A Backward Glance

Edith Wharton's autobiography, A Backward Glance, couldn't be more aptly named. While many biographies can be said to offer a long, close stare at a particular subject, this one truly is just a glance. Wharton doesn't try to present the full story of her life. Instead, she compiles a (not always chronological) collection of memories, and can often be found saying something along the lines of, "I won't go into detail about...." this or that part of her life. This kind of cursory treatment isn't without its problems. It tends to be a bit uneven, and much of the middle third of the book gets bogged down with anecdotes about her various acquaintances. This is interesting when the person in question is Henry James, but less so when she goes into detail about people who are no longer commonly known figures. She also barely alludes to her separation from her husband, an aspect of her life I would have been interested in hearing more about. These are minor quibbles, though, and can be easily remedied by reading a more comprehensive, impartial biography of Wharton. On the whole, I think A Backward Glance is an interesting read for anyone who has enjoyed Wharton's books and knows a bit about her life already.

In the spirit of Wharton's meandering style of reminiscing, the following is a random collection of some of the more interesting facts I learned from the book, along with a couple of quotes that I thought were particular gems.

Wharton opens the book with her philosophy on aging, which is that "in spite of illness, in spite even of the arch-enemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways".

Wharton's famous home, The Mount, was named after the country home owned by her great-grandfather, located in what is now...Astoria, Queens!

One of the biggest influences throughout Wharton's life was the long stretch of her childhood years that her family spent living abroad, a situation that was brought about as a way to economize after American currency depreciation after the Civil War.

Wharton's parents weren't particularly literary or intellectual themselves, but they did stress proper English usage to their children and didn't allow them to read children's books by authors who used "bad" English (including books by Louisa May Alcott!). Knowing this, it's easy to see how an emphasis on precise language choice shows itself in Wharton's novels.

And finally, the importance Wharton places on finding pleasure in the small things in life is one of the biggest themes that recurs through the book. She closes her memoir with a quote that eloquently revisits her opening theme: "Life is the saddest thing there is next to death; yet there are always new countries to see, new books to read, a thousand little daily wonders to marvel and rejoice in".

Hons and Rebels

After having enjoyed reading The Sisters, a biography of the Mitford sisters, it was a pleasure to revisit some of the same territory in the memoir Hons and Rebels. While The Sisters weaves together the lives of all six Mitford girls, Hons and Rebels follows the thread of just one-- Jessica ("Decca"), the second youngest and arguably the most interesting of the sisters.

The first half of the memoir covers many of the same anecdotes as The Sisters, painting a vivid picture of life growing up in the midst of an eccentric aristocratic family. The two books begin to diverge when Decca reaches her teens. After witnessing two of her older sisters embrace Fascism during the pre-WWII years, Decca breaks with the rest of her mostly conservative family and turns to Communism. Joining forces with Esmond Romilly, the left leaning nephew of Winston Churchill whom she eventually marries, Decca runs away to Spain to join in their civil war, spends time living and working in some of the poorer environs of London, and finally emigrates to America.

Decca's remembrances of her earliest years in America is where Hons and Rebels really shines. She and Esmond walk an interesting line as they travel from city to city around the U.S. The social introductions they wrangle out of their British friends and family allow them to hobnob with an array of wealthy and influential Americans. At the same time, they live in humble apartments and take on whatever jobs they can get to pay their bills. Their life among the lower and middle American classes is due as much to their lack of funds as it is to their left leaning social interests.  Decca writes with a self deprecating humor about her misapprehensions as she struggled to reconcile British and American culture during those years, including  naive errors like expecting cookies to be small cakes baked into the shape of cooks, with hats and aprons piped on with icing.

Not long after these years, Esmond will be killed in battle while serving with the Canadian army. Decca will eventually go on to make a name for herself as a journalist and will get involved with the American Civil Rights movement. Hons and Rebels ends well before these tragedies and changes take place. It covers a short, seemingly charmed period in Decca's life in a way that makes for a charmingly vivid read that's a must for any fan of the Mitfords.

