To: ALL Date: 07/06
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 9:55 PM
SOULS RAISED FROM THE DEAD by Doris Betts
By popular demand, I'll start this thread, although I have
not finished the book. Perhaps because of all the posts
saying it was a sad book, I have had a hard time becoming
emotionally connected to the characters. I have kept myself
aloof. This could be me or could be the something about the
writing or the characterizations. One thing I am enjoying,
though, is that it is set in North Carolina, and there are
many colloquialisms that ring true. One is calling the town
of Washington, Little Washington, to distinguish it from
Washington, D.C. That was a part of the language of my
childhood. Washington was a town right around the corner,
where much shopping and doctor-going was done by my aunts
and cousins and grand-relatives. I also know intimately the
look of the old homeplace. The barns that are falling-down,
the houses with vines overpowering them. It seems that
houses don't get torn down in my neck of the woods, but are
allowed to fall back into the earth and be reclaimed like so
many dead tree limbs. Whenever I visit my grandmother, this
phenomenon strikes me anew. But when you live there, the old
places just become part of the scenery.
So, discuss away, everyone. As soon as I catch up with you,
I'll put my two cents in.
Sherry back from the north woods and reconnected to the
world. It's no fun being in cyberlimbo.
=============== Reply 1 of Note 18 =================
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 07/06
From: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Time: 11:37 PM
Sherry,
I think that one of the reasons that this is such a sad book
is that Mary Grace is the most sympathetic character in the
book. We know what is going to happen to her, so that makes
her illness even more difficult to follow. I thought that
the characters were all well defined. We suffer along with
her father and grandparents and even her mother. I think
that we have all known people like MG's mother. She runs
from anything painful and then is knocked off her feet by
the consequences of her actions.
What does everyone think of the romance between the father
and the riding instructor? Could it have worked if MG
hadn't gotten sick?
One scene that I really liked was the family reunion. It
reminded me of some of the reunions I have gone to in
Indiana. Country people are the same anywhere, I think.
Jane who will bring the book to the computer for the
discussion tomorrow.
=============== Reply 2 of Note 18 =================
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 07/07
From: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Time: 8:59 AM
I flew through this book in a week-end and somehow forgot
that the blurb on the back referred to Mary Grace's death.
For about 2/3 of the book, I kept thinking that she might
survive...until it got too obvious.
Some of this read like a really good story from REDBOOK
which used to have some decent short stories when I read it
in my 20's (or was I just vastly uncritical?). But, some
of it was very, very good. The best parts, I thought, were
Mary Grace's reactions to her mother's leaving,
particularly the sort of magical thinking stuff...
maybe she had fallen asleep and when she woke up, Christine
would have become the perfect mother. I also thought her
panicked ruminations about mental illness, wondering how
and when it happened and if she had slid into it without
knowing it happened, were drawn with artistry. I have
vivid memories of feelings like that as a child and
adolescent...to the point that they still scare me
sometimes if I think about some of what I felt. And, my
own mother's death when I was 11 brought a lot of that
magical thinking stuff that Betts describes.
In fact, I think that the development of Mary Grace is
probably Betts' masterful touch in this book. Also, like
Jane, I loved the reunion. Betts is also very good
at putting you in a geographical place with all the perfect
little touches that make you see it.
I'm not sure what I think about the adult characters.
Tacey was pretty good. However, the others seemed a bit
one-dimensional to me, almost like caricatures. Christine
was almost too villanous and I never did believe Jill as a
person.
I have to say that I enjoyed reading this though. The
pages flew and I smiled a lot...interesting given the
serious subject matter. Barb
=============== Reply 3 of Note 18 =================
To: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Date: 07/07
From: KGXC73A GAIL SINGER GROSS Time: 2:57 PM
greetings to all who have read this novel...SOULS RAISED
FROM THE DEAD..doris betts..
this book has been on my list for ages..and when i heard you
all were going to read it..i thought i'd dive right in...
i read about 100 pages and gave up...nothing earthshattering
in the literary sense to me..i found BLUE CALHOUN by
reynolds price ..a much better writer..
my problem is ..after reading FUGITIVE PIECES...READING IN
THE DARK...BLUE CALHOUn.. and i pick up a book such as
SRFTD...it does nothing for me... onward and upward..gail..
a passionate reader who is immersed in an old novel that i
am enjoying tremendously...
