Beowulf on the Beach - Jack Murnighan

I'm not great at reading on 'planes, and I thought (on my recent trip to the US) that it would be best to take a book I could read in short segments, rather than attempting to sustain a narrative.  While rooting through my books-about-books shelf, I stumbled across Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits (2009) by Jack Murnighan.  It was first suggested to me by an online friend, Sheila, and I put it on my Amazon wishlist - from where it was bought by my brother a few years ago.  Thank you Colin, and thank you Sheila if you're still reading SiaB!

I think there are two things most bloggers and bibliophiles think when they see a list of books: (1) yay! a list! (2) wait, how could they have missed out/included this/that...  Well, Beowulf on the Beach is an extended exercise in both (1) and (2), tied together with Jack Murnighan's very amusing style - so, of course, I loved it.

Let's start with the gimmicks - and, no mistake, this is a very gimmicky book.  It would have to be, really.  Murnighan has selected the 50 'greatest hits' of literature, and tells us what they're about, what the 'buzz' is, the best line, fun facts, what's sexy (!), and what to skip.

When I read, I hope the book will reach me in at least one of three places: where I zip, where I button a shirt, and where I put on a hat.

A neat sentence, and once which tells you the sort of literary scholar Murnighan is - one who isn't afraid to talk about what is 'sexy'.  Yup, he's not using the word to mean 'the best bits', he literally means 'is there sex in this book?'  Which is obviously a bit silly, and very awkward when we get to Lolita, but... well, it's a gimmick, as I said.  Equally untenable is the 'what to skip' bit - perhaps it works when he's talking about Ovid's Metamorphoses or Homer's Odyssey, but it's pretty ridiculous to advise skipping huge chunks of a modern novel, which probably wouldn't make sense.

But none of that really matters, because I don't think Murnighan intends us to take those sections particularly seriously.  What I really enjoyed is how Murnighan refuses to put on a scholarly voice, and instead brings out how enjoyable reading great works of literature can be.

Anna Karenina is like a sundae with a dollop of Madame Bovary as its base and a squeeze of melted Middlemarch poured over the top.

Since I've not read any of those three novels (well, the first hundred pages of the third), I can't comment on the accuracy of Murnighan's simile, but I love the idea of it nonetheless, and it is a good example of his lack of holy cows.  Charles Dickens becomes Chuck, Murnighan refers to 'zingers', etc. etc.  It's all very informal, and great fun - but also very informative.  Murnighan is nothing if not passionate about literature.  Here's part of what he has to say about One Hundred Years of Solitude:

Forget magic realism.  Right now.  If I hear you say the words, I'll sneak up behind you with a piano-wire; I'm not kidding.  Yes, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is associated with that dimwit's category (lumping him with the epigone Isabel Allende and other charlatans), but his imaginative leaps are the least important about this book.  To reduce Garcia Marquez's narrative genius to such an infantilizing pseudoconcept as magic realism is high treason in itself, but to allow that academic manure to be what people talk about regarding this novel, as if humanity doesn't need to be sat down, as a whole, at grandpa Gabo's knee and told what's really important, that is utterly inexcusable.  Literature classes have a sacred book on their hands and they make it sound like the trip journals of a peyote fiend.  For shame.

Eeks.  Truth be told, Murnighan's tastes could scarcely be more different from mine.  He says Paradise Lost is the best work ever written (I don't even think it's the best work Milton wrote beginning with the word 'Paradise'), Moby Dick the best novel (snore), and Faulkner the best novelist (haven't read any, but...).  While he covers more of the globe than I do with my reading, there is a rather shameful paucity of female writers responsible for these 50 books - Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Toni Morrison.  Of course, he is not to blame for the sidelining of women throughout literature's history, but the inclusion of authors like Robert Musil, Thomas Pynchon, and Cormac McCarthy rather than (say) Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield, and Muriel Spark - all of whom have at least equal claim to canonicity - does speak some prejudice.  Make no mistake, Murnighan is a big fan of overtly masculine, guns-and-big-themes literature, and proudly states it; we were never going to coincide in our literary tastes.  (His chapter on Pride and Prejudice is, by the way, pretty poor... I don't think he got the point, since he thinks it's all about 'romantic fantasies', instead - as I would suggest - of being chiefly about self-knowledge.)

