Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim - David Sedaris

Ok, confession time.  I've often seen David Sedaris's book Me Talk Pretty One Day in bookshops, and thought it was a good title.  At some point along the way, this noticing must have developed into delusion, because for some reason I was sure it was a novel about a girl with mental development problems.  Erm... nope.  Turns out it's memoir.

A similar thing happened with Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004) which I received from my friend Laura in a book group Secret Santa in 2011.  I took it up to the Lake District with me, thinking it was a novel.  Indeed, I was about thirty pages into it before someone referred to the narrator as David, and I suddenly realised that (a) the narrator wasn't a woman, and (b) it was autobiographical.  I felt somewhat justified in my false assumption, though, scouring the blurb, because nowhere does it say that it's autobiographical.  Lots of talking about him being a humorist par excellence (more on that anon), comparing him to Woody Allen and Oscar Wilde (because they have so much in common...), and talking about 'his world', which I suppose is a clue, but could equally apply to the world created by a novelist.  Eventually, in tiny letters by the barcode, I found the word 'autobiography', and all was solved.

As when I read Ali Shaw's The Girl With Glass Feet and only discovered halfway through that Ali was a man, it was an instructive lesson in how such things influence my reading.  When I thought it was a novel, I was quite enjoying it; when I discovered it was a sequence of autobiographical essays, I started to really like it.  And I wouldn't be able to tell you quite why that was, except that true events don't need to be as sparklingly innovative or well-structured - they have the virtue, instead, of being true.

Many of the anecdotes do have the ring of fiction, though - truth stranger than fiction and all that.  I found the tales of Sedaris's life in his first apartment away from home rather unnerving, with the kleptomaniac young girl next door - then there is the time he is mistaken for an erotic cleaner.  As you are.  But the word 'family' is in the title for a reason, and it is Sedaris's vivid depiction of his family which makes this book so extraordinary (and, one presumes, the same is true of his other memoirs - indeed, I don't know how he had this many stories left to tell after publishing all those other essay collections).

Don't go thinking this is Swiss Family Robinson or Little Women, though - Sedaris's family is a pretty bizarre bunch, with many unpleasant elements.  And Sedaris doesn't sugar coat.  His sporty, brash, vulgar brother is no treat; there is more affection when he discusses his sister Lisa, and her feelings about potentially being portrayed in a film of his books.  There is, of course, an irony in publishing an essay about choosing to shield his family from intrusion, but it is still a beautiful moment nonetheless.

There are a couple of misfires in the collection.  I could have done without his story of manipulating children to undress and sit on his knee - not (to my mind) wholly redeemed by the fact that he was also a child at the time.  The vignette of house-hunting and finding the ideal home in Anne Frank's attic was a one-line dark joke which didn't work as an essay.  But that is not a bad hit rate, out of 22 essays.

What makes these essays special, and wonderfully readable, is Sedaris's eye.  He lets us into his family circle - with every blemish well known, and every annoying trait magnified through repetition, but also with a glow of affection - sometimes, for Sedaris, reluctant - which cannot truly evaporate.  How he gets this into words, and through the most eccentric anecdotes, I have no idea.  But it works brilliantly.  I am far from the first to discover the wonder of Sedaris's tone, but perhaps I am not the last - and I want to encourage you, particularly if you are in the US where his books are everywhere (why didn't I buy any when I was there?!) to pick this up and see what you think.  The good personal essay, the expertly wry memoir, are seldom found.  My thanks are due to Laura, for giving me a copy of this at a Secret Santa and giving me a chance to find an excellent practitioner of that rare form!

The Compleat Mrs. Elton - Diana Birchall

I wouldn't normally count a book from the author as a Reading Presently candidate, but in the case of The Compleat Mrs. Elton (2004) by Diana Birchall (consisting of The Courtship of Mrs. Elton, A Defence of Mrs. Elton, and Mrs. Elton in America) things are different - because Diana is a friend of mine, and you may know her blog.  We first met online - through a book discussion email list - but have now met at least three times in person, and Diana gave me a present of this book (and the biography she wrote of her grandmother Onoto Wantana) at a lovely riverside tearoom in Oxfordshire.  Photographic evidence...

I suspect most of you will already have worked out what the book is about, if you do not know already, for - yes- it is Mrs. Elton from Emma, once Augusta Hawkins, the fairly ghastly woman who ends up marrying the vicar.  If any of Austen's characters ever needed a defence, it is she, with her 'caro sposo' and 'Mr. K' and vulgarities here and there.

At least, that is the generally agreed line.  Diana disagrees.  Of the three, I found the Defence of Mrs. Elton both the most intriguing and the most controversial - but I will come to that in time, starting at the beginning with Augusta's courtship.

