved passionately The Archivist, by Martha Cooley - but if you hate T.S. Eliot, I wouldn't try it.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001


I'm not sure why I'm so sure of this, Melissa, but I think you will love Anna Karenina. Don't approach it as a great novel or a classic or anything educational; pretend it's just a big epic historical romance. But you might want to save it for winter, because it's the sort of book you should read while you're curled up on a sofa under a quilt.

-- Anonymous, July 02, 2001

Kitchen Confidential was my favorite Christmas present this year. Anthony Bourdain is probably the most creatively profane author I have ever read. The book was informative and in places screamingly funny. I'm going to have to read it again now that you've mentioned it.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

Huh, I'm a big ole uneducated moron. On the official Modern Library list I've read 7; the reader's poll I've read 20. The Feminista I've read 12.

I just finished Running in High Heels by Anna Maxted. Excellent book. Her first novel, Getting Over It is one of my all-time favorite books. The protagnist's father dies in the first chapter and the entire book is about how she deals (or rather doesn't) with it. Both books handle pretty serious issues (Running deals with anorexia) with amazing depth and wonderful British wit.

I also just finished all of the Series of Unfortunate Events books. I like them but by the 7th I was rather weary of reading the same plot over and over. Maybe I shouldn't have read them straight through.

Last week I read The Dower House, an interesting book about the Angelo-Irish just after WWII when their fortunes are gone but they still have enormous estates to maintain and perceive themselves as upper-class.

Currently I'm in the middle of The Red Tent. I'm a sucker for historical novels and I'm quite enjoying this one.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


And for what I'm actually reading--I have 70 pages left of The Golden Notebook and think I might throw it across the room when I'm finished because I'm frustrated with my own stupidity over it. I interrupted it a lot with other books, which isn't a good sign. Next up is Angle of Repose, which I can tell I'm going to like a lot. I am reading tour guides of England and France, hooray! and a history of the first Congregational church in my hometown (I hail from a puny but academic town and people've written books on minor rivers in it) and I just read Freak the Mighty, which was a great, despite severely flawed, YA book.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001

8 on the board's list and 19 on the reader's list.

As for what I am reading, I just finished Samurai's Garden- by Gail Tsukiyama. I definitely enjoyed it. Has anyone else read her stuff?

On the table, the 4th Harry Potter- rereading for the 4th time.

And I have a bunch of stuff on reserve at the library including Back when we were growups- Ann Tyler, Fall on your knees- AnnMarie MacDonald, Under the Tuscan sky, The Blue Nowhere- Jeffrey Deaver, and of course Seven Up- Janet Evanovich.

Mordecai Richler died and I realized I hadn't read anything he'd written. Any suggestions?

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


Well, I didn't do as badly as I thought, but I only got 13 on the Modern Library list, 26 on the reader's poll, and 18 on the Feminista list. I read all the time, and most of the time it isn't junk, but I just am not in the mood more than once or twice a year to read something that is going to take significant literary effort. I use reading as down time, to remove myself from the scientific writing and reading that I do daily, and it can take me a long time to get through something that I like but that takes more thought than I have the energy for at the end of the day.

Right now I am reading Lord of the Rings, finally. I never got around to it when I was younger. I have to say that I could do without some of the emphasis on the battle details, but I am enjoying it.

For those who are contemplating some Wallace Stegner: while Angle of Repose is wonderful, my favorite of his, and one of my top five favorite books of all time, is Crossing to Safety. It broke my heart, and made me wish that I could reinvent my life as a fiction writer so that I could tell that kind of a story.

-- Anonymous, July 03, 2001


I'm actually afraid to check the lists as I think I will be stunned by just how much I haven't read. I think the Great Gatsby was the only book we even read in American Lit in high school. I still can't figure out how we were allowed to graduate.

I just finished Close to the Shore about the 1916 shark attacks in New Jersey. It's the book that Peter Benchley based Jaws on. It was really good, a little slow at the beginning but picked up very nicely. There's a lot in there about sharks and about early 20th century society. All in all, a great read.

I also read Uncle Petros and the Goldbach Conjecture which is about math and mathmaticians and Greece. I have no idea why I liked this so much, or even how in the hell I managed to understand it. I'm not really into math at all (last math class in 1987!) but this was good also.

Next up is The Boxer's Heart by Kate Sekules about a woman who takes up boxing and In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurz by Michele Wrong about Mobuto Seto and the history of the Congo. I'm also waiting for the Night Listener by Armisted Maupin to come back to the library and I think I'm going to have to buy a paperback copy of Betsy's Wedding (that's the last Betsy-Tacy book for those who don't know) because it doesn't look like the library is ever going to find it. I'm sure after reading about the Congo I'm going to be desperate for some Betsy!

