Paul’s review of The Age of Innocence > Likes and Comments
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Paul, I love your reviews. I think you capture the theme of The Age of Innocence. What do you suppose the purpose of the novel was? Jess
The idea is that up to a certain not too distant point (might we say the 1960s) it was axiomatic that men should be "experienced" and women should be chaste upon marriage. "Experienced" - I assume - meant that the gentleman had frequented houses of ill repute or had had affairs with married women. If men did not do this, muses our young hero, then the newly married couple would indeed be "babes in the wood" - that's his phrase. Ian McEwan wrote a nice little novel about exactly that, two utter babes in the wood (On Chesil Beach). Of course all this was utter tripe, window dressing for the vicious double standard and the even more vicious women-as-property point of view, which is still to be seen in traditional marriage ceremony of the Church of England : "Then shall the Minister say,
Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?
Then shall they give their troth to each other in this manner The Minister, receiving the Woman at her father's or friend's hands, shall cause the Man with his right hand to take the Woman by her right hand, and to say after him as followeth..." i.e. transfer of the goods from one owner to the next with witnesses.
PAUL! AAGHH! Paul, I love you, but you are OUT OF YOUR MIND. "Henry James in drag????" NO! Washington Square is a soul-deadening slog -- The Age of Innocence is a magical TREASURE! PAUL! PAUL BRYANT! YOU'RE NUTS! Edith Wharton is a goddess! This book is amazing! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!!!!!
Okay, I know it's against all the rules just to sputter away like this and insult you without providing any intelligent commentary, but HOW can I POSSIBLY think of coherent arguments in the face of such MADNESS??!!! I love this book! Argh! AARGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Um. Wouldn't it be more likely for the Sendero Luminoso to drag them off to the sweaty jungles of Peru, rather than Colombia?
Hey, sorry guys - Elizabeth, that's an ad hominen argument and of course here on Goodreads we are strictly concerned with the words on the page, not with the details of the author's life. I mean, Bret easton Ellis - we KNOW he had a real bad childhood to have written American Psycho, but it doesn't excuse him, he still has to go in the bacon slicer. Sorry, I don't make the rules. Jessica - I LOVE Henry James, the old transvestite, and am looking forward to retirement when I can devote the requisite 6 months each to his last three great novels. So saying EW is the young HJ in drag is kind of - kind of - a compliment. probably didn't sound like it. So tell me, does Edith ever go further in her other works in denouncing the constrictures of bourgeois marriage? if so i want to read that. Because it seems to me she COULD have written a devastating novel here, but peeped over the precipice and ended up sad, sweet and wise instead.
Paul wrote: "The idea is that up to a certain not too distant point (might we say the 1960s) it was axiomatic that men should be "experienced" and women should be chaste upon marriage. "Experienced" - I assume ..."
Paul, I believe this axiom did not end in the 60's but a bit later. Do you think that men still want a woman with less experience than they have?
Jess
I hesitate to speak for men in general but I think, er, no is the answer to that question.
Paul, someone as to speak for men--who better than a man?
Men are strange creatures, a lot of men seem to get off doing things the mere idea of which give me the creeps - strip clubs for instance. Why would you want to get turned on by naked ladies IN THE PRESENCE OF YOUR BEERY FRIENDS? Sounds like a bowlful of pure embarrassment to me. So I kind of think I'm unrepresentative and I hesitate to speak on their behalf.
I actually know a lot of men who say they have never been to a strip club. I believe them. Like you, they wonder what the thrill is.
Of course, a previous fiance liked the modeling (where women walk around the bar barely dressed) and conned me into going (actually his mother-in-law played a large part because she was going). I went late, in five inch heals and an incredibly sexy dress--okay, I was young and could pull it off then. I found the whole thing offensive and ridiculous--the women were generally old and worn. It was all rather sad and pathetic.
Jess
Your fiance and his mother-in-law persuaded you to accompany you to a strip club? Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!