=============== Reply 4 of Note 18 =================
To: KGXC73A GAIL SINGER GROSS Date: 07/07
From: KXBZ24A ANNE WILFONG Time: 10:40 PM
I finished the book only because of the pending discussion.
I felt this story's been told many other times, in other,
better, ways (but I can't name one just now.) I got so
impatient with the characters--esp Frank & Christine. I
acctually thought Tacey was your typical strong soul found
in every family...seems ditzy day-to-day, but the strongest
one in a crisis. Jill seemed too vague. Cindy, while a
strong, kind person, was underutilized, to me. Mary Grace
was the star, and her dealings with a terminal illness were
on target, in my professional experience. Perhaps Betts'
best moments were in the final chapters, as everything tied
together. I did love the setting, having gone to school in
Chapel Hill & lived in apartment in Carrboro!
Anne, who said "Not anothere Horse Whisperer!" in the scene
where Mary Grace fell off the horse
=============== Reply 5 of Note 18 =================
To: KXBZ24A ANNE WILFONG Date: 07/07
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 10:55 PM
I wasn't too taken with this book. Too much head-hopping,
flipping about among different points of view, always
prevents me from the kind of identification with a character
that makes me care what happens. Too much telling us how a
character felt instead of showing. I had a hard time
believing in quite a few of the characters. Jill, what was
she? Tacey? A stereotype. Mary Grace was a tough little
cookie, and I liked her, but I didn't get a sense of how she
felt about all of this. I, too, didn't notice from the
blurb that she was going to die, so I finished the book,
pulling for her. It was a sad book, but it didn't move
me,for all the reasons listed above.
Ruth
=============== Reply 6 of Note 18 =================
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 07/08
From: DNBR75A S THOMSEN Time: 10:18 AM
Hi, all. I was really looking forward to reading this book
because I do like Doris Betts's story "The Ugliest Pilgrim"
and other things of hers that I've read. With SRFTD, though,
I never got completely pulled in. Perhaps I've gotten used
to first-person narrators who grab me my the collar and
scream, "I've got something to say." The multiple points of
view, or "head hopping," as Ruth said, became distracting to
me. I ended up skipping over chunks of the book. Maybe I'm
having reader's block; I recently read Anne LaMott's new
book, CROOKED LITTLE HEARTS, and felt pretty much the same
way:aloof from the narrative, for some reason.
I did like both grandmothers and Mary Grace herself. The
mother seemed almost like a cariacature, which was not in
keeping with the rest of the novel, although I did get
tickled over her selling cosmetics at the family reunion.
Susan in CT
=============== Reply 7 of Note 18 =================
To: DNBR75A S THOMSEN Date: 07/08
From: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Time: 9:18 PM
Susan and all,
I liked Christine because she seemed very fragile to me -
not in touch with reality until it is too late. I know
people like her. She follows the Scarlett O'Hara philosophy
of thinking about "it" tomorrow. I also had great sympathy
with Frank because the day-to-day dealing with MG's illness
was nauseating to him. I thought that this was very
realistic. Jane who Laura Howard (whoever she is) for
nominating this book.
=============== Reply 8 of Note 18 =================
To: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Date: 07/09
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 4:07 PM
I'm posting part of this New York Times Book Review. I
thought it might be interesting for you all the see that
we've been much tougher critics of this book than the pros:
The wrenching "Souls Raised From the Dead" is Doris
Betts's first novel in 13 years. There's no sense pretending
not to notice what the jacket flap discloses: that Mary
Grace Thompson, the almost-13-year-old daughter of a North
Carolina state trooper, lover of horses, irreverent and
un-self-pitying, a lovely redheaded child, is going to die
by the end.
