Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

It took me a long time to finish Housekeeping--not because I found it dull, but because I found myself overwhelmed with jealousy for Marilynne Robinson's prose style.

If one should be shown odd fragments arranged on a silver tray and be told, "That is a splinter from the True Cross, and that is a nail pairing dropped by Barabbas, and that is a bit of lint from under the bed where Pilate's wife dreamed her dream," the very ordinariness of the things would recommend them. Every spirit passing through the world fingers the tangible and mars the mutable, and finally has come to look and not to buy. So shoes are worn and hassocks are sat upon and finally everything is left where it was and the spirit passes on, just as the wind in the orchard picks up the leaves from the ground as if there were no other pleasure in the world but brown leaves, as if it would deck, clothe, flesh itself in flourishes of dusty brown leaves, and then drops them all in a heap at the side of the house and goes on (73).

My slow, "spurts" of reading method, however, didn't really do Housekeeping justice. Because the life of this novel is so deeply embedded in the flow of language, rather than in the plot, or even the characters (though the imagery exists through the characters), it can be difficult to get back into that flow if you only read a little at a time (I found this true with Robinson's Gilead as well, but I read that more quickly).

Just about everyone seems to have nice things to say about Marilynne Robinson's novels, so for simplicity's sake, I'm just going to list all (okay, several) of the things I liked about Housekeeping:

1. Robinson's breath-taking mix of water/air/ice imagery.
2. The picture Robinson draws of Fingerbone, Idaho through Ruth's position as someone neither completely inside nor completely out.
3. The idea of transience, and the question of whether it is harder or easier to love something/someone transient.
4. The characters. There's almost a gentleness in the way Robinson portrays people. Most of the people I've grown up around are likable and even (outwardly) boring. I always have a little trouble relating to novels populated by scoundrel after despicable, colorful scoundrel.
5. There's an innate spirituality in Robinson's prose. And she has a way of taking Biblical images (such as the Flood) and turning them so that they catch the light in a new way.

...and things that may make reading Housekeeping difficult:

1. There is a plot structure, but it's not immediately visible. Don't expect a fast read. (Not that I believe a fast read automatically equals a good read.)
2. Ruth, the narrator, (like many of the other characters) is a ponderer. I can relate, but sometimes I felt like shouting, "Just do something already!" But this, ultimately, makes the actions Ruth chooses more meaningful.
3. The knowledge that Robinson's prose is much, much more elegant than your own.

(Image from LITTORAL.)

Excuses, Excuses...

The past couple days, I've been wearing my brain out long before I've managed to get to the blog. I've tried working from the mental "netherworld," and at least with blogging (and grammar), results are sketchy.

The Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, trans. by Jack Zipes

I've finally finished my Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (illustrations by John B. Gruelle, aka Johnny Gruelle). I particularly appreciated the inclusion of tales the Grimms later omitted from their collection and Jack Zipes' brief biography, "Once There were Two Brothers Named Grimm."

Gruelle's pen-and-ink illustrations are the quintessential fairytale images, but in a 734-page book, they feel spread rather thin. I like my fairytales heavily illustrated, even when the tales are not actually for children.

I hoped reading all 242 of the tales would help me recognize some of the basic fairytale/folktale structures and elements. What surprised me was the tension between the morals of different tales. In most stories, for example, kindness and politeness to rude and unusual strangers is rewarded, but in "The Gnome," the youngest brother, who meets the gnome's incivility with harshness, is rewarded with information (of course, the reader knows the gnome is up to no good, so the message supposedly is "know who you're dealing with"). Throughout the collection, tales switch between confirming and subverting values like humility, honesty, patience, industry, etc.

Notes on the Translation: Jack Zipes says that his translation from the German attempts to keep historical references and the Grimms' mix of the "graceful" and "coarse," while avoiding mimicking a Victorian style. Comparing Margaret Hunt's (much older) translation of "The Three Spinners" to Zipes, I find I greatly prefer Zipe's "'Ahh!' said the bridegroom. 'How did you ever come by such ghastly-looking friends?'" to Hunt's more sedate "'Ah,' said the bridegroom, 'how comest thou by these odious friends?'" Also, (though unrelated to translation quality) I am predisposed to like anyone responsible for a book titled Don't Bet on the Prince.

(Image from Random House.)

In Praise of Procrastination

I'm acutely aware of the lack of content/punctuality in my recent posts, but even with a fresh Monday in front of me, I don't really feel like blogging. Fortunately, today I found an article on how the connotations of the word procrastination have changed over time, and why procrastination may be a good thing.

