Rebecca Again

As spring comes on, I find myself revisiting my favorite novels.  It is the mark of a good, excellent, even masterful novel, if they call to us even after we've read them, to come back and explore a story all over again, discover new nooks and crannies and the secrets buried in them.  Spring began with Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte), I Capture the Castle (Dodie Smith) and Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier) - reviving a spirit of the classic, ageless stories that have inspired, compelled or comforted me in my work.

I just finished Rebecca for the second time.  It is the newest of the three to my experience.  Jane has been with me since high school.  And Cassandra (I Capture the Castle) just after I graduated college.  An article on NPR stirred up an interest in Rebecca, and here I am, reading her again.  A few weeks ago I'd made up my mind that Rebecca was one novel I should have in my collection - I needed it in that odd, frenzied writerly way.  I know I will come back to it in the future time and time again.  I wanted it with me ready to be taken down and studied, just as Jane Eyre and I Capture the Castle are.

Rebecca's opening line is famous and ghost-like "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." It is more deeply psychological, sitting in the heart of the young (and nameless) Mrs. de Winter's story and looking out on the traces left of her husband's first wife.  The narrator's experience colors so much of the novel - her suspense is our suspense.  When she is shaken, we are shaken.  I could write paragraphs upon paragraphs of how Rebecca draws on Jane, how they're similar, how each is its own unique work of art, but perhaps in another post.  For the moment, I am quite content to bask in the sunshine and the shadows of these two works... a house of secrets, a wife's hidden nature, a husband's torment, a second marriage threatened, a haunting sadness, a love of place and nature, hauntings of the living and the dead. 

I love Ms. Du Maurier's attention to detail - how those details paint character as well as scene.  In the beginning of the tale she introduces the narrator's employer Mrs. Van Hopper thus:

... how different my present companion, his steady, well-shaped hands peeling a mandarin in quiet, methodical fashion, looking up now and again from his task to smile at me, compared to Mrs. Van Hopper, her fat bejeweled fingers questing a plate heaped high with ravioli, her eyes darting suspiciously from her plate to mine for fear I should have made the better choice... (p 10)

Rebecca herself is dead, but she's alive in the imagination of Mrs. de Winter, eclipsing her, overpowering her from beyond the grave:

I must have been the first person to put on that mackintosh since the handkerchief was used.  She who had worn the coat then was tall, slim, broader than I about the shoulders, for I had found it big and over-long, and the sleeves had come below my wrists.  Some of the buttons were missing.  She had not bothered to do it up... There was a pink mark upon the handkerchief.  The mark of lipstick.  She had rubbed her lips with the handkerchief, and then rolled it in a ball, and left it in the pocket. I wiped by fingers with the handkerchief, and as I did so I noticed that a dull scent clung about it still.  (p 120)

Her description of Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper:

Someone advanced from the sea of faces, someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheek-bones and great, hollow eyes gave her a skull's face, parchment-white, set on a skeleton's frame. (p 67)  

I could go on and on and on, but then my thoughts on Rebecca would be as long, or even longer, than the book itself.  It is a masterpiece because every word, every detail is carefully placed for the best affect - the subtlest, most stirring metaphors. The very novel is alive - gorgeously reflective of Manderley itself: a grand old house, well-kept and beautiful but unable to contain the wild spirit stirring at its heart.

You should read Rebecca...

... if you love Jane Eyre.  Don't compare them seriously (as to which is the "better" because they're both very different) - just enjoy their similar shades of story

... to catch a glimpse of the restless Cornish sea

... for a compelling, page-turning mystery wrought with lingering grief and silent rage

... for mouthwatering descriptions of food and gardens you can almost smell... the azaleas! the roses!

A Discovery of Garlic

It is finally August.  The air is thick with late summer humidity, the drone of cicadas and crickets, the smell of lavender, thunder storms and dry grass; the sun is at its strongest, its most radiant.  I've been out tending to my bit of earth and weeding as much I can around the side of the house where the roses are riding out the heat.  I have what you might call a greenish thumb: gardens enchant me and I'd like to plan and sculpt and keep a garden someday when my situation is a little more permanent.  Until that day, I am enjoy the garden as a place of discovery and endless musing.  This is good exercise for the writer's brain.

One such discovery this week was that of wild garlic clusters growing up where the irises are situated on the south side of the house.  Granted, in the few years I've lived here I'd always wondered what those white pod-looking things were but always tore them out in an effort to maintain order and never once thought to compare the shape to the typical bulb you buy in the produce aisle... or put it my mouth and bite down.  I was thrilled when that taste burst across my tongue, and I instantly had the thought that if this was some post-apocalyptic world, a discovery of garlic might just be a gold mine.  I wonder what Katniss Everdeen would trade for wild garlic.