-- Anonymous, July 05, 2001


I've read 20% of the books on each of the lists except for the Radcliffe one where I've read 30%. I think for any plausible-looking Great Books list you could come up with, my average would be in that range. It's creeping upward, but very slowly because I prefer nonfiction, which is rare on these lists. Also, for each list there's an additional 10% where I've started the books but hated them and am never going back there because life's too short.

Summer recommendation: Monika Fagerholm, Wonderful Women By The Water (or By The Sea in some editions).

-- Anonymous, July 06, 2001


I've read 5 books on the Modern Library List (possibly 6, I can't remember if I read _Light In August_ or a different book), all for school. I started _Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ on my own, but never finished it.

I read 7 books on the Readers' List for school (possibly 8 -- again, Light in August), and 7 on my own. I started 2, but never finished.

I read 4 books on the Feminista list for school, and 5 on my own.

I need to read more. I'm actually working on _Lord of the Rings_ now, as well as Landauer's _The Trouble with Computers_. I just finished Gaiman's _American Gods_.

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2001


Okay, I'm 14 chapters into I, Claudius by Robert Graves and it's damn good stuff. Most historical fiction I've read has been overly precious or clever, but this - wow, it's solid autobiography.

-- Anonymous, July 11, 2001

I am currently reading a book by Berger and Cunningham called _Rhinos on the Edge_ - an Oxford pub - it's very interesting, as much about the practical difficulties of field work en famille as about rhinos. That book, however, is meant to be a present, so I've been reading a slew of trashy paperbacks while in the bath or eating or whatnot - _Prisoner's Hope_ by Feintuch, _Lunatic Cafe_ by Hamilton, _War for the Oaks_ by Bull (okay, that one is not so trashy and contains the best definition of love I've read in ages), etc etc. I've read 13 of the Modern Library's list, and 47 of their readers' list - though I am HIGHLY suspect of the readers' list as far as representation goes, merely b/c of the enormous amount of Charles de Lint on there. I mean, I love de Lint to pieces, but he isn't nearly as well known as that list would suggest. I've only hit 11 of the Feminista list, but I've read *something* by 30 of the authors they chose. Not that these things matter, but it is interesting to see what turns up.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Also, I've hit 28 of the Radcliffe List, and whichever list Gravity's Rainbow was on, I'm not counting it because I couldn't get past the first 10 pages. And as far as Mordecai Richler goes, I heartily heartily heartily recommend Jacob Two Two and the Hooded Fang. Yeah, I know, it's a kid's book. I still like it better than any of his other books. Also, his nonfiction pleases me more than his fiction, but maybe that's just my fondness for Cantankerous Males Behaving Cantankerously.

-- Anonymous, July 12, 2001

Oh-oh. I thought I was literate and well read until I saw these lists. About a year ago, while cleaning out some boxes at my parents', I found a lot of reading lists from high school and college so I decided to start catching up on those. Much like you, Beth. So now I've finished The Awakening and I've generally been having a field day with all of the English female writers and catching up on those.

However, I've taken a break from those to reread the Hobbit and also to read The Lord of the Rings to prep for the movie this fall. I've never read the trilogy before and it's quite good although rather slow paced. I take occasional breaks from Return of the King (about 2/3 way through) to read my new books I just (stupidly) ordered from amazon.com. I'm almost done with Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and then I also ordered Neil Gaiman's Stardust. I read the Stardust graphic novel series and didn't realize I was buying the same thing when I ordered the book since it had been a while since reading the graphic novels. I wish I had waited until I finished Return of the King before ordering them, because now Return of the King has sat in the same place, on the same page, for a month. I must, must finish it.

I usually look to your page or 3WA for my next reads...I'm trying to catch up on all the old reading I should have done but never did.

-- Anonymous, July 16, 2001


Well, when I created my Adventure List in 2000, I decided to reread every book on theTop 100 Gay Novels, the Feminista List, and the Harvard Bookstore List. Frankly, I found the other lists boring. I started a page to track my accomplishments, and you can see that I've been reading nothing on these lists, but that's because I have tose pesky PhD exams coming up in October so I have about 80 other books to get done by then.

I almost had the Feminista list done, but some of those things were years ago and I only want to count something if I feel like I can hold a reasonable conversation about it. Sure, Nightwood is covered with highlighting, but I sure don't remember it.

Oh, Beth, Moby Dick is on the gay list, so that's one down there!