Usually, it seems unfair to give away an
outcome like that. But in this case, a good bit of the
terrible force of the novel lies in this most lifelike
paradox: that just like the characters on the page, and in
spite of the advantage of foreknowledge, I could not believe
it even while it was happening before my eyes. I said to
myself, "I know the author's got 300 more pages to work it
out, but I can't believe this illness could ever become so
complicated it could kill such a child." So much for
everyday, nonliterary denial. And so much for the skillful
engagement of the workings of good fiction.
Though the idea of building a novel around a
dying young girl sounds too much like "Little Nell Lives
(Only to Die Again),"Ms. Betts has made her version out of
gritty and durable stuff, and filled it with people whose
vividness is nine-tenths unabashed country candor and
one-tenth uptown reticence.
Mary's father, Frank, is a decent man, frequently
bewildered by the women who surround him. ("The life of
women seemed to him too intense, too tiring, always at
flood.") Neither lout nor supersensitive New Age hero, he is
a kinder man than many, whose love for his daughter has only
increased in the years since his wife, Christine, left him
and abandoned her child with callous casualness. In a fit of
marital disillusionment that has by now spread like a stain
to include all men, Christine has gone home to her eccentric
mother, Georgia Broome (who tells fortunes, doctoring them
as she goes, for mercy's sake), and to her feckless and
mildly abusive stepfather, Virgil.
However drab his wife may have found him,
Frank Thompson is a model of paternal steadiness. His own
mother, Tacey Thompson, is the kind of strong, openhearted,
deeply compassionate woman any child would want for a
grandmother, though it little avails when Mary begins her
downhill spiral. Like so many of the characters in Ms.
Betts's other work (five novels, including "Heading West"
and "Tall Houses in Winter," and the wonderful stories in
"Beasts of the Southern Wild"), Christine's parents, and
Tacey and her irascible husband, Dandy (who, like a balky
horse, takes quite a bit of leading), bring the pungency of
Southern religion and small-town habit to these pages on
their very skin. This is a rich and sometimes eccentric
chorus to listen to while the heartbreaking melody of Mary's
destruction plays on.
There is also some sharp commentary on the
fine shadings of class in the communities around Durham and
Chapel Hill, N. C., where Ms. Betts lives. Folks like these
come bearing the clear marks of their rural beginnings, only
slightly modified by ambition and recently acquired
addresses in town. As in Alice Munro's fiction, this is the
best kind of organic sociology, the kind the characters
intuit, sometimes with a cruel determinism.
Mary Thompson is on that tender cusp between
girlhood and her life as a woman when, by coincidence, she
is discovered to have a rapidly advancing kidney disease,
=============== Reply 9 of Note 18 =================
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 07/09
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 4:16 PM
NYTimes Review (cont.)
whose devastation Ms. Betts makes vivid and painfully real.
Mary's father is helped through the crisis by two women --
each in her own way tough, hurt and vulnerable. Everyone in
the book, we are meant to see, comes to each new crisis
qualified to cope, and every one of them is destined to
despair by a history of pain. One of the women has given up
a baby for adoption and given up its father as well; the
other has suffered a difficult childhood alongside a
handicapped brother and knows she is now the convenient,
useful girlfriend Frank doesn't seem inclined to commit
himself to. Like their lover, whose wife has humiliated him,
each woman has been both hardened and softened by
experience.
Her mother, Christine, has introduced Mary to
grief early by abdicating motherhood for a tacky career as a
professional beauty. Earnest self-promotion is Christine's
obsession; she gives beauty hints on her radio show, "Tina's
Arena," and brings a line of cosmetics to hawk at the family
reunion. Too absorbed in her own narcissism to notice, she
is the only one who continues, conveniently, to misread the
seriousness of her child's condition. Eudora Welty gave us
Christine's sister-under-the-pampered-skin in Fay, the
antagonist of "The Optimist's Daughter"; they even seem to
share the same no-account family, whose tastelessness has
ripened through generations of semiliteracy, bad debts and
beached cars on the front lawn.
