As stated previously one of my goals in retirement is to do a lot of reading thereby making up a lot of lost time over the past few years. Since we got back from England in March, I have been doing just that - I have probably read more books in six months than in the past six years combined. A subset of the goal to read more was (and is) to work my way through the books I already have - at some point I will write about my issues with buying books, but for the moment suffice it to say that I own far books than I have read.
So the idea was to focus on reading what I already have as opposed to buying or borrowing other books, new or otherwise. While I have certainly made progress there too, it gets subverted frequently as I learn about authors and books that are new to me. Case in point is two posts by Elaine over at Random Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover (http://randomjottings.typepad.com/) about books set in English villages which contained the names of a number of authors who are new to me.
Of particular note was a book called "One Fine Day" by Mollie Panter-Downes, Elaine quoted a passage from the book that by itself made me want to read it. So while down at the Rutgers library last week doing baseball history research, I checked the stacks and was able to find a copy of this short novel (184 pages) about one day in an English village in 1946. Due to its short length I was able to finish it in just a few days. I think it is an extraordinary book, one that I am confident that I didn't fully understand and will both want and need to read again.
At the heart of the book is the Marshall family, Laura, Stephen and their daughter Victoria. They are presented as a middle class family that before the war enjoyed a life where most of the manual type labor was done by servants. Now in this new post war world, servants are no longer available and Laura and Stephen are having a hard time adjusting. They are now having to do work to maintain a home and household that they are not used to doing, haven't been trained to do - in some cases things that they were trained not to do or at least not to think about.
My initial reaction to their difficulties was fairly negative, sort of a reverse snobbism. Life without servants - get used to it, grow up - that kind of thing. But the more I think about it, that initial reaction feels like a kind of literary "presentism" - judging the past by the present - a more typical problem in history. I have written a lot about my sense that the Civil War generation in the U.S. doesn't get sufficient credit today for ending slavery because today the very idea is so unthinkable.
The life the Marshalls lived in before the war was the life they were prepared for, the life they inherited. It is unfair, therefore, to think that they should easily accept the end of that way of life. Especially after enduring the risks and deprivations of war for five to six years - it is hard not to understand their asking, "What was the purpose of these sacrifices,?" "What did we ultimately win by winning the war?" It reminds me in some ways of the famous American movie, "The Best Years of Our Lives," the story of the difficulties faced by three American servicemen adjusting to civilian life.
Looking at it this way, it seems to me that the bulk of the story is about how Stephen and Laura, especially Laura, work through these issues. What is tested then in large measure is their devotion to England now that it is a very different England that to paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle's words, "lies in the sunshine once the storm has past." How they see the enduring good in England is something I will try to address in my next post, addressed, of course, from an American point of view.
So the idea was to focus on reading what I already have as opposed to buying or borrowing other books, new or otherwise. While I have certainly made progress there too, it gets subverted frequently as I learn about authors and books that are new to me. Case in point is two posts by Elaine over at Random Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover (http://randomjottings.typepad.com/) about books set in English villages which contained the names of a number of authors who are new to me.
Of particular note was a book called "One Fine Day" by Mollie Panter-Downes, Elaine quoted a passage from the book that by itself made me want to read it. So while down at the Rutgers library last week doing baseball history research, I checked the stacks and was able to find a copy of this short novel (184 pages) about one day in an English village in 1946. Due to its short length I was able to finish it in just a few days. I think it is an extraordinary book, one that I am confident that I didn't fully understand and will both want and need to read again.
At the heart of the book is the Marshall family, Laura, Stephen and their daughter Victoria. They are presented as a middle class family that before the war enjoyed a life where most of the manual type labor was done by servants. Now in this new post war world, servants are no longer available and Laura and Stephen are having a hard time adjusting. They are now having to do work to maintain a home and household that they are not used to doing, haven't been trained to do - in some cases things that they were trained not to do or at least not to think about.
My initial reaction to their difficulties was fairly negative, sort of a reverse snobbism. Life without servants - get used to it, grow up - that kind of thing. But the more I think about it, that initial reaction feels like a kind of literary "presentism" - judging the past by the present - a more typical problem in history. I have written a lot about my sense that the Civil War generation in the U.S. doesn't get sufficient credit today for ending slavery because today the very idea is so unthinkable.
The life the Marshalls lived in before the war was the life they were prepared for, the life they inherited. It is unfair, therefore, to think that they should easily accept the end of that way of life. Especially after enduring the risks and deprivations of war for five to six years - it is hard not to understand their asking, "What was the purpose of these sacrifices,?" "What did we ultimately win by winning the war?" It reminds me in some ways of the famous American movie, "The Best Years of Our Lives," the story of the difficulties faced by three American servicemen adjusting to civilian life.
Looking at it this way, it seems to me that the bulk of the story is about how Stephen and Laura, especially Laura, work through these issues. What is tested then in large measure is their devotion to England now that it is a very different England that to paraphrase Arthur Conan Doyle's words, "lies in the sunshine once the storm has past." How they see the enduring good in England is something I will try to address in my next post, addressed, of course, from an American point of view.
1 comment:
just SO glad you are loving this book
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