Welcome!!

By all reports and accounts this book is a stunner, it's listed as a "must read" on almost every group reading list there is, and I'm delighted that we in the Book Club Online will begin our Sixth YEAR! by reading it.

Often times, as in the case with the current Book Club Online selection, Back When We Were Grownups, the posters and their insights are as good as, if not better than, the book and this book is supposedly a revelation, I can't wait, myself, to get your input on it.

I have never been able to spell, and if you think the author can, you will find the interviews with the author fascinating while you're waiting!

Hope to see you here on November 1!

ginny

I'll be here Nov 1st, Ginny. I already have the book but haven't cracked it open yet. The interviews & questions listed above have got me enthused and now I can hardly wait to start reading.

Marvelle

Marvelle!!!

How perfectly MARvelous, this is exciting, I look forward to this, I think there are a LOT of issues in the book to look at, so glad to have you, we're so far a Party of Two, who will make it three?

Since grape season is finally winding down I hope to be able to be in the discussion more often!

ginny

The locale of this book is real place. I know,because I live in the neighborhood of the McKinley school, and other areas mentioned are for real.

We acquire many "labels" during various phases of our lives,maybe some are justified and maybe some are not,but since the labels are usually applied to us,by others,I venture that the labels are not the ones we would give ourselves.

I'll be here for the discussion. Spelling was always one of my storng pointes.

hahahaha Ed! Hey there, YAY, and you have personal experience of the neighborhood and you can SPELL! hahahaha

Wonderful, Party of Three, who will make it Four, the table talk will be scintillating, I know that, with my two table mates already in attendance, sparkling conversation is better than sparkling wine!

ginny

Andrea!! how exciting, you TOO? YAY and YAY and I have the honor to announce our own Harriet! will be Co Leading this one, so we're a great company well assembled and every other person is welcome.

I cannot spell? I never could. I always thought it was a mark of genius? Guess not, hah? hahaahaha

You're kidding, were you really a spelling champion?

ginny

Absolutely!

HI,

OH NO NOT A SPELLING EXPERT. Glad I have spell check.......Andy, Andy how very Handy.......

I am off to the LIBRARY TO FIND THE BOOK. See you all later. Ha Ha. You can't escape me.

Clare!

Super, so glad to see you, we look forward to your comments!

ginny

I don't no if I can say much, but I wood like to join in here when you talk about this buk. I used to be a pritty good speler myself when I was a kid, and I loved speling be's! As soon as I find my dickshunary I'll be reddy.

Lorrie

Lorrie!

We kudn't bee hapier. Welcum! It's grate to see another terific speler.

Harriet

Alf, what a joy to see you here! And a bona-fide spelling champ too!

How can I help you recover from my last post? Bicarb? Smelling salts? Dictionary?

Harriet

Ha.ha. ha. No, I'm a Pepsid gal, Harriet. I hope by the time I return home on Tuesday my Bee Season will have arrived.

Dats whut u git fer livin in outta mongolia, da mael dunt come regoolar?

hahahaha

Welcome Lorrie!!

ginny

Dun't no if I kin stand dis bunkch....

I think I'll join you for this one. I loved the book. I don't usually do much but lurk, since I'm not very good at dissecting all the stuff between the lines. I'm sure you guys won't mind me watching and reading along with you!

Gail!

Welcome! You must certainly do more than lurk, I'm sure some of our thoughts might interest and we certainly want to hear YOURS!

YAY!

ginny

You know on that idea of looking between the lines, that's a great thought, Gail.

It's amazing, they have had studies of reactions. They will stage an incident? They will stage a robbery and then they will come back in and see what everybody reports? And people who were eye witnesses disagree and differ upon even the appearance of the people and the events, even though they were right there!

Have you ever gone anywhere with anybody else, your husband, a friend and overheard something or possibly witnessed something and come home with a completely different take on it? Usually you can put it down to being a "man" or maybe you were having a bad day or your friend was having one, our perceptions are all so different.

So it is with reading, one line may mean a hundred different things, it's always amazing to see what each person thinks and we here are about hearing each take on the lines and the book.

There are no wrong answers, there are no right or wrong opinions, just our own.

As Shakespeare said, "he reads much, he is a great observer, and he looks right through the deeds of men." I love that.

We'll look right thru the deeds of these fictional people and share our perspectives, we'll all learn something from the book, and from each other.

We'll look at the first 82 pages Thursday! Welcome aboard!

ginny

I plan to be, could have written "Bee" and joined in this misspelling fun, here for this discussion. Have just started the book and look forward to exchanging thoughts and concepts with all gathered here!

Hey, Paige!!!

We anticipate your thoughts and opinions with pleasure. It's great to see you again. We'll all have fun!

Harriet

This book sounds like a winner, and I think I can get hold of a copy. Looking forward to the discussion and the book.

I wonder if she had to write each word ten times.

MG gives a wonderful description as to how our little Eliza actually sees the words in her mind, floating before her eyes.

Paige!

YAY!!

My mother could spell like a champ and the way she did it was totally strange. She would take a word like defenestration and she'd say it out loud, like "de....that's d...e..."fen" that's fen...d.e.f.e.n." "es...e.s.....d..e...f...e..." and so on.

I learned spelling the old way, look at these words, spell these words out loud, close your eyes and picture the word and as a consequence, I cannot spell anything.

And as I've aged, it's gotten worse. The very worst part, and this is something I have never ever encountered until now, is sometimes on rare and frightening occasions, I can't even look it up because I can't spell it well enough? I have to use (I blush to say) the word suggester in WORD!!!

Now that's BAD!

See you all here tomorrow, I hoep! hahahahaa

ginny

Ginny, I learned to spell that way too, not a good thing is it? I also am finding that spelling is becoming a probem as I get older, did not used to be...like many things! What really frustrates me is sometimes I write a word and it doesnt look right. I look it up and it's right, anyone else having that experience?

I don't remember how I learned - but I have always been a voracious reader and think spelling probably just came easy to me. I've always considered myself a good speller, but there have been times through my working life when a word -- usually a simple, stupid word -- just didn't look right and I had to look it up to make sure. Don't know why that happens. It may happen more as we get older, but it sure makes a person feel silly!

I could never spell using the technique of Ginny's mother, using the "sounds like" method. My mother was deaf & my father Slovene so when I was growing up the sounds of American-English had quite a unique flavor. I learned to spell through voracious reading like Gail, but I talk with an accent in spite of being U.S. born & raised, having comingled my parents' speech.

There's something so loving as well as touching in the way Eliza spells. I hope that as we progress in the discussion I'll understand this reaction of mine. --Marvelle

A bright good morning to you all1 Harriet and I welcome you to our November Book Club Online's discussion of a stunner of a book!

I will break all the rules, and everything anybody has ever been taught about leading book discussions or looking at book discussions and say on the very first day and post that this book absolutely blows me away, the writing is exquisite, and in some places breathtaking, imagine, all this over a spelling bee.

But it's not just about a spelling bee, is it? It's about a whole lot more.

As I read the first 82 pages, I kept shapeshifting, one minute I was in Eliza's shoes, the next I was Saul sitting in the principal's office listening to his excuses about TAG.

Oh can I sing this song, but there's more?

We have some start off questions in the heading, I bet those of you who have taught were ripping up the pages over the inferior desks and the...what do you call it, channeling of children?

Those of you who were parents are probably ripping up the pages too, but what about those of you who were children, once?

We just finished a book in the Book Club Online about a "quirky" family, these "quirks" make those seem like Norman Rockwell, don't they?

If you read the two books which do you think is more realistic, not in terms of the actions of the characters, but in terms of the emotions expressed?

I'm stumped to even choose ONE prevailing theme or undercurrent running in this thing because there is a veritable ocean of thoughts, the smallest event spins off a hundred explosions in the mind: it's like nitroglycerin.

I guess I'm going to, for my own part, say that it appears that parents play a greater role in self esteem of children than I realized, all of the characters seem to be reacting to living or long dead parents. I guess I wonder after reading this how anybody manages to grow up.

I'm going to throw the ball back at YOU guys, truly, the book stunned me, I'm almost speechless.

(you wish! hhhaahha)

What aspect of the first 82 pages (and if you're reading this and thought you might join, you can read them in no time, it's hard to put down, actually)

What aspect of the first 82 pages would YOU most like to talk about? We'll take the first respondent's thoughts, and look at those points first, and on till we all run out of points. The questions in the heading are also good for starters.

I really have had a very strong reaction to this book, how about YOU? What do you think? What stands out for YOU in these first 82 pages?

ginny

Pagie and Gail, me, too, I'll look at a word and think that's wrong but when I look it up it's right. Weird is such a word, that always looks wrong, to me.

Marvelle, how interesting, I had a very strong reaction to the book too, I wonder how many of the others of us had.

Ed knows the neighborhood and the McKinley school, and I know Bucks County, that's where I grew up, maybe that accounts for the strong emotions I felt while reading this book, but what of the THEMES, the characters, I can't even choose a starting place, remember that book Millions of Cats? The old woman couldn't choose ONE so she took them all? I cannot even start, I hope you all will help!

ginny

MaryPage!!!

I was talking to my sister last night and she felt the same way. She said it was painful to read the book at times.

It's a complex and rich book and I found emotional highs in it as well as lows. I thought the descriptions of Eliza's mental processes during a Bee were magical. What purity and passion! I felt that I had received a gift from MG when I was allowed to share the exhilaration Eliza felt as her letters rumbled into words inside her head.

There have been just a few times in my life where I felt I was doing something supremely well...(very few! Haha!) and Eliza helped me to recapture the magical feelings of those moments as she "loved" her consonants and vowels. Maybe other people can relate to the pleasure, the joyous experience of loving an activity and feeling as if one doing it superbly.

Heavens, but Eliza needed that in her life!