Christine, who ends a good many of her
assertions with a defensive, sympathy-curdling "O.K.?,"
dismally fails her daughter at a crucial time. But though
she is selfish she is also pathetic -- a frightened,
ill-instructed, unhappy woman caught playing out the foolish
illusions she thinks necessary to feminine success. Still,
because she persists in acting the classic "bad mother" at
just the moment when she might make amends for her earlier
derelictions, Christine gets only grudging sympathy from the
fellow sufferers in "Souls Raised From the Dead."
But what wonderful insights grace this book,
and how deeply Doris Betts understands Frank and his
companions in grief. While everything is still uneventful,
he has a premonition about his daughter, thinking, "This
kind of love -- it was all hazard." And so it is, right up
to the very last pages. Though at work as a trooper he
routinely pulls dying people out of car wrecks, when a crash
kills a mother and mutilates her daughter, he is again
confronted with his alternating helplessness and capacity to
lend aid and comfort. Watching him swallowing back his own
shared sorrow, we realize we have seen a man forced to grow
and deepen even as his life collapses. The book doesn't end
with Mary's death, because it concerns far more; nor will
her loss drag these people away from their dogged devotion
to a life spent in community, together.
AS for Mary (whose verbal sophistication at
times makes her seem a bit older than she's said to be), she
dwindles from ordinary adolescent, all gripe and good cheer,
to brave but alarmed patient, to victim beyond saving.
Finally, she disappears, delirious, into her own merciful
fantasy that she's going to join a dead neighbor in some
form of heaven. Mary's life and death are superbly and
unsentimentally accomplished. By the time her grandmother
Tacey sees her die, observing that she "had all at once
evaporated from that body, gone out as small as one breath,"
I was as pained by the cruelty of Mary's undoing as I would
have been by a real death.
Yet none of this should sound grim, only
=============== Reply 10 of Note 18 =================
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 07/09
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 4:17 PM
NYTimes Book Review (cont.)
appropriately sad, because Ms. Betts seems to be possessed
of high spirits and a generous wisdom. And that is what
buoys up her characters and makes a lot of the proceedings
very funny even as her people struggle with their anger and
bewilderment. "The Ugliest Pilgrim" -- perhaps her most
famous story and certainly the most widely anthologized --
long ago showed us Ms. Betts's gift for turning unappealing
fact into something more yielding and inviting. All that
lusty wanting, that earnest, unsecret desire, keeps her
characters animated even in the most unpromising
circumstances.
There isn't much to smile at in this story of
ambush by the fates, as "Souls Raised From the Dead" is
aided and abetted by human bit players. But if you like
poignancy laced with pungency, social comment and the
reassurance that sorrow does not finally sever the
connection between survivors, this moving novel will make
you happy, as all artful writing does, no matter how grim
the tale it tells.
When it came time for Doris Betts to kill off the
12-year-old heroine of her new novel, "Souls Raised From the
Dead," she found she just couldn't do it. "I thought maybe I
could find a miraculous cure or something," Ms. Betts
recalled in a recent telephone interview from her office at
the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she has
taught creative writing for 28 years. "By then I was very
fond of her. What happens is, you write a lot of dreadful
descriptions of sky, you change the subject, you bring minor
characters into the foreground. Finally I thought, 'This is
ludicrous,' and it didn't take two pages to write the scene.
After that, the book went very smoothly."
Ms. Betts, who is 62 and lives with her
husband, Lowry, a district judge, on an 80-acre horse farm
about 20 miles from the university, knew from the outset
that young Mary Grace Thompson had to die. How Mary's father
coped was the main point of the book.
"It seems that the discovery that the young will die before
you is the suffering that shakes your faith in life," she
said. "I suppose I've reached the age where I think that's
the test for people: can they see the very worst and keep
on?"