-- Anonymous, July 18, 2001


Okay, the glitch in my last response in the first line comes from my accidently deleting the Harvard Bookstore List, the only one with some comparative lit on it.

-- Anonymous, July 18, 2001

I've only read eight of the novels on the gay list, but at least one of them is on the reading list for one of the courses I'm taking in the fall.

-- Anonymous, July 18, 2001

Are these books by or about gays and lesbians? or either and both? Was Henry James gay? Because I don't remember any gay themes in Turn of the Screw (which doesn't mean much, because I hated it). And Little Women? This is the one title that makes me think the authors must be g/l, not only the books, because there's no homosexuality in LW (is there?) but Louisa May Alcott? Seriously? A little tear- mingling going on there?

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

Okay, for some reason, my posts yesterday were screwing up, but today they look fine.

According to the list description when the gay novels list appeared a couple of years ago, the definition of gay novel was quite broad. It could be by a gay man or lesbian, it could be about gay men or lesbians, or (and this is the fun part) it could simply be influential to gay and lesbian writers because of it's homoerotic tone. That's how Moby Dick and Little Women can end up on such a list. Frankly, my first thought was that The Catcher in the Rye should have been on it, and maybe it is but my quick glance back doesn't find it. I was more taken aback by the definition of "novel" since some of these books I don't see as novels (A Boy's Own Story or Zami)

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001


(Your post looks fine today because I fixed it. I move like the wind; you never see me coming.)

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

Yeah, though I don't remember whether Melville was as gay as Whitman, knowing one way or the other wouldn't surprise me. There might be some man-love lurking among the lines of Billy Budd.

If the list is about influence, where is the Yellow Wallpaper? (Rhetorical question. I know they can't include everything.)

But excuse me, homoerotic undertones in Little Women? Are we talking about the same book whose second half is *Good Wives*, not _Wives Who Creep about in Attics Resenting the Previous Owner's Decor_? Please, what have I overlooked? My first suspicion is that sometimes people read too much into things--Ishmael and Queequeg shared a bunk but I believe there's no reason to infer any slap-and-tickle from that night--and I cannot think what there might be in Little Women. Shmuel, Beth, Melissa, Nels, anyone?

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001


I believe the current assumption is that Louisa Mae Alcott was probably a lesbian. I once read an essay about homoeroticism (do you call it that when you're talking about lesbianism?) in Little Women, and there were a bunch of examples. The only one I remember at the moment is Jo saying she wished she could marry Meg herself.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

If Jo wanted to marry Meg, that's incest, and hardly a positive example of homoeroticism. Ick. Besides, lots of kids say that. Didn't the younger brother in The Pistachio Prescription try to reassure the protagonist by saying he'd marry her when he grew up? Jo is pretty butch--cutting her hair, how shocking!--but her ulterior motive is to keep the family together. One point for Reading Too Much into Things.

In 10th grade--the grade of the day, apparently, viz Glasses versus Contacts thread--reading "Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening," my teacher asserted that *he* interpreted that the speaker wants to get bestial with his horse because of this line: "My little horse must think it queer/ to stop without a farmhouse near." He expounded--no farmhouse means no witnesses, he's lonely, it's a diminutive horse--until at least some of the class agreed with him with vocal dismissal of such a faggot (their word). The teacher then asked why his interpretation didn't wash, and I said that the word "queer" didn't have that connotation Back Then. (I probably remember this only because I was right.) He was trying to get us to understand about overinterpretation--we had extracted pagefuls of meaning from the 20-word "The Red Wheelbarrow."

So anyway I need a lot more evidence and convincing before I allow that premise.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001


I mean, about *any* eroticism in LW. LMA could have been a raging lesbian for all I know or care.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

Speaking of the Modern Library list, and people were trying to before I tangented so wildly, I read Tobacco Road this weekend. Beth, I recommend it the next time you need a comedy break.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

Lisa, about the lack of homoeroticism in Moby Dick...

there's the scene (after he "found Queeqeg's arm thrown across me in the most affectionate manner. You would have thought i had been his wife"), he later sits and watches Queequeg and talks about how noble and majestic he is, and, watching him, "began to be sensible of strange feelings. I felt a melting in me. No more my splintered heart and maddened hand were turned against the wolfish world. This soothing savage had redeemed it. There he sat... Wild he was; a very sight of sights to see; yet I began to feel myself mysteriously drawn towards him..." Later they read a book together, share a smoke ("exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his"), and "when our smoke was over, he pressed his forehead against mine, clasped me round the waist, and said that henceforth we were married.." after ishmael rationalizes being a christian and worhiping Queeqeg's idol, the get into bed together ..."but we did not go to sleep without some little chat. How it is I know not; but there is no place like bed for confidential disclosures between friends. Man and wife, they say, there open the bottom of their souls to each other; and some old couples often lie and chat over old times till nearly morning. Thus, then, lay I and Queeqeg --a cosy, loving pair."

sorry for the long post, but that is one of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite books (it's not the end of ishamel's bonding with Queeqeg)..

