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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 3, 2024 22:02:39 GMT
"Carr is the character modern writers of period novels should create. Instead though, they make their feminist heroes perfectly align to today's unforgiving and yet tellingly always changing ideal, which makes their book's anachronistic, preachy and often silly and unreadable."
So well put and so true for many modern novels. The anachronisms are irritating, but the unforgiving part makes the characters downright unlikeable.
I know your movie tastes a bit, but not your reading ones, but my guess is they overlap, which makes me think you would like "The Wheel Spins." |
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nickandnora34
Full Member
Just a grease spot on the L&N
Posts: 103
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Post by nickandnora34 on Jul 6, 2024 22:32:40 GMT
what a lovely thread this is; no idea why I rarely click on it as there are so many solid suggestions here. as an avid reader, I should take advantage of this thread a bit more lol
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 30, 2024 9:26:07 GMT
The Pleasure of His Company by Bernard Glemser, originally published in 1961 and based on a play by Samuel A. Taylor and Cornelia Otis Skinner.
Some books are art, while others, maybe not rising to the level of art, offer deep insight into the human condition. Some, though, are just fun page-turners that create engaging characters, even if you know they are archetypes and not real people.
The Pleasure of His Company is entertaining in the same way that many modern TV shows are entertaining: the characters are intelligent, attractive and speak off the cuff with unrealistically perfect sharp barbs, witty observations and smart-sounding philosophical bromides.
No one in real life, perhaps other than Oscar Wilde or William Buckley, speaks like these characters. Still, it's entertaining to see a world where words and sentences are fired off like heat-seeking missiles, here, in service to a mild family feud.
First up is the incredibly named Biddeford Poole, nicknamed Pogo, who is that mid-twentieth century marvel: a man of independent means who travels the world living an exotic life that is captured on the society pages. He's rich, charming, cultured, handsome and social.
Today, he'd be on the board of a few charities – one with "green" bonafides would help – and he'd have to, occasionally, dress like a forklift operator to show his "common man" touch, but in his day, living a life of self-indulgent luxury with style was acceptable.
Two decades earlier, Poole was married to Kate, who is now a happily remarried San Francisco housewife. She and her kind and calm banker second husband, Jim, live in a large pretty house overlooking the San Francisco Bay.
Kate's life is charity lunches, shopping and cocktails. Her life is also seeing her beautiful nineteen-year-old daughter, Jessica, get married this upcoming weekend. Despite being Poole's daughter, Jim and Kate have raised Jessica together since Jessica was five.
That's the setup that sees Poole, who hasn't seen Kate or his daughter in fifteen years, show up unexpectedly - he was invited, but no one thought he'd come - the week before Jessica's wedding.
The rest of the story is Poole pushing Kate's buttons, buttons that he knows too well, while she does the same to his. Poole also forms a seemingly genuine bond with daughter Jessica who has hero-worshiped her society-page-famous dad from afar.
It's all Noel Coward drawing-room banter with an American edge. It's entertaining as heck if you're in the mood for sharp barbs, with no real purpose. It's smart people saying a lot of entertainingly snarky things.
There is a plot of sorts as Poole wants Jessica to ditch her 'boring' rancher fiancé to travel the world with him for a few years. He, of course, presents it as wanting to 'save' his daughter from a sheltered life of boredom.
Kate, of course, doesn't want her ex-husband to derail the pending nuptials, so they, mainly obliquely, fight it out by undermining each other. Poole plays on Kate's insecurity that maybe her life with Jim is boring versus her prior life with him.
Kate retorts that "Pogo," for all his outward nonchalance, needs a muse to hero-worship him or he becomes restless and morose. Her life might be boring, but his life is really a shallow one that is feeling even more shallow as he ages.
There are plenty of fun scenes and mid-century San Francisco atmosphere to make this short, smartly written, but ultimately fluffy book fly by. It's a book you read for a few days while you decide the next "real" book you're going to read.
The final part of the fun equation is that after you've read The Pleasure of His Company, you can check out the not quite as fun, but still good 1961 movie version of the story starring Fred Astaire, Debbie Reynolds and Lilli Palmer.