I don't completely believe it, but I believe it just enough to put off writing a real blog post till tomorrow.

Thoughts on Random Words, or Yes, My Brain has Melted; Thank You for Asking

I couldn't decide if it was worse not to blog or to subject everyone else to my current state of mind...

I'm sure I'm not the only word-lover who finds herself falling in love with a different word each week. I was very disappointed when it struck me yesterday that I would never be able to refer to myself as "just a bloke who [fill-in the blank]." Never. There is no female equivalent to the word bloke, or if there is, I'm sure it doesn't trip off the tongue so lightly.

Also, I will never be knighted--partially because I'm not male and partially because I'm not British. (Speaking of which, I'm not sure I've ever heard an American say bloke.) But supposing I, oh, suddenly woke up British tomorrow and then happened to do something really noteworthy, the best I could hope for is to be made a dame, which really just sounds like something out of a PI novel (i.e. "Then this dame burst in. I could tell she was trouble from the way she was swinging her Order of the British Empire around"). Not that special. On the positive side, I can't find any evidence that the British actually refer to the bestowing of this honor as being "damed," which is a relief.

P.S. The refuge of the lazy blogger, Wikipedia, informs me that I don't have to wake up British tomorrow to in order to receive an honorary knight-, er, dame-hood.

Also, I may have watched just a little too much of PBS' Monarchy: The Royal Family at Work this week.

While We're on the Topic of Dickens...

I found this interesting (London) Times article on Dickens' house for "fallen" women.

Redeeming Fagin "the Jew"?

Oliver Twist is not my favorite Dickens' novel, but "Boz" and I go way back, so I watched Masterpiece Classic's first installment of The Tales of Charles Dickens series.

This movie-length version zips along at a much faster pace than the novel, and in about thirty minutes Oliver is out of the workhouse, past the undertaker's workshop, in London, and being introduced to Fagin (played by Timothy Spall). And I'm all excited and thinking about the use of color, the musical score, the beefing up of Oliver's personality when--Oh my word! They didn't...

They did. They made Fagin a Jew, again.

In case you don't know, there is a long, perturbed history behind this. Fagin is considered the 19th century literary equivalent to Shakespeare's Shylock.

Historical Side Note: After Dickens became friends with James and Eliza Davis, a Jewish couple, Eliza expressed disappointment over his portrayal of Fagin. Dickens (after some initial defensiveness) stopped the printing of Oliver Twist and removed most mentions of Fagin's Jewishness from the last, unset chapters of the novel. (He also, presumably, created Mr. Riah in Our Mutual Friend as attempt to atone for Fagin.) But the miserly, demon-like image of Fagin "the Jew" had already been born.

The other versions of Oliver Twist that I've seen have blended together in my mind, but my impression was that contemporary directors tended to downplay or ignore Fagin's Judaism. (Some quick internet research shows that this isn't true, but I haven't seen/remembered all those interpretations.) I do remember frightening portrayals of Fagin, but he was also clever, almost to point of being a lovable, unrepentant rogue. This has been what I remember instead of a continuation Dickens' stereotype.

In a PBS interview, Timothy Spall said that his goal was to make Fagin more sympathetic, which seems like plausible idea to me (after all Fagin is the first remotely kind face Oliver meets in the novel). Spall is a good actor (I thought the scene where Dodger finds him praying was well-done), but his talent seems to have been poured into creating another Jewish caricature. Spall's Fagin is ingratiating, awkward, anxious... morally and physically weak. Spall even says, "Fagin seems to be used to getting hit a lot." Sympathetic apparently equals downtrodden and helpless.

I can't help feeling that the Jew as powerless victim isn't an improvement on Dickens' stereotype. Nancy and the Artful Dodger were each given moments where, futile or not, the viewer saw them set their teeth and go against the flow of circumstances--making them tragically heroic. Fagin kept folding like a card-table; somewhere along the way he'd lost the one admirable trait Dickens gave him: his resourceful mind. Without spoiling the ending, I can say that there was a moment where Fagin almost regained his dignity, but it wasn't enough for me. The focus of the scene was not on Fagin but on the prejudice that surrounded him, and he seemed like a flustered rabbit swallowed by hounds rather than a man overcome by tragedy.

I think I still feel a little stunned, both by what was attempted and what I actually saw. Has anyone else seen this? Thoughts?

(Image from BBC America Shop.)