Oh, you fool, there are rules, I am coming for you

[sovay]

I am also having an unsatisfactory government experience, where by "unsatisfactory" I mean "smug and inhumane" and by "government experience" I mean "two hundred and seventeen assclowns celebrating their decision to kill millions of their supposedly fellow Americans plus one assclown-in-chief signing disingenuous self-righteousness into law in an embarrassment to assclowns everywhere." I am aware that the Senate has not yet voted on the so-called American Health Care Act of 2017 and I hope their phone lines are burning up. As for the representatives who voted yes on this travesty, whether it passes in the Senate or not, I hope their jobs are already burning. The voting breakdown is available. I'm sure the twenty Republicans who voted no did not all have altruistic motives, but I hope someone sends them flowers anyway, since apparently deciding not to be a cartoonishly gleeful sociopath is something we have to reward people for now.

So that's difficult. Here are some non-government-related things.

1. Marc Svetov's "Strangers in Purgatory: On the 'Jewish Experience,' Film Noir, and Émigré Actors Fritz Kortner and Ernst Deutsch" is about half review of a book I can probably skip and half study of character actors of the kind I really enjoy. I think I have seen Kortner only in Pandora's Box (1929), but I've been trying to see The Hands of Orlac (1923) for years—admittedly, for Conrad Veidt—and Svetov has just sold me on Somewhere in the Night (1946). I was just looking up Deutsch a few weeks ago after seeing him in The Golem, How He Came into the World (1920); I can see now that I'll have to track down Pabst's The Trial (1948), though at the moment I'd rather rewatch The Third Man (1949).

2. I was talking about L.M. Montgomery with osprey_archer when I realized that Barney Snaith in The Blue Castle (1926) is very much like a version of Dean Priest from Emily of New Moon (1923), Emily Climbs (1925), and Emily's Quest (1927) who isn't fourteen years older than the heroine and eventually terrible about boundaries; otherwise they are strikingly the same mode of attractive outsider-dreamer-kindred-spirit, right down to the tawny hair, the whimsical, sensitive mouth, the world traveling, the touch of cynicism, and the bitter laugh. I am left wondering if Montgomery had a type or if she was just working out alternatives in parallel. (I need to find out if the publication dates of the books correspond at all to the dates of writing—if she actually wrote The Blue Castle in between Emily Climbs and Emily's Quest, that makes it feel especially like a kind of self-AU.) I know almost nothing about her life except that there was a lot more chronic illness and depression in it than I knew as a child. I don't know if she had a life model for Dean and Barney; I think I hope not. Leaving aside Dean's disability and Barney's family history, the major difference between them really is each character's viability as a romantic match for the heroine of his book. And their eyes, of course. Barney's are Emily-violet. Dean's are Priest-green.

3. Courtesy of rushthatspeaks: clipping., "Air 'Em Out." Daveed Diggs plus shout-outs to Octavia E. Butler, M. John Harrison, and Ursula K. Le Guin among other science fiction and a really catchy hook. I may have to look into the rest of this album. [edit] Splendor & Misery (2016). Highly recommended.

Comments

[sovay]

Herman Laird, I think his name was, was actually engaged to a very popular local young lady, well liked by everybody.

That does cast rather a different light on the star-crossed making out.

It look as though the biography you mean is entirely available online! Thank you for the heads-up. I can also get portions of another by one of the authors.

I see that Montgomery herself was engaged to another man at the time, though it didn't last and her physical interest in him was nil. Interesting face, but since he was apparently so self-absorbed that it took multiple letters to make him understand that she really wanted to break their engagement, Edwin Simpson sounds like a bullet successfully dodged:



—Huh. She did write The Blue Castle in between Emily Climbs and Emily's Quest. The biographers briefly discuss Barney, but not Dean. Dammit, these books are nearly a century old and I can't even estimate the readership; hasn't someone else gotten here before me?

[sartorias]

Oh, the Simpson engagement! Her journal goes on about how horrible it is to be physically repulsed by a guy. I wonder if this is her dean. As I recollect, Simpson was witty, sarcastic, good looking, and she accepted him because it was a feather in her cap--the Simpsons were upscale, and he was popular and pleasing. But that was before she discovered physical attraction. It's interesting seeing her groping for definition of such terms, as "ladies" could never discuss such things. She is very firm about being conservative.

[sovay]

I wonder if this is her dean.

I don't think he can be a personality model, because his relationship with Montgomery seems to have none of the emotional-intellectual click of Emily with Dean that makes him such a good friend in her childhood and such a trainwreck of a suitor as she grows up, but the description of the Simpsons of Malpeque Bay sounds like they filtered directly into the Priests of Priest Pond, especially the reputation for erratic brilliance and emotional weirdness and way too much intermarriage. I'm thinking of the scene in Emily's Quest where Emily declares her intent to marry Dean and is reminded that one of his great-great-grandfathers went mad and so might their children. Montgomery writes that Ed "is awfully conceited—and worse still, Simpsony" and I'd swear, too, that someone in that scene protests about Dean as "so Priesty." So he certainly looks to me like the template for Emily's engagement to Dean, albeit actually worse in terms of offputtingness.

[edit] Right: I could just search the Gutenberg texts. Here we go:

"You would have made a worse fuss if I had told you I was going to marry Perry of Stovepipe Town," said Emily when she had heard all Aunt Elizabeth had to say.

"Of course that is true enough," admitted Aunt Elizabeth when Emily had gone out. "And, after all, Dean is well-off—and the Priests are a good family."

"But so—so Priesty," sighed Laura. "And Dean is far, far too old for Emily. Besides, his great-great-grandfather went insane."

"Dean won't go insane."