Firstly, I should say that Diana writes Austen beautifully.  A long time ago I wrote about Diana's sequel to Pride and Prejudice, Mrs. Darcy's Dilemma (which is brilliant) and there is no doubt in my mind that Diana is among Jane's most faithful imitators - and it is a joy to read her taking on Austen's mantle.  The courtship between Mr. Elton and Augusta Hawkins shows the future Mrs. Elton to be as aware of her age and singleness as Austen's better-loved heroines... it's a nice tale, and starts the defence:

If our lovers were in fact a venial pair, marrying only in a spirit of self-seeking, how much worse were they than half the world?  It was such a perfect case of like marrying like, that the most elevated love between two pure souls could be no more perfectly matched.  With a strong mutual wish for matrimony, and for each finding a partner who could bring benefits to the other, and a determination and resolve to be bettering themselves, Mr. Elton and Miss Hakwins stood a great chance of finding as lasting a happiness as exists in this mutable world.

Which leads me onto In Defence of Mrs. Elton.  Scenes from Emma, from Mrs. Elton's arrival onwards, are shown again from that lady's perspective, away from the satirical and subjective slant of the narrator.  In my opinion (and I would love to enter into a debate), Diana doesn't so much defend Mrs. Elton's character as give her a different one...

Augusta knew, even as she was speaking, that everything she was saying was wrong [...]

Did she?  Hmm... of course, people often say one thing and mean another, or don't come across in the way they intend, but it is perhaps too easy a defence to take a character's objectionable qualities and say they were not really there.  Diana does, however, is more convincing and does a very good job when attacking the other characters - I hadn't really noticed quite how awful Emma et al are to the newcomer, and Augusta's plea swayed me...

They were all her enemies, yet what had she done to any of them?  Her ways, her manners, were not like theirs; she knew that well enough.  She was not capable of their sort of superior insolence, the exquisite politeness that only pointed up the disdain beneath: when she thought a thing, she said it.  If they were so pretty and exacting as to mind such a difference in her, and disapprove of the manner when the heart was right, what hope had she of ever living in harmony with any of them.

Onto the next and final story - whizzing through these, but hard to write about three novellas in one post!  Well, it's the one where things go a bit mad, and it's great fun.  Not only does Mrs. Elton go - with husband and children - to America, they travel among the Native Americans.  There is scalping...  From anybody who loved Austen less, I might not have forgiven the narrative world Diana takes her characters to, away from the English village life they call home, but I know that Diana would fall down dead rather than be disrespectful to Jane Austen.  The writing is good enough to support the scenario.  There is even much discussion of slavery - a wry comment on those who see slavery hidden behind Mansfield Park, I wonder?

"Yes - it is very painful," agreed her husband, shaking his head.  "We cannot be glad enough that there is not such an evil institution in England as slavery; and hope that it can be removed from this country in the natural operations of time, so that America may one day be as fair and untainted a land as ours."

From an English writer, this might come across as snobbery - but Diana is an American gal born and bred, which makes her tour of early America through the Eltons' eyes particularly intriguing.  It's a crazy idea, but it somehow works - and is a darn sight more entertaining than the next Lizzie-and-Darcy bonkfest penned by every author fixated with the 2005 film...

So, there you have it!  For those of us who adore Austen's novels and are on the look-out for intelligent, sensitive, and adventurous explorations of her characters - look no further.  Now, in the comments... thoughts on Mrs. Elton?

The History Book On The Shelf...

Sorry to start this post by setting the cultural barrier quite low... if you don't recognise the lyric in the post title, then consider yourself much more highbrow than me.

As promised, The History Boys by Alan Bennett. I did the unthinkable and came to this play through the film first - in fact, I still haven't seen it on stage, but I have read it. What first attracted me to the film was the shots of Magdalen in the trailer - I thought it would be fun to see my place of residence on the big screen. As it turned out, the shots from the trailer were about all you saw of Magdalen in the film. Which makes sense, as they only go to Oxford towards the end...

A bit of plot synopsis, for those who don't know. It's a 1980s boys' school, and eight students are going for a place studying History at Oxford. They have a wise, quirky, lonely teacher Hector - and in is brought a savvy, slightly awkward teacher Irwin. In between is the quite wonderful feminist teacher Mrs. Lintott. The play is really about different styles of knowledge and uses of it, and the purposes of education. Hector has taught them enormous amounts of interesting facts, but focuses equally on re-enactments of famous film scenes, and practising French through rather bizarre scenarios. Irwin is all about getting them into Oxford, teaching them the way to answer interview questions which is a little edgy, a little conspicuously different. Hector thinks examinations 'the enemy of education', and thinks with the boys that he has 'lined their minds with some sort of literary insulation, proof against the primacy of fact' - Irwin sees this trivia as 'gobbets' to be sprinkled into any exam or interview answer.