MaryPage, it's great to have you here. We look forward to more of your knowledgeable, literate analyses of the book, both structurally and emotionally. I'm very interested in your opinions of the author's skills, an area I would very much love to learn more about.

Harriet

The book is on the way. I'll be joining you when I'm caught up. It should be here before the weekend. I'd been wanting to read this and now I have a good reason.

becky

Becky!!!

You have ALREADY joined us, and we are so glad. It is a remarkable book and it's a delight to see you here.

If you have any comments while you wait for Bee Season, please don't hesitate to post.

Harriet

Well, as usual, I have a ton of things to bring forth about this book.  It is exciting and appealing!!  BWWWGups aggravated me-  sitting around wanting to goose Rebecca into action.  This novel is all action and activity.  You can feel the flurry of emotions and the dramatic reactions and responses that each character emits.  Yes, Ginny, like Nitrogycerin, ready to ignite at any given point.  Let us examine the title:  The Bee Season.  
The bee has a collective task of gathering nectar and pollen to produce something sweet- honey.  Our little E really is a honey, is she not?  A bee is also a competion.  A season is an interval /juncture or  an opportunity.  This, certainly,  is a period  that is marked by an activity that  changes each of their lives.  For Eliza, who has been struggling  in her school universe there is the dawning of a new light.  A door opens for this child.  Even though Eliza is our protagonist here the lives of each family member is altered.  I'm not sure how we should direct this .  There is so much to comment on.  Elizas new found notoriety, Saul's looking to E as if she were a new trophy, herself;  the mysticisism and the religious connotations that run rampant in the text, the palpable silence that is emitted from Mariam,  Aaron's vague feeling of being left out and in competition with Eliza.  Which should we comment on first?

I'll take Mariam.  Now she's quite the chick !  Oh boy!   Neurotic as the day is long.  She is filled with little obsessive - compulsive behaviors.  This poor soul at seven years old felt that she must spend her whole life searching for the door to Perfectimundo.  Oh my god, this poor woman has strived for this all of her life.  How does one cultivate themselves or others if they are looking for that type of fulfillment? Is it possible to live in an IDEAL existence (even if it is in your head) ?

I could have cried when she presented her treasured kaleidoscope to Eliza, only to be disappointed with Eliza's reaction.  This is the first time in 18 years that she has done something to surprise Saul.

Eliza is being raised in SOME family. Saul isolates himself from her in his study and Eliza is terrified to even knock on the door to present her letter about winning the Bee. How does Saul rationalize this? He believes he is protecting Eliza from the trauma of his disappointed expectations.

How right you are, Alf. Saul sees his children as trophies. Horrifying to think that HE is the more tender parent in that family.

Harriet

And a voice from the far north appears...

Really can relate to the characters, minus Miriam. Can accept her as a type A, but then all these other quirks are thrown in which distract me from the story. I can understand these characters as I have met them many times in my own life. Often there are people, usually criminals, that I can't understand for the life of me.

Finally, about pg 96 I really looked at the cover. Pretty nifty.

I do find that the story jumps around a lot back and forth with the lives of the characters. I have to read a bit before I say, oh yea, this is who we are talking about.

I had a slow start getting into it. Could be that it brought back too many painful memories of children that I have seen like Eliza. But now I am clipping away.

Glad that you are letting me participate in this discussion. I have always wanted to be in such a cyper discussion.

Kathy

Hi, As usual all 6 copies are out of the library and won't be back until Nov7 at which time I will be packing for Florida. Might have to borrow your book Andy. I'll see what Borders has to offer...

Howdy MaryPage glad to see you here. I have an article to send to you about the tree at St. Johns.

I'm lurking but shall join eiuther from NJ or Fl.

Hang on Clare! The book is yours when you arive here. I am on the last one third of it and love it. I can't wait to comment on a few other points of Mariam. does anyone know kids like these kids? The innocents are protected, thank God.

Adults are just grown-older children? Ms. Ladowski circles names with a red pencil and 'whispers "TAG, you're it," with childike glee.' Such malicious joy.

As for Saul & Miriam...Saul isn't any better than Miriam. He seems to live off/through other people...first Miriam, then Aaron & now Eliza. I don't see him as a caregiver, and although he goes through the motions of being a parent he is more child than Aaron or Eliza. At least Miriam recognizes & is shocked with the aloneness of Eliza which Miriam's aloofness has aided. Both parents are too self-absorbed to be supportive adults for their children.

What is strongest for me though is Eliza's battle against the label of 'stupid' with which others have burdened her. The gleeful Ms. Landowski TAGs her and Eliza's abandonment intensifies. She doesn't even know she has a skill, she belittles her spelling, until she's won the local school bee. She needs that affirmation. Maybe that is where this story is going -- where Eliza will/will not learn that her value depends on herself & not others. Perhaps she'll find that she doesn't need to compete for the approval of others and that loving what you do is value enough. If that is the theme here.

I cheered for Eliza when she discovers that "the dictionary is her body's knowledge made manifest....(and) when Eliza studies, she travels through space and time...Each word has a story: a Viking birth, a journey across the sea, the exchange from mouth to mouth, from border to border, until oepli is apfel is appel is APPLE, crisp and sweet on Eliza's tongue. When it is night...these are the words she rides into sleep. The voice of the dictionary is the voice of her dreams."

Wow, what a beautiful image. Yet this has been a difficult book emotionally for me and it seems so defeatist except for Eliza's bursts of flight on words.

--Marvelle

Although I am not very far into this book, the adults seem to be dreadful! The parents, as mentioned by other posters, and even small characters like Ms. Rai at the spelling bee. "Ms.Rai's manicured hand becomes a bloodied talon, her gavel rising like a guillotine blade waiting to descend upon the trembling outstretched neck of the next spelling victim. When the gavel comes crashing down and Ms. Rai growls "Incorrect," all sweetness and light are gone from her voice. Reminds me of the woman who hosts "The Weakest Link" who tells contestants how very stupid they are and then dismisses them with that clipped "Goodbye."

Becky!!

Kathy!!

Welcome, welcome to you both!!

I'm just struck by all your points here, I would like to get them up in the heading and let's look at them, one or two at a time per day, if that's OK, with you all? Please keep suggesting them and I'll put them up and we can look at each in turn?

First off several of you have mentioned Miriam. Could we start today with Miriam? Is there any person here who would admit to BEING Miriam? Do you know anybody like Miriam? What does the name "Miriam" suggest, it's an old name? What was Miriam's function in the Old Testament?

Whether or not you have children, you have been a child.

In Miriam we see...what do we see? The result of....what would you say she is? She's obviously an overachiever, an obsessive compulsive but....jeepers what a mother figure? And then there's the kleptomaia?

I don't know much about kleptomania, do you? That take on how she thought the objects were her own and how she'd go around the store, did you notice where that beavior was exacerbated? At the point at which it started in earnest? When was it?

I was struck by the business about it was hers and calling out to her but then when she did the coat thing with the pockets? That is not what I thought was kleptomania? That is studied and plotted and I thought kleptomaniacs did not plan? That it was a spur of the moment thing, something they could not help?

I will enjoy learning about this mental abberation, do any of you know anything about it? You do know, don't you, that Queen Mary, the mother of Eilzabeth II's father and of the Duke of Windsor was a raging kleptomaniac? They had to put away anything of value if she came visiting, she'd take it.

Miriam's own childhood, what can we say about it. What is the author saying here? Is Miriam a caricature herself of "the distant Parent?"

Yes these are dysfunctional people, can we look at Miriam today and try to figure out why she is the way she is and why she's in this book at all?

When you read, what do you look for? Do you read only for escape? Do you read to try to find in those pages an echo of your own experience, a healing? Maybe you'll find somebody who went thru the same thing you did and how they coped? Maybe you'll find somebody who went thru the same dark valleys you did and you'll find you did better?

IN this case, do you personally know a Miriam or somebody who tuned out like she did? Do all high achieving people have a touch of Miriam in their personnas? Is there the tiniest touch of Miriam in all of us? Are you the slightest bit obsessive compulsive yourself? And if so what does it mean? Isn't it supposed to give comfort?

I'm going to go carefully through your posts and list in the heading all the differnet POVS you have offered, let's look today if you will, at MIrima, can we agree she's the least sympathetic character here?

or IS she?

Our goal here is to get a super conversation going amongst yourselves, please feel free to talk to each other over every point, back in a minute with more about what you have said.

I love this book, Guys, I know I'm not supposed to say that, but I do.

ginny

NB: Had to put caricature and exacerbated in my IE mail program and use spell check before I could post them. Sigh.

hahahaha

g

Gosh, you know what this reminds me of? One of those things where you select who you would want to have dinner with? What great mind you would care to eat with and hear discourse? You all have brought up starting things to bring to the table, I'm astounded.

Mary Page!

Welcome, let's start with you!

You said, I have a difficult time, always have done, understanding the compulsion of writers to create works that mirror the distressing and unattractive aspects of human behavior.

OK let's look at this for a minute. We all agree so far that most of the adults in this book are dysfunctional? Marvelle did a super take on Mrs. Rai, the failed classics scholar (did you note the little slap in the irony of how her failed classics studies perfectly prepared her to choose the Talented and Gifted? TAG?) Little slap there. I hate to tell you all this, but that's common, I'm sorry to say, at least I have seen it more than once and have seen student rosters with the child's IQ as a result of ONE test, listed on the left of the child's name for the teacher's edification?

But MaryPage says why do they have to write about such people?

Why do they?

ARE there such people? Do writers only write to edify? Do we, at a certian time in our lives, PREFER to read edifying books, especially if we ourselves are not, for instance, kleptomaniacs?

Good good point MaryPage.

---

Harriet as is her sunny nature I am coming to believe, hones in on :Maybe other people can relate to the pleasure, the joyous experience of loving an activity and feeling as if one doing it superbly.

