EdithWharton

#whartonbuddyread

Who is up for Hermione Lee‘s biography of Edith Wharton? It‘s a chunkster (pictured above next to a 6 lb cat for size). While the book has 900 pages, many are notes. So a mere 760 pages of narrative. Comment if you want to join.

Proposed discussion schedule:

January 24: Chapters 1-4
January 31: Chapters 5-8
February 7: Chapters 9-11
February 14: Chapters 12-14
February 21: Chapters 15-17
February 28: Chapters 18-20

Graywacke @CarolynM @Currey @IMASLOWREADER @jewright @Lcsmcat @Leftcoastzen @TheBookHippie 6h

BkClubCare OOOOooo. This would fit the category of "independence" for one of my challenges. ? sure! Sign me up ? 6h

Lcsmcat I‘ve got my copy. It‘s an ebook, so I had no idea how long it is. 😀 #chunksterJunior 6h

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Graywacke @AllDebooks @amysisson @Ann_Reads @arubabookwoman @batsy @BookishTrish @catebutler @Catherine_Willoughby @Cathythoughts @cindyash @Crazeedi @dabbe 6h

Graywacke @Daisey @emilyhaldi @IndoorDame @KathyWheeler @kspenmoll @LitStephanie @llwheeler @Louise @rubyslippersreads @SamAnne @sarahbellum @Suet624 @Tamra @willaful @vikaplus321 @kenw3 6h

Graywacke @BkClubCare yay! Welcome 6h

Graywacke @Lcsmcat that hashtag 🙂 Of course, I‘m grateful you‘re joining! 6h

Leftcoastzen Yes , please! I loved Lee‘s Biography of Virginia Woolf . 6h

kspenmoll Possibly! I may have it somewhere!?😂 (edited) 6h

Graywacke @Leftcoastzen I have plans to read a lot of Woolf in 2026. That specific biography is an end goal! 6h

Graywacke @kspenmoll yay! 🩵 6h

Liz_M @LitsyEvents 5h

Leftcoastzen 🐈‍⬛😻👏 4h

TheBookHippie Tentatively 😅 yes 4h

Currey @Graywacke and other #chunksterJunior readers. Yes, I will join you 4h

Graywacke @TheBookHippie no pressure. It‘s a commitment (although i think i spread out enough to be easy) 3h

Graywacke @Currey ❤️ I‘m happy you‘re joining. #chunksterjunior will be our new tag. 🙂 3h

TheBookHippie @Graywacke I‘m reading Proust this year 😅🤣 3h

Graywacke @TheBookHippie proust 😍 Enjoy. Have a madeleine. 3h

TheBookHippie @Graywacke oh for sure!!! 3h

BookishTrish If I can get my hands on a copy… 11m

Graywacke @BookishTrish fantastic. There are ebook options, if you can‘t find the physical book. now

36 likes22 comments

Graywacke

A Backward Glance | Edith Wharton

pick

Infamously unrevealing, but Wharton‘s voice was gorgeous. Her prose magnificent. What she does tell us, including extensively about Henry James, is magical. All of it. She captures a world that existed before WWI, the experience of that war, and her personal devastation afterwards as she realizes that pre-war world is lost.

I wrote a long review here: https://www.librarything.com/work/46322/reviews/261461607

#whartonbuddyread

Currey @Graywacke Wonderful Library Thing review. Thank you for sharing it here. 6d

Lcsmcat Great review! Thanks for sharing. 6d

Suet624 I always forget to look at library thing for reviews. Thanks for the reminder. 6d

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Graywacke @Currey @Lcsmcat @Suet624 thanks guys. Sue, I don‘t usually link my reviews here because it feels like the wrong format. 6d

Suet624 @Graywacke I understand but I‘m okay with it. It‘s nice to have the option to see a more in-depth review. 6d

TheBookHippie The prose. Gorgeous. Wonderful review. Unrelated the 60 percent rating on Litsy makes me sad. I loved this. I‘m so glad I had this with me these months. Weirdly soothing. 6d

Graywacke @TheBookHippie I‘m happy to see that and so happy to have read this with you guys. As for the ratings, they are low everywhere. I think readers want dirt. 🤷🏻‍♂️ 5d

TheBookHippie @Graywacke ohhhhh. Ha didn‘t even think of that! Oy. 5d

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Graywacke

A Backward Glance | Edith Wharton

A Backward Glance

Chapter XII widening waters
Chapter XIII The War
Chapter XIV And After
#whartonbuddyread

I didn‘t realize how much the war broke Wharton. Nor how much great stuff she wrote during and in its wake. Arguably, she never wrote as well after this stage.

