Nathan "N.R."’s Comments (group member since Dec 05, 2013)

Nathan "N.R."’s comments from the Miss MacIntosh, My Darling group.

Marguerite Young, Our Darling: Tributes and Essays from Dalkey Archive looks very nice. Its three parts ::

Tributes and Recollections
Six essays
Two interviews (1988 & 1993)

Post links to yours or post links to those of others.

As of today's date, the reception on goodreads (apparently these folks mostly knew what they were getting into) contrasts rather sharply with a few of the Reviews on amazon, a few of which Reviewers should have been reading something else more safely.

...there is none. But I plan to begin somewhen toward the end of January // beginning of February 2014. I don't see any reason why you should wait for me. There ARE three (.3.) ::


Miss Ce Ce, My Darling (I believe we may all be Miss, My Darlings) requested some kind of schedule, or at a minimum, a series of signposts to mark our reading. I’ll produce three schedules ; all optional. Our arbitrarily chosen beginning date is the First of February, 2014.

I. A year of Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.
For those of you who would like to dwell and savor. At 1198 pages, we divide the novel into eleven parts ::
February :: pages 1 - 110.
March :: pages 110 - 220.
April :: pages 220 - 330.
May :: pages 330 - 440.
June :: pages 440 - 550.
July :: pages 550 - 660.
August :: pages 660 - 770.
September :: pages 770 - 880.
October :: pages 880 - 990.
November :: pages 990 - 1100.
December :: pages 1100 - 1198.


II. Five months for My Darling.
As with Women and Men, this pace may work best for most/many readers. 82 chapters : four chapters per week (Sunday to Sunday). I don’t know if the chapters are of roughly the same length, but the schedule is only for signpostage use -- feel free to shorten and lengthen as word=count dictates.

Feb 2-8 :: Chapters 1-4
Feb 9-14 :: Chapters 5-8
Feb 16-22 :: Chapters 9-12
Feb 23 - March 1 :: Chapters 13-16
Mar 2-8 :: Chapters 17-20
Mar 9-15 :: Chapters 21-24
Mar 16-22 :: Chapters 25-28
Mar 23-29 :: Chapters 29-32
Mar 30 - April 5 :: Chapters 33-36
Apr 6-12 :: Chapters 37-40
Apr 13-19 :: Chapters 41-44
Apr 20-26 :: Chapters 45-48
Apr 27 - May 3 :: Chapters 49-52
May 4-10 :: Chapters 53-56
May 11-17 :: Chapters 57-60
May 18-24 :: Chapters 61-64
May 25-31 :: Chapters 65-68
June 1-7 :: Chapters 69-72
Jun 8-14 :: Chapters 73-76
Jun 15-21 :: Chapters 77-80
Jun 22-28 :: Chapters 81-82

III. Eight weeks with Miss MacIntosh.
Roughly the pace I anticipate for myself. 82 chapters at 10 chapters per week.

Feb 2-8 :: Chapters 1-10
Feb 9-14 :: Chapters 11-20
Feb 16-22 :: Chapters 21-30
Feb 23 - March 1 :: Chapters 31-40
Mar 2-8 :: Chapters 41-50
Mar 9-15 :: Chapters 51-60
Mar 16-22 :: Chapters 61-70
Mar 23-29 :: Chapters 71-80
Mar 30 - April 5 :: Chapters 81-82


If you would like to commit to one of these three schedules, or find yourself roughly at a pace with one of these, please let the rest of us know so we might gain that advantage of mutually reinforcing social reading.

A few books have been written about Young and she has been featured in several journals ; Review of Contemporary Fiction features her in three (two?) issues.

We do have the luxury of having some information available to us about Young and her novel on the internets. Link that stuff here.

I suspect that some of us will not carry on with the work presented us by Miss MacIntosh. Should you feel that you've had your fill, or if you need to take an extended hiatus from the novel, please do us the kindness of leaving a note regarding your relation to the novel -- whether it's not for you, whether other life=events disallow its reading, or (forfend!) you think it's just not very good. About you or about the book, the more we know about how readers react to it, the more we know about the book.

chapter 2, page 11.

...and provide a page number to ease-ify our locations.

"The bus-driver was whistling..."

Being, likely, a kind of prose poem, I will name each chapter thread with the first few words of each chapter, as is customary in the world of poetry.

Miss MacIntosh My Darling exists in a number of editions. As far as I know they all have the same pagination (except....).

--The 1965 hd first edition from Scribner is easy enough to come by ; and is attractive. This is the edition I will be reading.

--The 1966 hd first Brit edition from Peter Owen.

--Both Dalkey Archive (1993) and Harvest/Harcourt (1979) have issued two-volume editions. My information is that they make the volume division at the same place.

--There exists also a mass market edition from Signet (1967). According to the goodreads database, its pages number 1396. I would not recommend using this edition, or any 1000+ page mm edition.

--Amer Audio released an audio book (cassette) (abridged or un-?) in 1987.

--I believe there is a recording online somewhere of Young reading from Miss MacIntosh. That link will show up eventually.

Young began as a poet. As far as I know, all of it is out of print and exists nearly not at all on the second-hand bookmart. The goodreads records (pretty much empty) for these books ::

The Collected Poems of Marguerite Young
Moderate Fable and Other Poems
Prismatic Ground
Nothing but the Truth

Inviting the Muses was published in 1994 by Dalkey Archive. It collects previously uncollected work by Young -- three stories, a number of essays, and her book reviews. I've outlined its contents in my review :: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Published in 1945, this study of two Indiana utopias -- the New Harmony of George Rapp and that of Robert Own -- marks Young's transition from poet to prose-ist. The theme of US utopian movements is taken up again in Harp Song for a Radical: The Life and Times of Eugene Victor Debs.

Young spent the final 25 years of her life writing this unique kind of biography of Debs and his times. A beautiful book.

I have my Review :: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Welcome to a little quiet corner of the internet dedicated to all things Marguerite with special attention granted her masterpiece Miss MacIntosh, My Darling.

This group will be organized along lines similar to those of my Women & Men/McElroy group -- ie, both as homage to a literary genius and as an unscheduled reading group for what I expect to be an immensely difficult novel.

First things first ;; this will be, by all reports, a seriously difficult reading experience. If you have not already read Proust or Women & Men or The Making of Americans, of if such-like is not for you, you may want to think twice of sojourning here. Although her other books will not intimidate as much ; her book on Debs I suspect would function as a very favorable step-in to Young's prose-world.

This folder shall contain individual threads for each chapter of MMMD. This thread in particular is for any general discussions about the reading.