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001


I don't think it's reading too much into Little Women to find evidence of Alcott's (alleged) lesbianism there. If you know the history, she hated Part II of the novel, the part where she was pressured into marrying them all off, especially Jo. Jo was Alcott's fictionalized version of herself, and of course *she* never burned her stories and married a boring old man and had a bunch of babies.

In Part I, the part of the novel that feels more true to the Jo character before she's sold down the marital river, there are all kinds of examples of Jo straining against her assigned gender role, as well as a complete lack of interest in men or boys as objects of romantic interest. Given the constraints of the time, you probably can't expect much more than that.

For what it's worth, I read that book about a thousand times, and as soon as I was old enough to know what a lesbian was, I thought Jo was one. Like every other reader, I could never understand why she married the professor, but I didn't think she should have married Laurie, either.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001


Moby-Dick not just a teensy bit homoerotic? What about the chapter where all the men stand around squeezing sperm? Ever heard of metaphors? There may not be a smoking gun of a line that reads "yes I, Ishmael, did engage in sex play with my fellow sea-mates" but you can definitely smell the gunpowder.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

And, Henry James was gay. Definitely. But not very fun to read.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

Was Melville married?

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

After all this I searched for LMA and homoeroticism. I do know that she was sick of the moral pap of LW/GW, and Jo does seem much more herself in LW than she does in GW. I remember reading somewhere that she refused to marry Jo to Laurie no matter what everyone wanted. You do have to acknowledge that the author and the text are discrete, though. Maybe Jo is a confirmed bachelor in LW, but you have to accept GW as part of the text--married, happy, a mother--and if Jo doesn't seem as Jo in it as she does in LW, then that could be LMA's failing as much as Jo's character.

I do think that we look for things we want to find, but it's also true Melville couldn't've published what he really wanted, if he wanted Q&I to be in lurv, and so would have hidden it. That is a powerful scene you quote, trouble.

I'm the one who's convinced Rebecca Dew and Susan in the Anne of Green Gables books fell in love, since they were kindred spirits and went off trysting together. And if LMA was a lesbian but under the same sort of publishing restraints Melville was under, then what she really wanted for her characters would come out. Fine. After all, there's no explicit love scene in Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle-Stop Café, but the women are lovers.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001


You do have to acknowledge that the author and the text are discrete, though.

Not necessarily. That's just one way of looking at it.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001


Beth, Melville was married. I hear it was not a happy one. At least one of his children committed suicide. On the other hand, some didn't, and now Melville is an ancestor of the musician Moby!

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

Damn. See, this is where a repressive society will lead you: sham marriages, children who manage to survive anyway, and finally, bad music.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

Somehow I'd avoided reading this thread until now. For what little it's worth, I've read 9 on the MLA list, 15 on the MLA readers' list, 8 on the Feminista list, 16 on the Radcliffe list, 2 on the gay list, and 16 on the Harvard Book Store list.

-- Anonymous, July 19, 2001

Wow, post a quick link to the gay list and get a whole discussion going. I can't find any links that were around at the time the list first appeared where some voters explained their voting logic, but as I said above, it wasn't just about homoeroticism, but also about influence. Little Women stood out to some people because it was one of the first books to deal with a somewhat extensive community of women. Yes, they're sisters, but it's possible to pretend that it's not familial and enjoy it on a certain level. It's why so many gay men cite The Outsiders as an influential text. It's not what Hinton intended, and it's not necessarily the "correct" reading, but it's a possible one, and for many (especially young) readers, that's all that matters.

As for Melville and his marriage, you might want to take a look at Strike Through the Mask: Herman Melville and the Scene of Writing by Elizabeth Renker. She argues that Melville's problems with depression and his emotional/physical abuse of his wife were integral influences in his writing career. The book caused quite a little stir when it first appeared.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001


Ugh, I have no frigging idea why my posts get screwed up when I post links. So Beth doesn't have to fix it, I had linked to a book at Amazon (Strike Through the Mask: Herman Melville and the Scene of Writing) that argues that it was Melville's depression and physical/emotional abuse of his wife that served as integral influences on his writing. It raised quite a few hackles when the book appeared.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001

I'd like to make two more off-topic points and then I'll be good.