What were thoughts on Whartons take before during and after WWI? And on the book as a whole (published 1934)?

Graywacke This quote defines this section for me: “It was growing more and more evident that the world I had grown up in and been formed by had been destroyed in 1914, and I felt myself incapable of transmuting the raw material of the after-war world into a work of art.” 2w

Graywacke @CarolynM @Currey @IMASLOWREADER @jewright @Lcsmcat @Leftcoastzen @TheBookHippie 2w

Graywacke On writing Summer during the war - “The tale was written at a high pitch of creative joy, but amid a thousand interruptions , and while the rest of my being was steeped in the tragic realities of the war; yet I do not remember ever visualizing with more intensity the inner scene, or the creatures peopling it.” 2w

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Graywacke On the big guns in a post-war parade: “But all those I had seen at the front, dusty, dirty, mud-encrusted, blood-stained, spent and struggling on; when I try to remember, the two visions merge into one, and my heart is broken with them.” 2w

Graywacke TAoI has been my favorite because of the sense of magical nostalgia. So I felt reassured reading this: “Meanwhile I found a momentary escape in going back to my childish memories of a long-vanished America, and wrote “The Age of Innocence”” 2w

Graywacke On writing A Son at the Front - “the book was written in a white heat of emotion” 2w

Lcsmcat That first quote - one I marked too - is so sad! But I think many artists had this issue. I know music changed dramatically around this time. 2w

Graywacke Kein Genuss ist vorüber gehend - which translates roughly to: No pleasure is temporary 2w

Graywacke “These and other wanderings have been the high lights of the last years; when I turn from them the sky darkens.” 2w

Lcsmcat Did anyone else notice the reference to “Professor Tonks” and go straight to Harry Potter? 2w

Graywacke @Lcsmcat I think it goes a ways to explaining the post-war artistic development. Broken narratives. Broken visual arts. 2w

Lcsmcat “In our individual lives, though the years are sad, the days have a way of being jubilant.” (edited) 2w

Graywacke @Lcsmcat Tonks 🙂 - i did not go there… 2w

Graywacke @Lcsmcat beautiful - the lives and days quote 2w

Lcsmcat @Graywacke a quick Google search indicates it might be a Henry Tonks who taught art - right era but I can‘t be sure. 2w

Currey @Lcsmcat yes, I marked the years versus days quote. And although Summer is not my favorite (I lean towards TAoI) I always thought it was richly felt when she was writing it. It simply has so little of the societal pretense she draws on for her other works. 2w

Lcsmcat @Currey I liked how she linked Summer and Ethan Frome 2w

Currey @Graywacke @Lcsmcat One of the themes remembered from my WWI history lessons was that before the war the “workers” movement, or socialists truly believed that the workers would never go off to fight for the rich or nation states representing the rich ever again. They were wrong. 2w

Lcsmcat @Currey Yeah. Some things never change. 🙄 2w

TheBookHippie @Currey yes they were wrong… 2w

TheBookHippie @Graywacke I really like Summer so much so I bought a cloth bound edition. That being said I couldn‘t exactly express why it hits me so, and now I like it more. 2w

TheBookHippie @Lcsmcat the days have a way of being jubilant hit me so hard. It reminded me of my grandparents telling us although there was war and fear and sorrow they did experience joy. I do think it all affected her deeply. 2w

TheBookHippie @Graywacke your first quote I both underlined and put in my journal. Just seeped through the page, her feelings this section. 2w