The Pioneer Woman

Do any of you follow The Pioneer Woman's blog? I look at it from time to time, and over the holidays I discovered that she also has a show on the Food Network. I watched a couple of episodes, and between a few yummy looking recipes, Ree Drummond's bubbly personality (she reminds me a little bit of a Midwestern version of Nigella, with some of Paula Deen's liberal butter usage thrown in), and the interesting peeks into life on a ranch, I found myself in the mood to read her memoir, The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels.

It tells the story of how Ree's life unexpectedly changes when, during a stop in her Oklahoma home town while moving from LA to Chicago, she meets her future husband, a cattle rancher on a rural farm. The writing is funny, approachable, and self-deprecating--exactly what you'd expect from reading a few of her blog posts. The one strike against it was the non-stop descriptions of how she swooned over her husband while they were dating. I'm not one to mind a little gushing, but it gets a little repetitive when she goes weak in the knees in every chapter. Overall, though, it's lighthearted and fun, and if you like her blog, you'll probably like this book.

Lunch in Paris

If My Life in France and A Homemade Life had a book baby, it would be Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard.

Bard tells the story of her move to Paris and marriage to a Frenchman, all prompted by one lunch date in Paris with her husband to be. She doesn't write about food as vividly as Julia Child or Molly Wizenberg. To be honest, I didn't even pay much attention to the recipes that are woven into each chapter. It's still worth reading, though, for a breezy, pleasant story and an interesting look at the ups and downs of being an American in Paris.

The Bucolic Plague

As its multiple subtitles suggest, The Bucolic Plague is both an unconventional memoir and the story of how two Manhattanites became gentleman farmers. Josh Kilmer-Purcell's previous memoir, I Am Not Myself These Days, was the first book I read with my book club about two years ago. That told the story of the author's early days in New York, when he worked at an ad agency by day, performed as a drag queen by night, got into a destructive relationship with a drug dealer, and developed a drinking problem.

While the subject matter of that book was by turns shocking, harrowing, and depressing, the author's voice remained completely funny throughout. I was excited to encounter it again in more pleasant circumstances- the story of how he and his partner buy an historic mansion and farm in upstate New York and try to turn it into a livelihood for themselves. Adding complications to their struggles in farming is the fact that Kilmer-Purcell's partner, Brent, is a doctor who works as the wellness expert for Martha Stewart Living. Martha's perfectionism and the threat of a weekend visit from her loom over the story as a constant, vaguely malevolent presence in their lives.

The final praise I can give this book is that it passed the Laugh Out Loud on the Subway Test (which, as it turns out, is actually less embarrassing than the Laugh Out Loud While Trying to Eat a Wrap in Your Company's Cafeteria Test).

Half a Life

The two main reasons why I read Half a Life by Darin Strauss are 1) I got a free galley copy and 2) it was short. Strauss is the author of several other novels, such as Chang and Eng, which I haven't read. This book is a memoir about his life starting from age eighteen (half the age he was when he wrote this) when, while driving with friends, he accidentally struck and killed one of his classmates with his car.

The book explores the ways in which the accident becomes a constant shadow that follows him throughout the rest of his life. As Strauss talks about his feelings in the days, months, and years that follow, he constantly pauses to acknowledge that he knows he's being inherently selfish by focusing on himself instead of on the accident victim. Just when, as a reader, you start to get weary of this constant apologizing, he pauses to acknowledge the fact that he's aware he's over-apologizing. All of this serves as a multi-layered peek into his thoughts and, ultimately, makes him a very sympathetic narrator. There are some truly beautiful moments of writing, too. My motives in picking up this book may not have been very lofty, but I'm glad I did. I may even try to read some of the author's fiction in the future.

More Mitfords

As if you couldn't already tell, I'm in the middle of a Mitford obsession and it's only gotten stronger after reading The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family. Essentially a group biography, it focuses on the six Mitford sisters- Nancy, Pam, Diana, Unity, Decca, and Debo- and spans the whole of the twentieth century, with all of the extraordinary events of their lives set against the historical and political backdrop of the times.

