Guardian Angel and Other Stories

by Margery Latimer, Nancy Loughridge (Afterword), Meridel Le Sueur (Afterword)

"Margery Latimer knows and understands human beings, particularly those who have been treated none too gently in the course of their lives. . . . The heaviness and world-weariness of her stories are balanced by the excellent craftsmanship which is the outstanding feature of her work" ( The New York Times). When Margery Latimer died in childbirth in 1932 at the age of thirty-three, she left behind a small body of published and unpublished fiction. Ironic, distancing, and somewhat surreal, Latimer explores sexuality and the unconscious in a midwestern setting.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

264 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1993

About the author

Margery Bodine Latimer was an American writer, feminist theorist, and social activist. She moved to New York City before finishing college and became involved in its cultural life. Latimer published two highly acclaimed novels, We Are Incredible (1928) and This is My Body (1930), and two collections of short stories, Nellie Bloom and Other Stories (1929), and Guardian Angel and Other Stories (1932).

Her formally experimental fiction was greatly influenced by the modernism of the 1920s. Reviewers of the period compared her to Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and D. H. Lawrence. Her work reflects her feminist, socialist, and anti-racist ideals.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good indeed - unexpectedly "modern" feel - fans of Kavan/Joy Williams/Lispector etc should find much they like here.


more details here:

http://joycastro.com/Latimer%20articl...

And a wonderful, short, piece by her on experimental writing can be read here:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4...

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

The Review of Contemporary Fiction: Fall 2001: Gilbert Sorrentino/William Gaddis/Mary Caponegro/Margery Latimer.


Did you read that title? Try again ::

The Review of Contemporary Fiction: Fall 2001: Gilbert Sorrentino/William Gaddis/Mary Caponegro/Margery Latimer


I'll spell it out ::

Sorrentino
Gaddis
Caponegro
Margery Latimer.


The present volume is a 1984 reprint from The Feminist Press. gr=Ratings -- 6. Of the four Latimer volumes in the gr=db, a total of :: eleven (.11.) gr=Ratings. This is how difficult the unBURIAL is.

How is her writing? Very good. Personally, the shorter ones in here rang more solid than the longer titular. But if you have an affinity for the modernist short story, no doubt -- you need to read Latimer, you are required to read Latimer. And [Q::] what's your excuse for not having read Latimer? A:: she's BURIED. You should be utterly incensed that no one ever in your life previously has provided you with the opportunity to read Latimer because they did not even perform the least courtesy of providing you with the knowledge of even her faintest existence.

Here's some little facts ::
--Latimer was protege of the first Pulitzer Winning Woman :: Zona Gale (for drama).
--Married Jean Toomer.
--She and Toomer were involved in some nutty stuff inspired by the nutty G.I. Gurdjieff, the Deepak Chopra of his day I suppose.
--Died in child=birth at 33.

--This Feminist Press edition comes complete with three Afterwords ;; The Life, The Memoir, and The Work.
--It would appear that the go=to expert on Latimer is one Joy Castro. She provided the essay in the RCF. I just can't resist another ReadaLong mit NR this Saturday morn. I'll be reading ::

"Joy Castro on Margery Latimer’s “The New Freedom”: A Manifesto of the Modernist as a Young Woman: A Manifesto of the Modernist as a Young Woman"
http://www.essaydaily.org/2013/05/joy...


"...immediately fell in love with her gorgeous, weird, difficult fiction." The adjective "difficult" which some find so controversial is always reassuring to me. Allow the difficulties.

"Abandoning my sensible plan to write a dissertation on canonical modernists, I devoted myself to Latimer’s novels and short stories, and I never looked back."

"scholars have found almost no modernist manifestoes authored by women, so I was stunned to discover Latimer’s flash essay “The New Freedom.”"
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
[thanks, Sean!]

"a young writer who went on to publish in the same high modernist venues as Faulkner, Stein, and Joyce"

“Everyone knows the sort of person who tells you to break up your thoughts with commas and semicolons instead of periods. And who bewails the ignorance of modern writers.” --Latimer [and bewails the ignorance of the POSTmodernist writers!]

"Then you will want to keep on murdering words. It will become your favorite pastime.” --Latimer

"Latimer casts literary convention as a cranky man who bellows and roars his authority, a tyrannical traditionalist of the English language who “wants you to wilt but you must not.”" --like many a gr=Reviewer who mention first and foremost the lack of plot and the unlikable characters. They like what they like, but they're cranks.

"“you are more important than he is” --Latimer

"together with her use of second-person address, opens space to construct her reader—that is, the fellow experimental writer—as potentially female."

"Now you are free to add to the race of words as rapidly as you please. . . . Don’t let anyone stop you! Down with birth control!” --Latimer

“If you have ever watched a word put on its hat and walk down your tongue out into the world you will always want it to do as it pleases. . . . And now your words will make their own streets and cities and worlds.” --That is vintage Gass. I say, Gass plagiarized Latimer!!! "J'accuse ...!"

