The Custom of the Country Revisited

I began to read The Best of Everything, but then I lost interest. And then I thought I’d revisit The Custom of the Country. I felt like I needed a little Undine Spragg in my life. And I wanted to write about The Custom of the Country again, because I feel as though I can express my love for this book better than when I first started my humble little blog.

I’m not sure that I even wrote what The Custom of the Country was about in my first post. Well, here goes: The novel is set, at the beginning, in post-Civil War New York. Young and beautiful (and extremely ambitious) Undine Spragg persuaded her parents to move there from Apex, Kansas, in order for her, Undine, to achieve social success. However, it’s not easy to break into the insular world of New York society. But Undine is nothing if not determined, and after some shrewd moves, she marries Ralph Marvell, a member of one of the old New York families. And that’s where things get interesting. Undine Spragg is the kind of person who has unrepentant ambition, and uses marriage as a substitute of business success that, because she is female, is off limits to her at the time. If Undine Spragg were around today, and actually able to use her mind in a public arena, she’d probably be like Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer or Sheryl Sandberg.

I like to think of The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence, and The House of Mirth as Wharton’s trifecta of perfect fiction. I mentioned before that Undine Spragg was a foil for Lily Bart from The House of Mirth. It’s true. Whereas Lily Bart was passive, Undine Spragg was very active. Undine Spragg didn’t let setbacks stand in the way of reaching her goals (and, without being too telling, this is why I needed a little Undine Spragg in my life). I think Lily Bart should have fought back against those who were out to get her. If only Lily Bart had Undine’s spunk…but then again, I must remember that these are fictional characters!

While rereading this book, I realized how the novel really ties together a lot of what I’ve read and seen since I started this blog. Eve Harrington from All About Eve is reminiscent of Undine Spragg. Eve elbows her way into the theater world in the same way that Undine Spragg fights her way into New York society. Both women are shrewd and calculating, although Eve is portrayed as more of a villain than Undine Spragg. I also mentioned in my original TCOTC post that Undine is a bit like Michael Corleone from The Godfather. Both are ruthless when it comes to getting what they want. There’s a line from The Godfather Part II, said to Michael by his wife, that I think also applies to Undine: “I suppose I always knew you were too smart to let any of them ever beat you.” Undine Spragg is also like Cleo Judson from The Living Is Easy. Both women are cunning and, though they are mothers, they are not very maternal. And they like to get shit done and don’t mind stepping on a few feelings to do it.

Also, I love how The Custom of the Country is pretty funny. I think it’s great how Edith Wharton, who was such a classy writer and a paragon of American literature, could be humorous. I believe that the subjects and themes Edith Wharton wrote about are universal, despite being set in a rarefied world. That is why I love her so much. And because she wrote a sentence like this: “Where had she seen before this grotesque saurian head, with eye-lids as thick as lips and lips as thick as ear-lobes?” Love it.

Great passage: Undine, hitherto, had found more benefits than drawbacks in her marriage but now the tie began to gall. It was hard to be criticized for every grasp at opportunity by a man so avowedly unable to do the reaching for her! Ralph had gone into business to make more money for her; but it was plain that the “more” would never be much, and that he would not achieve the quick rise to affluence which was man’s natural tribute to woman’s merits. Undine felt herself trapped, deceived; and it was intolerable that the agent of her disillusionment should presume to be the critic of her conduct.

Up next: The Book Thief

Off topic: When We Were Kings (1996)

Ali, boma ye!

Director: Leon Gast

Category: I’ve been watching boxing movies lately. Recently, I watched the first and final Rocky movies—Rocky and Rocky Balboa (the former is a brilliant film; the latter…is not). In the process, I thought I’d check out this documentary.

My thoughts: This is a great documentary, because the subject matter is so much more than just a boxing match. When We Were Kings is about the 1974 boxing match between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman, which Ali called “The Rumble in the Jungle.” The fight took place in Kinshasa, Zaire (which used to be Belgian Congo and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo). Ali was previously banned from boxing for three and a half years because he refused to enter the draft and fight in Vietnam. This act of defiance endeared him to those in Zaire, and Ali embraced them in return. Ali got the Zaire people to chant “Ali, boma ye!” which means “Ali, kill him!” Interestingly, George Foreman’s decision to bring his pet German shepherd with him to Zaire did not endear him to the natives—because the Belgians used German shepherds to attach the citizens of Zaire while the country was colonized by Belguim (this fits with what I’ve heard about life under Belgian rule, which was, by all accounts, brutal).