Nancy was the sister I had previously known the most about, but in a way she's one of the least interesting of the brood, as least as covered here. The others did notable and scandalous things like survive an attempted suicide, befriend Hitler, marry an English Duke, and runaway to America to work for the Communist party, join the Civil Rights movement, and become close friends with Maya Angelou- with all of the usual marriages, births, divorces, and affairs happening in between. The author covers an amazing amount of ground and goes into meticulous detail about her subjects, but manages to juggle everything and nimbly jump from sister to sister in a very engaging way. I know that the topic (and the hefty page count) may not make this a book for everyone, but I think I can say that it's the best biography I've ever read.

A Slice of Homemade Life

A Homemade Life by Molly Wizenberg- the creator of the food blog Orangette- is like a culinary autobiography. Each chapter starts with a story about some aspect of the author's life in which food played a part and ends with the recipe for the food item in the story. Each story is only a few pages long, so it's a quick breezy read, and the author writes with a warm, familiar tone that feels like she's personally writing you a letter to tell you about herself.

My one initial disappointment with this book was the fact that only a few recipes grabbed me as something that I wanted to try. I had imagined that every recipe was going to spark a desire to run into the kitchen, but that wasn't quite the case. However, this minor complaint flew out the window once I actually tried baking one of the three recipes that caught my eye- the "Winning Hearts and Minds Chocolate Cake".

The long-winded name for this cake has to do with the fact that the author always made it for people she wanted to impress and eventually ended up making twenty-five of these to use as her wedding cakes. It comes out looking like a flat, round brownie but, Oh. My. The plain appearance hides the most delicious chocolate cake I've ever had. It's rich like a brownie, but lighter in texture, and very chocolaty but not cloyingly sweet at all. Best of all, it's quite simple to make. It does call for real baking chocolate to be chopped up, which I usually shy away from in favor of easily pourable chocolate chips. I went by the book this time, though, and was pleasantly surprised. The chocolate was soft and easier to chop than I expected. I think it really made a difference in the cake. Best of all, the bars are stamped with a cute picture of an old-fashioned lady:

I followed the author's suggestion of serving the cake with homemade whipped creamed. I even took it up a notch by adding some almond extract to the cream.

Yum!

An Education

When the movie An Education was out last fall, not only was I dying to see it (still haven't, but it's on my queue), but I was also dying to read the memoir it was based on. Unfortunately, it seemed to be out of print or only available for the Kindle. I had pretty much forgotten about it when I was browsing at the Union Square Barnes and Noble and, lo and behold, I spotted it. Of course, I snapped it up.

The author writes with a casual tone that made this a breezy, quick read, the perfect antidote to the last not-so-great book I read. It spans the author's teenage years and time at Oxford, followed by her marriage and work as a journalist. One of my favorite parts was the final chapter- it takes a sad turn, and then you think it's going to become truly depressing until the final few paragraphs of the book rescue it in a surprising way. Now I'm even more anxious to watch the movie.

The Bolter

I had been eagerly anticipating reading The Bolter ever since it was reviewed on The Daily Beast way back in the summer. It took forever for the library to even get the book in stock, and when it finally did I was a bit disappointed to find myself feeling like I had to slog my way through the book to get to the end.


Idina Sackville was a British aristocrat who lived during the early 20th century. Her life was full of scandal and intrigue. She married, divorced, and then remarried five husbands. Abandoning her two sons, she left England and spent most of her time living on a farm in Kenya. Imagine one of Fitzgerald's flappers going to live the life of a Hemingway character on safari and you'll start to get an idea of her. Idina's life was said to the the inspiration for the runaway mother character (a.k.a. "The Bolter") in Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate- both of which I really liked.

I think I had hoped that The Bolter would read more like one of those Mitford novels. A jacket blurb even promised that it would combine "history with the stay-up-until-3am-to-finish-it urgency of a best seller". That prediction didn't quite come true for me. Although the facts of Idina's life are interesting, the author (a descendant of Idina) pretty much just presents them in a straightforward, basic way. Her attempts to explain Idina's motivations seemed to only scratch the surface of her personality. I'm sure this makes it a true, accurate biography, but it also made it a somewhat sluggish read.

Bon Apetit!