"“The New Freedom” broke fresh ground. Five years would pass before Virginia Woolf would publish—again employing the essay form—the most famous feminist literary manifesto we have"




That's pretty much what I've got for you this morning. Please do yourself a favor and work into your '18 Reading Agenda a little Spade=WERK. There's more deserving writers than have been dreamed of by our literary establishments.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Margery Latimer died too soon in childbirth, and would probably have become a great writer if these wonderful stories are anything to go by. My favourite (from this selection) is 'Nellie Bloom', about a spurned fiancée, whose groom-to-be runs off with her best friend. The writing is very much of its time (1920s/30s) and comparisons have been made to Woolf, Mansfield and Lawrence. Would-be artists kick against convention and small town manners. It can be a little overwrought in places (for my taste) - a lot of heads hanging and face clutching - but there is also plenty of humour and devastating insight into relationships. Throughout there are brilliant moments and great writing.
A fairly typical passage:
Now it was silent and she began making pleats in her skirt to keep that funny feeling away from inside her. Then she knew her father was coming. She knew he was kicking the bricks as he walked, his head lowered, and his sad face very white and hurt. Now that funny feeling was so strong that she couldn't breathe very well and she had to move her whole body in a big jerk so that she could swallow. He was coming fast and he was big and dark like a moving cliff. "Papa," she said over and over to herself, half crying. Then she crawled down the bank and followed quietly in his big dark shadow. Once he turned and she saw his large soft eye look at her. He waited but did not speak and she walked beside him in little jerks and runs to keep up with his nervous gait.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.5)

Margery Latimer is a buried American modernist writer. This book published by The Feminist Press contains a selection from her two published short story collections. For its time, her fiction is unusual in its piercing exposure of the bleak despair experienced by many American women in the 1920s, trapped as they were within the patriarchal framework governing nearly every sector of their lives. In addition to her feminist commentary, Latimer also takes jabs at the American Dream, as well as exploring broader existential themes common to modernist literature. My favorites were the first three stories ('Nellie Bloom', 'Mr. and Mrs. Arnold', and 'The Family'), which incorporate some of the more surreal elements (mostly in the form of absurd dialogue) alluded to on the back cover. The title story, also the longest, is a thinly disguised evisceration of Latimer's long-time mentor and proponent Zona Gale, who did an about-face on her stance against marriage and domesticity by marrying a wealthy conservative man and starting a family.

Latimer died at age 33 from childbirth complications, otherwise she would likely be better known today, as she was clearly a prodigy still honing her craft. In addition to her two short fiction collections, she also managed to publish two novels before her untimely demise, both of which are out of print and difficult to find. Her work has been compared favorably in reviews to the New Zealand modernist Katherine Mansfield, whom I haven't read in a couple of decades so can't comment on the comparison.

[Agnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

The afterword by Louis Kampf was excellent
"Underlying nearly everything that occurs in these pages is the condition of the lives of many women in the United States during the 1920s. These small town, white, largely middle-class women play out their roles as wives, mothers, spinster aunts, whatever. Fulfillment and status is supposed to come through their husbands. thier duties are to be supportive and happy. Somehow it doesn't work out that way. Hardly anyone-woman or man-is happy."

" For the women Latimer writes about, there seem to be no alternatives. They are stuck in their social situation. if their husbands are decent, they can make a life for themselves by hooking into the rituals and networks women have elaborated for centuries. If their husbands are brutish, insanity may be their lot. There are no forms of rebellion which really free women from the ties of their towns, their families, and the emotional straight jacket of their upbringing. Latimers understanding of this condition gives her stories a depth I do not find in the work of Anderson or Hemingway. Her characters' despair is grounded in the hard work of staying emotionally alive from day to day."

Yet again, I am grateful to the feminist press for publishing & rescuing great women's works.
Read the afterwards! There were 3 included and they gave great context to Latimer's life, writing, & the world she lived in.
I don't usually compare writers, but this gave me Shirley Jackson vibes (a big compliment)- the angst of domesticity and the insanity ready to burst from women's minds.
Latimer was a progressive person with a fascinating life - there was a scandal in California because she was married to Jean Toomer, a writer and mixed race man and was accused of a "sinister conspiracy" to take over the white race, the legality of their marriage was questioned, they got hate mail & threats.
Even though I did not enjoy 4/9 stories the ones I did more than made up for it.

Out of the 9 stories I thought 2 were genius, I got really excited- Mr.& Mrs Arnold and The Family

"If I'd known thirty years ago what I know now, I'd have set the world on fire."

"I am Mrs. Beale, a wife and mother, respected by the doctor, the dentist, our butcher, in the electric office, in the gas, general coal, trusted by the egg man, the vegetable man and in the fruit market. I can charge wherever I please. Our credit is good. No one needs to know what I think or feel about anything. That is my own. I can nod, no matter what is said, whether I believe or not, and know in myself what I really believe and I don't care what anyone in the world believes just so I can have peace and quiet and no one drips on the clean cloth."

I liked 3 stories- Nellie Bloom, Gisella & Monday Morning.

It is disappointing I did not enjoy the story Guardian Angel, I had a hard time understanding the relationships, did not connect with the main character, and I thought Vanessa was a child, not old enough to be engaged- but this may be a case of different times. The afterwards helped me understand a bit better.