Questions Posed to our Blogger FRIENDS,READERS, books books books

"She is too fond of books and it has addled her brain." Louisa May Alcott

BOOKS, I loved them as a child-neglectfully coloring in the pages-practicing writing(scribble)- playing school(this may have been my problem-I wanted to play school Not -Go to School.)



I received books as gifts when growing up- My first special book was the Louisa May Alcott book Little Women. Whether it is for this reason or many others- It is still (helplessly, humbly, and very unsophisticatedly)- one of my favorites.



I admit it might sound prettier to say so If I had a house full of girls to read and reread it too, But No- I never had a child. Just A lovely niece that upon our second night of reading LW aloud to her- She took a shot to the heart with these simple words, "Meg is bo-wing (boring.)" Crushed as I was, I didn't cry, only sighed and left her to her bubble bath.

I just purchased a new copy of LITTLE W to add to a collection of them. It is a Penguin Classic with cover design by Julie Docet(click). I admit the cover grabbed me- I think it might even appeal to me niece now- Birthday present? HUMMM? She might not like the story but could never deny the cover.

Julie Docet's cover

Here is the list of QUESTIONS(in royal purple) posed to fellow bloggers and friends, along with This is what I had to say:



What books are on your Summer Reading List? Is there one book you honestly don't expect to get to? Why?

my picks

art

Hexenlust und Sundenfall (Witches Lust and the Fall of Man): Die Seltsamen Phantasien des Hans Baldung Grien ( the Stange Fanstasies of Hans Baldung Grien) by Bodo Brinkman/HBG(1484-1545) drawings and etchings depicting the behaviour of witches

more will certainly pop up here

biographies/memoir/autobiography:

FAVORITE GENRE? this is mine.

Maeve Brennan Homesick at the New Yorker Angela Bourke

Caresse Crosby Anne Conover & Tears Before Bedtime and Weep No More Barbara Skelton ( these 2 I added at the suggestion of fellow blogger An Aesthete's Lament-to my already -Undoable list)

Ashcombe The Story of a Fifty Year Lease Cecil Beaton

The Loveliest Woman in America Bibi Gaston

Beverly Nichols: A Life Bryan Connon & along with this Rhapsody in Green The Garden Wit and Wisdom of Beverley Nichols edited by Roy C. Dicks

Built of Books How Reading Defined the Life of Oscar Wilde Thomas Wright

Brian Howard Portrait of a Failure Marie-Jaqueline Lancaster

My Darling Heriott Jane Brown-THIS IS A BOOK I WILL BE GIVING AWAY- bio of Lady Luxborough

Voltaire in Exile Ian Davidson

cover design by MY BOOK COVERS

Anchor Books Painting by Rex Whistler

fiction

The Little Girls , The Hotel , & A World of Love( read this but will read it again Elizabeth Bowen( one of my favorite writers of the moment)

I want to start re-reading E.F.Bensen's Mapp & Lucia Books

The Elegance of the HedgeHog Muriel Barbary- reading Now

The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger - reading Now

Yes, Yes- too heavy on the BIOS etc. However they will likely go down easy- I devour them. The Oscar Wilde Book I will read to get the gist of his bookcases- but from some reviews the author's conclusion about how Wilde's reading habits shaped his sexual preferences- I may beg off- I don't hardly see how books could do such a thing to OW, But that's another story.

L M Alcott

What is your security blanket book?

Can you guess? With no apologies- Little Women (see my remarks above) I will add, Everytime I have read this book, except for the few times as a child and teen- I was in crisis. Reading LW always reinforced what matters to me and I hope always will. A deceptively simple tale with a deep well of family, loyalty, duty, faith and leaving and returning home.

Elizabeth Bowen photographed by Slim Aarons

Latest Obsession Author, Designer, Photographer?

This question has three answers-I have obsessions in all three areas- You would know. As for an Author- would I be too obvious- to say Elizabeth Bowen(click to read more). I have read a number of her books along with Afterthought and the tome Bowen's Court- tracing EB's ancestors and their lives at Bowen's Court in Ireland beginning in 1649. Her attachment to Bowen's Court meanders throughout the book, making it a favorite.

from Wikipedia:

"Elizabeth Bowen was greatly interested in ‘life with the lid on’ and what happened when the lid came off. Her work deals with innocence and betrayal and the secrets that lie beneath the veneer of respectability."

A Review of Death of the Heart

A QUOTE from The House in Paris

"It is a wary business, walking about a strange house you are to know well. Only cats and dogs with their more expressive bodies enact the tension we share with them at such times. The you inside you gathers up defensively: something is stealing upon you every moment; you will never be quite the same again. These new unsmiling lights, reflections and objects are to become your memories, riveted to you closer than friends or lovers, going with you, even, into the grave: worse, they may become dear and fasten like so many leeches on your heart." Elizabeth Bowen

Elizabeth Bowen photographed by Eudora Welty

Elizabeth Bowen's Catalog

from wikipedia

novels

• The Hotel (1927)
• The Last September (1929)
• Friends and Relations ( 1931)
• To the North (1932)
• The House in Paris (1935)
• The Death of the Heart (1939)
• The Heat of the Day (1949)
• A World of Love (1955)
• The Little Girls (1964)
• The Good Tiger (1965)
• Eva Trout (1968)

short stories

• Encounters (1923)
• Joining Charles and Other Stories (1929)
• The Cat Jumps and Other Stories (1934)
• The Easter Egg Party (1938 in The London Mercury)
• Look At All Those Roses (1941)
• The Demon Lover and Other Stories (1945)
• Stories by Elizabeth Bowen (1959)
• A Day in the Dark and Other Stories (1965)
• The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen (1980)
• Elizabeth Bowen’s Irish Stories (1978)

non-fiction

• Bowen's Court (1942)
• Seven Winters: Memories of a Dublin Childhood (1942)
• English Novelists (1942)
• Anthony Trollope: A New Judgement (1946)
• Why Do I Write: An Exchange of Views between Elizabeth Bowen, Graham Greene and V.S. Pritchett (1948)
• Collected Impressions (1950)
• The Shelbourne (1951)
• A Time in Rome (1960)
• Afterthought: Pieces About Writing (1962)
• Pictures and Conversations (1975)
• The Mulberry Tree (1999).

