Sunday, May 30, 2010

everybody's searching

May already? How did it take me three months to finish "On the Road"? Well, considering it took Jack Kerouac years to live it and only days to write it, it's a pretty good compromise. It was easy enough to go a while without reading, because Kerouac writes with great detail about major events, but skips giant amounts of time. So while I was busy hanging out in New York doing my thing, Kerouac (er, Sal Paradise) was busy hanging out in New York, doing his thing. And it was nice, catching up with an old friend, because Sal was always just catching up with Dean, seeing him for the first time after years, noticing how he had changed or remained the same.

Some of what I've been doing book-wise during the last few months is building up my Daphne du Maurier collection, some from eBay, some from the Strand, some from the Half Price bookstore in Omaha ... you never know. But when I finished reading "On the Road," I jumped into "The Loving Spirit," which is her first novel. She talked a lot about its writing in the memoir I read, "Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer." I guess I didn't write a blog post on that one, but I read it directly after the short-story collection, "Don't Look Now." As I read her shorts, I pictured Daphne in her seaside Cornwall cottage, and I wondered how empty rooms and expansive sky equaled dark, twisted intrigue. And I was able to get a really nice picture of her life before her writing career as well as her penchant for solitude. And even though it's been a while since my mind has imagined the details, I'm finding it pretty easy to recreate that atmosphere while reading "The Loving Spirit." It's such a beautiful mental transformation -- but I am truly glad I've got a more personal view of Daphne now. I'm not sure I would fully appreciate it if "The Loving Spirit" was the first du Maurier book I'd read. Because knowing what I know about the woman, it definitely reads like a first novel. You can clearly see how much of herself she put into her protagonist, but she manages to do it in a most-endearing way. For me, it's all about the context. I feel like I'm reading her work now more as a study than for leisure. I'm giving myself a thesis in du Maurier.

And that thesis is going to extend beyond Daphne, and I'm pretty excited about it. Her sister, Angela, has a series of books, one of which I've already purchased. Her grandfather was a writer and illustrator, George du Maurier. He's got three, one of which is available at the Strand in a lustworthy two-volume British first edition for a mere $60. I can't say that will be easy to ignore for long ... I have a feeling I'll be giving in on that one before it slips away. But I have also collected various related paperbacks, including a short-story collection and a biography of Katherine Mansfield, one of Daphne's inspirations. I'll probably tackle the bit of Mansfield fiction when I finish "The Loving Spirit." But enough gushing ... here is what I've taken from the first 30 pages or so of Daphne's debut.

Janet Coombe is representative of Daphne's heart. She feels obligated to fulfill her "womanly duties," so to speak, but she dreams of the ocean and sailing and even voices regret that she wasn't born a man. In the books first chapter, she marries her cousin Thomas. "She loved Thomas dearly, but she knew in her soul there was something waiting for her greater than this love for Thomas. Something strong and primitive, lit with everlasting beauty." This theme is so clearly a piece of Daphne's life, and I feel I've already seen it recur in some of her other work.

In the third chapter, Janet has her first child, and you get glimpses of her personality in some of her actions related to the baby. Her family members tell her to rest, but she feels strong and annoyed. When they won't leave her alone, she makes her irritation clear. "I wish you'd away, all of you, and go about your business and let me be. I'm not feared o' pain nor trouble, and if I had my way I'd leave you to your ribbon-tyin', and soup-makin' and take myself to the quiet fields to have my baby, I would, 'midst the cattle and the sheep who'd understand." When the baby is born, she finds it annoying that people marvel that the baby looks like it's father as though no baby ever did before.

After another chapter and another child, Janet gets more brazen and tells her husband of her fantasies of being a smuggler. And all I could think of was "Jamaica Inn" and the short story of the ghost ship, where Daphne shows her readers just how knowledgeable she is of boats and smuggling, and you see the author's heart's desire.