Here again, a marvelous point. There WAS a blinding joy there, have you ever felt it? About anything? Is today's method of teaching to get every child to experience it and no child to fail?

Quite different from the way WE were schooled, isn't it?

More on teaching methods later on, but that one goes in the heading too.

---

Andrea, I agree, I'm all over the charts, because the author packs SOOO much in her writing, SHE'S the one making us run and I think it's deliberate. I seem to see a pattern in her writing.

You said, Even though Eliza is our protagonist here the lives of each family member is altered. Again, that is very important and I hope we can come back to it, because they all are swinging on Eliza's star. Why? Because they themselves HAVE no foundation?

---

Then Andrea said the word I forgot? "Perfectimundo."

OK here I stopped short in the book.

I was of the opinion that "the Fonz" on the television show "Happy Days" coined this phrase. Am I wrong?

Perfect world, can any of us find out the derivation and origin of this word? Do any of us have access to a recent OED? I know Maryal does, I myself do not have a subscription.

I think the author has made a boo boo here.

At any rate, Miriam is cleaning her house and ordering her life, her sheets, her very existence, in order to create Perfectimundo.

Andrea says: Oh my god, this poor woman has strived for this all of her life. How does one cultivate themselves or others if they are looking for that type of fulfillment? Is it possible to live in an IDEAL existence (even if it is in your head)

Excellent question and fits the topic du Jour today?

Saul is trying for that too. What do you all think?

---

Then there's the KALEIDESCOPE issue.

I could have cried when she presented her treasured kaleidoscope to Eliza, only to be disappointed with Eliza's reaction. This is the first time in 18 years that she has done something to surprise Saul.

I happen to be crazy about kaleidescopes? I have one I would never give anybody. What did the Kaleidescope mean to Miriam? If you have seen one you know that they are the least ordered things it's possible to deal with? The little designs fall INTO place, and out of place. But you can get them back by carefully twisting???

????

What DID it symbolize to Miriam?

---

Kathy said I do find that the story jumps around a lot back and forth with the lives of the characters and that's important, too, it shifts back and forth, and when it does, have you noticed you are in the head of the character? IN other words, the "voice" of the thing, the person speaking, the point of view constantly changes. At one point it's magic.

This book has not started out as a mistake. It's very carefully written. It will be our task to say if the author, in our own opinions, succeeds or fails, your opinion is all that matters.

---

marvelle9 brings up a super point as well, when she says, Are adults just grown-older children?

Are they? As we age do we get MORE like we were as children or less? Shouldn't all the things we've learned temper our child like urges?

I loved this: At least Miriam recognizes & is shocked with the aloneness of Eliza which Miriam's aloofness has aided. Both parents are too self-absorbed to be supportive adults for their children.

Just love what that brings up to my mind? The ME generation as parents? What are these adults hoping to FIND by their self absorption? Are they repeating whether they know it or not, the patterns that made THEM like they are?

- where Eliza will/will not learn that her value depends on herself & not others HOLD THAT THOUGHT!

(But isn't that where MIriam is? And Saul?)

Paige did a wonderful thing with another adult: waiting to descend upon the trembling outstretched neck of the next spelling victim. When the gavel comes crashing down and Ms. Rai growls "Incorrect," all sweetness and light are gone from her voice. Reminds me of the woman who hosts "The Weakest Link" who tells contestants how very stupid they are and then dismisses them with that clipped "Goodbye."

Yes, I hate that Weakest LInk, do you all watch it? I watched it when the Brady Bunch old tv cast were on and Florence Henderson in a moment of pique, referred to the woman and the show by saying, "Your stupid show." ahahahahahah

Yes it is. Why is that such a hit? Do we really relish nasty in our PC World even if we have to do it vicariously?

All these thoughts have made a rare Halloween Witche's brew? All of them are going in the heading. Please feel free to take any one of them and get a good discussion going among yourselves? Let's hone in as well today on Miriam, and see what we can discover about ourselves, and the book?

Wonderful exciting start, Guys! Thank you,

ginny

 Motherhood never reaches Mariam as the  "Birth of Son seems to occupy a similar part of her psyche as Earning Law Degree, another check-off on a lifelong To Do List."  Saul doesn't mind his low maintenance marriage one bit, going to bed alone allow him to focus on his goals for the following day.  Sex is infrequent and none too "hot" by the sounds of it.  Not so Perfectimundo, is it?   Perfectimundo being untrampled snow, sheets and body totally centered on the mattress, precision personified.
What is the story  with the flushed face as she returns home at 6:45 PM instead of her usual, calculated 6 PM?  A boyfriend perhaps?  Or could it be merely a change in routine?  That is unusual for an obsessive-compulive personality.

Her Kleptomania starts at the ripe old age of 8 and a half.  Can you imagine at that age even thinking about how a ball can  manifest itself as a sign as she listens to the ball intone her name repeatedly???   The revelation of the pink ball is not revealed to M until Saul describes Tikkun Olam, the fixing of the world.  She is a broken vessel finding  her scattered pieces

                          "She is compelled by a force far superior to material gain."

Wow, Ginny, good synopsis of where we have been and where we are going. Lots to digest.

Kathy

I've read other books where the characters were quirky, neurotic or just plain unlikable. In Bee Season the portrait of Miriam suggests a more severe form of dysfunctionality. The author never CALLS Miriam a "mental case" and she never describes the meaning of kleptomania, but the book is so well written that our postings seem to have come to similar conclusions and have begun to talk about her in that way.

So now I begin to wonder...has Miriam passed over some sort of invisible line from neurosis to mental illness? Where is that line anyway? If mental illness is an exaggeration of normal behavior beyond acceptable limits, how tough is it to draw the hard line where idiosyncrasies end and truly aberrant behavior begins?

And what a strange gal Miriam is! Her search for the "missing parts" of her loosely held-together self, her need for absolute order and cleanliness, her desire for Perfectimundo...wow. No one in the Naumann family has ever seen where Miriam works, or shared in the professional life she goes to each day. No one else knows of her illicit life of thievery and excitement.

And what a removed mother! Even when Eliza asks Miriam a direct question about why she cleans so much, she is met with silence...and a "vast unspannable distance" between herself and her mother. Miriam's acclaimed intelligence and powers of concentration sure aren't focussed on either of her children. What are the implications for any child being raised in such a strange household, dominated by the self absorption of both parents?

I was moved beyond all words by this passage in the book.

"Eliza had originally intended to tell her mother about the bee, but something about the way her mother is scrubbing makes Eliza fear that her words will be washed away upon leaving her lips. Eliza has a growing suspicion that she never won the bee at all, her father's silence proof that she has imagined everything."

So, in a child's eyes, if an accomplishment is never noticed, does it evaporate...like something that never existed, even to the child herself?

Harriet

This is quite a book! The first thing that jumps out at me is that every last character, major and minor, is carrying around a glass that is half-empty. Eliza assumes her first spelling bee will be the same as every other event "seemingly designed to confirm, display or amplify her mediocrity." She believes that new desks are given to smart kids and dumb kids get the old ones. Ms. Bergermeyer gives spelling words "that match the sodden texture of the classroom's cinder block walls" and who has resigned herself to student rosters filled with average, ordinary and dissatisfied people. Ms. Lodowski sees herself as a lapsed classics grad student. Dr. Morris' answer to father Saul comes from his defensiveness at having a retarded child. Saul himself has been a disappointment to his father and is, in fact, a disappointment to himself as he becomes a cartoony cantor hired to balance a conservative rabbi who himself settles for something less than what he desires in a rabbinate. And the "downers" go on and on. The state of Miriam's glass needs no elaboration.

If there is a sympathetic character so far, I find it in Aaron. He has had the good fortune of being a bright light in the eye of his father, a TAG student, does a phenomenal job in studying for and completing his bar mitzvah, doesn't hold it against his sister when she sees him being beaten up some class bullies, and seems to accept with a bit of equanimity (the only such thing I've seen so far in the book) his displacement in his father's ministrations.

What keeps me reading, in spite of the negativism I felt in the book, is the wonderful writing. Goldberg's writing is terse - and beautiful. I especially love how Eliza "sees" the words inside her head. I do not see them that was, but Goldberg makes me understand exactly how Eliza does. That is good writing!

And I got a laugh out of the paragraph on page 14 where it says, "As a result, it is painfully apparent who is reading the Hebrew and who is not. Misbegotten syllables collide midair with their proper cousins, making the service more closely resemble a speech therapy class than a religious gathering." My husband is Jewish and I officially am not. Right after we married I took a Hebrew class for a year and did well enough that in the congregational readings at Temple services I could at least pronounce the words when I read from the prayer book -- if the congregation went slowly enough (and usually they did because in our Reform temple there was not a lot of Hebrew used.) However, my husband was brought up in the Breed Street Shul in Los Angeles. Most of the congregants in this orthodox shul spoke Yiddish as their first language -- and they pronounced the Hebrew words very differently than my class teacher did. The first time Jerry and I stood together and started reading a congregational response, his pronounciation and mine clashed and I got all discombobulated because we sounded like we were not even reading from the same book. It took a great effort for me to "tune him out" and say my own prayers in my own way.

Gail T.!!!

Welcome to our discussion!

There are indeed many half empty glasses carried by the characters in the book. They are so well drawn that their interactions become compelling. Isn't it frustrating that they don't succeed in reaching out to each other to fill their needs as well as their glasses more fully? All, except perhaps Miriam need some form of love and connection. I haven't figured out yet if Miriam is truly the exception to this.

Loved the part of the book about the Temple services also.

Harriet.

There is a great deal of religious and mystical references. One gets the feeling that Saul is still looking for an answer. He refers to mystical greatness of the rabbis and now--- " He has been hoping to encounter a student of whom history is made. But that it should be Eliza!"

I loved that statement early in the book where it said that Saul, by playing his guitar allows folks to have enough fun to forget they've come to temple out of guilt. Saul presents the dictionary to Eliza as a book worthy of commentary and discussion, a Torah of language. I loved that description!

