Friday Overlooked Book Club: The Price of Salt

I was making my late night rounds and discovered through Josephine Damian’s blog that blogger Patti Abbott has come up with the brilliant idea for The Friday Overlooked Book Club.

This is how Patti describes it:

“This is the first of what I optimistically hope will become Friday recommendations of books we love but might have forgotten over the years. I have asked several people to help me by also remembering a favorite book. Their blog sites are listed below. I also asked each of them to tag someone to recommend a book for next Friday. I'm worried great books of the recent past are sliding out of print and out of our consciousness. Not the first-tier classics we all can name, but the books that come next. Here's my choice.”

You’ll have to go here to see what it is.

This is a great way to put those books that had their three months in the sun back into the spotlight again.

So here is my Friday Overlooked Book Selection:

The Price of Salt, by Patricia Highsmith was written in 1953 under the pseudonym, Claire Morgan. Highsmith (1921 – 1995) was known for her psychological thrillers. Strangers on a Train was adapted to film by Alfred Hitchcock and three of the five Tom Ripley novels she wrote have been adapted to film (only two have been released). Highsmith lived most of her life after 1963 as an expatriate in Europe and although she was highly acclaimed, she was never truly appreciated in the United States until after her death.

The Price of Salt was written after Strangers on a Train, but rejected by her publisher, presumably because of its lesbian content. It was published elsewhere and after its paperback release, sold over a million copies and became a lesbian cult classic.

Many reviewers consider The Price of Salt to be one of the most under recognized and under appreciated novels of the 20th century. Terry Castle of The New Republic wrote:

“I have long had a theory that Nabokov knew The Price of Salt and modeled the climactic cross-country care chase in Lolita on Therese and Carol’s frenzied bid for freedom…Highsmith was the first writer to mix roadside Americana, transgressive sex, and the impinging threat of a morals charge – and she went about it as masterfully as anyone.”

Highsmith’s prose is simple, but elegant:

“ ‘Some things don’t react. But everything’s alive.’ He turned around with a broad smile, as if quite another train of thought had entered his head. He was holding up the match, which was still smoking. ‘Like this match. And I’m not talking about physics, about the indestructibility of smoke. In fact, I feel rather poetic today.’

‘About the match?’

‘I feel as if it were growing, like a plant, not disappearing. I feel everything in the world must have the texture of a plant sometimes to a poet. Even this table, like my own flesh.’ He touched the table edge with his palm. ‘It’s like a feeling I had once riding up a hill on a horse. It was in Pennsylvania. I didn’t know how to ride very well then, and I remember the horse turning his head and seeing the hill, and deciding by himself to run up it, his hind legs sank before we took off, and suddenly we were going like blazes and I wasn’t afraid at all. I felt completely in harmony with the horse and the land, as if we were a whole tree simply being stirred by the wind in its branches. I remember being sure that nothing would happen to me then, but some other time, yes, eventually. And it made me very happy. I thought of all the people who are afraid and hoard things, and themselves, and I thought, when everybody in the world comes to realize what I felt going up that hill, then there’ll be a kind of right economy of living and of using and using up.’”

This was a great book and I plan to read more of Patricia Highsmith.

What are your overlooked book recommendations?

Can a WIP Get Jealous?

I thought maybe since I'm having so much trouble writing Chapter 12 of The Foundling Wheel, I'd post part of the first chapter of the WIP I set aside for the Dickens Challenge. How do you like that Tracy? Aaron? Hmm? You don't want to tell me what happens next? Maybe I'll go back to my other imaginary friends. How would that be? If you feel like giving it a read, it would be interesting to hear how this excerpt, which I started writing nearly a year ago, compares to The Foundling Wheel, which up until now had been a much more spontaneous effort.

* * *

With her children settled into bed, Mimi led Tash to the cracked flagstone patio and they relaxed into the weathered old wooden chairs with their cold beer. He’d forgotten the sky was so black here, that the stars and the moon could create this heavenly chiaroscuro. The light from stars, some of them perhaps burned out millions of years ago, illuminated the tips of the neatly cut lawn out to the edges of blackness where a row of eastern pines began. Lilac bushes, their heart-shaped leaves the only reminder of their once heavy blooms, crowded the side of the barn, now converted to a garage. First one tiny light flickered and then another glowed, hesitated and moved on. He’d forgotten about fireflies. They both looked up at the stars and sipped from the sweating glass bottles, savoring the hoppy effervescence.

Mimi broke the silence. “Hal’s having an affair.”

Road noise from a faraway thoroughfare ripped through the quiet summer night now and then like sniper fire popping in a neighboring village; the only interruption to the bickering crickets and the pitiable croaking of a lone bullfrog.

Tash tried to view his sister with detachment, the way a stranger might. Having four children would almost certainly have wreaked some havoc on her slim, petite body but her clothed figure gave no evidence to that. She was well past forty, but she was still shapely, toned and tanned from spending time in the garden and at children’s sporting events. Her arms were tight, even muscular; no doubt the result of lifting one or another of her progeny around dozens of times a day. Her legs were strong and pretty, her feet clad in white tennis shoes, flecked with grass stains and earth. There was a nearly imperceptible thickening to her waist. She didn’t appear to be carrying extra weight, but the inevitable metamorphosis that occurs when a woman begins her transition to middle age was subtly redistributing her shape. Mimi’s hair, always thick and shiny, had lost none of its luster, but there was a vague gauntness to her cheeks and a barely noticeable looseness to her jaw line. Never one to wear makeup, she had taken some care to preserve her skin and its only betrayal to her age were the clusters of crows feet framing each eye that were destined to form sooner or later. In Mimi’s case it was sooner. An uncharacteristic vanity made her stubbornly resist wearing glasses, although she’d needed them since high school.

With some relief, Tash concluded that his older sister’s appearance was above average for a woman of her age. Maintaining objectivity when assessing a sibling was tough, and doubly so because of the years between visits. He was always startled at how much she aged between trips. He could not help thinking of her as a young woman during the years he knew her best. A quarter of a century ago, she was an object of desire for his few brainy, libidinous high school friends. If Hal was unfaithful to Mimi, it was not because she’d let herself go. They’d been married a long time. Could it be fifteen years? Could it be longer? It wasn’t news to either Tash or Mimi that infidelity was common among forty and fifty-something businessmen, but there was something disturbing about the matter-of-fact way she presented the situation to him. Mimi was rabidly territorial as a child and it was hard to believe the possessiveness she displayed toward her record collection and her first car didn’t extend to Hal.

“What makes you believe he’s having an affair?”

Mimi draped one leg over the arm of the weatherworn Adirondack chair and squinted through the darkness to look at him.

“I’m not an idiot. That’s the first thing I know.” She began ticking items off on each slender finger as she answered. “He started paying much more attention to his appearance, completely out of the blue. I won’t go into detail, but let’s just say that includes his personal grooming. At about the same time, he suddenly started working out. He got a lot more secretive on the computer. He started running a lot more errands, and taking too long to do them. When he stopped leaving his cell phone lying around, I knew something was up. I checked his sent and received calls and listened to his voice messages. It was pretty obvious.” She tugged at her thumb, the last tickable digit on her hand.

Tash stretched his legs out and crossed his ankles. This sounded bad. Any notion he had of a relaxing, low-stress escape from his own problems evaporated. In between swigs of beer, Mimi jiggled her ankle and picked at a cuticle. Given his unfamiliarity with the adult Mimi he saw through the dimness, it was impossible to know whether this was her usual antsy behavior or if she was about to unravel.

“It does sound pretty damning, but I don’t think you should jump to any conclusions just yet. Did you question or confront him about it?”

“I didn’t ask him anything, and I’m not planning to. He doesn’t ever need to know that I know. Look, I get why he’d do this, I really do. I’m pretty sure I could crawl inside his head and figure out what he’s thinking. I’m not going to see him throw a grenade into the middle of our marriage and fuck up my family, just because he’s feeling old. If I confront him, and he’s convinced himself that this fling is something serious, things could turn in a direction I have no intention of going. I know Hal. At this point in his life I’m sure he’s bored. I’m sure that by the time he’s done working, comes home to all five of us and sees me worn out from chasing them around all day, he probably thinks this wasn’t what he signed up for. No, we don’t have as much sex as we used to. Yes, I get tired, and no, I’m not always ready to worship at the altar of his penis. I’m sure this woman is glamorous, and kid-free and has nothing better to do when they get together than slip her bikini-waxed cooch into some crotch-less, expensive lingerie, pop open some Veuve Cliquot, fall to her knees and go down on him for hours in her tastefully decorated apartment, while he thinks this is what he’s been missing out on. I’m sure they’ve been dashing around New York, dining in romantic bistros and going to parties with her exciting, single, younger friends, and he’s convinced himself he’s denying himself the life he deserves. Who could blame him? I’ll tell you who – nobody, if any of that was real -- but it’s not. I mean, it may be what’s real for him right now, but it won’t stay that way.”