I didn't think much of the film. All the acting was great, but the fact that almost everyone was lusting after each other (which I missed out of the synopsis because it's complicated and quite dull) rather ruined it. Reading the play, there are so many fascinating ideas in it - alongside genuine wit - and it isn't all clear-cut. It seems that Hector is right to start with - but so much of the entertainment of the play comes from these 'gobbets', out of context, out of passionate discovery. Tricky. The depiction of Oxford is hideously out of date, even for the 1980s, but Bennett's introduction detailing his own application experiences is worth the cover price alone.
Bennett's major achievement is having so many distinct schoolchildren. So many in fiction are good or disruptive or clever-but-misunderstood, and so forth - these are all intelligent creations and memorably characterised. Dakin - cheeky, bright, canny - is the most impressive, perhaps, but I grew fond of vulnerable Posner and authentic Scripps. Having seen the original cast members in the film, they are inextricably linked in my mind - especially Frances de la Tour's beautifully sardonic portrayal of Mrs. Lintott - and this helped a reading of the play.

Do seek out a copy to read, or hopefully a local theatre will put it on (is someone still touring with it? I don't know. Obviously the original cast aren't). And you could watch the film, but it doesn't do The History Boys justice at all.

Postjudiced

It seems Mrs. Darcy has been a busy woman, paying calls on more or less every blog in the neighbourhood, and Stuck-in-a-Book is no different. In fact, despite Diana Birchall (whom I know from an online literary discussion list) contacting me a while ago, her book Mrs. Darcy's Dilemma has been hither and thither, all around Oxfordshire and most of the departments of the Bodleian. Hallowed company indeed. Finally she landed at my doorstop (or, more precisely, the janitors' desk) and I read this lovely novel in little under a day.

I have a healthy scepticism of prequels and sequels and so forth, if not written by the original author, and no author comes more sacred than our Jane. Advocacy has bordered on obsession ever since the earliest days of general access to her writings, and though national Jane-addiction comes in peaks and troughs, it has never truly been absent. I came to Pride and Prejudice in 1995 along with so many others, through the BBC TV version, when I was nine or ten. Though I’ve only read the novel once, I have listened to an unabridged cassette and watched a fairly faithful television version probably some hundred or so times. There is not a book in the world I would less like to see sullied.

Lucky Diana Birchall feels the same, isn’t it?

What shines from every page of Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma is a love of Jane Austen, a respect for her great craft, and a deep affection for every single one of her characters, whether likeable or not. We have moved on twenty-five years, the wedding which concluded Pride and Prejudice has become a lengthy marriage and produced three children – Fitzwilliam, Henry and Jane. When Lydia’s progeny, Bettina and Cloe, come to visit their Aunt, Uncle and Cousins, romance, scandal and a sororal reunion cannot be far behind.

Within the first few pages, I had to make a decision – as will any reader, and it is the only way to read a sequel, I think. That decision was to read Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma as a exercise in hypothetical speculation; a diverting game of “what if?”, not “and then…” For there were a hundred times when I thought “No! She wouldn’t have ended up like that”, or “Surely they would have…” and so forth. I am certain that Diana would welcome such a response – she is not laying down Mrs. Darcy’s Dilemma as a definitive continuation of Pride and Prejudice, but rather a skilful and witty piece of fantasy. If I were writing (or, rather, plotting) a sequel, then I’d have been kinder to Lydia and Kitty, certainly given Jane a pleasing and humble daughter, and maybe even… no, you see, each reader has her/his projections, affinities and affections.

To return to the novel. It has been many months since I read something so addictively, so keen to dedicate all my spare time to reading it. Yes, it even entered read-whilst-walking-to-work territory, which only happens once or twice a year. This was helped by the fact that Diana cleverly divides the narrative focus between revisiting old characters, and exploring the antics of their children. Most of P&P’s characters appear, or are at least mentioned. We see Lizzy and Lydia making the same mistakes as their father and mother respectively, and watch the good ‘uns and bad ‘uns (as usual in Jane country, the bad ‘uns are foolish more than wicked) from the next generation make a mess of things, and, of course, sort themselves out.

Naturally, Diana Birchall isn’t as good a writer as Jane Austen – it would be an odd coincidence if she were, since nobody else has achieved that in the last two centuries – but I can think of no finer hands into which to place this playful task. Playful in theory, of course, but I daresay terribly difficult in practice. Diana gets the tone so right: witty and ironic and moving and very, very Austen. I think the greatest compliment I can pay Mrs Darcy’s Dilemma is that I was left not mourning the handling of beloved characters who appeared, but wondering what she’d have done with the ones who did not.