Category: Lust To Go

“Unexplorer”

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Millay, Edna St. Vincent. “The Unexplorer.” Collected Poems.New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1960. p 138.

I don’t know how to take this poem. Okay. So it explains why one doesn’t explore; why someone is an UN-explorer. Someone wants to know where a road goes. The answer is to the milk-man’s door. Interesting enough. Blame it all on childhood and your mother, as the therapist would say. Mom tells you something scary and it scars you for life. That would make sense if mother replied with something hideous, something deep and dark and scary. But the milk-man? Why is the milk-man someone to fear? Unless he’s daddy? I don’t get it.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Travelers’ Tale in Verse” (p 237).

“Ithaca”

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Cavafy, Constantine. The Complete Poems of Cavafy. “Ithaca.” Translated by Rae Dalven. New York: Harcourt Brace and World, Inc., 1961.

When I first saw the poem name “Ithaca” I thought I would be reading about Ithaca, New York. Silly me.

This was a poem I reread a few times. Not because it was taxing or troublesome, far from it. I just love the admonishment behind the words. It the advice given to someone traveling to Ithaca, Greece. The message is pretty simple and one we have heard before – it’s not the destination, but the journey. The unknown adviser is asking for the journey to be important. “But do not hurry the voyage at all” (p 36). Savor the way as you go.

Author Fact: Cavafy’s full name was Constantine Petrou Photiades Cavafy. How’s that for a nice Alexandrian name? Another interesting fact (according to Wikipedia) is that he was born and died on the same day, April 29th.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Travelers’ Tales in Verse” (p 237).

“America To Me”

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Van Dyke, Henry. “America To Me. ” The Poems of Henry Van Dyke. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911. p 167 – 168.

“America To Me” is begging to be set to music. In my mind it has all the makings of a really great patriotic song, complete with cheerful verse and enthusiastic chorus. It is the perfect post-9/11 anthem; a rally of sorts. It’s simple in its message: a traveling individual has grown tired of the Old Country. He (or she) has seen enough of France, Italy and England. It is simply time to go home, back to young America. After all, as Van Dyke has quoted Frank Baum, “there is no place like home.”

Favorite line, “I want a ship that’s westward bound to plough the rolling sea…” (p 168).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Travelers Tales in Verse” (p 237). Read in April for poetry month.

My Antonia

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Cather, Willa. My Antonia.New York: Everyman’s Library, 1996.

Rereading My Antonia was like spotting a familiar face in a crowd somewhere in a country I have never been to before. It was like coming home after forty years away and remembering houses and neighbors. An old familiarity that was somehow comforting and true. I thoroughly enjoyed rereading this classic. Structurally, My Antonia is separated into five different books: The Shimerdas (introducing Antonia and her Bohemian family), The Hired Girls (delving into Antonia’s life in town), Lena Lingrad (Antonia’s good friend), The Pioneer Woman’s Story (Antonia’s friend, Tiny’s return to the farmland) and Cuzak’s Boys (Jim visiting Antonia after a twenty year absence and meeting her large family).
The premise of the story is in the introduction. Two friends are traveling by train and reminiscing about Antonia, a girl they both knew growing up. They agree to write their thoughts of her but James Quayle Burden is the only one to do so. He tells the story of growing up on the Nebraska plains with Antonia as his lifelong friend.

Best lines: “Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great” (p 20), “Those two could quarrel all morning about whether he ought to put on his heavy or his light underwear, and all evening about whether he had taken cold or not” (p 159), and “Clearly, she was the impulse, and he the corrective” (p 262).

Author Fact: Willa Cather was born Wilella Cather and lived in New York for most of her life.

Book Trivia: My Antonia was made into a movie in 1995.

BookLust Twist: My Antonia is indexed in all three Lust books: in Book Lust in the chapter called “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade: 1910s” (p 175), in More Book Lust in the chapters called “The Great Plains: Nebraska” (p 107) and “The Immigrant Experience” (p 123), and in Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Nebraska: The Big Empty” (p 148). If Pearl had written a chapter called “Women Channeling Men” she could have included My Antonia there as well.

Wuthering Heights

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Austen, Jane, Emily Bronte and George Eliot. Three Nineteenth Century Novels: Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Silas Marner. New York: New American Library, 1979.

Reviewing Wuthering Heights Heights only.
Wuthering Heights is the quintessential story of doomed romance, family strife and all-consuming revenge. Who doesn’t know the tragic story of Catherine and Heathcliff? Ellen (Nelly) Dean is the perfect narrator for Wuthering Heights. Only her memory bridges the gap between the two generations. She served both generations of the Earnshaw and Linton families. As she explains to renter Mr. Lockwood, she was a child servant in the Earnshaw household when Mr. Earnshaw brought home gypsy orphan, Heathcliff. Earnshaw’s children are slow to accept Heathcliff into the family and while Catherine softens and learns to love him, brother Hareton never does. It is a classic case of feelings magnifying over time. Catherine falls in love with Heathcliff while Hareton becomes consumed by hatred. Revenge becomes another theme in Wuthering Heights as Catherine’s love for Heathcliff is overshadowed by a wealthier, more gentlemanly suitor. Soon she is sacrificing her true passion for societal standing and marries well-to-do Edgar Linton instead.

Author fact: Emily Bronte was only 30 years old when she died of tuberculosis. Wuthering Heights was her only novel although she wrote tons of poetry…Can you imagine what she could have done if she had lived for another 30 years?

Book Trivia: Wuthering Heights has been made into movies, a television show, a musical, a play, and even an opera. Kate Bush wrote a song about Wuthering Heights that became a hit.

BookLust Twist: from More Book lust and Book Lust To Go. From More Book Lust in the chapter called “Brontes Forever” (p 35). From Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “An Anglophile’s Literary Pilgrimage” (p 20).

Dubliners

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Joyce, James. Dubliners. New York: Signet, 1991.

When I was in high school I fell in love with James Joyce’s style of writing. We share the same birthday. The Dead, a short story from Dubliners was my all time favorite. Gabriel became my favorite name; a long lost child.

Dubliners is comprised of 15 short  and simple stories all centered around the people of Dublin. To sum up the collection it is a portrait of a city as seen from the eyes of the people living there. The very first story, The Sisters, is nothing more than a family’s reaction to a priest’s death. While the characters are not connected, their stories are. Life and death, love and loss, youth and aging, poverty and wealth. Joyce does a remarkable job capturing the spirit of the Irish while revealing universal truths about mankind as a whole. It is as if we, as readers, get to peek into the character’s lives and are witness to moments of our own circumstances.

What I find so remarkable about Dubliners is that Joyce originally had great trouble getting it published. And even after he finally did it didn’t sell that well.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “Irish Fiction” (p 125). Where else? Edited to add: I’ll tell you where else…Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Ireland: Beyond Joyce, Behan, Beckett, and Synge” (p 110). I guess you could say Dubliners shouldn’t be included in this chapter because it’s supposed to be about “beyond Joyce.” Something to think about.