These little garlics aren't single bulbs, but a little bundle of tiny kernels - exactly the size of popping corn.

Wild garlic kernels bursting from their pouch.

This discovery sparked to life old memories of similar finds from childhood.  My parents had green thumbs and hands when I was growing up: vegetables from tomatoes to squash to accidental corn; and wide variety of roses, flowering bushes and our own little patch of annuals (bachelor's buttons, zinnias, marigolds) we little ones took pride in.  My parents would use mint and basil and chives from the garden, and once in a while when Dad was doing his autumn-time chipper-shredding, a wild onion would accidentally wind up in the chipping pile and get into his eyes.  Once, I found a little patch of wild strawberries once growing cozily alongside the roses.  I remember my little heart jumping for joy when I saw those little red berries - and they tasted so sweet - different from the ones you buy in the store. 

The little strawberries made me think of the wild blueberries my sister and I discovered behind our relatives' cottage in Maine.  The cottage was a rustic little house - no air conditioning, antique furniture, a tide clock (which impressed me; everything about coastal Maine, tide pools and sea creatures fascinates a child who grew up in Nebraska) and the smell of saltwater and sand.  I first tasted saltwater taffy in this place, and perhaps even my first lobster.  I remember scores of family members - sadly many, many of them gone - crowding into that house.  And then the blueberries.  We were told not to eat the berries, but we went out when no one was looking and gorged ourselves.  Mom must have noticed it smeared on our faces or something because she flipped out: she thought we were eating the poisonous red berries from the bushes that separated the cottage from the neighboring plot.  Until we were caught, it was heaven.  Years later, we returned for a visit to find the cottage torn down and replaced with a snazzier, fancier, air-conditioned house. The blueberries were gone.  It was almost as if I'd dreamt them.

I think it was the idea that you could grow food in your own backyard that thrilled me.  Your own berries!  Your own tomatoes!  Your own herbs!  My father's parents had two or three apple trees.  I remember helping to pick apples and put them in baskets, and how the baskets were shaped: bucket-like with wooden slats.  Gramma would make pies and applesauce.  And I have the strangest recollection of being told to be careful of worms.  Papa would peel the apples with a knife, which I thought was strange because Dad had a special apple-peeling device with a crank that seemed to make it so much easier.  When the apple trees died, we played on the empty stumps until they were finally pulled out.  Gone were our apple adventures and the climbing posts.  Gramma and Papa's yard seemed so empty without them.

This love of fruit and veg thriving in the garden is still alive in me.  I maintain tomatoes, peppers and beans with my roommate. We are constantly fighting the weedy grape vines (that WON'T die no matter what we do to them) that have been blocking the sunlight from the tomatoes, and the "volunteer" trees that grow between the fences.  But there is something fulfilling in tending to these plants, deciding what stays or goes (if it's a pretty weed, it can stay), and discovering wild lilies or garlic... or finding that the violas, once bunny salad, have finally grown back and have flowered magnificently.  There is no greater joy than that.  

Gardens must be tended, but it's amazing what can grow on its own unnoticed in the shade, in the random corner of the yard, around the cedar tree, behind the shed... without having to be coddled, pruned or yanked out by the roots.  Writing is this way, too.  Sometimes you have to let it grow wild and rampant in order to see just what's in it. 

Bunny salad no more: my violas are finally thriving.

In Defense of Shrinking Violets

Violet Flowers by nondesigner59

I happen to like violets, violas and pansies.  They're sweet, unimposing, simple flowers.  Last year I found them growing all over the landscaping immediately in front of the house, seeded from violas I'd had on the front porch two summers before.  This spring I spied a third-generation patch growing in the middle of the lawn and took pains to rescue it from the lawnmower.  The original violas lasted from the end of May to October 2011. 

If properly cared for these can be hearty little plants, audaciously standing tall amidst a garden of bigger, bolder blooms. But they will shrink if they're not watered enough, or if it's too darned hot.  Or if a gardener decides that they are nothing but pretty weeds.  The phrase "shrinking violet" must come from this, and it's no surprise that I've seen it on writing blogs.  "This is no time to be a shrinking violet" someone wrote once in relation to "getting out there" in the publishing world, to relentlessly pursue agents and attend conferences, tweet like there's no tomorrow and blog until your fingers bleed.

I know it's meant to be taken lightly, but there are times when I resent this metaphor.  I cannot help but detect an implication that "shrinking" is cowardice or even laziness, a failure to act.  Simply, I am not and never have been a flashy person.  I cringe at the idea of crowds and loud places, and those things stress and tire me out easily.  It isn't quite fear, but the way I was made.  My energy simply cannot stretch that far, therefore, I've learned in the last few years how best to use the energy I have: writing my novels, steadily querying agents, slowing down on the things that tie my brain in knots. 



