What do you think?
Rate this book
Bookmarked: Reading My Way from Hollywood to Brooklyn
Wendy Fairey grew up among books. Her mother, the famous Hollywood columnist Sheila Graham, was F. Scott Fitzgerald's last love—he died in their living room in 1940. Fitzgerald would bring home literary classics from Charles Dickens to George Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Henry James. Their protagonists became her intimates. Leaving her glamorous Hollywood world as a young girl, Fairey entered the English landscape of David Copperfield, whose sensibility and aspirations she intimately shared, not least because both suffered a terrible stepfather. Her many affinities with David squired her to adulthood, when she became an English professor and eventually a college dean.
This memoir is the author’s literary journey through the classic British novels of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Besides David Copperfield, her traveling companions include Daniel Deronda, the hero of George Eliot's last novel, as well as Deronda's wife, Gwendolyn Harleth, whose suffering resembled the author's own in her stressed marriage. Both characters become important presences, and like Daniel, Fairey learned late in life of her Jewish ancestry. Other fictional companions, including Jane Eyre, Mrs. Ramsey (Virginia Woolf), Tess (Thomas Hardy), and Isabel (Henry James), weave in and out, helping her understand her own identity and trajectory. In this inspiring book, Fairey shows how great literature is and can be forever an inspiration, a companion, and a guide to living.
This memoir is the author’s literary journey through the classic British novels of late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Besides David Copperfield, her traveling companions include Daniel Deronda, the hero of George Eliot's last novel, as well as Deronda's wife, Gwendolyn Harleth, whose suffering resembled the author's own in her stressed marriage. Both characters become important presences, and like Daniel, Fairey learned late in life of her Jewish ancestry. Other fictional companions, including Jane Eyre, Mrs. Ramsey (Virginia Woolf), Tess (Thomas Hardy), and Isabel (Henry James), weave in and out, helping her understand her own identity and trajectory. In this inspiring book, Fairey shows how great literature is and can be forever an inspiration, a companion, and a guide to living.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published March 3, 2015
94 people are currently reading
399 people want to read
About the author
Wendy W. Fairey
4 books1 followerWendy W. Fairey holds a doctorate from Columbia University and teaches English literature and creative writing at Brooklyn College, where she was also formerly a dean. She is the author of One of the Family (Norton 1992), a family memoir, and Full House (SMU Press 2002), a collection of linked stories.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
January 10, 2021
There were moments while reading this delightful memoir that I felt like I was reading about my own life. The author tells how she has loved reading and books her whole life, being inspired by her famous mother. From the favorite books that we share, like David Copperfield and Jane Eyre, to the encouragement of parents, and a lifetime devoted to reading good books, I found her story was one that was eerily similar to my life. Perhaps other readers felt that same thing.
October 31, 2019
Summary: A literature professor who is the daughter of a famous Hollywood columnist writes a memoir interweaving her life with significant books and characters.
"I want to write of the private stories that lie behind our reading of books, taking my own trajectory through English literature as the history I know best but proposing a way of thinking about literature that I believe is every reader's process. We bring ourselves with all our aspirations and wounds, affinities and aversions, insights and confusions to the books we read, and our experience shapes our response."
In Bookmarked, Wendy W. Fairey draws upon her own life, both experienced and in books, as an illustration of this thesis. The daughter of famous Hollywood columnist Sheila Graham, she grew up in a home with one of many Graham's lovers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who selected books for Graham, a "College of One." Reading through Fitzgerald's books started her on a lifelong journey with books, books that helped make sense of her life.
In David Copperfield, she sees in brutal Mr. Murdstone the violent male paralleling "Bow Wow," one of her mother's lovers. She takes us through Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair, Daniel Deronda, Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Henry James The Portrait of a Lady, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Forster's Passage to India, and more recent authors from India.
