Katharine Beutner's Blog, page 4

Final Goodreads reminder

The deadline for entering the Goodreads giveaway of three paperback copies of Alcestis is tonight! There are, as I post this, about twelve and a half hours showing on the countdown clock on the site (apparently the widget is a little slower to update?):

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Alcestis
by Katharine Beutner

Giveaway ends March 15, 2011.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

More miscellany

Still recovering from my busy week, and now from spring forward, too. Mostly I spent the latter half of the week reading — I finally finished The Ambassadors, then read Jessica Stern's Denial: A Memoir of Terror, then Cynthia Ozick's Foreign Bodies. (I put up short reviews on my Goodreads page if you're curious.) I've also been looking at things on the internet, as you do. Some of those things have been upsetting — like this incredibly unsettling video of some of the most minor effects of the earthquake in Japan (cracks in the ground, filling with water).

If you haven't donated to the Red Cross or another organization to support Japan's relief effort, please do.

Some more cheerful (or at least distracting) links:

Recommended to me by a friend: the Arvon Book of Life Writing.
An interview with Ann Patchett about an essay of hers in Granta.
Daniel Craig cross-dresses to make a point about gender inequality, with narration by Dame Judi Dench. (I'm not sure it's the clearest visual argument I've ever seen, but who cares, it's Daniel Craig in a dress.)
An online exhibition of Isabella Stewart Gardner's travel albums.
The NYPL digital picture collection.
A striking essay by Sherwood Smith about learning how to rewrite and get beyond the "easy phrase."

And finally: Anthony Lane snarks about Oscar-worthy movies by predicting future winners. Here's the best:

2013

"HOUSE"

After "The Queen," "Elizabeth," and "The Young Victoria," which British queens remain to be explored? Step forward, Anne (played by a pitch-perfect Hugh Laurie), who reigned from 1702 to 1714, and who is now mainly associated with an elegant style of architecture and furniture. The last word in country-house period drama, with its soundtrack scored exclusively for cello, harp, and panpipes, and a controversial winner over David Fincher's blistering, bang-up-to-date texting drama "Elimin8." With Sir Michael Gambon, as Blenheim Palace, and a brief but scene-stealing turn from Dame Judi Dench, as a wingback chair with cabriole legs.

I'm so tempted to start casting my dissertation now. (Miranda Richardson as Martha Fowke Sansom!)

Also, remember that the Alcestis paperback giveaway on Goodreads ends March 15 — only a day or so left! I'll post about this once more tomorrow, too.

Milestones

It's been a very busy and exciting week. Here are a few reasons why:

Can you tell that Inge's head is upside down in this photo?

 

That's Inge declaring ownership of the box in which a copy of my (giant) dissertation is sitting. The diss. is with my committee members now, and we're working on scheduling a defense in late April. There's still work to do, of course. But: whew. That is the sound of me taking a short breather. (And doing some Killingly work, I hope!)

The book sitting on top of my dissertation draft includes my first substantial scholarly publication. It's an edited collection entitled Masters of the Marketplace: British Women Novelists of the 1750s – my essay is about Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote. The book looks beautiful, don't you think?

(Inge is not responsible for making this week exciting and busy — thankfully — but she and Saki have definitely helped make it more enjoyable. Except for when they decide to race around the apartment just as I'm falling asleep.)

I've also learned that Alcestis is a finalist for the BSFS Compton Crook Award for 2010, with results to be announced in early April.

Finally, don't forget that the Goodreads giveaway of three paperback copies of Alcestis ends March 15th!

After I catch my breath a bit, I'll be back with more links and perhaps more news.

A meme

It's been forever since I've done a meme like this, but I've seen this book meme circulating and I'm brain-fried enough to need some structure for my content this evening. So!

The book I am reading: I'm about 3/4 of the way through The Ambassadors, which I'd tried once before and hadn't gotten into. I love James, though I think I'm more comfortable with the middle period than his late style (I haven't read The Golden Bowl or The Princess Casamassima yet, though). The Ambassadors is — well, it's an entire book about whether one young man will choose to leave one place and go back to another, from the POV of a fifty-year-old friend of the family who overthinks everything. It makes me want to flee to Paris myself, or rather to the Paris in the book. It's a ridiculous book, in some ways — it has essentially no plot and the majority of the action involves characters turning each other's words around and emphasizing things when they talk — but it's very beautiful, too. I'm really enjoying it.