2nd generation violas, 2012.



I sympathize with the violet and the pansy, because I often feel that I'm a cluster of little insignificant flowers in a garden full of more impressive specimens. The snowdrop boldly pops up through the snow, wasting little time as spring comes on.  The poenies spread out their arms and legs and take up as much space as possible.  The poppies are red and rich.  The roses - oh, the roses! - open in their intricate splay of petals and smell like heaven, drawing the human eye towards it like a perfect sunset in the garden.  The clematis shows off its climbing skills.  The four-o'-clocks demonstrate their punctuality.  With marigolds, impatiens and cosmos, lilies and vines, flowering shrubs and bleeding hearts, the attention seems to be everywhere else.  Sometimes it seems downright Sisyphean to try to be anything other than what I am, a viola working a thriving quietly in my own special bit of earth. 

That does not mean that I'm shrinking.  Right now, I'm still waiting on agent responses to my recent batch of queries... and have received many "thanks-but-no-thanks" form letters.  If I was shrinking, I wouldn't be preparing to do it again in a few months time.  I keep reminding myself that an agent out there also likes violets; I simply haven't found him or her yet. 

I hope to be like the vagabond violas I find year after year in the garden and the lawn: shrinking down, but coming back time after time.

Efflorescence

Adventures in Logophilia, Episode 205:

efflorescence

 

 

Efflorescence is the state of being flowery, blooming or having such an appearance, a perfect word for the budding, opening and awakening of blossoms.  Like those above, I amazed to see these dobs of color give life to an otherwise struggling lawn. Many people remarked yesterday in Boston that flowering trees were in fantastic bloom on a day that saw so much anxiety and pain.  Spring is hope.  And here is proof.

Garden Metaphors for Writing (Jillian)

I've dabbled on and off with the curious magic that is gardening.  I say "dabble" because I could never quite accomplish the splendor and variety of my parents' garden growing up.  I've had dreams in recent years of planting roses and filling beds with flowers, but most of my successes seem to dwell with seeds in pots and little indoor projects.  Through this dabbling, I have learned a few things that have been astoundingly helpful in my writer's life.

• Michelle once compared a novel I have been working on and struggling with to berry bushes.  This is a para-paraphrase of her lovely metaphor, but hopefully it works.  You plant berry bushes and they grow for a few years before they produce any fruit.  But the plant is still alive, still growing, still getting ready for that fruitfulness. 

• Along the same lines, I've thought about seeds.  You have a seed.  You plant it in the ground or a vessel of some sort filled with soil.  You water it.  You put it in the sun.  Notice how it doesn't sprout up immediately.  For weeks you water the seemingly empty, fruitless pot of dirt.  The days pass and you wonder why nothing is growing, why nothing is beginning to show for all the effort.  And then at last, with enough patience, a little green shoot pushes up and into the open air.  Just when you'd given up hope.  The point of this is that you have to keep watering the little pot of dirt.  You can't see the plant yet, but it's there.  Same with writing.  Something may not be working.  A chapter or a scene might be stalling, but you never know what might be happening underneath the surface.  You have to keep watering it - or writing it - until it pokes up through the surface.  Never abandon it.

• I also had an amarylis bulb, bought on clearance in January.  It already had a green shoot coming out of it, so I assumed it was ready to grow and blossom.  Nope.  I let it sit out for two months, and watered it.  It didn't grow.  I despaired and finally put it in the garage so I wouldn't have to look at it.  Fast forward to April, and I'm gathering pots and soil to grow violas, when I rediscover the amarylis, still sitting there.  On a whim, I pick it up, plunk it in a pot and forget it out side.  Two weeks later, I look out and see that it has shot up a foot and is sporting at least six bright red buds, all of which open to full glory for a month.  Yes, I abandoned the amarlysis, but it came back.  It proved me wrong, as these things tend to do.  You may think a piece of writing is dead when it only requires a little patience, a little time to be dormant, and a little love.

• Violas.  The seeds are tiny.  The flowers are sweet and resilient.  I bought white ones on clearance last year and they grew till September.  This spring, I was excited to discover they had seeded themselves in the landscaping in front of the house - white faces thriving in lovely clusters in the wood chips and in cracks in the side walk.

• I went wild with the idea that if little tough flowers could grow in between the cracks in the cement, like weeds do, they could grow in tinier vessels as well.  Hence, a thriving viola, grown from seeds (above) inside a glass votive holder and broken (and otherwise useless) tea cups, straightened by a paper clip, and sporting a blossom and two buds. 

So... if violas can grow in the cracks in the sidewalk, my ideas can thrive in unusual places.  I just have to be a little patient.  And try not plant too many seeds in one little jar.