=============== Reply 11 of Note 18 =================
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 07/09
From: QFKA95A HELEN FINNIGAN Time: 6:38 PM
Sherry,
Do you know who wrote that review?
I was moved by the interplay between the ghost of the
neighbor and Mary. Shortly before my father died, he told
me that he had been speaking more and more often with my
mother (who died 7 years before) and that, at times, she
seemed to be with him. So, the increasing presence of the
neighbor was touching to me and led me to think, perhaps,
that my father was not alone in his departure from this
world.
=============== Reply 12 of Note 18 =================
To: QFKA95A HELEN FINNIGAN Date: 07/09
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 6:56 PM
Dear Helen,
I meant to add that. I'll look it up and get back to you.
Sherry
=============== Reply 13 of Note 18 =================
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 07/09
From: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Time: 9:41 PM
Sherry,
Thank you so much for posting that review. It is the kind
that I prefer to read after I have read a book, because the
reviewer gives away too much of the plot, I think. The
review was a good way to "review" the characters and the
story. Duh! Maybe that is why it is called a review.
Helen, I liked the way the spirit of the neighbor helped
Mary Grace as well. It was very touching.
Jane in balmy Colorado.
=============== Reply 14 of Note 18 =================
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 07/09
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 10:07 PM
Helen, the reviewer was Rosellen Brown.
=============== Reply 15 of Note 18 =================
To: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Date: 07/09
From: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Time: 10:12 PM
Dear Jane and Helen,
I also thought that having the neighbor as a friendly guide
was a way that made Mary's death a bit easier for the reader
to take. I became much more emotionally attached to the
characters as the book progressed. Maybe because I was able
to read for longer stretches. There were some things I
didn't like about her writing. One was her strange use of
question marks. I'm from NC and I know a lot of phrasing
ends with that upward lilt. But sometimes her use of "?" at
the end of an obviously declarative sentence made me go
"huh?" She sometimes used it even when she wasn't quoting a
character. Just a little nit I'm picking. Sherry
=============== Reply 16 of Note 18 =================
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 07/09
From: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Time: 11:27 PM
Sherry, thanks for posting that review. Interesting that
almost everyone here has many more reservations about this
book. I, for one, felt that the reviewer was writing about
the book that *might* have been, rather than the book as it
was actually written. There was great material here, but I
don't think Betts got it much above the soap opera level. I
kept mentally rewriting as I read.
Ruth
=============== Reply 17 of Note 18 =================
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 07/10
From: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Time: 8:03 AM
Interesting that Rosellen Brown wrote that review. I loved
her book BEFORE AND AFTER, but it had a similar theme in
that it was a disaster that the characters had to work
themselves around. Also, I have a feeling that Betts is
very well liked in the world of authors. I read the
interviews of her in PARTING THE CURTAINS and liked her
very much...which made me want to like the book. Perhaps,
Brown has the same instincts.
In any case, the interview brings new perspective,
Sherry. Thanks for posting it. I don't feel as negative
about the book as others here. However, I was distracted by
the parts that I thought were weak which really interferes
with my total absorption in a story.
Barb
=============== Reply 18 of Note 18 =================
To: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Date: 07/11
From: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Time: 10:36 PM
Barb and all,
As usual we are lacking commentary from the men of CR. I
know that Felix was reading the book. I think that he
mentioned it on CHAT last month. Please post! Jane
=============== Reply 19 of Note 18 =================
To: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Date: 07/12
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 9:24 AM
I hear you, Jane, and will obey.
I have been thinking about this book for the two weeks
since I finished it. Books serve as a way to tackle in our
imaginations things we have to encounter in life. A really
good book can give perspective on subjects that are
terribly emotional when we are actually experiencing them.
Death certainly is the toughest life experience and
fictional subject for anybody. I thought Doris Betts did a
fine job of taking the reader through the experience of one
family facing an especially poignant death. This is the
story of a whole extended family, not just of Mary Grace
and Frank, although they naturally are the focal points.