I was also left wondering whether Murnighan ever read anything that wasn't canonical, since he seems to have read all fifty of these books dozens of times.  Does he ever pick up something he's never heard of, and discover an unexpected gem?  That (as I'm sure you'll be aware) is one of the greatest joys of the reader's life.

But these are small criticisms for a book which, as I suggested at the beginning of this post, could only be found perfect by a bibliophile were that bibliophile to compile the list themselves.  Whether or not you'll use Beowulf on the Beach as a manual for the reading life, skipping the bits Murnighan advises against and bookmarking the sexy bits... well, I doubt you will - but any lover of literature will delight in a very witty, very intelligent, entirely biased and totally enthusiastic reader sharing those enthusiasms.  A perfect Christmas present for the bibliophile in your life - and a perfect birthday present to me from Colin back in 2010.

The Help (in which I step off my high horse)

I recently read The Help by Kathryn Stockett - I shan't bother giving a full review, since I'm so late to the party that nearly everyone seems to have read it already, but it does provide a useful opportunity to talk about a general trend in my reading.

Very briefly, for those not in the know, The Help is about 1960s America - Jackson, Mississippi, specifically (which to me is chiefly notable for producing Eudora Welty and this wonderful song) - and the racial tensions of the time.  Particularly those between maid and employee - the cast of characters is almost exclusively women, including the three narrators Aibileen, Minny, and Skeeter Phelan.  All three narrators are marvellously engaging, the whole novel is a terrific page-turner without sacrificing any narrative polish, and all in all it's a very good novel.  If it weren't tremendously popular already, I would be waxing evangelical about it to all and sundry.

It's not a flawless novel.  You think the characters are complex (and some are) but then you realise that some of the racist characters are unrealistically bad in all ways - and there is an incident involving a naked man and a poker which needn't have been in the novel at all (and isn't nearly as unpleasant as I've realised that sentence sounds.)  But it's an extremely impressive debut novel, and it's bewildering that 50 agents turned it down.

Simply to create three characters so empathetic and engaging (that word again; but it is appropriate) is an exceptional achievement.  Novels were multiple narrators usually end up having one who isn't as vibrant as the others, or one who is head and shoulders above the rest - not so, in Stockett's case.  I was always delighted to see any of them turn up in the next chapter - with perhaps a slight preference for irrepressible Minny. No, wise Aibileen might come top. Oh, but what about Skeeter's enthusiastic confusion and determination?  Oh, hang it, I love them all.

So why am I writing about The Help without reviewing it properly?  To expose one of my failings, I'm afraid.

I had assumed, since it was so popular, that it would be very poor.  If it hadn't been for my book group, I wouldn't have read it - and I'm grateful to the dovegreybooks ladies for giving me a copy (although I don't know which of the group it was!)

You can excuse me - or at least understand where I'm coming from.  If you've found your way to Stuck-in-a-Book, I wouldn't be surprised if you've experienced a similar thing.  Seeing Dan Brown and his ilk at the top of the bestseller charts, it's difficult to believe that anything of quality could sell millions of copies, in the way that The Help has.

I did love The Time Traveller's Wife, but other bestselling representatives of literary fiction have proven singularly disappointing to me.  Ian McEwan's recent output has been rather 'meh'; Lionel Shriver's fantastically popular We Have To Talk About Kevin was so dreadfully written that I gave up on p.50.  Things like The Lovely Bones and The Kite Runner weren't exactly bad, but I found it difficult to call them good, either.  Bestselling literary fiction is usually vastly better than bestselling unliterary fiction (yes, Dan Brown, I'm looking at you) but it doesn't excite me.

Remember a little while ago I posted that quotation from Diana Athill, about the two types of reader, and how the second type created the bestseller?  Well, my experience had led me to believe that I'd never find a chart-topping novel that I really loved and admired.  Perhaps a few would be page-turners, but I couldn't imagine any would actually bear closer analysis too.

Well, reader, I was wrong.  While Kathryn Stockett isn't (yet, at least) on the scale of great prose writers like Virginia Woolf, she is certainly a cut above the usual.  I'm delighted that I stepped down from my high horse long enough to enjoy it - or, let's face it, that I was pushed off against my will.

