#79....."A Room With A View"

“Take an old man’s word; there’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror—on the things I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now… ‘Life’, wrote a friend of mine, ‘is a public performance on the violin, in which you must learn the instrument as you go along.’”

One of my favorite movies is While You Were Sleeping, a hilarious romantic comedy starring Sandra Bullock. It tells the story of a woman who falls in love with a stranger she sees everyday from afar, but has never officially met. Their lives collide when she comes to his rescue when he is attacked at a subway station, and while he is in a coma, is mistaken for his fiancée by his family. Bullock’s character, Lucy, is without any family in the world, and she is taken in as one of their own by Peter’s family. Because she is so happy to finally be loved and be part of a family, she doesn’t correct their assumption about her relationship with their son, figuring as long as he’s comatose no one will know the truth, but the weight of lying to his very loving family begins to weigh on her conscience….especially when she begins to fall for Peter’s brother Jack. Things get complicated when Peter regains consciousness and actually proposes to her. Lucy realizes that she must come clean with everyone before making the biggest mistake of her life. If you haven’t seen it, rent it now.

E.M. Forster’s novel, A Room With a View, reminded me so much of this movie, because the two main characters are both named Lucy and both struggle with the impact of telling lies to their friends and family. Forster’s novel begins in Florence, Italy (ironically where Lucy from While You Were Sleeping wants to go on her honeymoon), where we meet young, innocent Lucy Honeychurch and her maiden lady chaperone, Charlotte Bartlett. The ladies have just arrived at an Italian pension and are distressed because they were promised rooms that would have a view of the Arno River. They’re overheard by an older man, Mr Emerson, who agreeably offers to switch rooms with them, since a view doesn’t matter as much to him and his quiet son, George. This is agreed upon, and Lucy and Miss Bartlett become intimately involved from this act with the Emersons (who are thought unsuitable) and the other pension guests: the annoying parson Mr Beebe, the radical author Miss Lavish, and later, another self-obsessed parson, Mr Eager. Lucy is portrayed as a woman with her own thoughts and feelings, and is not as conventional as those around her would prefer. She gets into trouble when she goes sightseeing alone, and witnesses a murder in the Piazza, but luckily faints into the arms of the erstwhile George, who falls in love with her at that very moment. When he kisses her on an outing into the hills, which Charlotte witnesses, both women flee Florence for Rome, where Lucy meets the stuffy, insufferable Cecil Vyse. He proposes to Lucy three times, and she finally accepts on the third occasion, even though her family and most of her neighbors hate him because he is a snob and hates people.

Back in England, at the Honeychurch home at Windy Corner, Lucy discovers that Cecil has arranged to let a cottage in town to none other than the Emersons. George befriends Lucy’s brother Freddy, and as they spend more time together, Lucy begins to warm up to George, until the one day where George tells Lucy that she cannot marry Cecil because 1)Cecil’s a snob and hates people, 2)Cecil doesn’t allow Lucy to have her own thoughts and feelings and is trying to brainwash her, and 3)George loves Lucy and knows she loves him too. He kisses her again. Although Lucy lies to George about her feelings for him, later that night she breaks off her engagement with Cecil because she knows George is right about him. She then lies to her family, telling them there is no one else she is more interested in, and that she wants to go traveling in Greece, instead of admitting she is trying to escape George. Plans are set in motion for her to go to Greece when she discovers that the Emersons are moving away so that George can get away from her. He does not know the engagement is over. On her way out of town, Lucy meets up with Mr Emerson, whom she initially lies to about going to Greece with Cecil, but then breaks down and tells him about the end of her engagement. Mr Emerson encourages her to go find George so they can be together, and that telling lies and making big mistakes is the worst part of life. The book ends with her marrying George and having her whole family pissed off that Lucy lied to them instead of just being honest. Like Lucy in While You Were Sleeping, Lucy Honeychurch's honesty with herself in the end brings her love.