The president of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Soku, is also featured in the documentary. He was a ruthless dictator, and he brings to mind the political situations that occurred in African countries during the 1970s—after all the fights for independence against colonialism had been won across the continent, many countries in Africa had to figure out how to govern themselves. And this was by no means a simple task. Mobutu reminded me of Idi Amin, dictator of Uganda in the 1970s.

Rocky is about an underdog who gets a chance to fight the world champion. And Ali was the “Rocky” of “The Rumble in the Jungle,” if you will. By 1974, many people thought he was past his prime. One person who didn’t think Ali was past his prime was Ali himself. He talked a good (and quite eloquent) game, but he could certainly back it up (it’s like that line in Beyonce’s “Ego”—“I walk like this cuz I can back it up”). During the actual fight with George Foreman, Ali didn’t dance around in the ring, like he might have done in the past. Instead he used the rope-a-dope tactic, in which he made his opponent, Foreman, tire himself out. And once this happened, Ali came out with a vengeance.

There is such a sense of the time period in When We Were Kings—it has a very 1970s feel. There’s a sense that black Americans, like the African nations after colonialism, were figuring out how to exist in the 1970s after the hard-won victories of the Civil Rights Movement. I can’t omit a very fascinating (and very ‘70s) element of this documentary—George Foreman’s wardrobe. It’s funny—Ali was a big talker, but a very conservative dresser, at least in comparison to Foreman. Foreman was very quiet, but his clothes were LOUD. Such intense colors! At one point, he wears this sort of bejeweled newsboy cap…and I just can’t understand why he decided to bring it all the way to Zaire to wear. There was also a concert preceding the fight, featuring James Brown, Memphis’ own B.B. King, and the Spinners. Like I said before, this is a fascinating documentary because it isn’t just about a boxing match. It’s about a legend (Ali) and a country (Zaire) who were both at a crossroads.

Great line (by Ali, who was marveling at how, in his opinion, the people of Zaire are smarter than Americans): "They speak English, French, and African. We can’t even speak English good."

P.S. Did anyone dare tell him that there’s no such language as “African?”

The Lilies of the Field

Little (and slightly battered) book

Author: William E. Barrett

Category: I saw the movie version of this book years ago. And recently, I saw this book at a library book sale. It was 50 cents, so I bought it.

My thoughts: This is a cute little book. It’s pretty good—I wouldn’t call it very good. But I did get a little teary at the end. The Lilies of the Field is the story of a black ex-G.I. named Homer Smith who wanders around the country, supporting himself with whatever work he can find. This wanderer aspect of the novel reminded me of The Odyssey, which, of course, was written by…Homer. I wonder if that was an intentional thing by the author. Anyway, Homer Smith comes across a group of East German nuns in a desert state (this book was written when there was such a country as “East Germany”) who want to build a chapel. The HNIC (Head Nun in Charge), Mother Maria Marthe, believes that Smith (or “Schmidt,” as she calls him) was sent to them by God to help them build the chapel. “Schmidt” himself isn’t so sure.

One reason I liked this book was because I like stories about people of different backgrounds who become friends. The Lilies of the Field reminds me of a children’s book, Mrs. Katz and Tush, about a young black boy who befriends an older Jewish lady (n.b. Mrs. Katz and Tush was wonderful book; read it to your kids if you have them. If you don’t, just read it anyway). The Lilies of the Field is a short book, and some of the writing, I feel, could have been better. And it would have been nice to have more background about the characters and what they went through in life. Both Mother Maria Marthe and Homer Smith are very stubborn, but they have a respect for one another that they either can’t or won’t articulate. Alas, some people are like that.

As I stated before, I saw the movie version of this book many years ago. I don’t remember much about it, but the final scene has always stayed with me. Check it out.

Great passage: He sat for a long time beside the station wagon after the nuns had retired. He told himself that he should have said “good-by” to old Mother, but it wasn’t his way to put his feelings into words. Old Mother looked into a man’s heart and she had an understanding mind. When he was gone, nobody would have to tell her anything; she would just know.

Next up: The Best of Everything

Maud Martha, Once Again

My thoughts: Ok, I started to read Song of Solomon, then I got the urge to reread Maud Martha. October has been a crazy month for me, and I needed a nice, soothing read. Upon rereading Maud Martha, I was reminded of why I liked it so much in the first place. The language is so beautiful and the main character is freakin’ awesome. Even though it’s a novel, Maud Martha is about the inner workings of a real life. You feel as if she is a real person, who endured real things. She has real triumphs and real heartbreaks. Maud Martha is the kind of person who finds humanity in things that others may not. In one chapter, she refrains from killing a mouse because she imagines that life would be harder for the mouse’s family if it died. She empathizes with the rodent, because she knows a little something about struggle herself. After she lets the mouse go, she feels proud of herself: “A life had blundered its way into her power and it had been hers to preserve or destroy. She had not destroyed.” Thinking about this moment makes me smile.