Return of Winnie-the-Pooh

When it was announced that there would be an authorised sequel to Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner, I was rather sceptical.  It seemed doomed to failure from the outset, and previous attempts to cash in on Milne's talent (notably the horrendous Disney adaptation, and resultant filling of the world with the hideous illustrations that were mangled into being) weren't encouraging.  But I read the first story online and was pretty impressed; Verity gave me a copy of Return to the Hundred Acre Wood (thanks Verity!), and... 15 months later, quick as a snap, I read it.

I don't know why it took me so long, other than because it almost always takes me an age to read the books on my shelves, however much I've been looking forward to them.  But it seemed the perfect choice for my sickbed last week, undemanding and jolly, and so I took it down.

My thoughts could be summed up by saying: "It's pretty much as good as it could be."  We all knew it would never be as good as the original - how could it be? - but it could have been a lot, lot worse.

The right people wrote and illustrated it, for a start.  David Benedictus, the writer, had already dramatised the Winnie-the-Pooh books for the radio, and Mark Burgess (stepping into E.H. Shepard's shoes as illustrator) was the colourist for Shepard's illustrations in When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six.  These are clearly men who have a great awareness of, and fondness for, the genius of Milne and Shepard.  Whatever results they come up with, they have written and illustrated with respect and caution.  Not for them, the slap-dash "Wouldn't it be funny if Rabbit looked like he was off his head on drugs, and Eeyore were an alcoholic?" stylings of Disney.

The stories in the book take place during one of Christopher Robin's school holidays.  I'll write a little bit about the ending of The House at Pooh Corner in another post, soon, but it's clear that Christopher Robin hasn't forgotten his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood.  He's changed a bit, but he's still delighted to see them - and they organise (or should that be organdise?) a speshul welcum home party for him, complete with speshul invitations.  Roo has his eye on a green jelly, and is trying to convince everyone else that the red and yellow ones look better.  Kanga successfully diverts Owl's story about Uncle Robert.  Pooh gets drowsy and dreams about honey.  "Jollifications and hey-diddle-diddle," comments Eeyore, and who are we to disagree with him?  Of course, Christopher Robin eventually turns up, and all is well.  It is a gentle, auspicious start to the collection.

Things continue pretty well.  As we go through the book, the events are chosen well.  Owl wants to write a book.  They start a school - Eeyore is headmaster.  Cricket is played.  Rabbit tries to take a Census...

"I thought I was a sensible animal," Rabbit said, shuddering. 

"Of course you are," said Pooh, "everybody knows that." 

"And it was such a sensible idea, the Census." 

"It's almost the same word," agreed Pooh.

It's all very much in keeping with the gang's original adventures, which is great.  Benedictus does, though, add another character.  A drought dries up the river, and there emerges (possibly indignant from years of having pooh-sticks dropped on her head), Lottie the Otter.  She wears pearls, says 'darling', and has gumption.  She certainly isn't a replication of any other characters - it's impressive the Benedictus has found a gap in the seemingly-comprehensive gallery of personality types invented by Milne - but, perhaps unsurprisingly, Lottie never quite works as a character.  Benedictus cannot rely on the charm that Milne has already built up in Pooh, Piglet, Eeyore et al - and there is a lot of looking-over-the-shoulder at events and expressions from previous books, which is better than if they'd been ignored altogether.

And there lies the problem, the inevitable problem, with Return to the Hundred Acre Wood.  The charm is missing.  Or, rather, it is less.  The same goes for Mark Burgess's illustrations - the spark of genius which characterised both Milne's writing and Shepard's drawing is absent from their imitators.  That indescribable something which brought Shepard's illustrations so charmingly alive, and gave Milne's prose a subtle undertone of wry wit and affectionate knowingness - it has not been bestowed upon Burgess and Benedictus, at least not in these guises.

The main emotion I have, when closing the very enjoyable but ultimately, of course, inferior tales of the Hundred Acre Wood?  To re-read the originals, naturally.  What fun!

The Behaviour of Moths

Thank you all for vindicating my purchase yesterday - you lot are probably a poor choice for the voice of my conscience, but I'm certainly happy to stick with it(!)
Ever onwards, ever in - and onto The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams. Everyone else read this ages ago, I think, and indeed I had a review copy from Virago languishing on my shelves - but it wasn't until the novel was picked for my book group that I got around to reading it myself.