Not a strip club, a fashion show for lingerie. Nobody was naked, just close. And yes, I was straight out of Iowa and terribly in love. Foolishly as well, I might as well say. Jess
Anybody remember what H.G. Wells said about James? He said a novel by the Master 'is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently placed, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string. . .' Not exactly sure what he meant by that last bit, but it sounds really nasty.
Mulligan: That's great, the Wells on James. I mean, I don't get at all how that describes James, but it's a super nice image.
Bryant, you once wrote my absolute favorite late-Jamesian passage of all time. Where was that? I can't remember, but it did nearly kill me when I read it.
Simon: I just love Wharton, Forster, et al's stories about rich people. Once my friend Emily speculated that one reason why these books are so great is that the characters aren't distracted by usual mundane pressures like going to work, getting enough to eat, etc., so the authors can just focus on their human behavior and interactions with each other. I think that's got to be a huge part of the appeal, at least for me. There is, paradoxically, something artificially stripped down about lives of the wealthy, so that you get almost laboratory conditions for examining certain things.... Of course, that's a really problematic argument in a lot of ways. Still. Then, though, I feel like both those authors (Wharton and Forster) really get into issues of class in a way that other big novelists-of-mannered-gentry might not so much.
Everyone: Okay, so with whom would you rather hit up a strip club: Wharton, James, or Forster? Obviously none of them would show much interest in a lapdance from a lady, but it might be fun to hang out and hear what they had to say about it all. I'd go with Forster, personally. I think that guy had a pretty raunchy -- or at least ribald -- side. Has anyone read his short story "The Obelisk?" It's basically just a long, dirty joke!
Hey Erik, I was just about to launch into the reason why rich people are okay to read about when young Jessica came and answered the point. ( Jessica - I need a clue as to what Jamesian passage you were talking about.) Interesting to see who in the great novelists of the late Victorian & early 20th C chose the poor and who chose the rich - Lawrence dodged about, but Joyce was solidly all about the meaner kind of person. As was Maupassant. Two splendid examples of bedrock poverty in the form of ripe entertainment: Hunger by Hamsun and New Grub Street by Gissing. Do you like Gissing? (Altogether now - don't know, I never gissed. Old joke.) I'd quite like to have dragged Knut Hamsun to a strip club but he may have died before the end of the evening. Gissing may have just been able to stay alive. Henry would be a hoot at a strip club. Imagine his elephantine felicitations attempting to encompass the esoteric and indeed exoteric aspects of the experience..
nice to hear you mention joseph roth, erik. a tremendously underrated novelist. probably not much fun down at Crazy Girls or Jumbo's Clown Room but a damn fine writer.
hysterical.
but someone beat you to the punch. unbelievably funny stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79vdlE...
that video is brilliant, great great stuff.
Speaking of love and the leisure classes I just watched L'Aventura three times.
i'm with jessica et al - tho calmly - Wharton is no-one in drag - and that kind of dismissiveness flatters neither author -or the reviewer, whom i love.
I think the book is a masterpiece and that the movie - one of my favorite movies not adaptations -stands alone. Wynona always make me itch and it was great that for once she was supposed to.
james/wharton - sure lots of common ground, but still distinctive voices: almost like the difference between understanding and compassion.
Now I want to rewrite the "Edith in drag" comment because clearly you guys see it as demeaning whereas I like a woman in drag (men not so much). So I'm sorry, I really just meant that Edith and the YOUNG Henry have a whole lot in common. (No one has anything in common with the old Henry.) But if I do take out that now annoying comment none of your strictures will make sense. Wynona was perfectly cast, a whole lot better than Alien 3.
Buck wrote: "Anybody remember what H.G. Wells said about James? He said a novel by the Master 'is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently placed, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string. . .' Not exactly sure what he meant by that last bit, but it sounds really nasty. "
Oh, that's just fabulous.
Paul wrote: "Now I want to rewrite the "Edith in drag" comment because clearly you guys see it as demeaning whereas I like a woman in drag (men not so much). So I'm sorry, I really just meant that Edith and the..."