She intertwines four themes from these various books, also paralleling her life--the orphan, the new woman, the artist, and the immigrant. As she does so, she traces her own discoveries that her mother was a Jewish orphan (not unlike Daniel Deronda) and that her true father was British philosopher A.J. Ayer. She takes us through the ups and downs of her marriage to Donald Fairey, her own self-discovery as a woman in academia, and her love affair and eventual marriage to Mary Edith Mardis. She reflects on Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse as well as "Tonio Kroger" in Thomas Mann as she recalls her affair with Ezio Tarantelli. She considers the immigrant experience as she recounts her travels in India and growing familiarity with Indian, ex-pat Indian, and Indian-American writers.
As we read, we listen to a skilled literature professor critically reflect on issues of class and gender, even as she also considers her own life. We read someone who both thoughtfully engages books on their own terms, and yet not in a way detached from her life. She both reads these books with her life, and in some respects, finds the books reading her.
At times I wondered if all of this might be considered a bit self-indulgent. And then I reflected on the self-indulgence that is reading--an exercise in which we both lose ourselves, and sometimes find ourselves as well, making sense of ourselves, our lives as we have lived them thus far, and perhaps making some sense of our world. Isn't this, as she contends, "every reader's process"?
The book made me wonder what books I would use in narrating my life. It clearly would be a different shelf of books than the author's. But I have no question that there were books that resonated with my experiences, and others that served to shape and crystallize my understanding of the world. It is an exercise I would like to pursue further as time allows.
"I want to write of the private stories that lie behind our reading of books, taking my own trajectory through English literature as the history I know best but proposing a way of thinking about literature that I believe is every reader's process. We bring ourselves with all our aspirations and wounds, affinities and aversions, insights and confusions to the books we read, and our experience shapes our response."
In Bookmarked, Wendy W. Fairey draws upon her own life, both experienced and in books, as an illustration of this thesis. The daughter of famous Hollywood columnist Sheila Graham, she grew up in a home with one of many Graham's lovers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, who selected books for Graham, a "College of One." Reading through Fitzgerald's books started her on a lifelong journey with books, books that helped make sense of her life.
In David Copperfield, she sees in brutal Mr. Murdstone the violent male paralleling "Bow Wow," one of her mother's lovers. She takes us through Jane Eyre and Vanity Fair, Daniel Deronda, Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Henry James The Portrait of a Lady, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Forster's Passage to India, and more recent authors from India.
She intertwines four themes from these various books, also paralleling her life--the orphan, the new woman, the artist, and the immigrant. As she does so, she traces her own discoveries that her mother was a Jewish orphan (not unlike Daniel Deronda) and that her true father was British philosopher A.J. Ayer. She takes us through the ups and downs of her marriage to Donald Fairey, her own self-discovery as a woman in academia, and her love affair and eventual marriage to Mary Edith Mardis. She reflects on Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse as well as "Tonio Kroger" in Thomas Mann as she recalls her affair with Ezio Tarantelli. She considers the immigrant experience as she recounts her travels in India and growing familiarity with Indian, ex-pat Indian, and Indian-American writers.
As we read, we listen to a skilled literature professor critically reflect on issues of class and gender, even as she also considers her own life. We read someone who both thoughtfully engages books on their own terms, and yet not in a way detached from her life. She both reads these books with her life, and in some respects, finds the books reading her.
At times I wondered if all of this might be considered a bit self-indulgent. And then I reflected on the self-indulgence that is reading--an exercise in which we both lose ourselves, and sometimes find ourselves as well, making sense of ourselves, our lives as we have lived them thus far, and perhaps making some sense of our world. Isn't this, as she contends, "every reader's process"?
The book made me wonder what books I would use in narrating my life. It clearly would be a different shelf of books than the author's. But I have no question that there were books that resonated with my experiences, and others that served to shape and crystallize my understanding of the world. It is an exercise I would like to pursue further as time allows.
August 30, 2021
3.5. Four on the literary analysis, but a three on some of the personal connection stories.
October 16, 2021
One of the best memoirs about the life-changing power of books I've ever read.