I have to admit that although I liked A Room With a View, it wasn’t the page-turner I think it could have been. I expected to blow through this book in three days, but it took almost two weeks. The last 1/3 of the book was really good, but for me, the middle 1/3 dragged horribly. Up until George moved to Windy Corner, it was seriously boring, partly because I hated Cecil, and partly because Cecil was making Lucy boring. I also have to wonder if all clergymen in 19th /early 20th century England were as stuffy and pompous as they seem to be portrayed so frequently in classic literature. Jane Austen, I believe, wrote the book on irritatingly proper and self-centered country parsons— I hate Mr Collins from Pride and Prejudice more than anything. I just have a hard time believing that men of God, who are ostensibly supposed to love all God’s children, could be so obsessed with money and social status. But that seems to be how it was!

My heart also went out to Lucy’s character. Although it created a big mess, I understood why she wasn’t forthcoming with her feelings for George. She had Charlotte telling her that he was a socialist, and the negative feelings of the other pensioners in Italy towards the Emersons didn't help. I noticed that she seemed to warm up to George when her brother started to get along with him. Having Cecil’s thumbs-up when he arranged for them to be in Cissie Villa seemed to recommend them as well. She didn’t want to disappoint her mother, who initially seemed excited by her engagement to Cecil, but then at the end, is relieved when she calls it off. So in that sense Lucy was not the only one who was lying!

Not my favorite of the list so far, but definitely not the worst. Here's hopin' the other Forster books upcoming will have a bit more drive to the narrative.

Grade: B+

Libris Interruptus...Phillippa Gregory and "The Tudors"

Waiting for the warmer weather to arrive, and finding that A Room with a View is somewhat on the boring side, I've turned to watching back episodes of Entourage on HBO (hilarious if you've never watched it) and I've also picked up the first season of The Tudors, a great series on Showtime about King Henry VIII and his wives. As a complete devotee of Phillippa Gregory and her wonderful books about Henry VIII, I was very excited to watch this series, and so far I have not been disappointed. The guy who plays Henry (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is HOT. The scenery and costumes are gorgeous. Sam Neill is beyond evil as Cardinal Wolsey. Plenty of sex, intrigue and action. Who could ask for more?? The new season starts up on Showtime this coming Sunday at 9pm ET. Check it out!

March '10 ML Literary Dirtbag Award

Drumroll, please....after much thought I had to give it to Simon March, Augie's big brother in The Adventures of Augie March. I re-read the part the other night where he ripped off his mother-in-law's shirt right in front of everyone because he didn't like the way she dressed, and I just got PISSED OFF. No one has the right to do that, no matter how rich and/or successful they are. He would probably go to jail in this day and age, anyway, so I can be comforted with that. He was also so smarmy about his success and his money. I hate people like that.

Plus I hate guys that have affairs as a rule. It wouldn't have hurt Simon to class it up a little and not 'ho himself around but unfortunately he had to go Full-on Dirtbag. Also guys that don't own up to their responsibilities (even if Renee didn't have the kid, he still should have been ready to step up, at least financially) are scum. So he has well-earned this month's award. Congrats to Simon.

Books to Movies..."Brideshead Revisited"

BR was the first movie I have watched that was based on one of the ML books I've read. Before watching the movie, I read several reviews of the movie online, and most people were lukewarm about it, saying that it didn't follow the book, etc. Most of the actors in the movie, excepting Emma Thompson as Lady Marchmain and the guy from the Harry Potter movies who plays Professor Dumbledore as Lord Marchmain, I had never seen before. Plus I didn't really love the book. So my expectations weren't incredibly high...thus I was pleasantly surprised by the movie.

I'll start with the positive. For the most part, the movie followed the book. The scenery was beautiful. The house they picked to act as Brideshead was gorgeous and almost exactly as I had pictured it myself. My daughter, who for some inexplicable reason watched the movie with me, pointed out that this same house was used in Garfield 2: A Tale of Two Kitties. I'll have to check that out. :) The acting, I thought, was very good. The girl they picked to play Julia was gorgeous. Rex Mottram was just as smarmy as I had pictured him in the book, and they even had the tortoise, although Julia's initials weren't in the shell. Emma Thompson was perfect as the cold, calculating Lady Marchmain (but when isn't she wonderful?). Overall, it was nice to see what I'd read brought to life.