Every character in the book is changed and forced to think
and feel in new ways by Mary's dying. Ruth criticized the
"head-hopping" in this book, but this multiplicity of
viewpoints was necessary to Betts' design. I was reminded
of a talk by a counsellor at a family week I went to years
ago. He used a little mobile made of small bottles (this
week was part of an alcohol-dependency treatment for a
family member of mine.) He removed one bottle and placed on
another arm of the mobile. The whole design of the mobile
was skewed by this change to one element. The counsellor
compared this to what happens to a family when one member
is an alcoholic. The analogy applies as well to any major
change for one family member, I think. Each character in
SOULS RAISED FROM THE DEAD becomes part of the death
experience with Mary Grace, and their internal reactions,
musings, thoughts and emotions are important parts of the
book.
Frank, of course, is most fundamentally and profoundly
changed. We first see Mary Grace through Frank's eyes,
when he comes into the apartment after a long day, and
feels a brief moment of panic before he hears her footsteps
and she calls to him. He loves her so much, that like many
parents, he suffers anxious intimations of death and injury
for her. The long departure of Mary Grace from him and from
life takes Frank into the heart of that parental nightmare.
Mary Grace makes an emotional and spiritual journey of her
own paralleling her physical departure. I became very
attached to this girl, with her spirit, humor, love and
intelligence. I can understand how Doris Betts must have
agonized over actually writing the death scene for Mary
Grace. I see that I am using both of Mary Grace's names
when referring to her. Partly that is the Southerner in me,
being so used to double-barrelled names. Mainly, though, I
was struck with Tacey's private reason for choosing "Grace"
as Mary's second name. The public reason was an imaginary
relative, but the true origin of the name was in Tacey's
favorite hymn, "Amazing Grace." So for me, Mary Grace
cannot be divided from her grandmother's gift name.
I was struck also by how rounded the characters were in
this book. Each character had strengths and flaws, which
influenced how they responded to the stages of Mary Grace's
illness and death. Even Christine has elements of good,
however offset they are by her consuming egotism. The most
wrenching moment in the book for me was Christine's
reaction to Mary Grace's death. Screaming for the doctors
to prep her for the operation she had avoided, desperately
trying to call back the days and hours when she might have
helped her daughter. Christine's screams will reverberate
in my mind for a long time.
So, Jane, and all, for what it is worth, that is the view
from the mountain this morning. Regards,
Felix Miller
P.S. Would you care to explicate on your comment,"As usual,
we are lacking commentary from the men of CR."?
=============== Reply 20 of Note 18 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 07/12
From: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Time: 3:46 PM
Felix,
At the risk of sounding sexist again, I *am* wondering
how accurately you thought Betts portrayed Frank's
masculine point of view. There has been a lot of
discussion here in the past about authors writing in the
voice of the opposite sex with Josephine Humphries getting
kudos for THE FIREMAN'S FAIR. Since Frank expresses a lot
of what he thinks are uniquely masculine feelings, I
wondered how accurate males might think they are.
And, as usual, your comments contribute significantly to
the discussion. I'm starting to think that you should get
a side-job as a book reviewer...ever thought of that? I
especially like your observations on a traumatic event
affecting all members of the family constellation. We're
having much the same experience here with the death of my
father-in-law and the resulting affect on my mother-in-law.
It's like a pebble dropped in a pond with the concentric
circles continuing outward. Barb
=============== Reply 21 of Note 18 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 07/12
From: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Time: 10:59 PM
Felix,
Your post just blew me away. Barb is right that you should
do book reviews as a job. My comment about the men of CR
not joining in is a trend that I have noticed recently. It
seems to me that the men of CR have been absent from our
discussions of the books from the book list. Usually Dale,
Steve, Richard, and Marty are here to kick some ideas
around. Dale is back, and the other three appear now and
then. Joe B. also appears occasionally. If you check the
first 18 replies, the writers are all women. Let me know if
you disagree. Jane who likes to see all of her friends on
the board
=============== Reply 22 of Note 18 =================
To: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Date: 07/13
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 9:57 AM
Barbara,
I am always interested in authors who write in another
sex's point of view. (notice that I don't limit it to ONE
other sex. I am a 90's guy all the way ). I agree that
Josephine Humphries was right on target in FIREMAN'S FAIR.