Gwendolyn Brooks writes about intraracial discrimination among blacks based on skin shade in this novel—something Dorothy West wrote about in The Living Is Easy. Maud Martha notices it as a child, when people (even her own family members) treat her light-skinned sister Helen more favorably. And this follows her into adulthood. And, as I mentioned in my previous post about the book, she also experiences racial discrimination. Brooks writes, “There were scraps of baffled hate in her, hate with no eyes, no smile and—this she especially regretted, called her hungriest lack—not much voice.” At one point, she quits working as a maid because she knew that the white people she worked for thought of her as stupid and childlike, and she did not want to absorb their low opinion of her. This is a quiet moment of defiance that gives her a little bit of a voice to address that “baffled hate.” In spite of everything, Maud Martha loves and respects herself, loves life, and embraces its ups and downs. I needed to read something that was life-affirming, and this is the perfect read for such occasions. One last thing: I wonder how much of Gwendolyn Brooks is in the character of Maud Martha…She (Gwendolyn Brooks) was a great poet, but she wrote a hell of a novel!

Great passage (when Maud Martha’s husband takes her to a dance and spends most of the time dancing with a light-skinned lady—when Maud Martha herself is pregnant, no less): “I could,” considered Maud Martha, “go over there and scratch her upsweep down. I could spit on her back. I could scream. ‘Listen,’ I could scream, ‘I’m making a baby for this man and I mean to do it in peace.’”

But if the root was sour what business did she have up there hacking at a leaf?

Up next: I think I’ll read The Lilies of the Field

Night Film

Makeshift bookmark

Author: Marisha Pessl
Category: I read Marisha Pessl’s Special Topics in Calamity Physics about six years ago. So I was intrigued when I heard she wrote a second book, Night Film, and I thought I’d check it out.

My thoughts: This book was compulsively readable, and I really enjoyed it. It took some dark turns and creeped me out a bit, but it was so thought-provoking. Night Film begins with the suicide of Ashley Cordova, the twenty-four-year-old daughter of legendary and elusive horror filmmaker Stanislas Cordova. Scott McGrath, an investigative reporter, begins to comb through the details of Ashley’s life and death to determine why she committed suicide. McGrath attempted to investigate Stanislas Cordova’s life several years prior, but crashed and burned. But during the investigation of Cordova’s daughter, McGrath is joined by Hopper, a pretty resourceful but secretive small-time drug dealer, and Nora, a teenage eccentric with an unusual upbringing. Together, the three of them make up some sort of peculiar version of Nancy Drew, Bess Marvin, and George Fayne (those girls were such a great trio, right?) as they travel hither and yon to uncover mysteries about a family thrives on complete secrecy.

This book brings up the idea of extremely talented artists being disturbed or downright crazy. Because Cordova is so reclusive and his films are so disturbing, many people believe he is a psychopath. I’ve read that the character of Cordova is based a little on Stanley Kubrick (which reminds me…I need to watch and write a post about Dr. Strangelove soon). But the character of Stanislas Cordova also reminded me of…Kanye West. Now, I think Kanye is a genius. I really do. He is super talented, makes great music, and before that was a hell of a producer. But he is crazy as all outdoors. In fact, Kanye’s brilliant My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy sounds like the name of a Cordova film, or possibly Cordova’s autobiography, if he ever decided to write one. It makes you wonder…do you have to have a chaotic personal life and inner demons to create great works of art? That’s the million dollar question.

Also, there are hints of Heart of Darkness in Night Film—which, I’ll confess, is one of the books in that I never quite finished in high school. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow (like McGrath) goes looking for the elusive Kurtz (who definitely has similarities to Cordova), who has let madness take over his life. While reading Night Film, I also thought about that quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you” (this is of course also relevant to Heart of Darkness). McGrath goes to some shady places to uncover the truth about Cordova, and has a hard time being unaffected by his investigation.

The book is very good, but I couldn’t help but think that it could have been a tad shorter. And Marisha Pessl likes to italicize words—a lot. There are some weird elements, so I don’t know how eagerly I’ll be to recommend this one to other people. But I liked it a lot and I’ll definitely read it again.