Comments on the movie here: "The Pleasure of His Company" |
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Post by christine on Jul 30, 2024 18:31:15 GMT
One of these days Fading Fast, I need to stop watching movies and start reading again!!! LOL
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Post by Fading Fast on Jul 30, 2024 18:34:54 GMT
One of these days Fading Fast, I need to stop watching movies and start reading again!!! LOL |
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Post by christine on Jul 30, 2024 19:03:02 GMT
I so agree with you Fading Fast - I love to actually hold the book in my hands. There's just something soothing about that to me.
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Post by Fading Fast on Aug 25, 2024 9:40:36 GMT
I just read a review of this book, which sounds wonderful if you have a spare $250 sitting around ($220 on Amazon). Here's the book's website: "Life. Hollywood"
From the Website:
"The golden age of the world’s most popular weekly photography magazine (1936-1972) coincided with Hollywood’s most glamorous decades. Featuring hundreds of meticulously researched and curated images from the vast LIFE archive, capturing “more stars than there are in Heaven,” location shoots, Oscar nights, homes, alluring parties, and more."
And some pictures (there are a lot more on the website):
   
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Post by Andrea Doria on Aug 25, 2024 14:09:57 GMT
Wow, great pictures. I love that one of Marilyn, for once, we can see her intelligence through the beauty.
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 7, 2024 12:44:18 GMT
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1934
Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust doesn't fit squarely into one genre as this short book has elements of comedy, satire, soap opera and farce – so it's basically life. It’s also Waugh’s way of saying that England’s gentry in the pre-war 1930s are often ridiculous and selfish.
As the book opens, Brenda and Tony's marriage seems fine, until you notice that young, attractive Brenda is a bit bored living on a country estate whose maintenance absorbs most of their time and money. It’s a pretty-looking world, but a lot of work goes on behind the scenes.
Tony loves his family's estate, seeing its caretaking as his responsibility, legacy and life's work. So when Brenda starts spending more time in London, even taking a flat there, he's disappointed because he misses her, but not concerned as he knows his marriage is rock solid.
Tony is wrong: Brenda has taken a lover, John Beever, a young bounder and social boor. It seems almost de rigueur in this class for one partner in a marriage to have a lover, with an understood-by-all etiquette to be followed to make it appear "proper" on the surface.
So while Tony is out in the country busy care-taking the estate and their young son, Brenda spends most of her time in London socializing and sleeping with Beever. It’s quite amazing how everyone accepts this arrangement, as long as they abide by the right social customs.
It might have gone on a long time that way, as the "rule" was to stay silent – but then a family tragedy changes everything. After that, Brenda asks for a divorce, which would have gone smoothly as Tony is a good guy, but Brenda's family got greedy and Brenda went along.
The story then takes several twists as Tony has to fake an affair—a standard requirement at the time—to allow the divorce to proceed. The staging of the affair is a disaster because Tony is simply not good at being insincere – it just isn't in his DNA.
The money moment of the story comes when docile and kind Tony fights back in an honorable way and reshuffles the deck fiercely on Brenda. It's a wonderful moment of saying, if you won't play fair with me, I'll not go along with all this rigmarole needed for the divorce you want.
Waugh is at his absolute best here as you're cheering while turning pages because you care about these characters and want to see some justice done. There’s more to the story after that, as it wades into farce, but it’s very much of-the-era British.
What stands out most is the futility of it all. Waugh saw the uselessness of having a legacy monied class that did not much more than care for antiquated estates and run around cafe society waking up in different people's beds.
Tony is a good guy - he's the apotheosis of the British gentleman - but his efforts are spent fixing bathrooms in a huge house no one wants. Brenda isn't evil, but money and boredom have not served her well. Beever, the worst of the lot, only aspires to have money and do nothing.
Waugh scholars debate, to this day, the meaning of A Handful of Dust, but that's what they are paid to do. Heck, they even manage to see penumbras of Waugh's aborning Catholicism in the characters' religious ambivalence. They are right, but it's also a bit of a "so what" to the story.