The Behaviour of Moths should have been a perfect novel for me - all about the tensions in families, Gothic houses, and an unreliable narrator: tick, tick, and tick. Ginny is a lepidopterist (moth expert, in case the title doesn't give the game away) still living in the old family mansion in her sixties. The novel centres around her younger sister's return home after 47 years - Vivien arrives, but there are all sorts of unanswered questions and secrets between the two, which the reader hopes to disentangle...

That's the novel in a nutshell - I won't elaborate, partly because there are reviews all over the internet where you can read about the plot; partly because not a huge amount happens. Instead, we are left to piece together the sisters' lives (and try to understand their parents, from the piecemeal information which emerges) as the narrative jumps back and forth from present day to their childhood and adolescence. One of the first recollections is when Vivi fell off the bell tower:

My heart leapt but Vivi must have lost her balance. I watched her trying to regain control of the toast that danced about, evading her grip like a bar of soap in the bath. For those slow seconds it seemed as if repossessing the toast was of utmost important to her and the fact that she was losing her balance didn't register. I've never forgotten the terror in her eyes, staring at me, replayed a thousand times since in my nightmares, as she realised she was falling.

The fall leaves Vivi unable to have children; another catalyst for the events which unfold. And so it ambles on, with secrets gradually becoming exposed, and the relationship between the sisters coming to light.

But I was unconvinced. And not just because it was set near Crewkerne, close by where I live in Somerset - which Adams claims is in Dorset, and has a bowling alley. No, it doesn't, Poppy, love! No, the reason I was unconvinced is because The Behaviour of Moths tries to do the unreliable narrator thing, but it all comes in a huge rush with a big twist towards the end. And then you wonder quite how we were supposed to read the rest of the novel - but there weren't enough clues laid down, and the picture isn't properly developed. All the details about moths are doubtless engaging, but they seem to have taken the place of a coherent narrative arc.
The Behaviour of Moths has done very well, and my lack of enthusiasm for the novel won't trouble Poppy Adams particularly, but I do wonder quite why it's been so popular. I found the whole thing... how shall I put it... quite bland. The blurb talks about 'Ginny's unforgettable voice', but that's the problem: it wasn't unforgettable, it was literary-fiction-by-numbers. The style is almost ubiquitous across novels of this type - and though there were Gothicky elements (especially in the depiction of the house) which impressed and set the novel a bit apart, for the most part The Behaviour of Moths was a common-or-garden specimen. Not a bad novel by any means, and passes the time adequately, but could have been so much better. I do look forward to seeing what Adams does next, but if she couldn't win me over with a novel which has all my favourite ingredients, then I don't hold out huge hope.


Simon S has started suggesting similar reads at the bottom of his reviews, and I love the idea - and asked him if he wouldn't mind me nabbing it! So from now on, I'll try and think of books which I think did similar things better - or, with positive reviews, do similar things equally well! And link to my thoughts on them, naturally...

Books to get Stuck into:

- Angela Young: Speaking of Love - family secrets and tense relationships are as subtle and engaging as they get in this wonderful novel
- Shirley Jackson: We Have Always Lived in the Castle - the unreliable narrator and the Gothic house taken to a whole new level in this brilliantly addictive novel

A Kind of Intimacy

I've spent a long weekend at home in Somerset with the rest of my family, doing restful things and enjoying the countryside (though the train journey home was a nightmare - took eight hours from door to door, and is two and half hours in a car...) When I'm on trains, I try to catch up with some of my non-university reading, especially things I've promised that I'll read for months and months...

But A Kind of Intimacy by Jenn Ashworth isn't a review book (plenty of those waiting, looking at me impatiently) but one my housemate Mel lent me a while ago. (She first heard about Jenn when Jenn submitted work to Mel's flash fiction website, The Pygmy Giant. Go have an explore.) Oh, and it came second in the Guardian's 'Not The Booker' prize. A Kind of Intimacy is a novel from earlier this year, about Annie - 'morbidly obese, lonely, and hopeful', says the blurb, though I should add that the blurb gives away most of the plot and should be ignored before reading. Annie moves to a new neighbourhood, with just Mr. Tibs the cat for company. As she's bringing the boxes in, she meets her next door neighbour Neil, who initially mistakes her for the removal man. She recognises him, but can't place where they'd previously met.

