In the Summertime. . . !

     Dancing to this song in the privacy of my living room is about all the physical activity I can stand when the daily temperature rises above 90F.

     Once Memorial Day passes, I always feel a little restless twinge inside that warns me of long, hot, drowsy days ahead, dog days, days when the Texas humidity feels like a giant blanket round your shoulders. You get all your chores done, run all the necessary errands, as early in the day as possible to avoid going out once the sun has passed the mid-sky mark. After the morning get-it-done frenzy, all you want to do is loll in an air-conditioned space and read. At least, that's how the afternoon heat affects me.

     So it's time to plan my summer reading! Or rather, rereading. Summer simply screams for rereading old favorites. Let's see ... will it be kiddy lit? Travel narratives? Or novels?

     Leticia the Eternal Kid would choose to chase hardened criminals with Nancy Drew or hang out at the hospital with Sue Barton and her fellow nursing chums, or maybe romp around the prairie with Laura Ingalls in the "Little House" books. And there's also the Betsy-Tacy series, which she's only read once and loved -- she'd probably skip the first four books, though, and go straight to when Betsy and Tacy are in high school. Or maybe she'd reread a few of the "shoe books" by Noel Streatfeild (you know: Ballet Shoes, Dancing Shoes, Theatre Shoes, etc.), although she remembers that if you've read one, you've read them all, because they all have the same basic plot: young girl shows real talent and promise in some performing art or other, has some success, becomes a pain-in-the-neck diva, because of which she loses a big opportunity to some other girl, who likewise enjoys a big success, so the first girl learns the valuable lesson that "the business" doesn't revolve around her and there's always someone to replace her.

     Leticia the Armchair Traveler would perhaps reread some of the highly entertaining (if outdated, travel-wise) narratives by Emily Kimbrough, that proper middle-aged lady who loved planning and taking trips (and getting into less-than-dignified scrapes) with her friends, many of whom were well-known theater and film people of the 30's, 40's and 50's. In fact, Leticia the Armchair Traveler would probably start at the beginning with the side-splittingly funny Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, which Miss Kimbrough co-wrote with her friend, the stage star Cornelia Otis Skinner, and which recounts their first trip to Europe together as young girls in the 1920's. Leticia would then follow up with We Followed Our Hearts to Hollywood, the equally funny story of how the Misses Kimbrough and Skinner helped write the screenplay for the film adaptation of Our Hearts. But then, any of Miss Kimbrough's many books are great summer reading, if one is a lover of travel, humor, and nostalgia.

     Leticia the Lit Lover would most probably choose to reread her beloved Barbara Pym, which she does every two or three years. She'd first of all whiz through Pym's best-known and most popular novel, Excellent Women and once more sink into the warm, soothing bath of Pym's prose, which combines sharp intelligence, wit, and tongue-in-cheek perspicacity. She'd reacquaint herself with Pym's small but delightful world of professors, anthropologists, clergymen, and the spinsters who love them. After that, there are twelve more Pyms from which to choose, almost all of them gems.

     Two more novels Leticia the Lit Lover would consider rereading: A. S. Byatt's Possession and Rumer Godden's In This House of Brede.

     Or ... maybe Leticia the Lazy Loller will wade her way through them all! It's highly likely.

     

My "Friendship" with Barbara Pym

     For every passionate reader, there are certain authors he or she turns to again and again for the simple reason that reading them is like a cozy get-together with old friends. For me, one of those authors is Barbara Pym. Every couple of years, I re-read some of her novels to cleanse my reading palate and wash off the literary excess accumulated from reading more verbose writers. Her ability to paint a vivid character portrait with a single phrase, the humor that sneaks up on you and tweaks your most ticklish spot, and her uncanny gift for moving you unexpectedly with a strangely detached yet penetrating pathos -- these are the qualities I cherish in her writing. The fact that she was English and wrote the most "English" of all twentieth-century English novels further endears her to this unabashed Anglophile. Whenever I discuss her with an Englishman, his first comment is, "She's very English." To which I reply, "Yes, that's one of the reasons I like her so much."
     It was my love for Jane Austen, to whom she is often likened, that first prompted me to seek out Pym. I ran out of Jane and needed to find more of her ilk. Oddly, the first time I read Pym, I didn't care for her and couldn't even finish the novel, which was An Academic Question. In retrospect, I think that was the wrong novel to start with, it being one of her posthumously published novels that she never got around to revising herself. (Hazel Holt prepared the manuscript for publication.) I decided to give Barbara another chance a few years later, happily with Excellent Women, her most widely-read title and considered by many to be her best. I was hooked for life. Lesson learned -- when embarking on a writer who is new to you, always do a little research first, to find out which is his/her most popular and/or acclaimed work. No point in trusting your own judgment and risking a less than impressive first impression.
     Unfortunately, since she is dead, there will most probably be no more new Pym for me to delight in, though I understand there is still unpublished material lying around. After devouring all her novels, plus A Very Private Eye (diaries and letters), A Lot to Ask (Holt's biography), and many critical writings on her work, I scouted around for similar authors ("similar" according to reviewers and dust jacket blurbs): Anita Brookner (too relentlessly sober), Elizabeth Bowen (too dense with sensibility), Muriel Spark (too barbed and quirky), Elizabeth Taylor (closer, but still too far), and others. (With the exception of Spark, I do very much like these authors for their own particular merits, and read them regularly.) I came to the conclusion that no one quite matches Pym's unique blend of gentle/wry/subtly bawdy humor, her detached/penetrating perspicacity, and that dead-on-target verbal economy which is the hallmark of a truly gifted writer. So I will content myself with re-readings every couple of years. After all, I don't see even my very best friends more often than that, so each reunion is truly a time to treasure. Why should Barbara be any different?