The rest of us are free to see the novel as an entertaining indictment of a class on its way out. There would be rich after the war, of course, but the "he's not one of 'us' / old money / look down on those who work" class lost power to the new mercantile class that actually earned its money.
Waugh couldn't know it, and it would take a few decades for Britain to unwind its Empire and the burden of its post-war experiment with socialism, but the country’s revival would come in the 1980s when people began earning money the old-fashioned way: by working hard for it.
A Handful of Dust is a fun quick read that entertains as it denounces the Empire's upper class in its twilight. Waugh's insights feel prescient, but it’s his nuances – his ability to portray real people, their thoughts, problems, and contradictions – that bring this oft-told tale to life.
There is a very pretty movie version of the novel that was made in 1988 (comments on the movie here: "A Handful of Dust"). It captures the look and feel of the novel and is well-acted, but the true searing commentary and cynicism of Waugh’s work are best appreciated on the printed page (or in ebook format). |
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Post by I Love Melvin on Nov 7, 2024 13:52:58 GMT
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1934
Waugh scholars debate, to this day, the meaning of A Handful of Dust, but that's what they are paid to do. Heck, they even manage to see penumbras of Waugh's aborning Catholicism in the characters' religious ambivalence. They are right, but it's also a bit of a "so what" to the story.
It's too bad you're not paid to do it, because you'd be earning every penny. I don't have much of an on-line life other than this site, so I love the one-stop-shopping aspect here, with so much variety for a "quote" movie "unquote" site. Your book reviews (and other writings) are the equal of anything I run across elsewhere. Your enjoyment of reading is a big part of what makes your own writing so enjoyable. Just want to put that out there because I don't think I've said it directly before. |
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Post by Fading Fast on Nov 7, 2024 14:38:25 GMT
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1934
Waugh scholars debate, to this day, the meaning of A Handful of Dust, but that's what they are paid to do. Heck, they even manage to see penumbras of Waugh's aborning Catholicism in the characters' religious ambivalence. They are right, but it's also a bit of a "so what" to the story.
It's too bad you're not paid to do it, because you'd be earning every penny. I don't have much of an on-line life other than this site, so I love the one-stop-shopping aspect here, with so much variety for a "quote" movie "unquote" site. Your book reviews (and other writings) are the equal of anything I run across elsewhere. Your enjoyment of reading is a big part of what makes your own writing so enjoyable. Just want to put that out there because I don't think I've said it directly before.
It's fun to share these books and movies with others who have an enthusiasm for them like you. |
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Post by NoShear on Nov 7, 2024 14:49:30 GMT
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1934
Waugh scholars debate, to this day, the meaning of A Handful of Dust, but that's what they are paid to do. Heck, they even manage to see penumbras of Waugh's aborning Catholicism in the characters' religious ambivalence. They are right, but it's also a bit of a "so what" to the story.
It's too bad you're not paid to do it, because you'd be earning every penny. I don't have much of an on-line life other than this site, so I love the one-stop-shopping aspect here, with so much variety for a "quote" movie "unquote" site. Your book reviews (and other writings) are the equal of anything I run across elsewhere. Your enjoyment of reading is a big part of what makes your own writing so enjoyable. Just want to put that out there because I don't think I've said it directly before. What I've been telling him 'for years' now, I Love Melvin. |
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Post by NoShear on Nov 8, 2024 0:16:03 GMT
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1934
Waugh scholars debate, to this day, the meaning of A Handful of Dust, but that's what they are paid to do. Heck, they even manage to see penumbras of Waugh's aborning Catholicism in the characters' religious ambivalence. They are right, but it's also a bit of a "so what" to the story.
It's too bad you're not paid to do it, because you'd be earning every penny. I don't have much of an on-line life other than this site, so I love the one-stop-shopping aspect here, with so much variety for a "quote" movie "unquote" site. Your book reviews (and other writings) are the equal of anything I run across elsewhere. Your enjoyment of reading is a big part of what makes your own writing so enjoyable. Just want to put that out there because I don't think I've said it directly before. And what of you, I Love Melvin?? You need to get paid for your reviews as well. |
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