5 stars
5 stars
November 6, 2021
Good book, showing how reading books means living your life!
I've read almost all the books she deals inside here, most of them I've loved - not all though. But I think I'd like to try seeing how "my" titles could be linked to my life. A work I could do, once Ive got time...
Becky has already won me. Perhaps I side with her all the more readily because she’s not aspiring to be good. She’s a rogue who plays the game of life, uncomplaining when she loses a hand, just anteing up again. I love her zest and resilience, her wit and irreverence. Even in the face of my better judgment, I forgive her everything.
the female orphans of Victorian fiction are generally tougher than their male counterparts. While Pip shivers, both Becky and Jane get on with what they need to do. Becky, as we’ve seen, is awesome in her resourcefulness and resilience. As for Jane, small and plain though she may be, it’s still the case that at every crisis in the novel from her first encounter with John Reed to her resistance to St. John Rivers’ proposal that she become a missionary’s wife, we feel her drawing strength from the one thing she can count on—herself
Eliot is merciless towards their romantic illusions, which the circumstances of their lives crush out of them. Their salvation, if it comes, lies in disillusionment. To be stripped of illusions is the basis for more humble and accurate knowledge. It is a beginning, not an end.
In “The Decay of Lying” Oscar Wilde asserts that life imitates art far more than art imitates life. His serious point, beneath the wit of the epigram, is that art furnishes us with life’s plots and its paradigms. We see the sunset a certain way because we know the paintings of Turner. A novel by Balzac shapes our understanding of ambition and betrayal.
the poor clerk Leonard Bast, an aspirant to culture, not power, who, interestingly, seems to be a victim of both the masculine and feminine strains in the novel. Helen Schlegel seduces him, Henry loses him his job, Charles Wilcox hits him with the flat edge of an ancestral sword, and the Schlegel bookcase falls on him just as his heart gives out (can culture kill?)
I’d now not hesitate to say I am or Lily Briscoe is gay, but that label, as do others, seems to flatten rather than illuminate identity.
I was about to exchange roots for “routes”—the title of anthropologist James Clifford’s 1997 work as he explores “traveling in dwelling, dwelling in traveling,”
I've read almost all the books she deals inside here, most of them I've loved - not all though. But I think I'd like to try seeing how "my" titles could be linked to my life. A work I could do, once Ive got time...
Becky has already won me. Perhaps I side with her all the more readily because she’s not aspiring to be good. She’s a rogue who plays the game of life, uncomplaining when she loses a hand, just anteing up again. I love her zest and resilience, her wit and irreverence. Even in the face of my better judgment, I forgive her everything.
the female orphans of Victorian fiction are generally tougher than their male counterparts. While Pip shivers, both Becky and Jane get on with what they need to do. Becky, as we’ve seen, is awesome in her resourcefulness and resilience. As for Jane, small and plain though she may be, it’s still the case that at every crisis in the novel from her first encounter with John Reed to her resistance to St. John Rivers’ proposal that she become a missionary’s wife, we feel her drawing strength from the one thing she can count on—herself
Eliot is merciless towards their romantic illusions, which the circumstances of their lives crush out of them. Their salvation, if it comes, lies in disillusionment. To be stripped of illusions is the basis for more humble and accurate knowledge. It is a beginning, not an end.
In “The Decay of Lying” Oscar Wilde asserts that life imitates art far more than art imitates life. His serious point, beneath the wit of the epigram, is that art furnishes us with life’s plots and its paradigms. We see the sunset a certain way because we know the paintings of Turner. A novel by Balzac shapes our understanding of ambition and betrayal.
the poor clerk Leonard Bast, an aspirant to culture, not power, who, interestingly, seems to be a victim of both the masculine and feminine strains in the novel. Helen Schlegel seduces him, Henry loses him his job, Charles Wilcox hits him with the flat edge of an ancestral sword, and the Schlegel bookcase falls on him just as his heart gives out (can culture kill?)
