An awful lot of a good thing

Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen novel. I appreciated her more with my mind than with my heart, until I got to this one, and it's the book I recommend to people who say they can't get into Austen. It's quiet and dark and more about inner life than about outer, although, as in every Austen book, it's about both, the interplay of the two.

The story is driven by what I think of (in negative moments) as the plague of having to live in linear time. You can't know the future so you have to make the best choices you can without knowing for sure whether they really are the best, and you can't change the past once you've made them. Not an uncommon dilemma in stories but wonderfully realized in this tale of a young woman persuaded not to marry the love of her life, not by those who have no concept of true quality (Anne's or her beloved's), but by the person who loves and respects her the most and who genuinely fears for her happiness. Right and wrong choices are so very hard to define sometimes, even after the fact.

I love this book. So when I saw that there was an Annotated Persuasion, I jumped on it.

And it's really a cool resource. It's not perfect. I can't imagine that anybody reading Austen's books at all, much less this one, needs a note telling them what "amiable" means.

But there was great stuff in it. I now understand the relatively lowly status of a curate, and of an attorney as opposed to a barrister. The idea that for widows to remarry -- I don't mean in haste, I mean, ever -- was considered not...quite proper was new to me.

It's got some nifty illustrations too.

So that's what a "pelisse" is.

But i was hoping it would replace my nice, mundane little copy of the novel, and it won't. It's too much, as a reading copy. This is absolutely great for students, or for anybody who just wants more, but that's studying, not reading. The format -- text on the left-hand page and notes on the right -- bothers me. If that were reversed, I could possibly read a novel only on right-hand pages. Turning the page when I come to the end of a right-hand page is very natural, but not when I've just finished a left-hand page. I think the publisher should have reversed this.

So much for not expanding my book collection. (grumble) I'll be keeping both copies. The extras in the Annotated are too good to discard, but it's too hard to just read for pleasure.

It's also Grilled Cheese Month!

Complete with a new, all grilled cheese, all the time, cookbook!



Amazon
Books-a-Million
Barnes & Noble
IndieBound


Nice review in the Christian Science Monitor.


I don't know if my favorite is in there, since I just found out about the book (and the month) 10 minutes ago, but for a terrific grilled cheese sandwich,
assemble in logical order :


- DARK pumpernickel bread
- UNSALTED genuine butter, lightly spread on the bread
- Gouda, or smoked Gouda cheese - at least 2 slices thick. 3 is good.
- honey mustard.

Happy April.

It's National Poetry Month! Quick, hide the poetry!

A facebook friend made me aware of a nifty interview with poet Mary Oliver in the April issue of O magazine.

The interview is online, but I liked it enough to buy the magazine. Oliver has heretofore been very private, despite being one of the rare poets who is both literary enough for the literary and accessible enough for popularity, and has won not just major awards but wide readership.

I have this bad tendency to pigeon-hole things, and I really have ignored O magazine because I thought it was strictly self-help. I got the issue and discovered that the Mary Oliver interview is the tip of the iceberg. There's a world more about Poetry Month in it -- a big section, including lots of poems, people talking about their favorites, Caroline Kennedy discussing poetry work with Bronx kids and several anthology projects, AND a profile of W. S. Merwin, who has restored a substantial patch of rainforest all by himself.

On the magazine's cover, you get "in this issue" blurbs for...

• being your best
  
• weight loss
• Oprah's journals (She and I are the same age, and this was actually quite interesting to me)
• optimism
• loving your work and getting rich from it
• eating well for $40.00 a week (Blogger Xtreme English skewers that one!)
• beauty products

And that's all.

You'd never know there was a whisper of poetry stuff in there.

My first reaction was, That's terrible! All this great poetry-related content and it doesn't even get ONE out of 7 cover teasers! Shows how literature don't get no respect.

Then I realized it could be a smart decision. Oprah is known for promoting books, including classics, so maybe the editors were over-protective of sales figures to fear that intellectual/literary stuff will scare people off, and maybe it couldn't have hurt to put on a cover line about "Mary Oliver - rare interview" or "W. S. Merwin restores a rainforest," but I have to praise the content. Maria Shriver was guest editor and did a smashing job.

Buy a magazine to help you improve your life and stumble on poetry. You could call this sneaky, or you could call it a workaround. Once they do buy it, how many people are going to find the poetry features quite engaging? And maybe read some poetry? And would they have missed out on something that's expanded their worlds, if they'd seen "poetry" on the cover and thought, "Meh. I'll buy InStyle instead" ?

I've read enough stacks of murder mysteries to both understand and cheer-lead for reading the not-difficult; for avoiding mental work during a stress-filled life and going for escape instead. In this sorrowful world, escape reading is tremendous gift, a very positive mental-vacation thing to avail oneself of. Of which to avail oneself. I really hate this syntax rule. It sounds snotty and stupid and is not necessary for meaning or clarity.

Hey, it's my blog and I'll digress if I want to.

Anyway, the deep rewards that come from a little mind-stretch now and then are a gift too. Reading something with more to think about isn't just Mental Spinach - It's Gross but Good For You! It can be likened to acquiring a taste for darker chocolate. I'm aggravatingly ADD and I've read embarrassingly little that's very mind-building, but when I do, it brings a smile to my heart that I can't even explain. Poetry is a succinct way to give the soul a chance to dance a little.