You mustn't get bullied into rewriting things by the pc brigade! I'm glad to see you are standing firm.
i'll just go out on a limb here and say that strip clubs are not all bad! haven't been to one in many years, but back in my 20s & early 30s, they were fun to go to every now and then, "in the presence of beery friends", as you say. and some of the girls in my circle stripped as well. maybe we just come from different crowds.
here in san francisco we even have our own unionized, worker-owned strip club: The Lusty Lady. there's a fun documentary on it called Live Nude Girls Unite.
hmm, what else?
i think the parallel between james and wharton works. i see common threads in their themes. and they both had their own burdens to bear (repressed, possibly closeted sexuality; bad marriage) that clearly come out in their writing. i'd throw forster into that mix as well.
i also think winona ryder in the film adaptation works! probably her best role.
i think karen's comment about why it is fascinating to read about the idle rich is spot-on.
but it is also the reason why it can be so frustrating and eye-rolling to read about the idle rich: a life devoid of the mundane pressures of money-making is, in a way, a child's life. its hard for me not to feel a strong level of condescension towards those kinds of lives or the novels that are only concerned with detailing those lives' various travails.
Paul, to quote another woman I have derived a lot of pleasure from, I keep returning to your reviews and the threads they provoke, because I know here I can lose my innocence without losing my virginity.
Well, whatever that means, I'm gratified, I believe. Here's a good tune (a propos of nothing)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cu4F0...
This is a quote from Germaine Greer that I was reminded of when I read the above comments about the innocence of the wife and the experience of the husband.
She was actually talking about libraries and books in general, but it makes an interesting contrast with the institution of marriage, at least at the time of this novel.
The wife is supposed to have a "blemish-free" past and swaps her innocence and virginity for the privileges of marriage, the wisdom of experience, in fact a "lifetime of experience".
Though as you point out, the reality is swapping it for her husband's experience, and it is largely of the carnal variety.
Theoretically, in this context, you can only lose your innocence once, at the same time that you lose your virginity.
I like the fact that Greer is saying that you can lose your innocence many times on your journey through life, as you accrue experience and wisdom incrementally.
There is no finishing point when you know it all.
What Greer finds in books, I find in your reviews and the threads that they stimulate, so thanks be to you.
The song is great.
It's amazing what journeys you can go on with just one guitar.
I was a bit of a John Fahey innocent, if not a total virgin, until that experience.
Paul, I anxiously await the brilliant novel that will win the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. The one about a man and a woman of whatever superior class that you belong to.
Since you did not get the point of Age of Innocence I suggest you read The House of Mirth where Edith hits you over the head with her insight that patriarchial society not only maims and kills women, but cripples men emotionally. On the level of just a good story, I think that the love story between Newland and the Countess rival other great loves in modern literature. I also suggest that the irony and humor of Ms Wharton are
a pleasure to behold.
I thought so too. I don't understand your message 37.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PujvRm...
on the subject of "the virtue I'm too late to save"
of course we know what happened in the end.
thanks Tim - yes, perhaps my ironical eyebrow is a little too prominently raised at the beginning!
Paul, perhaps I have been a tad unfair to your entertaining review of this masterpiece. Is it the low rating you gave it? Or is it the anger I felt when a discussion of that great author Edith Wharton prompts literary men (again and again to evoke shades of that boring old prude Henry James and his intellectual masturbation that he called fiction?
As to the "idle rich"---I suspect that women authors had to have means and be "idle" in order to have the space to create. And their experience is among the "idle rich." Do you find people all that different whatever class has spawned us?
Hi Pat - well, I did try to say that I thought Edith was a delicious and beautiful writer. And i do actually think Henry James was brilliant... although I haven't read the Last Three Outrageously Difficult Novels so after that ordeal I may revise my opinion. As regards the very rich, I actually DO think they have qualitatively different lives to the rest of us, and I lay out my reasons in this review of The Privileges
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
I want to read The House of Mirth soon.