The negative. The movie, as movies often do, took some liberties with the book, but I'm not sure that the liberties really detracted from the overall story. The movie developed the love story between Charles and Julia much earlier than the book did, having them fall in love in Venice during the visit to see Lord Marchmain (Julia didn't even go with them to Venice in the book). Sebastian sees Charles kissing Julia and that moment is used as the reason for Sebastian's downward spiral and distancing from Charles. Sebastian's character was way more flamboyant and overtly homosexual than his character in the book...which I actually didn't enjoy. I guess I preferred the book's more 'under the table' treatment of Sebastian's persuasion than I did seeing it outright. I felt that Waugh left it up to the reader to decide whether or not that dimension to Charles' and Sebastian's friendship existed. A scene from Julia's debutante ball in the movie didn't exist in the book. Her engagement to Rex is announced there and Sebastian accuses Charles in front of everyone of 'wanting to sleep with his sister'. There is also a scene in the movie between Charles and Rex where Charles asks Rex to divorce Julia, and Rex agrees to, on the condition that Charles give Rex two of his "jungle pics" as payment. This didn't happen in the book either.

Overall, I'm not sorry I watched it. Sadly I think I had a better feeling about the movie than I did the book. My daughter has encouraged me to track down more of the movies from the books I've read, as every book I've read has become almost a household name for us. :)

Grade: B

March '10's Literary Dirtbag Nominees

Am having a dilemma as to who to pick for March's MLLD. Front runners are the following:

1)Rex Mottram from Brideshead Revisited: Total dirtbag and probably the guy I will end up picking. Slimy politician who 'converts' to Catholicism in order to marry Julia (and I say 'converts' lightly, because he basically told the priest he'd agree with anything he said). He also gets Julia the tortoise with her initials in diamonds imbedded in the shell, which I thought was BEYOND HORRIBLE. He also has affairs with other women....but so did most of the other people in BR.

2)Simon March from The Adventures of Augie March. He started out okay as the studious bookworm, but ends up being this super-angry guy who is successful in business but a real jerk. He yells at everyone, makes fun of his mother-in-law for the way she dresses (actually rips her shirt off in one scene), and is mean to his wife Charlotte. Plus then he has the affair with Renee, thinks she got pregnant and doesn't want the kid. What a lowlife.

#80...."Brideshead Revisited"

"I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I was old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember."

Brideshead Revisited is the reminiscence of Charles Ryder, a British military captain stationed in England during World War II. As his platoon is moved through the British countryside, they end up at Brideshead, a mansion no one is familiar with except Charles, who makes up for all of them by not only knowing of Brideshead intimately, but also knowing the family who used to live there. Arriving at Brideshead brings up Charles' memories of the past and the Marchmain family.

Charles meets Lord Sebastian Flyte, the son of Lord Brideshead, at Oxford, where Charles is studying to be a painter. Sebastian is wealthy, happy-go-lucky and irreverant, and introduces him to the 'wrong' group at Oxford, which includes Anthony Blanche, an all-out homosexual, and Boy Mulcaster, who will be his future brother-in-law. Sebastian becomes a very different person though, when he brings Charles home with him to stay at Brideshead. He is very close-lipped about his family, drinks a lot, and is also resistant to his family's Catholicism. The Marchmain family, consisting of the separated Lady Marchmain, his two sisters Julia and Cordelia, and his older brother 'Bridey', welcome Charles into the family, and Lady Brideshead tries to enlist Charles' help with Sebastian's alcoholism. Charles refuses, and continues giving Sebastian money to drink, although Sebastian is convinced that his family is turning Charles into a spy. Sebastian is eventually pulled out of Oxford, and Charles quits Oxford as well to attend art school, where he becomes an architectural painter and makes his living on the decay of the British aristocracy by painting all of the grand old homes before they are sold or torn down.

Fast forward several years. Charles' painting career is on the rise and he is married to Celia, Boy Mulcaster's sister. They have two children and Charles knows that Celia has already had indiscretions with other men. When he arrives back in New York after painting jungle ruins, he and his wife board a ship to take them back to England. On board is none other than Julia, Sebastian's beautiful sister, who is also struggling to escape a loveless marriage to an unpopular politician. Charles and Julia begin an affair, which is soon known by all but is not looked on favorably by Julia's Catholic family. Charles and Julia plan to divorce their respective spouses to marry each other. This plan proceeds until the elderly, ailing Lord Marchmain returns to Brideshead to die. Religion having always been a sticking point between the Catholic Julia and the agnostic Charles, Lord Marchmain's death returns Julia to her religion, and she gives up Charles so that she will no longer live in sin. In the end, when Charles re-visits the chapel at Brideshead during his military stay, there is some intimation that Charles may have taken on Catholicism too.