I’d now not hesitate to say I am or Lily Briscoe is gay, but that label, as do others, seems to flatten rather than illuminate identity.
I was about to exchange roots for “routes”—the title of anthropologist James Clifford’s 1997 work as he explores “traveling in dwelling, dwelling in traveling,”
August 9, 2021
3.5 but I rounded down for unmet expectations.
4 stars for the connection to literature and the synopsis of all the various novels she's read and taught with sometimes vague connections to her own life and other times a bit more specific.
3 stars for the memoir portion. The connections or parallels she draws from the novels to her own life are rather sparse in details. She spends more time on the novels than on her own story.
The memoir is incredibly academic, lacking the more flowery way of novels and most memoirs. Yes, she's an academic, but to hook the reader better, toning down the academic nature of her sentences and her conclusions was truly needed and should have been caught by an editor. I have nothing against a more academic type book, in either fiction or non-fiction, but when writing about literature and it's connections and similarities to ones own life, I greatly prefer more warmth in the telling of the story(ies).
4 stars for the connection to literature and the synopsis of all the various novels she's read and taught with sometimes vague connections to her own life and other times a bit more specific.
3 stars for the memoir portion. The connections or parallels she draws from the novels to her own life are rather sparse in details. She spends more time on the novels than on her own story.
The memoir is incredibly academic, lacking the more flowery way of novels and most memoirs. Yes, she's an academic, but to hook the reader better, toning down the academic nature of her sentences and her conclusions was truly needed and should have been caught by an editor. I have nothing against a more academic type book, in either fiction or non-fiction, but when writing about literature and it's connections and similarities to ones own life, I greatly prefer more warmth in the telling of the story(ies).
November 28, 2022
Umm... "Bookmarked" is a part autobiographical reminisces of the author's life, part a collection of essays on English literature and part a dialogue on Feminism. I enjoyed author's personal anecdotes on some of my favourite stories and characters. We see character sketches of David Copperfield and of Jane Eyre, among many others. How these evergreen stories are still relevant is analysed under the radar of our modern societal values and morales. The last chapter on Indian books written in English and their writers was unsurprisingly quite interesting. In particular, the author, although only briefly, illuminates upon some rather curious points about Roy's magnum opus, one of my most beloved books, "God of Small Things". Overall, a mere 3/5 stars because been from an altogether polar opposite background to the author, I feel I cannot much relate of numerous parts of her story. In any case, as the author charmingly puts, a childhood in the Beverly Hills has little attraction for someone who's adolescence was spent living the Victorian charms.
June 19, 2023
Bookmarked: Reading My Way from Hollywood to Brooklyn by Wendy Fairey (2023 Book 47)
If you want to know how certain classics of English Literature relate to Wendy Fairey and her life as the child of a Hollywood-almost-celebrity this is the book for you.
For me, this was a real bore. I tried to get into it, but just never did. I ended up skimming the last chapters. I think her life experiences are just too far removed from mine and too limited to be really of interest to me, and this was really much more about her than the books themselves.
Apparently, she's written other biographical books about herself, so if you enjoyed those, you might like this better than I did.
If you want to know how certain classics of English Literature relate to Wendy Fairey and her life as the child of a Hollywood-almost-celebrity this is the book for you.
For me, this was a real bore. I tried to get into it, but just never did. I ended up skimming the last chapters. I think her life experiences are just too far removed from mine and too limited to be really of interest to me, and this was really much more about her than the books themselves.
Apparently, she's written other biographical books about herself, so if you enjoyed those, you might like this better than I did.
June 22, 2022
This was an interesting perspective on how books shaped the author's life. I enjoyed the connections such as her mother being F. Scott Fitzgerald's lover, and the references to so many of the characters in novels I have read, reminding me I should probably read them again. I found myself smiling through much of this book. It is a must-read for anyone who loves to read, wants to be well-read, or wants to learn how well and how deeply reading can shape and mold one's life.
