A new regular blog feature debuts on Friday. It’s bookish, illuminating, interactive and addictive. I’m excited to share it with you. Are you in, dear readers? Come back tomorrow, and we’ll get the (nerdy reading) party started.
Casino de Paris by Louis Gaudin, 1931.
Henry James died on 28 February 1916. He wasn’t always a humourless looking middle-aged man. Briefly, a long time ago, he was a humourless looking yet dapper young man.
Young Henry James
QUOTE: “It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”
SOME WORKS: Roderick Hudson; Washington Square; The Portrait of a Lady; The Bostonians; What Maisie Knew; The Wings of the Dove; The Golden Bowl; Daisy Miller; The Aspern Papers; The Turn of the Screw.
A KEEPSAKE:
Daisy Miller by Henry James at Free Parking. $10.00
Still Life, 1866, by Henri Fantin-Latour.
Still Life, 1866, Henri Fantin-Latour
My Internet connection decided to play hooky this afternoon. It went away, leaving an onslaught of cold rain in its place. I ignored them both, sliding into a hot bath fragrant with salt, book in hand. It wasn’t a waste, but a swirling respite. A challenge. A challenge to be calm, if only for a few moments.
Bath time
New Rudyard Kipling Poems Discovered [courtesy Huff Post Books]
I am not a Kipling fan, but I am always fascinated and thrilled when work by long-dead writers is discovered.
Fannie Hurst Quote
Once Upon a Time, little girls were told they needed fairy tales. The goal was to hear the words, “And they lived happily ever after. The End.” It’s a scary idea. It says so right there: the end. A closed book. Happiness trapped under glass like a dead fly. The problem is that, when you are working toward an official Happily Ever After, you miss the nuances of the journey through the Big Bad Forest, the meat and mead of life: laughter, tears, growth, absurdity, knowledge, companionship, heartbreak, fulfillment, frustration, accomplishment. Life is messy, irreverent. It brooks no happily ever after. Why should it? Life is its own complicated reward.
Write your own story, but write it honestly. Live your own life, without succumbing to complacent platitudes. Embrace your own beautifully cracked version of success and happiness. Mine calls for writing words the best way I can, in reading more than is healthy, in loving a complex, brilliant, imperfect man. It allows for dust in the corners of my house and budding laugh lines around my eyes. I love every second of this broken bliss. It’s a thousand times better than any sterile Happily Ever After.
This is in response to the Daily Prompt: Happily Ever After. “And they lived happily ever after.” Think about this line for a few minutes. Are you living happily ever after? If not, what will it take for you to get there?
“Check out your library, just like I did.”
A look at the home of James Herriot.
The Tyler Davidson Fountain, aka The Genius of Water. Fountain Square, Cincinnati, Ohio.
“An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.”-James Whistler
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 