Have you read any of the Books on My List ? Stop me- if You have-& didn't like it (break the news gently) but do Tell me the Truth.

or

Does something Look promising? Tell Me What is on Your Book List? Your favorite Genre? Security Blanket Book? Your latest Obsession? I will wait to hear from you- and then choose Someone to Receive YOUR PICK from The BOOK LIST posted on the 16th- YOUR PICK!

to Eudora Welty

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... her photographs-a trip to the store where you press your nose to the glass of the candy counter. It is hard to decide what you want, you want it all. The Welty photographs caress, call- You stare trying to decide and you can't. Which do you choose? My Eudora Welty photograph chose me.

As I leafed through a portfolio of collected art work belonging to a dear and distinguished gentleman-SB. I stopped to stare in amazement at a photograph. She stared back- powerful and ancient. Her picture was taken by Eudora Welty- I had heard about the Welty photographs and even had shelved a book devoted to her work. (Eudora Welty Photographs 1989)





Two portfolios of Welty's work were available- Palaemon Press' "Twenty Photographs," published by a native of my hometown, another distinguished gentleman, Stuart Wright, son of my childhood piano teacher. Distinguished gentleman and friend, SB, just happened to be professor and friend of publisher Wright.
As luck would have it SB- seeing a certain serendipity here- made a gift of A Woman of the Thirties/ Hinds Co/1935 to me. She watches, at the top of the stair, over all other talisman.

Of Woman- Eudora Welty said, " I think she lived on the road between here and Utica, where I used to go quite a bit, and where I took a lot of pictures. And I think I did see her a time of two after that. She has a very sensitive face, as you can see; she was well aware of her predicament in poverty, and had good reasons for hopelessness. Well, she wasn't hopeless. That was the point. She was courageous. She thought it was a hopeless situation but she was tackling it." Welty's explanation- at least her story connects me to Woman and to Welty- this is why I love her- Welty- the ever present storyteller and Woman- Hope.





"I was taking photographs of human beings because they were real life and they were there in front of me and that was the reality." Referred to as snapshots by Welty, Reynolds Price sees "mercy" in honest subjects facing the lens of observer with "patent trust."

Some of my pics from Welty's candy counter-

Sideshow,State Fair. Welty gravitated to the odd native folk art quality of the carnival posters. She was drawn to the carnival crowds- she was quick to say the posters at the carnival were records of that art and not the of the "Mule Faced Woman" -" Photographing subjects of the freak show or of that sort violates human privacy , and by intention."(Welty)

an image in the Hattie Carnegie show window/NYC/ 1940's

beautiful and tender Sunday School, Holiness Church/Jackson/1939

 
detail of " Mercy and Trust"

 
Baby Bluebird/Bird Pageant/Jackson 1930's Welty's photographs of the Bird Pageant are spiritual, a bit amusing- but don't we giggle in church, don't we laugh at things we don't quite understand. Such is the Bird Pageant- Even Welty doesn't have much to say about it- it was dramatic, original. She photographed the performers outside the church but would not take any pictures inside the church of the pageant. It wouldn't have been right. " I wouldn't have taken a camera into the place. I wouldn't have misused my invitation by disrupting the program." In all that Eudora Welty speaks about concerning her photography there is present her compelling sense of honoring subject and place.







ruins of Windsor- Eudora Welty's shadow in "the Ruins of Windsor" with trees growing out of the columns. At some point, Welty was asked to host Henry Miller around Mississippi when he was researching a book making a cross country trip. Amongst other things- Welty and several friends took the expatriate Miller to see Windsor.... Miller was bored. (If you've ever had guests in a small town- I admit-it is sometimes a stretch to entertain.) As to dining, "the Rotisserie was the one good restaurant in Jackson" and Welty and her distinguished guest dined- "at the drive in part, at the steak part and sometimes at the dance part with the band," leaving Miller to say- "how does a town like Jackson rate 3 good restaurants!" Whether Windsor impressed Miller is unknown- Welty only felt relief that Miller didn't mention the visit or Jackson in the book.






Welty's pictures- her snapshots-"was some irresistible notion that I might capture some essence of the place... Yes, I was smitten by the identity of place wherever I was."

Chopping Cotton in the Field/ Warren County 1935

Welty lost her camera while traveling in Europe. She left it on a station bench after a full day with friends, children, and Versailles . As a sort of punishment for the loss of a day's worth of film-" a day's happiness"- she stopped taking pictures. "I didn't deserve a camera after that. I was so crushed." The day was lost- never to be recaptured-those people would never be assembled in such a way again.

I can not imagine that if Miss Welty had wanted to continue taking pictures she would have done so- Perhaps she had recorded all that she wanted to and told stories instead.

Eudora Welty born - April 13. 1909



(quotes from an interview with Eudora Welty by Hunter Cole and Seetha Srinivasan-1989)



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