Graywacke @TheBookHippie i adore Summer. It has surreal absurd elements, like you might find in Muriel Spark or Deborah Levy. It‘s also sexually charged. And ultimately shocking us into rethinking it all. It‘s maybe my second fav. 2w

TheBookHippie @Graywacke yes I adore both those authors! 2w

Graywacke @TheBookHippie that quote on her lost world, her apocalypse, says a lot about her and a lot about everything else too. 2w

TheBookHippie @Graywacke it just hits right in the heart -hers then and ours right now I think. 2w

Graywacke @TheBookHippie yeah. Ours too. I was thinking more about pre and post war literature ☺️ 2w

38 likes28 comments

Graywacke

A Backward Glance | Edith Wharton

Wrong time period, but at least she‘s in Paris 👆

A Backward Glance
#whartonbuddyread

Today:
IX The Secret Garden
X London
XI Paris

Dec 13: finish

On writing House of Mirth
“The answer was that a frivolous society can acquire dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys. Its tragic implication lies in its power of debasing people and ideals.”

I‘m smitten all. What are your thoughts?

Graywacke @CarolynM @Currey @IMASLOWREADER @jewright @Lcsmcat @Leftcoastzen @TheBookHippie 3w

Lcsmcat I highlighted that passage too. Also “As a stranger and newcomer, not only outside of all groups and coteries, but hardly aware of their existence, I enjoyed a freedom not possible in those days to the native born, who were still enclosed in the old social pigeon-holes, which they had begun to laugh at, but to which they still flew back.” 3w

Graywacke @Lcsmcat Paris! How interesting 3w

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Graywacke A big thing i‘m contemplating is the world changing impact of WWI. Like how Cather said the world broke in 1922 (which is an odd choice of year). 3w

Lcsmcat I also added Enrique Larreta, Paul Bourget, and Howard Sturgis, to my TBR. I like reading what a favored author read. (edited) 3w

Lcsmcat @Graywacke I think WWI gave others the freedom that Wharton tasted as an outsider in Paris society. The classes and the expectations of one‘s place in society shifted so dramatically then. 3w

TheBookHippie @Lcsmcat I do too!! 3w

TheBookHippie I keep thinking about the importance of writing is art. You must do your art. The stories swimming inside her, oh to be a witness to that. But mostly I‘m just smitten with the prose and her observations. It is fascinating to me the shifting of “society”. 3w

Leftcoastzen I‘m not done yet but just finished rewatching Downton Abbey. They did such a good job illustrating how WWI changed so much . The youngest daughter Sybil, working as a nurse . The family turning their home into a convalescent center. 3w

Currey @Graywacke WWI was completely world transforming but I did find Wharton picking 1922 odd. I keep thinking about how I would tell others about my friendships and acquaintances. She just could really capture her friend‘s unique properties. 3w

Graywacke @Lcsmcat i didn‘t add those three 🙂 But I did find them fascinating. Howard - what a character! 3w

Graywacke @TheBookHippie she really has a way of making you interested in whatever she wants to tell about. That prose… 3w

Graywacke @Leftcoastzen I‘ve never seen Downtown Abbey. 🙁 That element interests. The show interests. The fact you‘re watching it a second time interests! 3w

Graywacke @Currey goodness, I could never bring anyone alive the way she does. It‘s so special. (It was Cather, not Wharton, who made the 1922 quip.) 3w

Currey @Graywacke Oh Cather made that remark. I am not sure I understand that any better but it does make more sense given Cather being in the US and Wharton in Europe. 3w

Lcsmcat @Graywacke If I read any of them I‘ll tag you. Although finding an English translation of Bourget may be difficult. 3w

Graywacke @Currey right. It‘s a curious remark. Interesting that i just read East of Eden, which ends in WWi. In California. So far away, yet so impactful. Also - from a different angle - pre-wwi is Wharton‘s age of innocence… 3w

Graywacke @Lcsmcat oh - yes. Please do. I‘m curious. 3w

Graywacke @Lcsmcat also - I‘m thinking about what‘s next. I plan to read Hermione Lee‘s biography. And hopefully there is group interest. But i‘m also thinking of all that Eudora Welty talk we had. I‘m really interested in pursuing that. 3w