First, the last post from the 19th was written in three seconds before I left the web for the day and more riddled with faults therefore even than my usual posts.

Second, whether LMA was a lesbian and wrote Jo as a would-be lesbian (masked as an independent, nonmarrying woman) in _Little Women_ but then compromised Jo's character in _Good Wives_ is one argument, and one I don't counter. What I do counter is any intimation of homoeroticism among the sisters in _Little Women-Good Wives_. (It is an essay of the sort you read, Beth, that I would like to read.) If Jo is homosexual, well and good. That's a much different suggestion than whether she had any incestuous desires for her sisters.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001


Last month, during the quarterly membership drive, our local PBS station showed the first two Anne of Green Gables series (and, thankfully, not the dreadful and non-canonical 'Anne goes to war' one) and I loved these series as a teenager - but watching them now, I was really taken aback by what seems to my overly culturally sensitized eyes as a bunch of frolicking young lesbians - 'bosom friends' and outright swooning of young women over each other.

But then I remembered that female relationships have taken on very different forms throughout time - I am reminded here of a recent article in Ms. Magazine about 'Boston Marriages' - where two single women took up residence together, based on a close friendship - and to call every one of those a lesbian relationship is straining credulity. There need not be sex lurking in every corner when two people come together.

I think it's textually and historically incorrect to read Jo as a lesbian - each girl in the March family represented the different ways the notion of womanhood was developing in that era. Jo was the pre-flapper, really. Her devotion to her sisters, if anything, is indicative of how new and precarious her attempts to branch out beyond the expected roles of wife and mother were - there was familiarity, comfort and safety with her sisters.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001


"that is a powerful scene you quote"

yes indeed! i do love it so. not to mention

"exchanging puffs from that wild pipe of his"

hee.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001


Wow. The only thing I remember from my one women's history class was that "boston marriage" was a code word for lesbianism. Huh.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001

Bless their pointy little heads - but women's history/culture/lit classes do love to find lesbianism everywhere - the women's studies class I took was very much in that vein. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. It seems unfashionable in academe these days to simply see women as strong, independent and empowered with one another without their being romantically involved.

With the caveats that I am staunchly in the corner of New Criticism (you deal with the text and the text only), and see no value at all in the too common reading of texts from other eras with an eye lodged solely in the now. (Which is to say, a Marxist reading of, say, Jane Austen is both useless and way off the mark.)

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001


Actually I oversimplified. This definition of a Boston marriage is pretty much in line with what I learned in college. This is another interesting definition.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001

I just remembered my favorite example of reading lesbianism into a text where it most likely isn't: my Milton prof pointed out a theory someone or other had come up with, that in Paradise Lost, Eve was actually a lesbian. This was shown by the fact that she vastly preferred her own reflection to Adam; she found him fairly repulsive at first meeting.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001

What Gabby said, and thank you: two or more people can be together without sex lurking in the corner.

Or not. I just read Angle of Repose, which is a) fantastic and b) about an old man writing a biography of his grandparents based on their letters and newspaper clippings and his memories. His amanuensis, who is 20 and female, thinks he's denying the Truth but not writing in explicit sex scenes, and calls him repressed. Maybe I'm repressed for thinking incest is as repugnant as I do. But I just think I'm right.

If you want to get your rocks off reading the Outsiders or Little Women/GW as homosexual (or Jane Austen as Marxist, ouch!), go you. But to profess that such was those authors' intent (which I haven't read anyone here do) I do not accept.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001


Lisa: nobody said incest. Did anyone say incest? I didn't say incest. If you thought I meant that Jo actually wanted to have sex with her sisters, then I'm sorry for being unclear. But I'm beginning to think that I can't explain to you what I did mean, so I'm just going to drop it.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001

No, no one said it here. Dropping the tangent sounds fine; pardon me; let's move on.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001

i feel like i'm coming late to the discussion.... radcliffe - 37 modern lib board - 19 modern lib readers - 35 (what's with all the charles delint?) feminista - 12

would you believe me if i said i was an english major? i was. i did two years of grad school, too, but i was a medievalist. the 20th century isn't exactly my time period unless you count modern sci-fi and fantasy (well, and ayn rand) so i look like a moron when i try to answer any "how many books have you read off the such-and-such best of list" questions.

but i was just tickled to see the hitchhiker's guide.

this summer's reading consists of finishing guy gavriel kay's tigana and starting (and hopefully finishing) jeanette winterson's the powerbook. and...um...harry potter 3 and 4.

-- Anonymous, July 23, 2001


...and yesterday i bought american gods (neil gaiman) so now i have to finish that too.

-- Anonymous, July 24, 2001

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