Good for you Gail, you recite away. Your incantatations are for God.

I've been thinking about Miriam although I do not like thinking about her! There is something obviously about the perfection of the hopscotch stone that falls into the perfect center of square 3 and the impact it has on her at seven years old. The kaleidoscope too with its perfect symmetry and how she decides she must from that point on be perfect. Often people who are perfectionists do it out of a need to control things, something, anything. One wonders what was going on in this seven year old's life that she felt such a need to have some control over her life. Were other things or people out of control in her little world? Seems to be such a big decision to make so young and to keep it as the main rule in her life all the way into adulthood. She only sleeps three hours a night in order to attain this??? Excludes everyone?? Very sad for her family and very sad for her. Reminds me a tiny bit of Will from "Back When We Were Grownups" with his habits that became rituals. There is a feeling of safety in that for some people. Someone here described her as obsessive compulsive, I can't find who as I scroll back, sorry.

Nooooo, I do not watch The Missing Link! I have paused and watched a few minutes while channel surfing. I cannot deal with the rudeness even though it is tongue in cheek.

At the area finals of the spelling bee Miriam recognizes her isolation in Eliza & tries mutely to form a special bond through the reconciliation gift of her treasured kaleidoscope. But Eliza does not see any uniqueness in the kal and the unspoken rejection of the kal. is the same to Miriam as a rejection of herself, a judgment of worthlessness. This sends Miriam into a cycle of increased stealing.

Sudden thought:Someone mentioned the book cover and that could be another question. Here we have a book within a book. What does that symbolize? And there are parallel stories or examples of the secular and the religious. How does the religious manifest itself in the children and parents, and why? End of afterthought

If we consider Miriam and Saul's parental roles, I have to disagree with the idea that children can be emotionally strong on their own. Children are at the mercy, good or bad, of adults and others. Any emotional baggage of your parents and teachers will affect you as a child.

Such emotional baggage can create shows like the "Weakest Link". It works like a seesaw -- if you have low self-esteem you can be uplifted if someone else is put down. I think that is the purpose of these shows.

In such a competitive society many people have low self-esteem and they look for outlets, like "Weakest Link," to let off steam. We are PC only face-to-face and in certain situations. For instance, we are 'tolerant' of the physically or mentally challenged (and how PC is that language) but it's acceptable to make fat jokes. It is easy for adults to manipulate children and just as safe to turn on the television in your home and jeer anonymously at the stupid people on the screen. We are free to choose our attitude, however, and that is important to remember. We do not have to stay on the seesaw.

Does the novel offer an alternative? While I love the book and the writing is flawless, I just don't believe that ALL adults are messed up or that "life is horrid and hopeless and we might as well go drown ourselves and get it over with." This is the current message I'm getting from the book. The situation could turn around, however, and change, or the opportunity to change, is what novels are about.

I've reread my notes and wish I'd interacted more with the novel, however, it's late and time to call it a night. Maybe tomorrow my thoughts will be clearer.

Marvelle

I have just found this site. It's 4:30 in the morning and since I am wide awake, I've been surfing the net and found what appears to be a great site for seniors. I will look forward to reading the book and joining you in your discussions.

Keene!!!

Welcome to Books & Literature and to SeniorNet!

We're so glad that you found us and that we found YOU. You are a person of perception because this IS a great site. We hope you'll enjoy looking around at all the discussions and we look forward to your joining us in Bee Season.

Keene

An email is finding its way to you with instructions to come in, sit down and join our great group of readers.

Keene! as Harriet and Andrea have said, you are, indeed, a person of KEEN perception hahahaha, and we're delighted to welcome you here to our converastion and look about this strange yet wonderfully written book!!

First off today let me unburden self of all this baggage before I sit down and we all chat, you all have raised so many super points!!!

I've had a TIME with "perfectimundo!" Just a time. I remain convinced since it's not in any dictionary I can find on the web or any other place that it's coined from the "Happy Days" tv show and "The Fonz." Of course this would mean the author goofed, so of course I'm hanging on this like, as Andrea always says, a dog with a bone, but I've asked Maryal who does have a subscription to the online OED to look it up for me (they want $550 and I'm not THAT doggy).

Anyway, now on kleptomania? Now Harriet had asked when it was that Miriam had slipped into mental illness? And we know she has been shoplifting since 8 years of age?

It's interesting to read these sites and see that , for one thing, it's an IMPULSE disorder? Now again Miriam would not seem very impulsive to me, does she you?

But it follows a period of tension (that fits the story) and it causes some kind of relief, but the main thing is that the person does not plan it.

Now Miriam here is sewing into her coats and clothes pockets to hold the stuff, I think when she did that she went over the edge, to me, and according to the definitions that's NOT kleptomania?

And why did the author choose such a strange condition?

Here's more on Kleptomania and kleptomania and kleptomania

It says it's a rare condition? I think Miriam is rare, myself.

But are we saying we don't know anybody who cleans obsessively? Don't you? I do?

Now, the best part, let's talk about YOUR points!!!

ginny

I suspect that the author is from a family that is typical of many Jewish families (of a certain generation)in which females were viewed less highly than males,and a family in which education was valued higher than almost anything else.

Eliza is almost an afterthought to Saul,as most of his energies are focused on Aaron,and I believe that Saul has invested (at least in the early part of the book) his hopes for the future in Aaron.

Now,Eliza seems to throw a monkey wrench into his hopes,aspirations and plans,by being successful in the Bee and I think that Saul ,really doesn't know how to handle Eliza's success and he seems to subvert his own life into that of Eliza. I find Saul to be weak and rudderless and to be leech-like in trying to find his own purpose in life.

The kaleidescope is loaded with symbolism. I think it is the farthest thing from perfectimundo,because it is constantly shifting as you turn it, just as life is constantly shifting as the planet shifts from day to day and season to season. Life events.like k-scopes,get jostled and one's vision (scope)becomes changed. Also,how is a k-scope constructed...using shards of glass that give you a narrow tunnel-like view....Is that Saul's view...narrow....Is that the view of all the characters...narrowly focused and constricted,but searching for a "perfect and utopian" world,that cannot possibly exist.....In reading the book, I found that the world of the chracters keeps shrinking...Ginny you mentioned Nitroglycerin ,an explosion. My view was somewhat different,that of an implosion tinged with attempts to escape mediocrity.

My mind, after reading all your thoughts, is like a blender that somebody pushed all the buttons on! It's amazing that 82 pages could bring all this up.

---

Mary Page mentioned "I don't understand filling the whole work with them, showing life as one big nightmare. In any reading of fiction, I want to be able to relate to at least one person."

Ok that's our number one topic of the day, is there, in these 82 pages, NO person you can relate to? Not one? Paige mentions Aaron, Mary Page, can you not relate to him as the story unfolds?



Are they all just BAD or is every person a mix of strange and odd things? No person is all good, do you all not know any people like these?

---

You know, I know people differ on their opinions of child raising, and I guess it's a difficult road to walk? On the one hand Mommy and Daddy are encouraged to have "date nights" so the children can see affection, but where does date night stop and neglect begin, it's a strange thing. I'm not putting it well but that bit about Eliza starting out for the big BEE with no parent even knowing, and that bit where Harriet showed the effect on that child was just astounding, the child almost MISSED the thing because of the strain of communicating with her parents. She had to stay up and get out of the way of one who was cleaning and could not get thru the door of the other.

---

I have a terrible time relating to people who just allow their lives to go relentlessly and unredeemably on, as it were, said Mary Page.

Do you think, perhaps, that both Miriam and Saul think they ARE taking control of their lives??

---

For instance, in the stone hopscotch thing that Paige mentioned, Miriam clearly sees herself as being able to control events? This is on page 64. The game stops as she experiments with the positioning of the stone....

"Miriam can feel the release. Her body fills with warmth at the sight of the stone, beckoning like a talisman to another world. It is this other world tha Miriam wants to inhabit, this other world to which she really belongs..." Then the kaleidescope is "a window into the world of the perfectly thrown stone, the land of Perfectimundo....the movement did not destroy perfection, but created it anew...she has decided that where there is a window there has to be a door. That night Miriam vows, with the solemnity of all seven of her precocious years, that even if she must spend her whole life searching for the door to Perfectimundo, she will find it."

OK so this child, tho the author does not tell us why, needs another personna, almost another....dual personality and she needs to control her surroundings.

Something traumatic must be going on, as Paige suggested? Something out of control but we don't know what?

---

HarrietM (like that new Harriet but be sure you stay happy!!) Good point here: No one in the Naumann family has ever seen where Miriam works, or shared in the professional life she goes to each day. No one else knows of her illicit life of thievery and excitement.

These are very.....what do we call this....is it....well heckers, why do you suppose Miriam does not let anybody (it's hard to believe a lawyer doesn't socialize, wonder what kind of lawyer she IS?) Did any of you wonder that? It's her own secret world. Saul has one too. Everybody has one, don't they? Arron has one, he's waiting to see God again. Eliza has one, but hers is more positive, "She has often felt that her outsides were too dull for her insides, that deep within her there was something better than what everyone else could see." (page 45)

(Did you all notice how many "pebbles" and stones there are cropping up hahahah (sorry) in this thing?) The stone on page 39, and here's another one, "Applause pounds the stage like colored pebbles." (page 63). I wonder if all these stones have meaning, like the stones left by the Jewish at a grave site? I did not know that until we read Nathan Englander last December, but I think it's fascinating, little pebbles left by the visitors at the tomb? I think that these stones have meaning in the book, do you all see any more? .....oh gosh LOOK LOOK...it goes ON? Perhaps, like the donkey in her favorite bedtime story, she has been turned into a stone. Oh no and there's even more...."Eliza has often looked for a pebble, red and round, that might transform her from her unremarkable self." (page 45).

Stones and pebble imagery abounds, wonder why? Wonder what it may mean?

(Didn't you all think that was pitiful about how Aaron thought if he stared at the cloud hard enough, or did you have some small bell ring somewhere that hit on a memory?)that he would see God? "He had begun to hope that all he needed to see God was a pair of glasses" (p. 39). Boy that's a statement, isn't it?

They're all looking for something in this, aren't they, so far? What is Eliza looking for, I wonder? Love? Acceptance? Respect?

more.... Are you all willing to say who so far in this book you most relate to and why?

ginny

ED! We were posting together and I must stop in my present thoughts to say IMPLOSION is a great description of more than Saul, I note that Rabbi Meyer himself, did you catch this? He "looks out at the congretation through disproportionately small eyes, which he has willed down in size to take in as little of the world as necessary."

(page 13)

Implosion!

But Ed, Goldberg says that the Kaleidescope represented perfection? How can we undestand this? I loved your writing here: changed. Also,how is a k-scope constructed...using shards of glass that give you a narrow tunnel-like view....Is that Saul's view...narrow....Is that the view of all the characters...narrowly focused and constricted,but searching for a "perfect and utopian" world,that cannot possibly exist." That's beautiful, Ed.

A kaleidescope, one of those old ones with the shards, can be reversed, tho? If you carefully hold it, remember how the child screamed when somebody else touched it? But if you carefuly hold it and turn it a micro inch you can create a new world, and if you then turn it a micro inch the other way you have a new one but you can regain the old one by carefully turning it back, just as long as you don't go too far? If you keep control of you own mini world creation there?

I loved your take on Saul. I would like to ask you and Jerry, Gail T's husband, if Saul's retreat into study is more scholarly or religious and if either of them have known any person like this?

More!!! PAIGE and MARVELLE and GAIL to come, everybody talk to everybody else!

ginny

When Ed says that this family is typical of certain Jewish families of a certain generation, I, too, feel that I have encountered them before? I really do.

But then Ed interjects this, I find Saul to be weak and rudderless and to be leech-like in trying to find his own purpose in life.

And we have to stop again. Now Saul....is he just a reculsive scholar? We have all known reclusive scholars, as Paige said, we had one who arranged pencils in Back When We Were Grownups?

Let me ask you all this? If YOU were a person who was not...who was shy? And scholarly? And you were mocked (Miriam) when your love of learning was revealed to the other kids and your own father (Saul) lost interest in you ("By Saul's sophomore year of high school, he has given up any pretense of interest in cars and his father has given up interest in him.") (page 11)...then what would YOU do?

Ed, I think I'm going to say that part of Saul's religious absorption is a direct refutation of his own Henry Newman father.

Hey, also, Guys, what connection has the name "Saul" to do with "Solomon," you note in the somewhat bewildering stuff on the top of page 11 that Saul was named for Yehuda's brother Solomon?

ginny

Harriet, formerly Happy but still our bright star, asked, What are the implications for any child being raised in such a strange household, dominated by the self absorption of both parents?

I have a feeling we're going to see, and it won't be good. But this is not the first family like this we've read about, this is just a different take on strangeness.

---

Gail T!!!

THAT was beautiful, every word of it, I loved it. You choose Aaron as a sympathetic character to relate to over Eliza? Why?

He's certainly easier to like, he's gifted, he's smart, he's an athlete, he's the apple of his Daddy's eye and he even tries, and it's a struggle, not to feel jealous. Why do you not relate to Eliza, tho?

I loved your story of you and Jerry in the temple! hahaahaha This is so super: stood together and started reading a congregational response, his pronounciation and mine clashed and I got all discombobulated because we sounded like we were not even reading from the same book.

Hahahaha, love it. I'm so glad you have joined us. Will you ask Jerry if he knows any reclusive scholars like Saul? I can't decide IF Saul is a reliigous or simply a reclusive scholar? In other words, I don't want to MISS some implication here I'm not familiar with?

---

I agree with you that the writing is superior, now have YOU all had that same experience of the explosion in the head, that feeling of triumph? I feel a tad anxious that I've not had quite so many moments in my own life, but hey...the day is young? When these discussions get going they themselves often glow, and the feeling you get is magical!

---

Kathy, what are your thoughts on this book so far, can you relate to any of the characters?

---

Paige, I agree, Miriam is not somebody we want to read about. Who, in this first 82 pages can you connect to? Do you agree with MaryPage that none of them are taking control of their lives?

Let's get some conversation going between us all, if we can, you are all super smart.

---

Andrea, I loved your

Good for you Gail, you recite away. Your incantatations are for God. The "make a joyful noise," personified, LOVE IT.

---

Paige, I appreciate your mentioning the hopscotch stone, I flew over it and I think it's important.

Often people who are perfectionists do it out of a need to control things, something, anything. Oh that's well said, I think that's what the adults are doing in this piece, maybe ALL of them? The Principal surely was, wasn't he? Certainly the the lapsed classics scholar.

I was the one using the obsessive compulsive label but I'm not sure it applies, certainly Miriam seemed to fit until the kleptomania? Which does not fit at all?

---

Marvelle, if that's how your brain works when tired I'd hate to see you wide eyed and bushy tailed, loved your points. Your take on The Weakest Link made me think of the Romans and their "bread and circuses," a channel for the hostilities that build up. Ray Bradbury did a wonderful take on this in one of his own books, was it The Illustrated Man or....???? aggg...mind is gone. And of course the theme is carried on in the Mad Max Thunderdome movies as well, a competition which allows the....baser non PC instincts to get out.

Now here's a pause for thought, and I'd like everybody's take on this?

Marvelle says very eloquently above that she's getting a message from the book. Is that the same message you are getting? Why or why not?

(Now Miss Andrea says I am not posting, I bet you'll tell her to stifle in future? hahahahah) What do you think on any, all or none of these points, the floor is YOURS!

ginny

Marvelle, what do you mean by the thought now in the heading about the "book within the book?" What's the book within?

ginny

I can only speak from a tiny bit of knowledge here, but at least in the Ashkenazic branch of Jewry (eastern european), a child is named after a deceased relative. In the Reform branch of Ashkenazic Jewry, the name does not have to be the same but does need to start with the same letter. And it need not be just the first name. It might be the middle name, or sometimes both. In our family, Jerry's grandaughter Stacey Julia is named after her deceased great-grandmother Sylvia Julia. Granddaughter Carley Phyllis is named after her deceased grandmother (and Jerry's first wife) Carolyn Phyllis. Some Jews do not follow any pattern of the sort. Jerry's daughter did, and Jerry's son did not.

Interestingly, in the Sephardic branch of Jewry (Spanish, portuguese, etc.), the naming is after living relatives.

When I read the Saul-Solomon bit (and assumed that Myra Goldberg herself would be more familiar with the Ashkenazic side), I understood that Saul's father was trying to honor his father (whom he couldn't name a child after) by naming the child after the father's brother. I do not think there are usually ulterior motives in bestowing names (tho I don't know for sure) but in this case I feel it was a ploy to gain favor. It obviously didn't work.

I too would like to know the origins of "Perfectimundo", when it started to be used. Of course 'mundo' in Spanish is 'world' so we know we are talking about a Perfect World which is what Miriam sees in the k-scope. What I think appeals to her is that this world is small and self-contained and easy to control. If stones get out of place -- whatever she determines that place to be -- she can put it back in order. Miriam is in charge.

Can someone explain to me the Jewish significance of stones? In the movie "Schindler's List," the people saved by Schindler (& their children, & the children's children) visited Schindler's grave and each person left a stone. The one stone became a mountain of stones and that image hit me with a powerful emotional wallop as I realized that Schindler's small act helped save a nation.

My comments on the book within a book of course refer to the bookcover which shows just that. Aren't we seeing parts of the Torah within this novel of a Jewish family? Or what else? I ask because there is some significance that I'm missing.

Is Saul's stay-at-home status not so bizarre as we might initially think? Isn't a Jewish father/husband responsible for the spiritual life of the family? Is spending all day studying the Torah a common wish? Help me folks. I'm not Jewish but trying to understand.

I relate most to Eliza. I think she, and perhaps Aaron, will survive this family. I had my own horrifying experience with a 1st grade teacher and can relate to Eliza's struggle. What is important to me is that Eliza is not passive despite the power even the weakest adults have over children. And I don't believe that Aaron is as passive as he might initially seem.

In answer to the question, are all the adults bad? I wouldn't say bad which denotes to me a feeling of evil. Except for the teacher, I think all of them have good intentions but they have their own emotional problems which they visit upon children. Life rarely collects together so many misfits in such a small social climate.

Marvelle

I've been thinking of stones. A stone symbolizes the foundations or essence of the self. It represents permanence and antiquity and is therefore immortal and unalterable.

I remember Peter preached from a rock which stands for the foundation of his religion. And David killed a giant with a little stone. But I bet someone has the perfect example from the Torah/Old Testament.

Just saw MaryPage's comments. The book as a dictionary explains a lot. That clinches for me the religious significance of the cover/book because Saul, further into the novel, brings religious practice into words and letters. I couldn't grasp Saul's lessons but this is for later when we get to that part of the book.

Marvelle

Well, I just feel left out, I have a paperback copy of this book and there is nothing on the cover but the author's name! What MaryPage says about it being a dictionary makes a lot of sense since it was what Saul bought for Eliza and allowed her entrance to the nearly sacred interior of his study. She is amazed by the dictionary and the fact that the words are the exact size of the ones she sees in her head and that the dictionary is her body's knowledge made manifest. I love that she feels "The voice of the dictionary is the voice of her dreams." Lovely writing.

It wasn't me that identifies with Aaron. I truly do identify with Eliza. As a small girl I felt I always struggled in school, especially with that awful math scratch paper that had no lines, was beige in color and you could see the little chunks of wood in it the quality was so poor. Anyone else remember that paper? All of a sudden after testing us, they had me skip the second grade. No one said I was smart, had done well. One day I was taken to the third grade where I further felt I struggled. I was, in reality doing great. When I was in my late forties and my father in his sixties he said to me one day, in the course of a conversation about the town we lived in when I was small, "You were a very smart little girl." I felt as if I had been hit by lightening, had never heard that before.

When Miriam gives Eliza the old kaleidoscope, I think she hopes very strongly that Eliza will see the perfection in it that she did as a child and become a perfectionist just like mom. Before she won the spelling bee, I don't think she had any hope for Eliza at all. It seems as if the kaleidoscope has almost magic to Miriam, the answers are all in there if only Eliza could see them. When she doesn't, "Miriam can taste her disappointment, goes to the sink for a glass of water. She needs the distance to stop herself from grabbing the gift back."

There is something batting around in my head that I cannot get rid of so I will throw it out here. It has to do with the word "bee." If the word is used meaning honey bee, it brings up some interesting symbolism. Aerodynamically, the bee is not supposed to be able to fly. It's body appears to be too big and too heavy for its small wings but it does fly. Thereby it becomes a symbol for achieving the impossible. Does the spelling bee become for Eliza being able to achieve the impossible? Does she win approval at home, respect at school, acknowledgement by her brother as being worthy? I have not read ahead so I don't know.

I am fascinated by the stones also. Would like to know more about the whole subject.

I think maybe what I wrote about Aaron in an earlier post is causing a little confusion: I said, "If there is a sympathetic character so far, I find it in Aaron. He has had the good fortune of being a bright light in the eye of his father, a TAG student, does a phenomenal job in studying for and completing his bar mitzvah, doesn't hold it against his sister when she sees him being beaten up some class bullies, and seems to accept with a bit of equanimity (the only such thing I've seen so far in the book) his displacement in his father's ministrations"

I do not identify with Aaron in any way. I think he is, however, the character with the most balanced life. In fact, at times I think he is acting quite normal for his age under the circumstances(e.g., his juvenile pomposity at being so wonderful at his bar mitzvah -- 13 year olds can really be like that sometimes! Know-it-alls!). His attitudes toward his sister seem fairly benevolent - running interference for her with Saul, shlepping her around in the car, etc. He doesn't seem as tightly "wound-up" as the others in the family.

As for his pacificity in taking his "beating" - there are some kids who fight back with bullies (usually the bigger, more athletic kids who tend to not get beat-up so much) and there are others who take their lickin'(the quiet or smaller or nerdier ones) I thought his "taking it" was far less bizarre than his sister's reaction of denial. No way can I believe that anyone would turn their back on anyone being beaten up and shrug it off as Eliza did. Her thought were totally of herself and not her brother at that critical time.

Actually, I don't feel too sorry for Eliza, come to think of it. I think she is kind of a little prig. (Sorry!)

It was Alf who pointed up Saul's desire to teach religion to a "notable student" and his stunned pleasure to consider that his trophy student might be his own little Elly-belly. Once Saul sees Eliza in a spelling bee, notes her concentration and her almost mystical "feel" for letters and words, he drops poor Aaron like a hot potato! Now it is Eliza who is invited into the sacred sanctuary of her father's study to fulfill her father's hopes..

Saul begins this task he has always dreamed of, the Jewish education of his "notable student," by drawing a connection between Eliza's beloved spelling bee and a Torah scribe. Both demand PERFECTION of construction with no errors allowed, he points out. The dictionary is Saul's chosen text and he uses the two passionate needs of Eliza...her desire to excel in spelling, and her desperate need for the love and attention of her parents...as the twin pathways to try to mold this child into both an unbeatable spelling bee competitor and into his religious acolyte as well.

I've been trying to figure out why it all makes me so uncomfortable. I asked myself, what's wrong with a father helping his daughter prepare for an upcoming spelling bee and also sharing his religious beliefs with her? First of all, there is such a selfish component of Saul's personal needs mixed in with his help. Secondly, Saul is so totally insensitive to Aaron's needs and becomes casually, though maybe not deliberately rejecting toward the boy. From p.69:

"Saul...must not frighten Eliza with the scale of his plans, the height of his ambitions. They will start by focusing solely on spelling. The dictionary will be their foundation. The ancients advised throrough knowledge of the texts before undertaking the Kabbalah."

I have not read the whole book yet, but it seems to me that Eliza, who is innocently rejoicing in her father's attention could very well be heading for trouble. Thank you, Marvelle, for bringing up the connection between the dictionary and religious mysticism. Also, I never noticed that the cover of Bee Season represents a dog-eared, much used dictionary until MaryPage pointed that out.

A side point: in my family, when we visited the cemetery where loved ones were buried, we left a pebble or stone on the grave as a memento of our visit. I always thought of it as a physical, long lasting indication that we had been present and our dear ones remained in our thoughts.

One of the things about this book which I think is deceptive is that each of the characters has something in him or herself which most of us can relate to, whether we like it or not? It may not seem so at first, and perhaps Aaron is the least likely, surprisingly enough, to be somebody we can identify with (sorry about getting that mixed up, Gail, and thank you SOOO much for explaining that name thing, I've been frantically trying to apply it to my own children, 30 years too late hahahaha) Love it.

But the others, if you pause, you can find something to relate to here? Even in Aaron as he struggles NOT to be jealous, can we all not relate to that pitiful attempt to be good despite raging jealousy?

Marvelle remembers a first grade teacher? I remember a fourth grade teacher. Paige remembers being skipped a grade? I was almost skipped a grade but the third grade teacher did not want me in the class and made my life a misery from the moment I set foot in the room.

Paige remembers the paper. Remember those potholders one would make with the little loops? Well OUR potholders were supposed to be symmetrical/ orderly/ carefully designed in color, mine was not. Mine was a coat of many colors. That beast of a woman, Miss Thomas, may the bird of paradise fly up her nose, took my potholder to the front of the room and made fun of it, had all the children laugh and said to me that I might BE smart, but I would never be able to do anything with my hands, and that was what was important.

And I believed her. And she was right. And to this day I'm clumsy and don't do handwork well.

But imagine?

She also slapped in the face a child who had a speech impediment because she could not understand her. When the bell rang to go home she would begin with the multiplication tables, moving down the rows. Our hands were folded on the desk. If you missed one, SMACK down would come the ruler. I never missed one. My father went to visit Miss Thomas at the school and she never hit me, she'd, hissing like a boiler about to blow, skip by me, but she hated me from that point on. And on and on the woman was a monster.

So I know how it feels to be powerless in the class.

As far as Aaron (no, MaryPage I did not know about the elephants, how neato) I dunno about bullies, it's VERY hard to try to help a bullied child and get him to stand up for himself. Sometimes they take what they think is the best path. I thought that Saul was going to teach him to BOX, but Saul obviously thought he was giving Aaron literally the keys to the kingdom instead.

I agree with Gail that Aaron has redeeming values and I think something happened between Eliza and Aaron when Eliza turned her back on him. Now Gail thinks Eliza is a prig! Isn't that interesting, do the rest of you agree? What could a little girl do against these bullies, what did Aaron expect? She could have screamed? Why did she not? Aaron realized in that moment "that the Eliza he had been picturing was as imaginary as the Aaron he had hoped she would help him become." (page 31). So this incident defines both children but only one realizes it?

In Edit: Arron was Moses's brother not his son! The name "Aaron " is thus not as ironic as I thought. hahaahaha. Moses led the children out to the Promised Land.

(And heck, if one wants to keep on looking at literary parallels, you remember that Moses never got to enter the Promised Land? He only could see it, he was not allowed to go because of his own sin. Aaron led the way, might be interesting to follow that thread and see if it works out and if not, how it does not?)

Some marriage, the Promised Land and Perfectimundo.

And then Saul. You may say oh no I have nothing in common with Saul, can't identify. Can't you? I can, we have shared an experience. I have sat in many a seat facing Principals, teachers, TAG administrators, I know exactly how he felt and he did better than I did?

Yes, here is a story every parent loves to tell. About the child who was identified as "gifted." About the brand new TAG program. About the child who was tested and passed over? About the interview wherein the brand new TAG administrator told the disappointed and somewhat shocked rejected parent that an entire sheet of questions was left blank? "He spent all of the time allotted for this section drawing one train and it's exquisite, but he did not fill in the page?" Alarm, incomprehension, sweat for parent appears. Er...uh... "but listen, Mrs. Anderson, it's not the end of the world?" (words edged in stone coming, etched in memory forever coming... "he might even still go to college....somewhere."

As I myself was teaching in one of the top ten liberal arts private unversities in the nation at the moment that was like a slap. I strangled out through gritted teeth, oh do you think so, then?

Homeward we go. WHY WHY WHY did you not fill in the PAGE? Poor child. WHY? Because, Mama, they said you could do as little or as much as you liked, and I wanted to do the train? Why? What's wrong?

Call to the Woman Who Thinks She's The Three Fates: Child says he was told he could do any or all of page? Well yes he was told that, but no other child failed to complete page , so we can't....and again fade out.

....so...flash forward...(I apologize for this but the book has set these old memories on fire, please excuse)....same child is in high school, in required Algebra II. Teacher thinks so little of the class she says when the test is coming to a close and time is running out, take it home and see if you can finish it THAT way. Teacher laughs. Back to school goes mother.

Teacher has won teacher of the year awards, but lets THESE kids know they aren't worth crap. I point that out and ask her how she expects any of them to learn? OH I never she says. Well I say the kids think you do. Well it's not my best class. Well that's too darn bad, that's my child, if he's so bad in math how will he ever have a career as an Engineer like his dad which he wants? I don't know Mrs. Anderson, I have never heard of somebody not good in math having a career in Engineering. But he made almost 700 (in the days before they inflated the scores ) on the SAT, in both English and Math, he can't be THAT stupid. Oh that does not matter, I myself did very poorly on the SATs....(like that came as a surprise).