Lcsmcat @Graywacke I have the Carol Singley book, but not the Hermione Lee, but I can probably find a copy. And yes, Eudora Welty would be an excellent choice. 3w

Graywacke @Lcsmcat I really want Hermione Lee - her name is legend. And I haven‘t read her. 🙂 3w

Currey @Graywacke @Lcsmcat I would be interested in Eudora Welty, though to be honest, I would follow you two anywhere 3w

Lcsmcat @Currey ❤️ 3w

Lcsmcat @Graywacke Sure. Like I said, I‘m sure I can get my hands on a copy. 3w

Graywacke @Currey ❤️ (x2) 3w

Lcsmcat If you‘re curious, the Singley book is

Edith Wharton: Matters of Mind and Spirit

Graywacke @Lcsmcat Thanks! 3w

bibliothecarivs @Graywacke, here's a second endorsement of Downton Abbey. I've watched the whole series two or three times. 3w

Graywacke @bibliothecarivs !! I think I must. Thank you. I‘m currently watching West Wing for the first time. I‘m in complete adoration. 3w

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Graywacke

A Backward Glance | Edith Wharton

A Backward Glance - VI-VIII
(Next, Dec 6 IX-XI)
#whartonbuddyread

Wharton‘s early works, through House of Mirth, but more about her “inner group” - with Walter Berry, and a magical section on Henry James:

“these elaborate hesitancies…were like a cobweb bridge flung from his mind to theirs, an invisible passage over which one knew that silver-footed ironies, veiled jokes, tiptoe malices, were stealing to explode a huge laugh at one's feet.”

Graywacke Also, I didn‘t know Emily Bronte wrote poetry! What a gorgeous poem - Remembrance: https://poets.org/poem/remembrance 1mo

Graywacke What did you all think? @CarolynM @Currey @IMASLOWREADER @jewright @Lcsmcat @Leftcoastzen @TheBookHippie (edited) 1mo

Graywacke On Walter Berry: “From my first volume of short stories to “Twilight Sleep”, the novel I published just before his death, nothing in my work escaped him, no detail was too trifling to be examined and discussed, gently ridiculed or quietly praised.” 1mo

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Lcsmcat I underlined so many sections! I was particularly amused by her description of New York conversation being like the gossip column of a country newspaper. (My NYC daughter would be incensed!) 1mo

Lcsmcat “I remember once saying that I was a failure in Boston. . . because they thought I was too fashionable to be intelligent, and a failure in New York because they were afraid I was too intelligent to be fashionable.” 1mo

Lcsmcat “None of my relations ever spoke to me of my books, either to praise or blame-they simply ignored them; and among the immense tribe of my New York cousins, though it included many with whom I was on terms of affectionate intimacy, the subject was avoided as though it were a kind of family disgrace, which might be condoned but could not be forgotten.” 1mo

Graywacke @Lcsmcat it‘s a gorgeous section. So inspiring and interesting and amusing. I remember these quotes! 1mo

Leftcoastzen I especially love the quote about her family not being interested in her books ! Hilarious they are ! As I think she noted if she was in a British or European family it would be of interest! 1mo

Leftcoastzen I like how she discusses her friends and mentors. I read a lot of lost generation writers and in their time they seemed to act like they rose out of the ashes of war fully formed, and owed nothing to the earlier generations of writers. 1mo

Currey @Lcsmcat Yes, you picked the perfect quotes for this section. I loved the part on Henry James, instead of making him appear more stuffy, it made him more vulnerable, more insecure and therefore more powerful to rise out of that to write how he wrote. And how could a family just ignore the very thing that is the core of you. She does not have much good to say about her husband does she? 1mo

Lcsmcat @Leftcoastzen I liked how she gave her mentors and informal editors credit too. And how she was honest about her early stuff. I don‘t have my copy in front of me now, but there was something about not having a personality of her own until the first collection of short stories was published. 1mo

Lcsmcat @Currey Yes, Henry James‘ personality really comes through. 1mo

Graywacke @Leftcoastzen well - this lost generation were essentially chanting, “down with Edith Wharton” 🙂 1mo