Seeing Julie & Julia sparked my interest in reading Julia Child's autobiography My Life in France. Now that I have, I can't decide whether it raised or lowered my opinion of her. There's a lot about her that I really like, but those are all the same things that the movie covered. The book seemed to bring out a few more negative qualities, though- like the fact that she could be a bit judgemental towards views that were not her own, whether about cooking or politics.

On the whole though, I thought the book painted a charming impression of her and of France. Surprisingly, it didn't really put me in the mood to cook since a lot of what she made seemed difficult and, frankly, not that appetizing (aspics? tripe? no thanks!). What did put me in a culinary mood were her descriptions of the way food in France tasted better, fresher, and more like it was supposed to taste. It reminded me of a restaurant I ate at in Maine that was one of the best I'd ever been to- Bandaloop (pictured in a horrendously blurry way below).


The focus of the restaurant is on organic, mostly locally grown ingredients, with a lot of vegetarian and vegan dishes thrown in. We ate there two nights in a row and some of the highlights the best chicken I've ever tasted and an amazing beet salad. It definitely made the case in support of local, organic eating.

Biographies and Biopics

I recently read Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis: A Life and then, in keeping with the theme of American icons, followed that up by seeing Julie & Julia.

The Jackie Kennedy biography was interesting and I'm glad I read it, although aside from a few random facts, it wasn't that earth-shattering in terms of things I didn't already know about her. I did think the author was stretching some of the biographical facts a bit. Jackie liked to read as a girl...does that necessarily lead to the assumption that she read Jane Eyre and imagined that her school's headmistress was secretly insane like Rochester's wife in the attic? I'd like to see the documentation behind that fact.


Julie & Julia was such a cute movie. Nothing overly dramatic happens to either of the characters, but it's just so charming watching them go through all of the little things in their lives. I walked away wanting to a) read My Life in France by Julia Child and b) wear my pearls more often!

Savages

My book club's latest pick is the quick, light, and very funny Life Among the Savages.


The author Shirley Jackson is best known for writing in the horror genre, including the creepy short story The Lottery. This book, however, is an autobiographical memoir of her life raising children in a small town in Vermont during the 1940s-1950s. Her voice- a cross between June Cleaver and the slightly ironic narrator from A Christmas Story- turns the daily life of an ordinary family into a collection of truly hilarious stories. I enjoyed this much more than I expected.

Zeitoun

Zeitoun, the new nonfiction work by Dave Eggers, is a book that reads like a movie. As I read it, I could easily see the places where the plotline would switch or a camera would cut away to a new scene. This is of note because Eggers and his wife just cowrote the film Away We Go. I was disappointed in that movie, so I was eager to see what his latest book would be like.

Zeitoun is the story of a Muslim man and his family in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. A lot could be say from a political and social point of view about this book, but I’ll just stick to the writing, which I thought was well constructed and nicely paced. It kept me reading and it kept me interested. What I did think was missing, however, was Eggers’ signature brand of self-conscious wit. I have two theories about why this may have been lacking. First, it could be that he wanted to portray the true-life characters as accurately as possible and saw his usually humor as something that would stand in the way of this. He previous book, What is the What, also told the story of a real person, a Sudanese refugee, but in fictionalized form. I think that book struck a perfect balance between portraying a unique character while still retaining a bit of Eggers’ typical voice. If I had read a passage from that book blindly, I still might have guessed that it was Eggers’ writing. I can’t say the same for Zeitoun. Perhaps positioning it as a work of pure nonfiction forced him to reign in his own voice as much as possible.

My second hypothesis is that the tone of this book could be a result of his writing style maturing over time. What I enjoy so much about his earlier works is his self-conscious humor, and the subsequent literary tricks he uses to portray a self-consciousness about being self-conscious. Logically, it makes sense that this kind of perspective would be characteristic of a younger writer, something that Eggers is moving farther away from as time goes by. I guess I’ll just have to wait and see what his next book brings. And even more interestingly, what his next book will be about. Will he continue this tactic of writing about people and issues he want to raise awareness about? I must say, I probably would not have picked up a nonfiction book about this topic if it was written by a random reporter, but I will continue to pick up anything by Dave Eggers to see what he’s writing about next.