Ahh …I read the house of mirth
Ironic title.
yes, I did too, and liked that one even better.
You simply don’t understand the status of women at that time. I’m surprised you don’t have nice things to say about her writing either. Other than to paste long quotes of it in your review. When I read them, I once again loved Edith Wharton. Thank you.
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Jessica
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Jan 13, 2009 03:27AM
Paul, I love your reviews. I think you capture the theme of The Age of Innocence. What do you suppose the purpose of the novel was? Jess
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The idea is that up to a certain not too distant point (might we say the 1960s) it was axiomatic that men should be "experienced" and women should be chaste upon marriage. "Experienced" - I assume - meant that the gentleman had frequented houses of ill repute or had had affairs with married women. If men did not do this, muses our young hero, then the newly married couple would indeed be "babes in the wood" - that's his phrase. Ian McEwan wrote a nice little novel about exactly that, two utter babes in the wood (On Chesil Beach). Of course all this was utter tripe, window dressing for the vicious double standard and the even more vicious women-as-property point of view, which is still to be seen in traditional marriage ceremony of the Church of England : "Then shall the Minister say, Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?
Then shall they give their troth to each other in this manner The Minister, receiving the Woman at her father's or friend's hands, shall cause the Man with his right hand to take the Woman by her right hand, and to say after him as followeth..." i.e. transfer of the goods from one owner to the next with witnesses.
PAUL! AAGHH! Paul, I love you, but you are OUT OF YOUR MIND. "Henry James in drag????" NO! Washington Square is a soul-deadening slog -- The Age of Innocence is a magical TREASURE! PAUL! PAUL BRYANT! YOU'RE NUTS! Edith Wharton is a goddess! This book is amazing! YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT!!!!!Okay, I know it's against all the rules just to sputter away like this and insult you without providing any intelligent commentary, but HOW can I POSSIBLY think of coherent arguments in the face of such MADNESS??!!! I love this book! Argh! AARGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Um. Wouldn't it be more likely for the Sendero Luminoso to drag them off to the sweaty jungles of Peru, rather than Colombia?
Hey, sorry guys - Elizabeth, that's an ad hominen argument and of course here on Goodreads we are strictly concerned with the words on the page, not with the details of the author's life. I mean, Bret easton Ellis - we KNOW he had a real bad childhood to have written American Psycho, but it doesn't excuse him, he still has to go in the bacon slicer. Sorry, I don't make the rules. Jessica - I LOVE Henry James, the old transvestite, and am looking forward to retirement when I can devote the requisite 6 months each to his last three great novels. So saying EW is the young HJ in drag is kind of - kind of - a compliment. probably didn't sound like it. So tell me, does Edith ever go further in her other works in denouncing the constrictures of bourgeois marriage? if so i want to read that. Because it seems to me she COULD have written a devastating novel here, but peeped over the precipice and ended up sad, sweet and wise instead.
Paul wrote: "The idea is that up to a certain not too distant point (might we say the 1960s) it was axiomatic that men should be "experienced" and women should be chaste upon marriage. "Experienced" - I assume ..."Paul, I believe this axiom did not end in the 60's but a bit later. Do you think that men still want a woman with less experience than they have?
Jess
I hesitate to speak for men in general but I think, er, no is the answer to that question.
Paul, someone as to speak for men--who better than a man?
Men are strange creatures, a lot of men seem to get off doing things the mere idea of which give me the creeps - strip clubs for instance. Why would you want to get turned on by naked ladies IN THE PRESENCE OF YOUR BEERY FRIENDS? Sounds like a bowlful of pure embarrassment to me. So I kind of think I'm unrepresentative and I hesitate to speak on their behalf.