Annie senses a closeness between herself and Neil, not hindered by his partner Lucy, who is everything Annie is not: very young, thin, beautiful. But Annie realises that she has to keep an eye on Lucy, if she is going to rescue Neil from his current life, and set one up with him. These attempts are increasingly bizarre, but all very just in Annie's mind. She overhears Lucy insulting her - so she pushes handfuls of garbage through her letterbox. She digs up Lucy's primroses; she even takes washing from Lucy's washing line.

The novel is from Annie's first-person perspective, and so Ashworth deftly gives us a viewpoint of somebody who is unbalanced, but is unaware of it - the narrative manages to tread the line between internal logic (all Annie's actions make sense to her) and insanity (the reader slowly realises how unhinged Annie is.) But unhinged isn't perhaps the right word - because we also see, in flashbacks, what events have led to Annie's current state - her relationship with her parents, for example, and her first boyfriend. There is the ongoing questions as to whether or not she has a husband and child - she tells some people that she does, and some that she doesn't.

It is no easy task, showing us Annie's perspective, while still allowing the reader to understand how limited and delusional that perspective can be. She notices everything - 'Neil shuffled, took his hands out of his pockets, and sat down next to me on the couch. Our knees pointed at each other, which I knew from my reading about non-verbal communication was a good sign.' - but not the motives behind the actions. She interprets Neil's glances with Lucy as trying to let her down gently; her neighbour laughing at her as anxious concern. The reader is able to see the truth through the mist of Annie's misconceptions - though there is still often a haze, as Annie's most bizarre actions are only mentioned in passing, by others. A Kind of Intimacy has a lot in common with Lisa Glass's excellent (though very disturbing) book Prince Rupert's Teardrop, which I reviewed here - Ashworth's novel is perhaps not quite so clever as Glass's, nor so unsettling, but that doesn't stop it being pretty clever and unsettling anyway.

As a character study, and as an experiment in how narrative can be used to reveal and conceal, A Kind of Intimacy is a triumph - that the novel is also fast-paced, compelling, and of escalating intensity makes it exceptional. Perhaps not my normal fare, and not gentle or relaxing, but it's always good to jolt myself with this sort of novel - I recommend you give it a go yourself.

The Other Elizabeth Taylor

Nicola Beauman, of Persephone Books, very kindly sent me a copy of her book The Other Elizabeth Taylor months and months ago, and I've been reading it gradually for most of that time. I finished it quite a while ago now, and have been meaning to write about it for a long time - but I wanted to ponder it, and give the book a proper response. As Persephone Reading Week kicks off on Monday, it seemed a good way to whet appetites. I shouldn't think there will be much confusion on this site, but I'll make clear from the start: we're talking about Elizabeth Taylor the novelist (who wrote books I've chatted about such as Angel and Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont) rather than Elizabeth Taylor the actress, who has - as far as I'm aware - warranted no mention yet at Stuck-in-a-Book.
The Other Elizabeth Taylor is the first (and maybe last?) Persephone Life, a biography which Beauman wrote over the course of fifteen years. As one might expect of a biography, it runs from 3rd July 1912 when Betty Coles was born, to 19th November 1975 when Elizabeth Taylor died - but the focus of the biography is largely twofold. Her writing and her relationships. If, like me, you find an author's writing life of paramount significance, there is plenty in this biography to satisfy. Though writing from 1940s - 1970s, there is a sense in which Elizabeth Taylor's novels fit with the spirit of the 1920s and '30s. To quote Jocelyn Brooke, cited in The Other Elizabeth Taylor, Taylor is

in the best sense old-fashioned; that is to say, she writes an elegant, witty prose, has a decent respect for the Queen's English, and is not obsessed by crime, violence, madness or homosexuality.

As well as looking at the situations and inspirations for Elizabeth Taylor's novels, the biography has a great deal of information about her short stories - both the ones published and those which weren't. This does lead to quite a lot of little plot summaries, but I appreciate the effort of a biography to be comprehensive - and the practical process of writing is always the most fascinating part of an author's biography, to me. These sections also furthered my interest in William Maxwell, the novelist Cornflower introduced me to, in his capacity of New Yorker editor. Their relationship is fascinating - Maxwell was capable of being both friend and professional. He recognised her talent, spoke of 'the excitement, the bliss, of reading' one of her stories, but continued to turn down some of her stories throughout the rest of her writing career. How strong their bond must have been to survive that - especially to a woman who took criticism so much to heart.