The book I am writing: Killingly — my 1890s New England Gothic about a disappearing college girl and her unusual best friend. And I recently finished writing a book-length dissertation, which should count for something, I think.

The book I love most: I've seen a lot of people refusing to choose, and I sympathize. Today I would say Middlemarch. Tomorrow it might be Persuasion, or Portrait of a Lady, or Possession.

The last book I received as a gift: There is a wrapped book sitting downstairs waiting for me to open it on my birthday tomorrow. I'm trying to remember what book I was given most recently before this. Possibly a gluten-free cookbook from family at Christmas?

The last book I gave as a gift: Hermione Lee's A Very Short Introduction to Biography, which is really charming and well-put-together.

The nearest book on my desk: The fantastic Memoirs of Laetitia Pilkington, A. C. Elias, Jr.'s 1997 edition from the University of Georgia Press. It's two volumes totaling 845 pp., the second being only notes. LP is one of my dissertation subjects, and she's probably the one I'd most want to invite over for tea. The gossip would be exquisite.

PS. Don't forget about the Con or Bust auction entry for Alcestis — bidding ends on Sunday.

Con Or Bust auction: another chance at a paperback

So, the Goodreads giveaway of three paperback copies of Alcestis is still going, but I'm also contributing one signed paperback copy to the Con Or Bust auction. Con Or Bust raises funds to send fans of color to SF/fantasy cons. Originally, it supported fans who wanted to attend Wiscon, but this year it's been broadened to support any con a fan chooses. Visit the link above to bid — bidding closes on March 6, as that post explains — and your bid will help.

I don't think I'll be at Wiscon this year, unfortunately, since the combo of dissertation and job market is pretty much eating my spring. But I had a great time when I attended for the first time last year and I hope I'll be able to go back in the future.

And to conclude this post, before I dive back into scholarly work: the Viking Answer Lady. You're welcome.

The Agony Column

Still finishing up some dissertation business, but I had to pop in here to share this: a printed collection of The Agony Column of the Times, 1800-1870, from 1881. These are amazing — half are written in code, and the other half are just mysterious and strange. Highly recommended if you want entertainment or inspiration for historical fiction.

This e-text is made available by the California Digital Library, which has a browseable and searchable index.

Also: don't forget that my paperback Alcestis giveaway on Goodreads runs through March 15. Go here to enter and please do pass the link around.

Whew.

Just to get this out of the way: paperback giveaway! Go to it!

I have brain-drain from lots of dissertation chapter editing, so it's mostly links tonight:

Paul Ford on the fundamental question of the Internet: why wasn't I consulted?
Advice about writing workshops from USC professors.
The last unknown victims of the Triangle Waist Company fire have been identified.
Memory palaces: the extreme sports version.
A long and interesting interview with Alison Bechdel about memoir, memory, fiction, and narrative structure.
One of the Stockett family's maids files suit against Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help.
Jesse Eisenberg's Marxist-Socialist jokes and "manageable tongue-twisters" at McSweeney's.

Body talk

I love doing giveaways on Goodreads — there's something delightful about watching the number tick up as more people enter. Right now the giveaway's only actually been accessible for three days, I think, and more than 360 people have requested the book. (Last year's ARC giveaway got up to over 1000, I think.) I'd rather like to hug them all.

This week has been full of dissertation, but I took a break on Thursday night to go see Robyn at ACL Live as part of her Body Talk tour. If you like electro-pop and have a chance to see her, I highly recommend it. Somebody's uploaded a few short videos from the show to YouTube; this is the best one. If you think you hear an echo, that's the entire venue singing along. (Also, see this interesting documentary clip about the "dynamic textile" liquid art used in Robyn's "Indestructible" video.)

I'll post again soon with more literary links. I'm working on my laptop right now, and, as always, half the things I've been meaning to mention here are open in tabs on my desktop. Someday I'll develop the habit of tagging things on delicious right away rather than leaving them open for a few days first. For now, I'll just point out that Paul Lisicky will be reading at the Joynes Reading Room on the UT campus on Wednesday, February 23, at 7:30, and that UT Theatre & Dance is currently staging The Threepenny Opera.

'Alcestis' paperback giveaway!