April 11, 2024
Superlative!<<
Fairey, the daughter of Hollywood columnist
Sheila Graham, reminiscences her favorite novels, gleaned as a literature professor over a forty year span. In many ways, the book also constitutes a memoir as she links her life experiences with her chosen texts in a frank telling. Though published in 2015, it remains up-to-date in its many insights and obvious expertise, conveyed with empathy and eloquence.
Fairey, the daughter of Hollywood columnist
Sheila Graham, reminiscences her favorite novels, gleaned as a literature professor over a forty year span. In many ways, the book also constitutes a memoir as she links her life experiences with her chosen texts in a frank telling. Though published in 2015, it remains up-to-date in its many insights and obvious expertise, conveyed with empathy and eloquence.
January 6, 2025
I didn't want it to end. I've never read anything quite like this, a brave, honest memoir merging her personal (fascinating) life with her book choices through her life, novels which she has taught and written about and which have shaped her sense of self. I've no idea how I stumbled across this but I love it. I was hooked from David Copperfield onwards and will revisit The Odd Women which I loved many years back. TEN STARS
July 6, 2022
While I like the premise of this book - comparing characters from books to one's own life - I found it hard to finish, so I did some speed reading at the end. I've read a lot of the books she's mentioned, but I don't remember the characters well like she does, which made it less enjoyable. Of course I could re-read them but even then I don't think I remember them all.
December 24, 2017
A quick and well written autobiographical read with a heavy dose of solid literary criticism in the mix. I have College of One which this books refers to and I believe it would be a solid co-read to this book.
May 15, 2023
In terms of literary discussion, this is an interesting book. However, I got lost in all the anecdotes and found myself moving swiftly on, because I got bogged down with it all. Not really my kind of book, though I'm glad I tried it.
June 2, 2021
This was fine, if you enjoy high-quality explorations of the relationship between classic and modern novels and our own lives, as described in a memoir by someone from an incredibly privileged and unusual background.
October 18, 2024
Absolutely loved this. Such an excellent surprise. If you love books, take a chance on this.
August 5, 2022
DNF’d at 20% - it wasn’t bad, just not for me and so I continually tried to avoid it
December 30, 2016
I like books about books and essays about anything. This is a good book to delve into and out of. The writer shows her knowledge of literature and connects with her subjects and with the readers who are of like mind. This book will not appeal to everyone and not all essays will be equal in their reception. This is a great book to check out from the library.
December 31, 2023
Interested me because of the author's connection to Scott Fitzgerald: her mother, Sheilah Graham, his lover in the last years of his life, was herself quite a story. Fairey, who became an academic, writes about how books, mainly nineteenth-century novels, helped her to make sense of her own life and her mother's. In this way it makes a great springboard into other books (I read "Daniel Deronda" so I would better understand her chapter on George Eliot). The book weakened for me when it drifted from introspection into textual analysis.
November 24, 2015
I only read two of the essays David Copperfield and A Passage to India and Beyond and skimmed the rest. The author has a real appreciation for writers (Dickens etc.) and sees ties to her own life in the writer's prose. Interestingly, at one time she taught a literature class in Paris (in St. Denis) to students from North Africa. The last essay ('India') was also the most engaging and exposed me to writers I had never heard of.
December 31, 2015
Parts of this were interesting, other parts extremely slow and boring. By the end, I was skimming just to get it done. I had only read one book that she "relates" to her own life, so maybe it would have been better if I had a bigger knowledge of the books she discussed.
June 28, 2015
Awkward integration of book reviews and the author's life events.
Read
March 19, 2018I read the preface and was intrigued by the author and her premise. But after reading bits of the essays I quickly realized how awkward it felt - I think this was more of a book for her and her family/community than a way to connect to readers.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews