The local elk drop their antlers every year.

Someone’s laptop.

Between Pym week, an unexpected trip to the Netherlands, expected house guests, and fantastically fun trip to Jackson Hole, I haven’t had much time or inspiration for blogging.

I have some bookish blog ideas swirling around. But first, the vacation photos.

John’s older brother and his family live in Jackson, Wyoming. I think there should be a rule that all relatives live in beautiful places. At 6,000 or so feet Jackson gives me a bit of altitude problems but that didn’t keep us from driving up 1,500 more feet and then climbing another 1,000. Let’s just say we were wheezing a bit.

A very refreshing dip at the top of our hike (and only halfway to the car).

More Jackie Schuman covers
One of my favorite parts of Barbara Pym Reading Week was finding out more about Pym cover designer Jackie Schuman and being able to share it on My Porch. I like the process of hunting down hard to find information, but I also like it when my efforts bring joy to others. After my post on the Dutton Pym covers, Gloria DeVidas Kirchheimer, one Jackie’s friends (who had been alerted to the post by Jackie’s daughter) wrote me a very nice email with examples of work that Jackie had done for her and her mother.

Don’t you love the title of this short story collection? I also love how Schuman combined  a wallpaper like background  in the vein of her Pym covers and the line drawing style she used for her Colette covers. (Cover design by Jackie Schuman)

(Cover design by Jackie Schuman)

Meeting bloggers in foreign lands
I have written before about meeting book bloggers in the UK and about meeting up with bloggers here in DC. During Pym week, as I was preparing for an unexpected, last minute trip to the Netherlands, Dutch blogger Anna van Gelderen contributed a Pym post. It struck me that most places in the Netherlands are day-trip material given the size of the country and the efficiency of the transit system. So I emailed Anna and asked her if she wanted to meet while I was in Den Haag. Since I was the one with all the time on my hands I hopped on a train and met Anna in the beautiful train station in her town in the northeastern part of the Netherlands.

She took me for a lovely lunch at a hotel that was once a friary. It was a beautiful spot. The weather was nice enough so that we could sit outside in the forecourt with a peaceful view of a churchyard (free of gravestones). I had delicious mushroom ravioli and we spent a lot of time forgetting to talk about books. We did, however, talk about books long enough to bond over a shared lack of interest in modernist writing and a certain amount of loathing of a couple of authors.

Now that I think of it, John and I also met up with a blogger when we visited Thailand in 2010. And of course I almost met JoAnn last month in Ithaca. Common wisdom says that the cyber world distances us from the real world. It certainly can, but I have had the opposite experience. Next time you travel, think of who you might meet along the way.

Books read recently

Angel Pavement by J.B. Priestley
I  loved this book. When I bought an edition just like the one at left, I did so just because it had such a great cover and was about London. Had no idea if it would actually be enjoyable to read. It was. It painted such an interesting picture of life in a London office in the late 1920s. It could be a Persephone for boys. There is a lot of dry, subtle humor as well.

The Autobiography of the Queen by Emma Tennant
An interesting, though not necessarily original premise of the Queen walking away from her job. The first 20 or so pages were kind of delightful, but then it just became too implausible to be enjoyable. It made me want to write my own Queen abdicates fantasy.

An Unsuitable Attachment by Barbara Pym
Since I got on a plane halfway through Barbara Pym Reading week, it seemed appropriate to take along some Pym. Usually on a long flight I get distracted. Meals, in-flight entertainment, sleeping, other books, crosswords, and just general discomfort tucking my 6’2″ frame into a doll’s chair. But Pym made it all speed by. I read this cover to cover on the flight to the Netherlands. It was, not surprisingly, delightful.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
I had seen the movie years ago but never read the book. If not for an online glossary of the made up words peppered throughout the book I never would have made it through the first two pages. After a while one no longer feels the need to look up every strange word, but sometimes my contextual guesses were wrong. I don’t really get books that are so violent. Less graphic than American Psycho, but I just don’t get this kind of violence. I know the whole point of ACO relates to violence, but I still don’t feel like I need it described.

The Widower’s Tale by Julia Glass
This is the first Glass novel I have read where I didn’t feel the need to keep a running list of implausible or inaccurate details. This isn’t to say there weren’t any in this book, but it is the first time I found the plot and writing good enough to not notice the mistakes. Or maybe they were just far fewer and less egregious. I always enjoy a book where lives are transformed generally for the better.

Except for the cover contest, the winners were chosen by random draw from all of the people who either commented on My Porch or Fig and Thistle during Pym week or who did a post on their own blog.

Winners, please email me with your mailing addresses. onmyporch [at] hotmail [dot] com

Cover Contest 
We didn’t have much of a response to our cover contest so I am especially pleased that the one person who entered made two really great covers. It would have been terrible to give a prize to a bad design. So a Barbara Pym tote bag will be going to  Melwyk at The Indextrious Reader. Incidentally, I didn’t read An Unsuitable Attachment until after she submitted her covers. I now know how appropriate the card catalog theme is for this novel.

(There should be an honorable mention for Simon from Stuck-in-a-Book. He made three covers for Some Tame Gazelle, but he submitted after the deadline.)

   
Barbara in the Bodleian by Yvonne Cocking
Mary at Mary’s Library will be getting this wonderful newly published book.

The Barbara Pym Cookbook
Miss Bibliophile, whose post on Crampton Hodnet I seemed to have missed in my recaps. Sorry about that.

Tea Towels Times Three
I have three Barbara Pym tea towels to give away. They go to:

Brona Joy at Brona’s Books

Non-blogger but big time commentor Susan from TX

Liz at Adventures in full-time self-employment

The Pymnal
This compilation of Pym-related hymns goes to Vicki at Bibliolathas.

Blogger works funny on my iPad which is all I have with me in the Netherlands. It won’t let me scroll down in the draft form of my previous post so I can’t add all the great last minute Pym posts. So I will try and post them here in a new entry.

Brona Joy reviews An Academic Question.

LyzzyBee posts not one, but two reviews. No Fond Return of Love and Quartet in Autumn.

Vicki at Biblioathas reads her first five (!) Pym’s and finds a new favorite author. 

Gaskella at Annabel’s House of Books chose Pym’s most serious novel as her first Pym read. Now she is looking forward to reading lighter Pym. 

Simon at Stuck-in-a-Book reads Some Tame Gazelle and designs a few covers.

Bibliographic Manifestations reads and likes her first Pym. This is what I love about reading weeks, it was another reading week post that prompted her to pick up a Pym. yay!

Hayley at Desperate Reader “finally finished” Excellent Women.

JoAnn at Lakeside Musing is giving away a copy of Some Tame Gazelle.

A Super Dilettante has a wonderful dinner party and somehow Barbara Pym shows up.

    

Recently @chaosbogey tweeted asking if there were any 21st-century descendants of Barbara Pym. I read so little new fiction that I am not one to come up with much of an answer. What do you think? Are there any authors currently being published that make you think of Barbara Pym? Or what 20th-century authors who came after Pym or may have been influenced by Pym?

The question got me to thinking like an Amazon algorithm “If you liked Barbara Pym you should try…” Could we clone Barbara? If you had to describe Pym by naming authors who would you name?

My thoughts run along these lines:

Jane Austen: I think the critics are right. Pym is like a 20th-century Austen. Pym’s style, while contemporary to her time, is not unlike Austen’s and her observational skills and her attention to detail and nuance are certainly Austenesque.

Anthony Trollope: Pym’s witty descriptions of ecclesiastical comings and and goings is more than a little evocative of Trollope’s Barchester series.

Iris Murdoch: Pym’s work has more humor and her characters are less serious than Murdoch’s. Not to mention the fact that Pym’s characters, while not necessarily prudish, don’t engage in endless rounds of adulterous bed hopping as they seem to in Murdoch’s books.

Anita Brookner: The academic interests of many of Pym’s female characters makes one think of similar characters in Brookner. Except Brookner’s heroines, who were all written after Pym’s death, lead far bleaker lives than any Pym character that I have so far come across. And although Brookner is infinitely more serious, her characters share an introspectiveness (introspection?) that is not uncommon in Pym.

What say you?

In a BBC radio broadcast from April 1978 Pym herself discussed some authors who may have had an influence on her writing. At the age of 16 she was convinced she wanted to write a book just like Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow. After studying at Oxford Pym discovered Elizabeth von Arnim and recognized that her work might be more a more appropriate model for her own efforts than Huxley’s. Not long after that she encountered Ivy Compton-Burnett’s fiction and for a time took to writing letters to a friend in ICB’s distinctive dialogue heavy manner. She also gives a nod to Austen and Trollope and notes that many compare her work to theirs. But she is a little sheepish about agreeing.

But what novelist of today would dare to claim that she was influenced by such masters of our craft? Certainly all who read and love Jane Austen may try to write with the same economy of language, even try to look at their characters with her kind of detachment, but that is as far as any “influence” could go.

  

Long time readers of My Porch will remember a few years ago when I fantasized about seeing a Pym novel adapted to the big screen. I even included a wish list of actors I thought would make great Pym characters (Fiona Shaw, Fenella Woolgar, Imelda Staunton, etc.). As I was looking for a picture of Sophie Thompson, I stumbled across her sister Emma. In addition to Sophie, it seemed natural that Emma would also make a good Pym character so I included her as well. Incidentally, I also included a few pictures of the incredibly handsome Mr. Emma Thompson, Gregory Wise just because, well, just because he is incredibly handsome. But now, having just read No Fond Return of Love for the first time, it occurs to me that Wise would make a great Aylwin Forbes.

But, I digress.

It is quite amazing to me that there hasn’t been any adaptations of Pym’s work to the big or small screens. Not likely to be blockbusters sure, but certainly exactly the kind of thing for those that like that kind of thing. Rather than just fantasize about bring Pym to life on screen, television producer Linda McDougall decided to do something about it.

McDougall is a British TV producer who has made many well received documentaries with subjects as diverse as Margaret Thatcher and Cot Death. She has twice won awards from the Royal Television Society and is the author of Cherie, the perfect life of Mrs Blair and Westminster Women. McDougall also writes for The Times (London) and the Daily Mail.

What she did and how it ended up is best left to her own words. So I turn over today’s Pym post to guest blogger Linda McDougall.

“I’m not very up on Barbara Pym. I’m just gay enough to want to read them, but not gay enough to have! But I’ll mention your story to the LRB and see if they bite. “

Today marks the beginning of the second half of Barbara Pym Reading Week so I thought I would  take a minute to make a few housekeeping announcements.

First up is that Amanda is having the week from hell with two of her children coming down with acute maladies that required trips to the emergency room. I believe they are both on the mend and are expected to be fine, but the result is that Amanda’s busy world suddenly got much busier. So we may not hear too much from her over the next few days.

Second, I have to move the entire Barbara Pym Reading Week office to the Netherlands today. I am taking advantage of some frequent flyer miles to visit friends in the Hague so the remainder of the reading week will be administered from Dutch soil. The only real consequence is that I am not doing a real post today and the mailing of the prizes will have to wait until I am back in the U.S. But hey, winners can’t be choosers.

Third, don’t forget there is a make your own Pym cover art contest. Submit via email or link in a comment by 6 AM U.S. Eastern Daylight Time on June 7th. Get creative and make a cover image for a Pym novel. Extra points go to those who make it thematic to a specific novel. Multiple entries are acceptable. Paint, draw, sculpt, do a collage, manipulate a photo, you name it, just make sure you put some creativity and originality into your entry.
And finally, if I have missed any of your Pym posts from June 3 or 4, please let me know.

Blog Posts

I am not sure Barbara would approve of my choice of expressions, but I have to say it: OMG.  I just came across the blog Optimal Indexing. The most amazing thing is not that it references Pym, but that the blog exists at all. It is like the characters in No Fond Return of Love have entered the digital age. I wonder if that means they limit themselves to cyberstalking or if they still do it the old fashioned Pym way.

Somehow I missed the Indextrious Reader’s TWO posts on Pym. Post the first is Mel’s story of how she met Miss Pym and post the second features some really delicious looking cucumber sandwiches.

I also missed Adventures in full-time self-employment‘s post about putting on a Pym-like frock and cardy and heading to Heavenali’s tea party.

I am not sure if this blogger knows about Barbara Pym Reading Week but she has a great blog that accompanies her class Miss Charlotte Bronte Meets Miss Barbara Pym.

Read the Gamut prepares for her entry into the world of Pym.

Indextrious Reader reads An Unsuitable Attachment and may have found her new favorite Pym.

Lyn at I Prefer Reading also gives us her take on An Unsuitable Attachment and has an edition I have never seen before.

Mary convinces me I need to get my hands on a copy of Felicity and Barbara Pym by Harrison Solow.

At least one literary soul has been saved. Barbara Pym Reading Week has made a convert out of Brona Joy.

Alex in Leeds takes her Folio Society edition of Excellent Women (with color illustrations!) for a spin.

Elisabeth at The Dirigible Plum, a long time fan discovers an early Pym she hadn’t read before.

After a five-year hiatus, Lizzy’s Literary Life returns to Pym by reading Excellent Women.

JoAnn at Lakeside Musing, unsuspectingly drawn in to reading another Pym this week, entices her readers to do the same with A Few Green Leaves.

Karen K. at Books and Chocolates reviews No Fond Return of Love.

Lisa May at TBR313 reviews Quartet in Autumn.

Anbolyn at Gudrun’s Tights also gives us a review of Quartet in Autumn.

New mom Melanie at Meli-Mello walks to the store to lay in some Pym but finds herself distracted by life.

Cosy Books has a link to the wonderful 1978 Desert Island Discs broadcast with Pym.

Yours truly reviews No Fond Return of Love.

I must say, I am particularly proud of my efforts to expand the digital footprint of the late Jackie Schuman, cover artist for Pym’s U.S. editions.

   

Out of the six Pym novels I have read, Some Tame Gazelle has been my hands down favorite since I read it in 2009. But now that I have read seven Pym novels, I must say that No Fond Return of Love has replaced STG in the number one spot. I should add, however, that NFRL‘s primacy could be short lived. I have a feeling if I reread STG it might climb back to number one. But for now, I will let No Fond Return of Love enjoy its well earned spot at the top.

Published in 1961, No Fond Return of Love was the last Pym novel published before the dark ages descended and Jonathan Cape and other publishers deemed Pym’s work not commercially viable. Maybe it was the incongruity of Pym’s world and the swinging sixties. Indeed while reading NFRL I found Pym’s occasional descriptions of beehives and short skirts to be a little jarring. Mind you, not poorly written, or inauthentic, but just out of place against my perception of the Pymsian universe I have made up in my head. Given that I am inclined toward sensible ladies drinking tea rather than the visual and cultural chaos of Carnaby Street, this is hardly surprising.

After meeting at an academic conference, Dulcie Mainwaring and Viola Dace, two educated but underemployed single women find themselves stalking the strikingly handsome Aylwin Forbes, one of the learned authors who spoke (and fainted) at the conference. We discover almost immediately that Viola has had some sort of romantic entanglement with Aylwin and is still carrying a torch for him, but it isn’t until later that we find out that Viola is the reason Aylwin’s wife has recently left him. If we believe Viola, there was someting meaningful between them. If we believe Aylwin, he merely meant to thank Viola with a kiss for creating the index for one of his books. (No doubt the truth likes somewhere in the middle.)

The two women stalking Aylwin unfolds rather subtley and in a way that is somewhat surprising given their sensible, decorous personalities. And watching that happen is one of the great pleasures of this novel. It is easy to see why some refer to Pym as a 20th century Jane Austen, No Fond Return of Love has its share of vicars, gossip, and even a trip to the seaside town where folks bump into each other.

Many of the things that so endear Pym’s fans to her work are present here: incredibly precise and concise attention to manners, food, clothing, and emotions; witty, trenchant observations of the social and professional workings of the worlds of literature, scholarship, and the Church of England; and women. We read about and believe in her well drawn male characters, but ultimately Pym’s is a woman’s world. They may be weak or strong or somewhere in between, but they are always authentic. While Pym may lean towards making her female characters more independent minded one rarely feels she is judging any of her women–or men for that matter. Pym’s preference for observation rather than judgment may be a result of her years working for anthropology related organizations, just as the other characteristics common in her work were no doubt drawn from her own milieu.

If you haven’t read any Pym yet, I think No Fond Return of Love is a wonderful place to start.

[Incidentally, the copy of NFRL I read was the new reissue of the novel from Open Road Media who also publish e-versions of the work. I’m so glad I bought a copy when I was at the Pym Society Conference in March because I only just found another edition of this title which are a little hard to find on this side of the Atlantic. But more importantly, the Open Road paperback editions are quite lovely. The covers and the paper feel good to the touch, the type is clear and fresh, and the covers don’t try and make Pym look like chick-lit.]