Tash stared at his sister while she tried to examine the backs of her hands in the darkness. He was surprised by the graphic terms, and he wasn’t sure how to react to her business-like assessment of her husband’s real or suspected philandering. He wished he knew her better. If not for Sarah, he wouldn’t make the infrequent calls to his sister that he did and he’d never think to send birthday cards to his niece and nephews or shop for them at Christmas. The sporadic communications never provided an opportunity to really talk to Mimi. If her marriage was in trouble before this, there was no reason to expect she’d confide in him. There was a lot he assumed about her, but nothing he really knew, and Hal was a virtual stranger. Tash didn’t know if Mimi and Hal had a good relationship, if they were friends, if they loved each other, or if they were like nearly every other married couple he knew who looked to be sleepwalking through life, paying the bills, caring for the kids, going to bed at night and endlessly repeating the same quotidian routine.

“Mimi, aren’t you upset?”

“Of course I’m upset.” He could barely see her hands, gesturing in the darkness like two ghostly birds.

“Just because I’m not sobbing and cramming my head in the oven, it doesn’t mean I’m not upset.” She pulled her hands back, as if trying to control their flitting, darting expressions and crossed her arms, hugging herself.

“OK, I’m just surprised you’re not more emotional about it.”

The truth was that it didn’t surprise Tash all that much. As a young woman, Mimi was unusually independent, at times even callous when it came to her boyfriends and lovers. What was disconcerting was that she seemed to want to hold her marriage together, but was employing the emotional detachment he’d seen her use to dismiss others from her life. He couldn’t recall her ever being on the receiving end of a breakup or having her heart broken.

Mimi asked, “What’s the point of getting emotional? Look, I love Hal, even though he’s acting like a ridiculous asshole right now. We’ve built a life together and he’s the father of my children.”

The symphony of crickets approached a crescendo and now the bullfrog sounded suicidal. Peeled rubber barked through the darkness, a dramatic exit from a drunken marital spat or maybe the testosterone fuelled ebullience of youth on a hot summer night.

Their own father had left their mother for a much younger woman before either Hal or Mimi left for college. Victor Lentz loved and was loved by many women and neither he nor his wife, Katherine attempted to hide it from their children. Their father’s infidelities had embarrassed them, forced them to view him as a sexual being instead of a parent; their mother’s self-imposed martyrdom made them feel helpless at first, then alternatively awkward or annoyed. Victor married his paramour, but Katherine remained frozen in time, unable or unwilling to get on with her life.

Tash began peeling away the label on his beer bottle. “Mimi, have you talked with anyone else about this?”

Mimi leaned over and patted her brother on the arm. “Of course I haven’t. This isn’t going to turn into a drama, and nobody else ever needs to know about it. Since you’re here, I take it as a sign that you need to help me. I could use your objectivity and analytical brain to help keep me on an even keel. I need you to come to New York with me for a couple of days. Don’t worry; I’m not going to do anything crazy. I just need to know what I’m dealing with. This will be fun, Tash. I promise you first-class accommodations, fine dining, plentiful adult beverages and of course, scintillating conversation.”

Her enthusiasm and her attempt to color this mission as a few fun days in the city brought on a dull aching in his temples and he could taste acid in the back of his throat. Mimi’s resentment of her mother’s role as victim had bred in her a Do something, even if it’s wrong mentality that fed her impulsive nature. He’d often envied her willingness to chase her passions without regard for the consequences. For once he wished she’d adopt his more reserved approach of When in doubt, don’t.

What Will People Think?

The older I get, the easier it becomes to fictionalize painful feelings, awkward emotions and other uncomfortable subjects.

In my youth and young adult years, I found myself in the midst of constant drama and I wasn’t capable of writing much that wasn’t pure personal angst, but now that I am as grown up as I plan to be, the school of hard knocks is behind me. With the distance that time and growth afford, I can reflect on emotion, examine it and re-purpose it to fit fictional characters without much trouble at all.

But there is still a part of me that hesitates when I describe loss, love or humiliation. It’s not the strangers who might read my words and make assumptions about who I am that give me pause. That doesn’t concern me for a minute. I worry that the people who knew the most about me at some point in my life will believe the squirmy parts to be more memoir than fiction.

After all, we never really change all that much in the minds of those who knew us when, do we?

I’ve often wondered if writing truthfully and accessing painful emotions is easier now that neither of my parents is alive. I wonder if it would be possible for me to write some of the things I do if I had children of my own who might read me. There are things I’ve written in recent years that I might not have if I had a larger family. I think perhaps at one time I was afraid there were people who would see too much truth in what they’d read and take it personally.

Do people do that?

Maybe I assume people read more into my work than they do.

I suppose I make certain assumptions about authors whose work I find particularly brave or honest. When authors access emotion that grabs me by the throat or the heart, I just know they’ve experienced that emotion. But that author is a stranger and my perceptions are general in nature. I don’t know the facts of their lives.

What do you think? Do you avoid writing about certain thoughts, or emotions or even about sex or violence because of how you think those closest to you will see you or because perhaps you’re afraid they might see themselves? If your parents are no longer living, has it changed your writing? Does having children change the way you approach your writing?