OK flash forward. Now you know where this is going, right? Child enters university, in Engineering. After one year child is given full tuition scholarship by the AirForce ROTC where he proceeds to be one of the two top Pilot Slot soldiers on the East Coast. Child gets BSME in Mechanical Engineering, then MBA the next year followed by the PE. Child is highly respected in the world of Engineers. Mother would like to rub same in face of high school teacher.

Snort.

Sorry, er...where were we? I've been Saul, at least in some of his activities, and the book opened with them setting off a bomb in my head. I know people who clean like Miriam and I know how it feels to want perfection. I understand the principal with his daughter whom he loves having to deal with somebody upset that their child is not TAG. I have met Ms. Ludowski, those teachers who wield power because of the results of one test with a page missing.

The author has done an incredible job of putting us in the body and personna of every person, and I think the fact that we CAN identify with some characteristics of these less than perfect people makes us uneasy? The book, as Harriet said above, makes more than one of us uneasy and I think that's the reason. And I think, in our world, it's very difficult to live the perfect life, and I wonder if it's harder to appear perfect and which one, Saul, or Miriam, is more pure in their intent?

ginny

The word Perfectimundo, Maryal tells me, is NOT in the OED? She thinks I am "correctamundo" about its having originated on the tv show Happy Days. hahaha, so that's a dead Dictionary end?

What can we say about a word NOT in the dictionary but which we have heard before? I am puzzled?

We now have our own lexicon beginning.

Marvelle mentions BEE. Wonderful analogy, now I want to know where the word BEE as in Spelling BEE got its derivation.

Did any of you remark on the "standing" thing? The kids all stand and at the end of the classroom bee, the winner remains standing?

Do any of you remember that type of thing? I do. And I myself more than once "threw" a contest so I would not have to stand, because standing where I went to school meant you were stared at. If you made a mistake, you stood. So "standing" was not my idea of good and I wonder even now why anybody would think it so?

What do those of you who have taught think of this standing stuff?

---

Harriet, so your family also does the stones, let me ask you all what happens after years and years? Does the pile get humongous or do they start over or???

This last summer I spent partly in the South of Switzerland near Lake Maggiore where Italian is the language, I was stunned at THEIR care of the graves? Most of the cemeteries are adjoining churches, so after church on Sunday they will water the plants and flowers that adorn the graves, almost all of which have the photograph of the deceased on them. The cemeteries are beautiful, like a garden, it's only a step or two upon leaving to water and prune the flowers and the photos add a personal touch even to the stranger. I've never seen that before, I find cemeteries fascinating, for some reason, and the customs which accompany them, as well.

---

What does this mean, I am not sure I understand the reasoning here:

Eliza wonders if death is not a sleep you can't wake up from but life reduced to one inescapable moment.

There's an illogic about that that I can't grasp, does it make sense to any of you?

Anybody see any more pebbles or stones in this first section?

We can enjoy at the end saying what we think they symbolize, exciting, hah?

Let's hear from everybody today! We want to know what YOU think, don't be shy!

ginny

Paige, just in case your screen image isn't clear, the bookcover is a photo of a well-used book. It is this cover which is the actual dustjacket for the novel "Bee Season".

Marvelle

Thank you MaryPage and Marvelle for the headsup about the bookcover! Perhaps because The Bee Season has come as the same time as fall allergy season and I'm trying to read and post through squinty, allergy eyes and migraines that I am missing things! My thought processes are a bit foggy also, more than usual!

MaryPage, you had such an interesting post, would love to hear more about it. Gail T, it is possible that Eliza is a prig and I have just not read far enough to know that.

In my experience it is true that some Jewish families, particularly of the immigrant generation, placed a higher value on the education of their sons than of their daughters. Ed felt that was why Saul initially invested his hopes and aspirations on Aaron. But, also what about the precipitating reason that initially gained Aaron entry into his father's study?

Aaron earned the honor of his father's attentions by getting beat up regularly on the playground at school, an event that proved to be the turning point in the relationship between Aaron and Eliza. Before that event, BOTH children were excluded from Dad's study. They allied themselves in private games and jokes and formed a singular connection of friendship and flights of imagination about superheroes. As the author said so poignantly, those were the days when Eliza still thought of her brother as a boy who could offer his protection to a sister and Aaron saw himself through her admiring eyes.

When Eliza saw him being degraded by the schoolyard bullies, a very singular UN-five-year-old type of analysis ran through her head. (p.29) Her final decision to abandon her brother was equally INCONSISTENT with the behavior of most five-year-olds. In truth, I feel most children of Eliza's age would instinctively have run howling for a teacher...who would HAVE to have been present in a supervisory capacity during recess.

Aaron's alienation from Eliza began when their eyes met and, in a terrible mind meld, Aaron saw his diminished status through HER eyes. After that event Aaron avoided Eliza. He felt lessened, uncomfortable with her.

Yet MG NEEDED a rationale for the children to lose intimacy and for Aaron to temporarily blossom under his father's attention. It was important to the story line and the author did it so well that I accepted her contention. I simply DIDN'T CARE about the perceived flaw.

Don't you feel all along that the thoughts and rationalizing the author gives Eliza are way too advanced for a child that age, especially one who apparently in the academic area is fairly mediocre? This kind of thinking wouldn't surprise me if it were found in some of the kids who are in the gifted programs but would shock the daylights out of me to find in those "left behind."

In my elementary school days - 1940-46 - there was no such thing as advanced classes or gifted children or any such thing. We knew who the ones were in the class who were smart and who were dumb; but we all were in class together and were friends. It wasn't until Jr. High school that the kids headed for an academic track were separated out from the others and placed together in various classes by subject matter. (Still no AP or honors or gifted programs). But if there had been ANYONE in any of our classes who had thought processes like Eliza did, we wouldn't have known it unless he or she acted weird; then we would have been quick to label her crazy and and we all would have stayed away from her.

It is hard for me to think of either Eliza or Miriam as being "real" people. I find both very bizarre as constructed in this novel. I can understand Saul better because I do know people who are so single-minded about some things that they really aren't very socially or emotionally accessible.

Do I identify with any of them? Maybe Saul, because I sometimes wish I had been more focused on one thing to do well, rather than be so interested in everything that I did NOTHING well. Mind you, I'm not crazy about Saul, and certainly wouldn't have wanted him as a father, but in this book, I am certainly not as hard on the males as I am on the females.

How can Eliza be a prig? The child is only 10 years old!

Gail, I put in some time thinking about that very question while I was reading the book and veered back and forth a lot. This is what I came up with, and it's just my personal take on the subject. I'd be fascinated to hear the opinions of others also.

By the way, I'm talking about Eliza at 10 years old now. At first I figured that any child who was as good at spelling as Eliza was must have come to it by reading a lot. I thought that if she was a voracious closet reader, she would be able to visualize words she had seen many times in books. But that is NOT how she's represented in Bee Season.

As I continued to read, (I haven't finished the whole book yet...it's so rich in detail that I'm concerned about losing parts of the beginning of the book if I read too far ahead...no genius, me...that's for sure) I see Eliza begin to spell words totally unfamiliar to her, EYRIR for instance. From p.39:

"From the first time she steps to the microphone the words are there, radiant as neon. She hears the word and suddenly it is inside her head, translated from sound into physical form. Sometimes the letters need a moment to arrange themselves behind her closed eyes....She knows when a word has reached its perfect form, blazing pure and incontrovertible in her mind."

I think Eliza is a kind of a prodigy, feeling things about letters and words that the rest of us can't. Maybe people who become spelling bee champs have this kind of special gift...just like there are math or music prodigies with gifts of perception that can't be explained in any ordinary way. I feel fond of Eliza, so I'm glad she has this gift.

I clicked on one of the interviews with MG, supplied by Ginny in the link on top of our Bee Season banner and got this quote from Ms. Goldberg:

"In 1997 I went to D.C. to visit the National Spelling Bee. I interviewed the kids and I sat in the auditorium and watched the whole thing--it was intense! If nothing else, that was what made me realize that I could write a novel about this. It's an alternate universe; there's just so much there. For me it became a microcosm of the childhood experience, for just about everyone that I know."

Interesting? The lady did research and talked to the kids participating in the Bees. I'm prepared to believe that some part of her image of Eliza's thinking may have originated in that research. Anyway, I sure hope so, because the parts of the book describing Eliza's thinking, her passionate connection with words...to me, they are wonderful to read. Most of all I love the varied emotions and associations this book brings up in me as I read.

I'd be interested in other takes on the subject. Hey, it's a joy to talk to you Gail, and to everyone else in the discussion.

I believe in Eliza's thought processes. Children see, know and understand much more then they can articulate. They have the thoughts, they just need to develop sophisticated language skills to express those thoughts. As for Eliza running to a teacher to help her brother -- Eliza go to a teacher? No way.

The students wouldn't judge Eliza as smart or dumb. It's the teacher who makes that judgment which these very young children, including Eliza, accept since it comes from an adult. It's good if you've never been faced with a teacher's judgment before Jr. High School. But it happens. My first grade teacher, Sister Mary Valerian, once brought my 3 older sisters into the classroom, made the four of us stand in front of the class, and said that I was stupid and would never graduate. We had to stand there all day.

Well, I did graduate and tests showed that despite being quiet I was smart. Unfortunately for the kids in that 1st grade class, Sister Mary Valerian didn't play favorites. She hated us all equally. Today a teacher so-inclined would have to be more subtle, such as creating TAG games. Then there was Ginny's experience with a teacher.

You've been lucky if you've never experienced what Eliza did, but please understand that such things do happen.

On another note, there is a difference between Aaron's and Eliza's skills which shows up within the first 82 pages. Aaron does something -- plays the guitar, learns Hebrew -- not for love of the activity but to receive approval. Without the approval, the activity isn't of value to him.