"His children might."

"Laura," said Elizabeth rebukingly, and dropped the subject.

"Are you very sure you love him, Emily?" Aunt Laura asked that evening.

"Yes—in a way," said Emily.

Aunt Laura threw out her hands and spoke with a sudden passion utterly foreign to her.

"But there's only one way of loving."

"Oh no, dearest of Victorian aunties," answered Emily gaily. "There are a dozen different ways. You know I've tried one or two ways already. And they failed me. Don't worry about Dean and me. We understand each other perfectly."

That does look like something of a direct transfer to me.

But that was before she discovered physical attraction.

I dated my closest male friend in high school because he asked me out and I figured it was the thing to do. I was not physically attracted to him; I just liked him very much as a friend. About a year later I was attracted to a mutual female friend to the degree that my brain turned to pudding when she was around. I've never repeated the mistake.

[sartorias]

Yes--I think you're right.

Oh, yes. The eye-opener of physical attraction. Soooo much tougher in days when "ladies" ought not to discuss such things. Or feel them.

Really, you've got to read the journals. Her female friendships were so very tight, more than one person as wondered if she was bi, and sublimating strongly. In so many ways she was so isolated, even in the midst of many.

[sovay]

Yes--I think you're right.

It is a terrible fallacy to assume that writers automatically pour the details of their lives into their art, but considering how much she seems to have mythologized her own relationship to Herman Leard, I'd love to know if he was tawny-haired.

Really, you've got to read the journals.

I'll look for them!

Her female friendships were so very tight, more than one person as wondered if she was bi, and sublimating strongly.

Hm. I always feel weird about that assumption because I think it is not only possible but not all that unusual to have emotionally intimate friendships that are not romantically/sexually based, but since I don't know the language she used for her relationships or the patterns they formed in, I should not argue.

In so many ways she was so isolated, even in the midst of many.

I got the picture the depression was huge, which again casts interestingly backward on the period of Emily's Quest where Emily has stopped writing and is not actively miserable but doesn't take much pleasure in anything, either, and in general is kind of tolerantly flat.

(If it is not obvious, the Emily books were my formative Montgomery rather than Anne of Green Gables, even though I read most of that series in elementary school and still want to re-read Rilla of Ingleside sometime because everything I can remember about it as a WWI novel is so weird. I came to The Blue Castle late and loved it.)

[sartorias]

The depression doesn't become overwhelming until after the third volume, when Frede, her bestie of all besties, dies. She was always depressed in winter, especially when living with her grandmother, who controlled every single bite, every movement. The tiniest things drive her into anguish. But as soon as the weather cleared and she could get outside for rambles, her mood would improve. This was while she was young. The last journals are just about unreadable: the depression was so bad, though she was very successful professionally. Her marriage was in trouble due to her husband's mental issues, and one son apparently had severe problems, compounding that sense that she was locked up tight and could not escape.l

But the first two journals, and parts of three, are fascinating reading. There are times when you can tell she is writing for her future audience--she plays coy--and there were other times when she poured out her emotions there because she could not let a hint of them escape in her outward life. (Like the Herman Laird episode.)

[ethelmay]

There was actually a woman (Isabel Anderson) who fell in love with her. See http://www.lmmontgomery.ca/islandora/object/lmmi%3A4152 (there's a PDF to download that contains an article on Isabel Anderson).

Of Ed Simpson, she later wrote, "His wife is a clever, talkative woman, quite a dab at public speaking. They have no children. This must be a disappointment to Ed. But he would never have had children, no matter whom he married, I believe. When I was engaged to Ed I did not know enough of men to realize what was lacking in him, but I know now that there was something lacking and I believe that was why, though I did not understand it, I felt such a mysterious repugnance to him."

I have always read that as her assuming he was gay, though obviously that's not the only possible meaning.

[ethelmay]

Oh, and I've never seen LMM as bi, though I wouldn't rule it out either. I just don't see real physical attraction for women in her writing the way I do in how she writes about men. Biromantic, perhaps. But I feel as if it's impossible to pin down, given that she infuses her writing with all sorts of intense feelings that could seem sexual to one person and not to another.

[sovay]

But I feel as if it's impossible to pin down, given that she infuses her writing with all sorts of intense feelings that could seem sexual to one person and not to another.

"Impossible to pin down" is a status I will totally accept about the past and people's lives.

[ethelmay]

Re "impossible to pin down," I actually meant specifically about her writing, but it works more generally, too.

[sovay]

(there's a PDF to download that contains an article on Isabel Anderson).

Thank you. Everybody rewrites their own lives, but Montgomery seems to have been especially novelistic about it, which makes disentangling as much of the reality as can be recovered really interesting.

I also appreciate the article identifying Robert Owen's "All the world is queer save thee and me, and even thou art a little queer," since I'm more familiar with it in the form of the Chad Mitchell Trio's "The John Birch Society": "There's no one left but thee and we and we're not sure of thee."

I have always read that as her assuming he was gay, though obviously that's not the only possible meaning.

I feel like this is a kind of Rorschach: first I thought she meant he was asexual and then I thought that people in the late 1890's were definitely not talking enough about how sometimes you just aren't physically attracted to a person and nothing's wrong with either of you. (To be fair, in the 2010's it's still a surprisingly difficult concept to communicate.)

[ethelmay]

Yeah, but clearly she thought there was something wrong with Ed, and she didn't have any trouble talking about not being attracted to someone with other relationships, such as with her friend Nate Lockhart.

[sovay]

and she didn't have any trouble talking about not being attracted to someone with other relationships, such as with her friend Nate Lockhart.

Fair enough. I haven't read her journals; in isolation it looked justifying.