I actually know a lot of men who say they have never been to a strip club. I believe them. Like you, they wonder what the thrill is.Of course, a previous fiance liked the modeling (where women walk around the bar barely dressed) and conned me into going (actually his mother-in-law played a large part because she was going). I went late, in five inch heals and an incredibly sexy dress--okay, I was young and could pull it off then. I found the whole thing offensive and ridiculous--the women were generally old and worn. It was all rather sad and pathetic.
Jess
Your fiance and his mother-in-law persuaded you to accompany you to a strip club? Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore!
Not a strip club, a fashion show for lingerie. Nobody was naked, just close. And yes, I was straight out of Iowa and terribly in love. Foolishly as well, I might as well say. Jess
Anybody remember what H.G. Wells said about James? He said a novel by the Master 'is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently placed, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string. . .' Not exactly sure what he meant by that last bit, but it sounds really nasty.
I like women with commensurate experience, and I abhor strip clubs in theory and practice. That said, in my dark past I was actually engaged once to a stripper, although I didn't meet her at work, and I never went and saw her at work. Long story.
And I understand, Paul, your comment about EW being HJ in drag. I did not see it as a negative criticism or even as wholly inaccurate. But I do believe this book is beautiful, and I adore HOUSE OF MIRTH and ETHAN FROME and CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY and find they are quite original works of art, even if they do haunt many of the same rooms in which we find the characters of Sir Henry. I also enjoy much of James' early work, though I admit that later stuff, which are supposed to be his masterpieces, completely eludes me. But in light of your review, the question I find myself asking, and have often asked, is, "Do the stories of rich people interest me?" Louise Erdrich once said that she wasn't interested in the stories of rich people. I used to think that, back when I thought I was the reincarnation of Che Guevera. But if a story is well written, then I do care about its characters, be they rich or poor. I tend to be more interested in the stories of poor people, or even middle-class, but heartbreak, dejection, despair, and suffering are not class-conscious. Yes, I understand that pain and hunger rarely visit the rich, but heartbreak does, and the ache of a wasted life does, and those things interest me, too.
And I understand, Paul, your comment about EW being HJ in drag. I did not see it as a negative criticism or even as wholly inaccurate. But I do believe this book is beautiful, and I adore HOUSE OF MIRTH and ETHAN FROME and CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY and find they are quite original works of art, even if they do haunt many of the same rooms in which we find the characters of Sir Henry. I also enjoy much of James' early work, though I admit that later stuff, which are supposed to be his masterpieces, completely eludes me. But in light of your review, the question I find myself asking, and have often asked, is, "Do the stories of rich people interest me?" Louise Erdrich once said that she wasn't interested in the stories of rich people. I used to think that, back when I thought I was the reincarnation of Che Guevera. But if a story is well written, then I do care about its characters, be they rich or poor. I tend to be more interested in the stories of poor people, or even middle-class, but heartbreak, dejection, despair, and suffering are not class-conscious. Yes, I understand that pain and hunger rarely visit the rich, but heartbreak does, and the ache of a wasted life does, and those things interest me, too.
Mulligan: That's great, the Wells on James. I mean, I don't get at all how that describes James, but it's a super nice image.Bryant, you once wrote my absolute favorite late-Jamesian passage of all time. Where was that? I can't remember, but it did nearly kill me when I read it.
Simon: I just love Wharton, Forster, et al's stories about rich people. Once my friend Emily speculated that one reason why these books are so great is that the characters aren't distracted by usual mundane pressures like going to work, getting enough to eat, etc., so the authors can just focus on their human behavior and interactions with each other. I think that's got to be a huge part of the appeal, at least for me. There is, paradoxically, something artificially stripped down about lives of the wealthy, so that you get almost laboratory conditions for examining certain things.... Of course, that's a really problematic argument in a lot of ways. Still. Then, though, I feel like both those authors (Wharton and Forster) really get into issues of class in a way that other big novelists-of-mannered-gentry might not so much.