Great passage: It was a covert line of attack described in Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Your enemy expected the direct approach. He prepared for it and fiercely fought it off, resulting in severe casualties, the expenditure of major resources—and, ultimately, your own defeat. And yet, occasionally, there was another entrance, the fragile corridor. Your enemy never expected advancement via this route because it was labyrinthine and treacherous, and he often didn’t even know it was there. But if your army managed to make it though, it would deliver you not just behind your enemy’s lines but to his inner chamber, the heart of his heart.

Up next: Song of Solomon

Coming of Age in Mississippi

That is paint, not bird poop, on the table.

Author: Anne Moody

Category: I’ve heard of this book here and there for years. This past summer, one of the teen volunteers where I work told me that this book was on her summer reading list. She said it was really good…so I decided to check it out.

My thoughts: It started off a little slow, but eventually I really got into this book and I really liked it. Like Between Shades of Gray , Coming of Age in Mississippi made me cry. It ended up being a very gripping read, and renewed my admiration for those who were on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. It was a movement of young people, and Anne Moody was one of them. The victories they won were fought with actual blood, sweat, and tears.

Anne Moody grew up in rural Mississippi in the 1950s. And she heard about brutality toward blacks throughout the state, concerning people she knew, like a classmate who was beaten up by whites because he was suspected of making salacious phone calls to a white woman, and people she didn’t, like Emmett Till, who was murdered when Moody was a teenager. When she went to college at Tougaloo, she became involved in the Movement, first by joining the NAACP. She participated in sit-ins, and was beaten and insulted by angry whites. This reminded me of something that Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns said in her lecture at the University of Memphis back in February. She said that so many whites were so invested in keeping blacks down that they missed some of their own potential—because when you keep someone down, you spend so much energy and waste so much time doing that and nothing else.

One part of the book that made me sad was when Moody mentioned Medgar Evers. He spoke at her college and at meetings she went to while living in Jackson, Mississippi. And she saw him the last night of his life. I really admire Medgar Evers, and I don’t think he gets enough credit for all he did during the Civil Rights Movement. He investigated Emmett Till’s murder and helped Till’s family get out of Mississippi after the men who killed him were found not-guilty. He was truly in the thick of things, and it cost him his life. And, unfortunately, I had never heard of him until I saw news reports about his killer finally being convicted, in 1993.

Anne and her fellow civil rights workers were under a constant threat for their lives. People they knew had been killed, and they were verbally and physically attacked all because they were trying to get American citizens to register to vote. This book really reinforces the danger people faced so that people like me could do something as basic as vote in an election or even walk into a store through the front door. I try to never forget that.

The narrative ends in 1964, right at the beginning of Freedom Summer, which would bring more bloodshed. Coming of Age in Mississippi, however, was published in 1968, the year Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Since that time, Medgar Evers’ killer has been convicted and died in prison. There are hate crime laws all over the country. But only last year, an unarmed black teenager, not unlike Emmett Till, was killed in Florida…At the end of her book, Moody wonders if the lyrics to “We Shall Overcome” will ever ring true. Some days, it seems to be so. Others…well, it makes you wonder.

Great passage: Before Emmett Till’s murder, I had known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was a new fear known to me—the fear of being killed just because I was black. This was the worst of my fears. I know once I got food, the fear of starving to death would leave. I also was told that if I were a good girl, I wouldn’t have to fear the Devil or hell. But I didn’t know what one had to do or not do as a Negro not to be killed. Probably just being a Negro period was enough, I thought.

Up next: Night Film

Carole, Denise, Cynthia, and Addie Mae

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Sixteenth Street Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama, which killed four young girls (Carole Robertson, Denise McNair, Cynthia Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins) and injured others (including Addie Mae Collins' sister). The bombing is actually mentioned in Coming of Age in Mississippi, which I'm reading now. But I wanted to write about it because I think about it every time the anniversary of the bombing rolls around. I think it affects me so much because I was around the girls' age when I first heard about the bombing (I was twelve, and read an article in Essence by Angela Davis) and because my own mother was in the girls' age bracket at the time when the bombing occurred. When I first heard about it, I was a little shocked that I had reached adolescence and had never heard about it before (this was before Spike Lee's documentary about the bombing, Four Little Girls, was released). It makes me sad and angry that these young lives (and so many others) were snuffed out just to preserve the idea of inequality and hatred. But I have to believe that these young ladies did not die in vain. That their deaths "awoke the sleeping giant" and inspired others to fight for their equality. In his poem "If We Must Die," Claude McKay wrote, "If we must die, O let us nobly die,/So that our precious blood may not be shed/In vain."

Rest in peace, girls. You've inspired me more than you know.