Graywacke @Currey @Lcsmcat Henry James comes out so lovable 1mo

Graywacke @Leftcoastzen @Lcsmcat that names were so interesting! The social fabric that she sook out by intent 1mo

Lcsmcat @Graywacke @Leftcoastzen And she skewered the lost generation too with “the amusing thing about the turn of the wheel is that we who fought the good fight are now jeered as the prigs and prudes who barred the way to complete expression—as perhaps we should have tried to do, had we known it was to cause creative art to be abandoned for pathology.” 1mo

Currey @Lcsmcat Ouch 1mo

jewright I‘m late commenting, but I thought there would be more about her marriage, but not so far, other than their trips. I did enjoy the parts about Henry James. 4w

Lcsmcat Has this section and the one just started for next week exploded anyone else‘s TBR, or is it just me? 4w

Graywacke @Lcsmcat other than needing to read everything by Henry James? 4w

Graywacke @jewright she‘s quiet quiet on that so far. And it‘s coming to an end 4w

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Graywacke

A Backward Glance | Edith Wharton

👆Land‘s End - Wharton‘s Newport RI home

A Backward Glance - Chapters I-V
(Next week, Nov 29, chapters VI-VIII )

Before Newport, there is Rome, Alhambra, Paris, Bad Wildbad (Germany), old brownstone Manhattan, Florence and a yacht tour of the Aegean. We also meet Egerton Winthrop, Ogden Codman, Walter Berry, and kinda/sorta Mr. Wharton. Lush stuff, presented as natural and even middle class. The leisure class world. Thoughts?

Graywacke #whartonbuddyread
@CarolynM @Currey @IMASLOWREADER @jewright @Lcsmcat @Leftcoastzen @TheBookHippie 1mo

Graywacke @CarolynM - looks like your handle didn‘t take above 1mo

Graywacke Scroll down for a video of Land‘s End. It recently sold for $8.6 million. Be sure to check out the backyard views. https://liladelman.com/listing/42-ledge-rd-newport/ 1mo

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Currey @Graywacke ah, yes, nice middle class views 1mo

Leftcoastzen Her writing is just wonderful , as always! I knew we were not going to get true confessions! 😁Her descriptions of her travels with such details of the art & architecture, great . I love the details of how NYC changed from her youth . And her love of books and her father‘s library ! I know people of means loved the long vacation tours . It was harder then , but they had nothing to compare it to . Part of their education indeed ! 1mo

Currey @Graywacke She does indeed seem to believe that she was middle class but during that era, the life she describes is not middle class. Her father‘s reversals of fortunes even did not leave them destitute but only forced them to live a cheaper life in Europe. 1mo

Currey @Graywacke @leftcoastzen I really enjoyed the section about her mother‘s English and how that reflected exactly their place in society. And as always, it is wonderful to be back in Wharton‘s prose. I also was delighted to see how her life travels turned up later in her books 1mo

Graywacke @Leftcoastzen that prose. How does she do it? It‘s the first thing I notice here is how lovely that voice is. Relaxes this reader immediately 1mo

Graywacke @Currey right. I think she is clearly advertising the lost joys of the leisure class. But she can‘t bring herself to acknowledge it wasn‘t the fairest of lives. So she pleads denial, while fronting amazing travel, food, books and houses. But - what a childhood! And I love the visual impressions of 1870‘s Manhattan (edited) 1mo

Graywacke @Currey one side trip to the accidentally wrong part of the Alps formed the basis of 3 books! I was also fascinated by the focus on the proper spoken English 1mo

Graywacke @Leftcoastzen @Currey i‘m so happy you‘re enjoying. I didn‘t know what to expect. It feels lovely so far 1mo

Lcsmcat Wow. If that‘s middle class, I‘m destitute. 😂 I think it shows how many even more wealthy people she hung around with! 1mo

Lcsmcat I loved her mention of the (then) unpublished Fast and Loose “It was destined for the private enjoyment of a girlfriend, and was never exposed to the garish light of print.” 1mo