Everyone: Okay, so with whom would you rather hit up a strip club: Wharton, James, or Forster? Obviously none of them would show much interest in a lapdance from a lady, but it might be fun to hang out and hear what they had to say about it all. I'd go with Forster, personally. I think that guy had a pretty raunchy -- or at least ribald -- side. Has anyone read his short story "The Obelisk?" It's basically just a long, dirty joke!
Jessica: You're not wrong to want ribald Forster's accompaniement to the strip club, but really, who could resist the witty titterings of a repressed homosexual surrounded by stripping women? I'll take Henry James, pay for his cover charge and buy him his drinks. In fact, the only person I might want there more is Dorothy Parker.
Hey Erik, I was just about to launch into the reason why rich people are okay to read about when young Jessica came and answered the point. ( Jessica - I need a clue as to what Jamesian passage you were talking about.) Interesting to see who in the great novelists of the late Victorian & early 20th C chose the poor and who chose the rich - Lawrence dodged about, but Joyce was solidly all about the meaner kind of person. As was Maupassant. Two splendid examples of bedrock poverty in the form of ripe entertainment: Hunger by Hamsun and New Grub Street by Gissing. Do you like Gissing? (Altogether now - don't know, I never gissed. Old joke.) I'd quite like to have dragged Knut Hamsun to a strip club but he may have died before the end of the evening. Gissing may have just been able to stay alive. Henry would be a hoot at a strip club. Imagine his elephantine felicitations attempting to encompass the esoteric and indeed exoteric aspects of the experience..
Funny you mention, Gissing, Paul because I was just palming one of his tomes in the library the other day, thinking I need to read the chap. NEW GRUB STREET it will be. No, I definitely sympathize with lit about the grubby masses. It's partly why I prefer Dickens to Austen. I also enjoy Hardy's embrace of the filthy lumpenproletariat (LOVE Tess and Jude and even that foolish, foolish Mayor of Casterbridge). And some of my favorite literature is that of the urban poor of turn-of-the-century America, much of it immigrant but not always so--Dreiser, Roth, Fuchs, etc. And I'm glad we agree on who to take to the strip club.
nice to hear you mention joseph roth, erik. a tremendously underrated novelist. probably not much fun down at Crazy Girls or Jumbo's Clown Room but a damn fine writer.
No, but I bet Roth could deliver some serious fuck-you-up in a mean game of paintball.
hysterical. but someone beat you to the punch. unbelievably funny stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79vdlE...
that video is brilliant, great great stuff.
Speaking of love and the leisure classes I just watched L'Aventura three times.
i'm with jessica et al - tho calmly - Wharton is no-one in drag - and that kind of dismissiveness flatters neither author -or the reviewer, whom i love.I think the book is a masterpiece and that the movie - one of my favorite movies not adaptations -stands alone. Wynona always make me itch and it was great that for once she was supposed to.
james/wharton - sure lots of common ground, but still distinctive voices: almost like the difference between understanding and compassion.
Now I want to rewrite the "Edith in drag" comment because clearly you guys see it as demeaning whereas I like a woman in drag (men not so much). So I'm sorry, I really just meant that Edith and the YOUNG Henry have a whole lot in common. (No one has anything in common with the old Henry.) But if I do take out that now annoying comment none of your strictures will make sense. Wynona was perfectly cast, a whole lot better than Alien 3.
Buck wrote: "Anybody remember what H.G. Wells said about James? He said a novel by the Master 'is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently placed, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string. . .' Not exactly sure what he meant by that last bit, but it sounds really nasty. "Oh, that's just fabulous.