I have to say that I was very disappointed in this book. Those of you who loved it, go ahead and blame it on the circumstances of my cat Frank's unhappy passing last week and the ensuing depression that followed. Besides wondering why there are so many drunks named Sebastian in 20th Century literature, I kept waiting for the story to take off, and to me it never really did. The most interesting characters, Sebastian and Anthony Blanche, almost completely drop out of the story by the middle of the book, and even Lady Marchmain dies pretty early on. Call me a purist, but I can never really root for characters who cheat on their spouses, so Charles and Julia lost my sympathy too.

On the Catholic angle. I read that Evelyn Waugh was a Catholic convert, and his conversion obviously meant a great deal to him. It was interesting to me that Waugh has several of his main characters converting to Catholicism by the end of the book. These conversions all seem to happen as a result of a major life change. Sebastian goes to live with monks abroad when no one else will take him in, and Julia is reconciled with the Church when her father dies. Lord Marchmain is converted on his deathbed when he receives the Last Rites. Charles himself even comes around to the Catholic faith at the end, most likely because of losing Julia, when he kneels in the Brideshead chapel and prays.

Interestingly enough, I am also in the middle of watching the movie version of Brideshead, with Emma Thompson playing Lady Marchmain. So far, excepting a couple of scenes, the story has been fairly true to the book. The movie is playing up the possibly homosexual angle on Sebastian (which I guess never really occured to me when I was reading the book, but may have explained why he got depressed when Anthony Blanche left Oxford and why he stayed with the cripple Kurt) quite a bit. Sebastian is positively flamboyant in the movie. Julia also seems to be playing a more central role in the movie than she did in the book. She accompanies them to Venice to visit Lord Marchmain, which didn't happen in the book.

Overall, just okay for me. And this book didn't have a tough act to follow after Augie March.

Grade: B-

Libris Interruptus...Requiem for a Feline Friend

In September of 1995, I drove to the Chapel Hill Animal Shelter in search of a friend. Most of my college friends had already graduated, and I had half a semester to go. I went in that day, and knew at first sight the kitten that would be going home with me. He was a long-haired, orange cat with black freckles on his lips and paw pads. When I took him out of the cage, he crawled up onto my shoulders and laid down there, purring away. I named him Frank, after Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, and after Frank Sinatra, who had made a comeback with the whole 'swing dancing' thing that was at that time sweeping the nation.

Over the last fifteen years, Frank and I have traveled all over the country together. He's lived with me in five states: North Carolina, Maryland, Utah, California, and here in Minnesota. He was there when I had my daughter in 1998 as a scared single mother, and was there when I got both my bachelor's degree in 1995 and my master's degree in 2001. He was there when I got married in 2007 and in fact did his damndest to win over my non-cat-loving husband. He managed to tolerate his cat sister Fiona, even when she bit his ears and ate his food, and loved nothing more than laying in a warm, sunny spot and having his chin rubbed. No one could ask for a better friend than Frank was to me all those years.

Frank and I took our last trip together three days ago. I came home from dinner to see him dragging his rear left leg behind him and meowing piteously. He hadn't been eating hardly at all as of late, and was spending most of his time sleeping, as old cats do. I knew something was wrong. I took him to the emergency vet, and the unfortunate news came out that he had a blood clot that had paralyzed his back leg. The vet gave him very little time, if any, and told me that his quality of life would be beyond awful if I allowed him to live. The decision was made that my boy needed to be free of pain and be in a better place. I was there when it happened and it was very peaceful.

Those of you who bore with me when I bawled my way through The Call of the Wild (and Buck lived!!!) can imagine what condition I was in Thursday night. It was, to date, one of the hardest hours of my life. I feel sorry for Evelyn Waugh, because even if Brideshead Revisited is a fabulous book, it's not touching me at all. Every day gets a bit easier, but reminders abound everywhere. My orange boy will always be here with me and for me, in spirit.

Those of you who have pets, love your animal family members for all the time you have with them.