Some friends sent me that book because the main character
reminded them of me, so Humphries must have got it right.
I also think that Ann Patchett did a great job with John
Nickel in TAFT.
I found Frank quite believable in this book, identifying
with many of his feelings and fears.
Some time back, I posted about THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP,
expressing my violent feelings about the gratuituous death
and injury of children in the scene where Garp runs into
the parked car where his wife and her lover are doing their
thing. Several replies to my note commented that I was
expessing the typical male feelings about not controlling
events. The replies (all from females) compared this
attitude unfavorably with female endurance in the face of
tragedy. I felt at the time that this was a misreading of
my note. I don't think that I, as a male, can or should
expect to avoid prevent pain and suffering for my loved
ones. I am all too conscious of the fraility of all life;
I am not a control freak. I interpreted the comments on
that occasion as representing a sterotypical view of what
it is to be male. I do not find this stereotyping in
Betts' treatment of Frank. He is abundantly aware of the
limits of his ability to protect Mary Grace. There are male
control freaks, as there are female versions of the same.
Men and women are more alike than they are different, in
the Miller view of life. I think that Betts presented that
view well in SRFTD.
I am, of course, conscious of all the differences between
the sexes, many of which I celebrate and am mighty grateful
for.
Betts has my vote as an author who can step into another
sex's point of view.
Regards from the mountain,
Felix Miller
=============== Reply 23 of Note 18 =================
To: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Date: 07/13
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 9:57 AM
Jane,
You of course are right about the proportion of posters in
this thread, and others. I was really asking if you had
any take on why this is so. It does seem to be the case
with many threads here. Then there are others which bring
those of us who are male out of the woodwork.
In my case, my scarcity of posts is mainly sloth. Putting
thoughts into words is hard work, whether spoken words or
written. I know that there are differences between the
ways men and women approach different subjects, especially
in how they comment on them. I am always interested in
exploring these differences. I may be a wee bit
hypersensitive to the attribution of value judgements to
these differences. As I said in another reply, men and
women, in the important issues common to both, are more
alike than different.
Thanks for your comments on my two cents' worth.
Regards from the mountain,
Felix Miller
=============== Reply 24 of Note 18 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 07/13
From: TQWX67A ANN DAVEY Time: 10:55 AM
This is a book that I intended to read, but just got too
busy to do so. However, I wanted to let you all know how
much I have enjoyed reading your posts--especially Felix's
comments about how interconnected families are and how one
members problems affect all the others. So very true.
Ann
=============== Reply 25 of Note 18 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 07/13
From: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Time: 8:48 PM
Felix,
I can understand why it is time-consuming (you said sloth,
but I don't buy that) for you to post. You take your time
and think things out. I, on the other hand, sit down at the
keyboard and type the first thing that comes into my head.
When I first started on CR, I would take notes on books and
take the time to write my posts off-line. You have reminded
me that I need to do that again. I started being so rushed
during the school year but now I have no excuse. I will try
to do better on our next book.
It seems to me that the men of CR appear in droves when
we are discussing anything by Cormac McCarthy. I was a
little annoyed when someone made the generalization that
only men liked his works, but I like them as well. I AM NOT
A MAN. (G) Anyway, keep up the good work. Jane who is on
a Michael Connelly kick
=============== Reply 26 of Note 18 =================
To: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Date: 07/14
From: ACCR69A JOSEPH BARREIRO Time: 8:59 AM
Jane and all - I only got about 80 pages in before I gave
it up. I kept seeing a little Lifetime cable network
logo in my mind's eye and couldn't get past it. I found no
fault with Betts' writing, and the character of Mary Grace
almost kept my interest, but I didn't feel any connection
at all with any of the other characters - I simply wasn't
in the right frame of mind to pursue this novel. Joe B
=============== Reply 27 of Note 18 =================
To: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Date: 07/14
From: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Time: 9:18 AM
Thanks, Felix, enlightening answer. As you know, I agree
emphatically with your viewpoint. Women in the 90's have
started to make generalizations about men when they would
not like to hear equivalent generalizations about
themselves. Huge mistake, in my opinion. I fall into it
too sometimes, but try to remember how limiting it is. One
of my excuses is that certain males have tried to convince
me of some of these stereotypes. However, that's not a
very good excuse.
