"famous for the wrong book"?

I love this discussion of how authors are often famous for the wrong book -- Guardian writer John Self points to such classics as Remains of the Day or Catch-22 as not-bests.

What would you add to his list?

I'm hesitant. I feel like often enough, the famous books are most famous for their ability to transcend elitist or snobby particularities. For example, my favourite Atwood novels are The Edible Woman or Cat's Eye, but I'm well aware their experimental feminism and blending of the unrealistic with the everyday appeal to a certain narrow crowd. The Handmaid's Tale or Oryx and Crake would generally have wider appeal.

On the other hand, this sort of brings to mind a book club discussion once had in Edmonton, where one member pointed out that, failing to get his points across in books like Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell essentially parades a bunch of farm animals before the reader in Animal Farm, finally entertaining a wider crowd and allowing the political messages he wished to get across to shine through....

pretty....

So maybe I'm bored. But check this out -- dreamy, no?

As I wrap up Cat's Eye, I have a couple quotes to share....

"... chivalry in men is idiocy in women: men can get out of a rescue a lot more easily, once they get into it." (p. 320)

"Most mothers worry when their daughters reach adolescence, but I was the opposite. I relaxed, I sighed with relief. Little girls are cute and small only to adults. To one another they are not cute. They are life-sized." (p. 133)

*Spoiler warning*

I've just read the part, in the present, when Elaine sleeps with her ex-husband. I find this fascinating and blurry. I find it cloudy and unreasonable and despite the author's best explanation I can't understand it.

"I don't feel I'm being disloyal to (my husband), only loyal to something else; which pre-dates him, which has nothing to do with him. An old score." (p. 414)

Epic tales of a man's life always seem to have adventure, world-conquering adventure. Women's epics always seem to have sex. And not even wild, random sex with multiple partners like you might find in a different kind of men's epic novel. Rather, it's slightly experimental but ultimately sad and unfulfilling.

bright

Today is the first of my three-day weekend, payoff for working last weekend. And it’s a gorgeous day in Edmonton -- yes -22C, but the sun is out and if you could ignore the snow you’d want to wear a skirt. (Can I say how much I look forward to wearing my summer dresses again? I really miss summer.)

So, right off the top, I offer the best Saturday morning mix I can think of:

Love Today, MIKA
When the Night Feels My Song, Bedouin Soundclash
I Am Your Tambourine, Tift Merritt
Anyone Else But You, Moldy Peaches
Kaboom!, Ursula 1000
Wake Up, The Ditty Bops
Non je ne regrette rien, Edith Piaf
Soon We’ll Be Found, Sia
I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’, Scissor Sisters

I know, my “eclectic” music taste is questionable. My brother, who is far more talented in this area, would come up with something much better. But I like dancing around my living room on Saturday mornings. It’s my thing.

On that image, let’s go to books.

Despite my ever-growing pile of must-reads, I’m re-reading a favourite Atwood.

To read Margaret Atwood immediately after reading Carol Shields is to step through the looking glass. Yes, you’re still pondering on feminism, but you’ve tilted. Forward? Sideways? Certainly not backwards. If both are angry to start, then perhaps Shields’ voice is vaguely uncomfortable and confused by its anger whereas Atwood’s voice embraces the anger, spins it, makes it bizarre while stabbing at the truth.

Cat’s Eye is set in the late 1980s and the late 1940s at once. At once Elaine is the girl who sits awake at night picking the skin off her feet to give herself a pain to focus on, and at once she is the middle-aged woman hyper aware of what others think of her while at the same time somehow lost without the anchors of husband and home.

(Why must women be hyper-aware of what they think other women think of them? What is that? Do men do this?)

At the start of the book, your heart breaks for young Elaine who doesn’t know the games that girls play. You search through your own memories, hoping you never did such things to other girls -- never made them rethink every word they said over the day in a desperate search for the one thing they said wrong.

But I always find the wanderings of modern Elaine more fascinating, as she trips through a Toronto that’s utterly changed from the one she knew as a young person.

(Why does the bulk of Canadian literature sit in Toronto? Why do all the greatest literary minds live in the GTA?)

From the book, a comment on the author herself (I think):

“Well, what about, you know, feminism?” she says. “A lot of people call you a feminist painter.”
“What indeed,” I say. “I hate party lines, I hate ghettoes. Anyway, I’m too old to have invented it and you’re too young to understand it, so what’s the point of discussing it at all?”
“So it’s not a meaningful classification for you?” she says.
“I like it that women like my work. Why shouldn’t I?”
“Do men like your work?” she asks slyly….
“Which men?” I say. “Not everyone likes my work. It’s not because I’m a woman. If they don’t like a man’s work it’s not because he’s a man. They just don’t like it.” I am on dubious ground, and this enrages me. (p. 101)

scary! scary!

I'm not going to pretend every second of my life is filled with fantastic, thrilling activity.... (yes, I am re-reading Cat's Eye, a fantastic depiction of how women can tear at each other).... but seriously? There are people in this world with nothing better to do than this?

(Also, why do people want to sound like something so scary?)