Lcsmcat She did seem to be trying to justify her privilege. “In every society there is the room, and the need, for a cultivated leisure class” Is there really, Edith, is there really? 1mo

Graywacke @Lcsmcat can i volunteer to take that role - for the civic wellbeing? 1mo

Graywacke She was a wonderful reader. A quote: “There was in me a secret retreat where I wished no one to intrude, or at least no one whom I had yet encountered. Words and cadences haunted it like song-birds in a magic wood, and I wanted to be able to steal away and listen when they called.” 1mo

Lcsmcat @Graywacke Why not? Edith says we need one. 😂 1mo

Lcsmcat @Graywacke Per your quote, I wonder if that desire of hers was part of the reason her marriage failed - a la Hudson River Bracketed. She needed more interior life than her society was willing to allow her? 1mo

Graywacke @Lcsmcat there were larger issues. He mentally broke down (and emptied her trust secretly) 1mo

Lcsmcat @Graywacke And yet she (so far at least) makes no attempt to foreshadow this, which I find odd. 1mo

Graywacke @Lcsmcat yes. She hasn‘t said his name, or anything significant about their relationship or his personality. 1mo

TheBookHippie Sorry so late! I love the prose. I just love it. As for the leisure class is there a sign up?? The video was a WOWOWOW. Do you think she thought she was middle class??? As for the English it reminded me of my Grandmother who knew the upper and lower class French, Dutch and Yiddish (as it was used) she would say that‘s a scrub woman‘s French of Dutch- I would about pass out ..however she used that in ⬇️ (edited) 1mo

TheBookHippie ⬆️volunteering in nursing homes with senile or Alzheimer patients as they‘d lose English immediately if they were immigrants and or refugees like she was- (back in the 1960- 1980s) she felt she owed it to help. 1mo

TheBookHippie The not mentioning the MR is saying A LOT. I‘m very much loving this. Do you think she wanted to be single but society didn‘t allow it? 1mo

Lcsmcat @TheBookHippie I don‘t know if she wanted to be single when she was young, but I think she didn‘t want to repeat the experiment when older. 😀 1mo

Graywacke @TheBookHippie a scrub woman‘s French of Dutch. 🙂 You‘re not late. No clocks here. And I‘m with you on the prose! 1mo

TheBookHippie @Lcsmcat For sure that! 1mo

TheBookHippie @Graywacke my Bubbe was something ELSE. The prose is so very good. 1mo

jewright She certainly had a fascinating childhood. I can‘t imagine spending so much time traveling. I always find people‘s earliest memories interesting, and that‘s how she started the book. 1mo

Graywacke @jewright me too - I enjoy reading about early childhoods. I‘m fascinated by the nature of traveling in the 1860‘s & 1870‘s. (I tend to forget she was a child of this era. I think of her as an early 20th century person because that‘s when she started publishing. But she had a lived a lot before that) 1mo

CarolynM I haven‘t had a chance to get to this yet. Hoping to catch you up before the end 🙂 1mo

Graywacke @CarolynM i was worried about reading it. But it‘s been lovely. Read when you can. Glad you gave an update. 1mo

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Graywacke

A Backward Glance | Edith Wharton

Lush life 2 - the books! #whartonbuddyread

Lcsmcat Loved this section. I can visualize that library! 1mo

Leftcoastzen Yes ! I loved this section! 1mo

36 likes2 comments

Graywacke

A Backward Glance | Edith Wharton

Lush life. The food! #whartonbuddyread

34 likes

Graywacke

A Backward Glance | Edith Wharton

#whartonbuddyread - I‘m finally starting. Chat Saturday!

IMASLOWREADER, Lcsmcat, CarolynM, TheBookHippie, Leftcoastzen, Currey, jewright

Leftcoastzen I need to start ASAP!😄 1mo

Lcsmcat I‘m finding it a quick read so far. (Love the 🐈‍⬛mug!) 1mo

Graywacke @Leftcoastzen I need to get going too. 🙂 I‘m behind my planned schedule. @Lcsmcat glad it‘s fast! The opening chapter reminded me how wonderful her prose can be. 1mo

50 likes3 comments

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