It is these sections of the biography which Beauman really brings to life: Elizabeth Taylor's relationship with other authors. Though the biography often remarks with surprise that Taylor chose a middle-class, almost provincial life, instead of the hustle and bustle of London (whereas I can never understand why anybody would choose London over the countryside - the former seems so much more isolated than the latter!) she had several significant literary friendships. The most influential seems to have been with Elizabeth Bowen, who was not shy of offering praise: 'This is a case of the genius which I do know you have'. The most interesting to me is Ivy Compton-Burnett, and I have already gone and bought Robert Liddell's Elizabeth and Ivy based on Beauman's mentions of it.

I said the biography had dual focuses; the big discovery in Beauman's research, and the main reason the book was delayed until after Taylor's husband's death, was the relationship between Taylor and Ray Russell. Hundreds of his letters have emerged, and Beauman interviewed Russell. Though Taylor's marriage seems more or less undisrupted by this ongoing relationship, which lost any mutual romance quite early on, it remains something to shake the image of Elizabeth Taylor as a model middle-class wife. Though perhaps the biographer's biggest claim to breaking new territory, it was this section of the book which interested me least. It might alter her reputation and character - but I didn't know anything about her extant reputation or character before I started reading the biography. It was enough to earn Beauman the antagonism of Taylor's children, though. I would be unable to write this review without mentioning the striking footnote which every review has mentioned: 'Elizabeth Taylor's daughter has commented [concerning a section on David Blakeley]: "Most of what Nicola has written is untrue and the rest hurtful to many people"'. The Acknowledgements add that they are 'alas "very angry and distressed" about the book and have asked to be disassociated from it.' I don't know how to respond to either their fierce rejection of the book (one can only imagine how hurtful that has been to its author) nor the very honest publication of their opinion - the ethics of biography is a whole other topic, one which Elaine touches on interestingly in her review of The Other Elizabeth Taylor.

I think the key to appreciating The Other Elizabeth Taylor and Nicola Beauman's writing is to recognise that she approaches biography predominantly as a reader, rather than a writer. That is not to say that her research is not impeccable - the heart Beauman brings to the project means the research is likely to be all the more scrupulous. But the book is not scholarly in the way that, say Hermione Lee's biographies are scholarly - opinion is permitted, informalities allowed. Discussions of books will lead into a more personal point - indeed, the writing is almost always personal. In discussing a situation in Taylor's life which is reflected in her novel Blaming, Beauman writes:

Whether she was as much to blame as she believed no one can say; we have all written letters saying 'I am sorry', failed our friends when they needed us. If she was to blame for her small lapse - then we are to blame, everyday, for similar failures.

It is an approach I like, it is one which fits in with the ethos of Persephone. In the pen of another biographer there might have been fewer evaluative comments; fewer emotive responses, but perhaps that is not the brand of biographer appropriate for Elizabeth Taylor. This is an appreciation as much as a biography. Like any reader, Beauman isn't always sure how to esteem the writer. Alongside Elizabeth Bowen, Beauman uses the word 'genius', but elsewhere debates why Taylor is not a 'great' writer. The Other Elizabeth Taylor is, subtly, probably unintentionally, also an exploration of Nicola Beauman's decades-long relationship with the writer through her books. Accepted on this level, Beauman has pushed the boundaries of biography, and written a book which should be recognised as - in its own way - experimental rather than simply informal. I do not believe Beauman set out to challenge the perimeters of biography - but I do think there is a case for suggesting that she has done so.

Perhaps one can see why Taylor's children complained. I dare say any book about one's own parents must cause offence somehow - especially about someone so ardently private as Elizabeth Taylor. The vitriol of Taylors Junior can't really have poured oil on troubled waters, though, and they have done Beauman a huge disservice in their assessment of the biography. The Other Elizabeth Taylor is a warm, original, caring portrait of the middle-class literary highflier; the wealthy socialist; the domestic career woman; the determinedly private woman whose life is so very interesting, despite her contest protestations that it was not.