One of the interesting things to me about Frank was that
he seemed to believe in some of these stereotypes, that
women could care for Mary Grace in her illness more
effectively than men, that women developed friendships more
quickly than men, etc. However, his experience proved at
least the first one of these generalizations to be faulty.
Did you notice this? Barb
=============== Reply 28 of Note 18 =================
To: NCSH82B BARBARA MOORS Date: 07/15
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 9:08 PM
Barbara,
Yes, Frank did buy into all the sterotypes, even when he
was disproving them. He remained limited in his capacity
to bear the physical elements of Mary Grace's illness, but
he worked to overcome this revulsion-and recognized that
his attitude was a failure that hurt Mary Grace.
Most generalizations have a germ of truth in them, and the
old one about women being the caretakers and nurses is one
of them. Tacey feels some abivalence and difficulty in
facing Mary Grace's illness, but she overcomes it with less
difficulty than Frank. This is probably mostly
conditioning. If you are told from an early age that
caring for people in illness or bereavement is the job
you were born to do, you believe it. Frank, in his time
and social background, had never been told this. Only his
love for Mary Grace allows him to bridge this cultural gap,
however imperfectly.
Regards from the mountain,
Felix Miller
=============== Reply 29 of Note 18 =================
To: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Date: 07/15
From: VMMN97A FELIX MILLER Time: 9:26 PM
Jane,
Thanks for your comments on my post. I deplore all
generalizations smacking of "guy books" and "chick books."
There are only good books and other books.
And yes, I would never argue with you that you are a woman,
and are not thereby disabled from appreciating Cormac
McCarthy. Let he who disputes this beware. I am old and
fat and tired, but will nonetheless dispute any contention
to the contrary.
Regards from the mountain, Felix Miller
=============== Reply 36 of Note 18 =================
To: WSRF10B SHERRY KELLER Date: 07/18
From: FAVB99B JANE NIEMEIER Time: 10:20 PM
Sherry and all,
This book did not seem to catch on with CR's. Some books we
read have replies being generated so quickly that it is
difficult to keep up with them. We have lost interest and
moved on to discussing air conditioning (and I believe I
started it). What does this say for the book? Jane
wondering what the magic ingredient is
=============== Reply 37 of Note 18 =================
To: KDEX08B RUTH BAVETTA Date: 07/22
From: KGXC73A GAIL SINGER GROSS Time: 7:32 AM
greetings dddRUTH..
that's it..SOAP OPERA LEVEL...i can't read a book like TREE
OF HEAVENand then pop over to SOULS RAISED BY THE DEAD...
i find it too amatuerish...
gail..hp..a p r home from the wars in eastern europe or
should i say the floods!
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I was moved by the interplay between the ghost of the
neighbor and Mary. Shortly before my father died, he told
me that he had been speaking more and more often with my
mother (who died 7 years before) and that, at times, she
seemed to be with him. So, the increasing presence of the
neighbor was touching to me and led me to think, perhaps,
that my father was not alone in his departure from this
world.
Helen
Books serve as a way to tackle in our
imaginations things we have to encounter in life. A really
good book can give perspective on subjects that are
terribly emotional when we are actually experiencing them.
Death certainly is the toughest life experience and
fictional subject for anybody. I thought Doris Betts did a
fine job of taking the reader through the experience of one
family facing an especially poignant death. This is the
story of a whole extended family, not just of Mary Grace
and Frank, although they naturally are the focal points.
Felix
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