Paul wrote: "Now I want to rewrite the "Edith in drag" comment because clearly you guys see it as demeaning whereas I like a woman in drag (men not so much). So I'm sorry, I really just meant that Edith and the..."You mustn't get bullied into rewriting things by the pc brigade! I'm glad to see you are standing firm.
i'll just go out on a limb here and say that strip clubs are not all bad! haven't been to one in many years, but back in my 20s & early 30s, they were fun to go to every now and then, "in the presence of beery friends", as you say. and some of the girls in my circle stripped as well. maybe we just come from different crowds.here in san francisco we even have our own unionized, worker-owned strip club: The Lusty Lady. there's a fun documentary on it called Live Nude Girls Unite.
hmm, what else?
i think the parallel between james and wharton works. i see common threads in their themes. and they both had their own burdens to bear (repressed, possibly closeted sexuality; bad marriage) that clearly come out in their writing. i'd throw forster into that mix as well.
i also think winona ryder in the film adaptation works! probably her best role.
i think karen's comment about why it is fascinating to read about the idle rich is spot-on.
but it is also the reason why it can be so frustrating and eye-rolling to read about the idle rich: a life devoid of the mundane pressures of money-making is, in a way, a child's life. its hard for me not to feel a strong level of condescension towards those kinds of lives or the novels that are only concerned with detailing those lives' various travails.
Paul, to quote another woman I have derived a lot of pleasure from, I keep returning to your reviews and the threads they provoke, because I know here I can lose my innocence without losing my virginity.
Well, whatever that means, I'm gratified, I believe. Here's a good tune (a propos of nothing)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Cu4F0...
This is a quote from Germaine Greer that I was reminded of when I read the above comments about the innocence of the wife and the experience of the husband.She was actually talking about libraries and books in general, but it makes an interesting contrast with the institution of marriage, at least at the time of this novel.
The wife is supposed to have a "blemish-free" past and swaps her innocence and virginity for the privileges of marriage, the wisdom of experience, in fact a "lifetime of experience".
Though as you point out, the reality is swapping it for her husband's experience, and it is largely of the carnal variety.
Theoretically, in this context, you can only lose your innocence once, at the same time that you lose your virginity.
I like the fact that Greer is saying that you can lose your innocence many times on your journey through life, as you accrue experience and wisdom incrementally.
There is no finishing point when you know it all.
What Greer finds in books, I find in your reviews and the threads that they stimulate, so thanks be to you.
The song is great.
It's amazing what journeys you can go on with just one guitar.
I was a bit of a John Fahey innocent, if not a total virgin, until that experience.
Paul, I anxiously await the brilliant novel that will win the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. The one about a man and a woman of whatever superior class that you belong to.
Since you did not get the point of Age of Innocence I suggest you read The House of Mirth where Edith hits you over the head with her insight that patriarchial society not only maims and kills women, but cripples men emotionally. On the level of just a good story, I think that the love story between Newland and the Countess rival other great loves in modern literature. I also suggest that the irony and humor of Ms Wharton are a pleasure to behold.
I thought so too. I don't understand your message 37.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PujvRm...on the subject of "the virtue I'm too late to save"
of course we know what happened in the end.
thanks Tim - yes, perhaps my ironical eyebrow is a little too prominently raised at the beginning!
Paul, perhaps I have been a tad unfair to your entertaining review of this masterpiece. Is it the low rating you gave it? Or is it the anger I felt when a discussion of that great author Edith Wharton prompts literary men (again and again to evoke shades of that boring old prude Henry James and his intellectual masturbation that he called fiction?As to the "idle rich"---I suspect that women authors had to have means and be "idle" in order to have the space to create. And their experience is among the "idle rich." Do you find people all that different whatever class has spawned us?
Hi Pat - well, I did try to say that I thought Edith was a delicious and beautiful writer. And i do actually think Henry James was brilliant... although I haven't read the Last Three Outrageously Difficult Novels so after that ordeal I may revise my opinion. As regards the very rich, I actually DO think they have qualitatively different lives to the rest of us, and I lay out my reasons in this review of The Privilegeshttp://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...
I want to read The House of Mirth soon.
Ahh …I read the house of mirth Ironic title.
yes, I did too, and liked that one even better.
You simply don’t understand the status of women at that time. I’m surprised you don’t have nice things to say about her writing either. Other than to paste long quotes of it in your review. When I read them, I once again loved Edith Wharton. Thank you.