I have a nice big box of Alcestis paperbacks from my publisher, so I've decided to give away three copies on Goodreads.

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Goodreads Book Giveaway

Alcestis

by Katharine Beutner

Giveaway ends March 15, 2011.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

To enter to win a copy, just log on to Goodreads and click the "enter towin" button. And please spread this link around! I'm happy to sign the copies before I send them to the winners.

Also, if you haven't checked out Elizabeth Loupas's guest blog post from earlier this week on her forthcoming The Second Duchess, please do!

Guest post: Elizabeth Loupas on 'The Second Duchess'

The gorgeous cover to the right of this text belongs to Elizabeth Loupas's The Second Duchess, a historical novel inspired by Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess." Since Elizabeth's book will hit shelves on March 1, I asked her if she'd mind writing up some thoughts about her writing and research process, and about fictionalizing real (and already fictionalized) events.

Elizabeth:

First I'd like to thank Katharine for inviting me to write a bit about the intersection between "My Last Duchess" and The Second Duchess, and how researching and writing the book changed my reading of the poem. Thank you, Katharine, and congratulations on the paperback release of your own beautiful, beautiful Alcestis.

I have loved "My Last Duchess" from the time I first read it in junior high. For junior-high-me, it had everything—the glamour of the Renaissance, a darkly brooding narrator, a beautiful and doomed heroine. At first I saw only the surface romance of it. Later, in university classes, I read it more carefully and followed the traditional interpretation—the duke as a madman who murdered his innocent wife out of pride and jealousy and sheer possessiveness. My focus was always on the duke and the duchess and I never really thought about the unseen character of the potential second wife.

Much later, when I was tutoring high school students through writing essays about the poem, it suddenly struck me that there was yet another level to the poem's story. Who was this second wife? What would she make of her new husband? At that time I did not know any of the historical background, or even that Browning had based the poem on fictionalized versions of historical personages.

So I began to look things up—research! How I love it—and a whole new world opened up to me. The poem's duke, Alfonso II d'Este, became less a one-note megalomaniacal villain and more a classic Renaissance prince in the mode of Machiavelli. His first duchess, Lucrezia de' Medici, became less the innocent victim and more a willful seventeen-year-old. (She was only fourteen when she and Duke Alfonso were married, and seventeen when she died.) The duke's second wife, Barbara of Austria, took on a face and a personality of her own as well—she was twenty-six, old for a first marriage at that time, and ambassadors' letters are frank about her lack of beauty.

Browning chose one way to fictionalize the relationships of these three people—a way, I think, that reflects his own Victorian sensibilities, his admiration of the Romantics and Pre-Raphaelites, and his taste for psychological drama. I wanted to choose a different way. I did. The Second Duchess is the result.

So for me now, there are two ways to read "My Last Duchess." One is the way Browning intended, and which a million students and critics have expounded—that the duke is a madman and that he had his first duchess murdered. When asked what his meaning was, Browning himself said, "I meant that the commands were that she should be put to death, or he might have had her shut up in a convent." So this is Browning's story, and he's sticking to it. There's something to be said for it—it's compelling drama.

The other way to read the poem is with the genuine historical personages in mind. Duke Alfonso was a soldier, a sportsman, a musician. He fought in the French army with his cousin Henri II of France. He was a world-class tennis player—the first written book of rules for tennis is dedicated to him. He was the patron of the first professional female singers in Europe, the Consort of Ladies. So although he was indeed vain, arrogant, and vengeful, he was a sixteenth-century prince and that was what was expected of him.

Young Duchess Lucrezia, so often characterized as an innocent victim of the Duke's jealousy and madness, was the daughter of Cosimo I de' Medici; she and her sisters were not as sheltered as one might think. (Read the fascinating story of Lucrezia's older sister Isabella in Caroline P. Murphy's Murder of a Medici Princess. Isabella plays a critical role in my Lucrezia's development, and she's far from innocent.) Even Browning hints at the duchess having a mind of her own: "…and if she let / Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set / Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse…"

It changes everything. I think it makes the poem richer. Browning's fictionalization, and a re-fictionalization based on the historical record, intertwine with each other for me now as I read, and make my experience of the poem all the more intricate and powerful.

(The Second Duchess, published by Penguin/NAL, will be released March 1, 2011. For complete details see www.elizabethloupas.com. Thanks, Elizabeth, for writing about it here!)