Eliza, on the other hand, loves the process with words which then becomes a recognized and treasured skill. She didn't do it for approval because she thought anything she did could not be worthwhile to others. Even at page 82 you begin to worry about Saul trying to control the process.

But there are the two different approaches to an activity -- one for approval and one for love of the process. There is a funny convergence with chanting too, later in the book, like long distance dueling banjos. I think the novel explores these approaches and leaves the reader to wonder which is more effective or worthwhile.

--Marvelle

Oh Marvelle, another horror story, bless your kind heart, did that searing experience affect you, do you think, like mine did me? To this DAY I can't do anything like sewing with my hands, handwork they used to call it. I wonder how many of us have had these horrendous expereinces, and when you think about it, what is more defenseless than a child?

What a wonderful "thread" you all have started here, about Eliza's point of view being too old for her chronological age?

Somebody was saying that to me who is not IN this discussion and I could not follow the thought, and I hope you all will expound on the plusses and minuses of this today so I can grasp it, to me, the way the book starts out, it's a ...oopsie!! kaleidescope of things a child WOULD notice, remember the animal posters?

To tell the truth I have not been 11 for so long I forget how they think and I'm not around any 11 year olds, so I'm flummoxed here!~!

(Hey! Did you see the Emmys? I could not stay up and taped it but HEY HEY google this morning reports that the Sopranos got best Actor and best Actress and that Sex and the City got Best Comdey so I'm flying very high this morning, love Gandolfini in that Sopranos role.) YAY?

Paige, sorry about that migraine!!! Hope you feel better today! I hope you didn't get it over my saying Aaron was Moses's son?

(What was the first thought you all had today upon waking up? Mine was oh no you idiot, Arron was Moses's brother, not his son. OH no, say not so, can it bEEEEE? Grab Bible, anxiously peer in dark nearsightedly at text so as not to wake up husband, er...er...yes indeedy, Aaron the Levite was Moses' brother. No no, bullrushes...yes yes dummy, run in there and change that. But it changes my entire theory. So???? hahaahahah)

Wash that one down the drain, Aaron was Moses's brother who got to lead the children to the Promised Land, Moses got to look over the hill for his sins. I hope I can make that bend enough to tie in. ahhaahahahahaa Jeepers.

Harriet, you taught first grade, what are you thinking about all the issues we're seeing here, did you do that standing thing? I know from reading Harriet's posts that she is a light to everybody around her, I'm interested in her take on what we've heard here and in the book?

MaryPage, bless your heart, DITTO, in spades!

Back in a mo, and will change the heading, do explain, all about this Eliza thing ("Po Eliza, Li'l Liza Jane, Po Eliza, Li'l Liza Jane."

ginny

Marvelle -- what an interesting comparison you have made about Eliza and Aaron -- one doing something for the love of it, and the other doing it for approval. Makes you think of your own families, doesn't it -- how much of what we and our loved ones do is for approval? How do they perceive themselves?

I'm not too far into this book,(it's a LPrint version, so my paging is different) but it makes me think about kids and families I know -- what are they really like, what's shaping those children. I remember my two youngest, describing the high school hierarchy to a visitor. "Well, there are the jocks, and the druggies, and the popular kids, but nobody really likes them." "And what are you?," asked the visitor. "Oh, we're regular kids, we're just average."

This morning I opened the local paper, and immediately thought of Eliza. It's first quarter honor roll time. High school has done it for years -- I can live with that. But now it's every school and sometimes every grade.First grade honor roll! Give me a break. So Susie's name is not in the paper, but Johnny's is. They both know why and it's not good for either of them.

When I think about all the bad experiences I've read in here with teachers, I feel like cringing. I'm not sure I want to ADMIT to having been a teacher of very little children. Having taught both kg and first grade, they seem surreal.

No one, repeat NO ONE is more open, vulnerable and GIVING of trust than a very small child. It's what I adored about them... their sweetness of personality and their innocence, the ease with which they would giggle and smile, and the trust with which they threw themselves into learning new things. Little children are a joy, and I loved spending my day with them. The deliberate desire to cause pain, physical or emotional, to such a small person is unimaginable.

A brief apologia for teachers: If you think about it, teaching in an elementary school can be an isolated sort of job. For the most part you only get to interact with other adults during lunchtime and when you arrive at work or go home. The GOOD things you do, and your successes... happen in an enclosed classroom and are often unwitnessed by any other appreciative adults. In teaching, your reward for successfully diagnosing WHY a little child is having difficulties grasping an aspect of learning, and then figuring out a fun way to fix it... has to be the overjoyed look on that child's face...(that is a POWERFUL motivator)... and the eagerness and confidence with which the child accepts subsequent learning situations. The BEST thing in teaching can be when the teacher and children live in a classroom filled with the daily simpatico vibes that surround a happy, eager group of little kids. There is so much warmth and satisfaction in that. A teacher who CAN'T enjoy kids is destined for a difficult, frustrating career.

Horrors!...the mistakes a teacher makes are also mostly unwitnessed by any other adult who has the power to say, "Hey, knock it off, huh?" Apparently, that aspect of the job must have resulted in a power trip in some twisted individuals who, for whatever reason, simply DIDN'T LIKE little kids.

I am appalled to say it, but it sounds like, in your experiences, Ginny, Marvelle, some Nazi-like individuals wielded power with malice and sadism. I am so sorry to hear it. I can't find any excuse for some of the awful experiences I've read about here. Many of them constitute child abuse and seemed to have originated with a teacher who was angry and frustrated for whatever... and took it out on little innocents. Those teachers created a bonanza of trauma and pain for children and their parents alike. Nowadays there are often aides, and parent volunteers in many classrooms, so abuses that stem from isolation-driven power should, hopefully, be less. But I doubt if that provides much consolation to you guys after all your trauma.

Also, sometimes frustrating things happen because of the bureaucratic nonsense that afflicts ALL fields of work. If a silly, inflexible set of rules is set up by the Board of Education or the school administration, teachers who don't even agree with those rules may be locked into implementing them. What a downer for all concerned!

One last word about a field of work that I have loved. On Sept. 11, 2001, when the WTC in NY was attacked, there were many schools that underwent emergency evacuation in the immediate vicinity of the WTC. Teachers and aides had to make spontaneous judgements about what to do under terrifying circumstances. Yet EVERY SINGLE CHILD in those schools was brought to safety. When the dust settled, there were NO unaccounted for NYC children. There were news reports about teachers who led their children through ash and debris with one child carried on their back, and another child in their arms. Many teachers spontaneously manned overnight bed facilities set up to care for kids whose parents couldn't be found.

By the way, Ginny... about things like standing up in class, I made spontaneous decisions based on the "look" on the child's face and the "vibes" coming from him. In teaching, after a while it's possible to become very finely attuned to the emotions of the kids. There were some kids who gloried in being the center of attention, and others who hated it. I tried to do whatever made a child comfortable, and there are so many different personalities of children.

Teaching is such an emotional subject because we entrust teachers with our most beloved treasures, our children. When our child feels pain, so do we...and mostly we aren't interested in the why's of any unintentional mistakes that may occur. That's human nature, and acceptance of it goes with the territory of professional teaching.

Golly, Marvelle, don't you wish we had had Harriet for a teacher? It's obvious from the proliferation of words meaning JOY in her post what a blessing she was to her pupils. Teachers like that come along once in a while, if we all think back to our most beloved teacher, how MANY such fine people do you come up with?

You should have tons of names, do you?

Harriet, I'm humbled to be here in the same room as you! And you are right, I think the key word is "Nowadays." Back then there were few, I think standards and very little supervision. Back then sometimes even the teacher did not have teaching credentials and obviously abuses occurred and I have not told the worst, but I think everybody got the picture. I think people our age are much more likely to have such memories, thank God.

---

Pedln!! Welcome!!! We are so glad to see you here!!! First Grade Honor role, you are so right! At that age maybe they all, in a perfect world, should feel good about what they each can do.

I like the "popsicle stick" method for recognizing children, myself? It works with any age group. You put the child's name on a popsicle stick and keep it on your desk, and draw out one by one and call upon that child. In that way you don't favor one of the more eager, and each child gets his own day in the sun. I like that. I think everybody should have their own day in the sun and hopefully here in the Books everybody does!

Wonderful question, Pedlin, about how much we do for approval. I would say normally a female would try to please more than a male, but the situation is reversed in this case? Interesting, huh? That's not the only male/ female role reversed, either, is it?

---

Marvelle, wonderful point about Aaron and Eliza, I missed that entirely. I loved this point of yours There is a funny convergence with chanting too, later in the book, like long distance dueling banjos. I think the novel explores these approaches and leaves the reader to wonder which is more effective or worthwhile.

Oh that's so good. I had found a place in the text where it seemed to me that there was another type of convergence? A convergence of voices, almost contrapuntal? It gave me a chill and here you note another conversion, this is exciting, to me. I'll go back and try to find the convergence in voice.

ginny

MaryPage, what a beautiful thing you wrote: I do own a concept that the moment of death encapsulates the entire life experience, and that that very moment illuminates and sanctions (or, perhaps, does not) the whole depth, breadth, and many other undefined dimensions of that life, making the whole understandable and worthwhile.

Now you and that doctor who wrote How We Die drastically differ, have you read it? What an amazing thought, I think we need to be taking quotes like that out of our book discussions that are interesting and publicizing them. Thank you for that. Scary concept tho, that "and perhaps, does not" you've got there? Harold Kushner just wrote an entire book on that.

---

Harriet, I appreciate your explanation of how a child's mind would work in the Aaron beating situation, that was what I thought, too, that she would run to the teacher. So in this area, then, we find I guess an anomaly. I guess we, the Readers, will have to decide for ourselves at the end if Eliza is real or if we're looking at something else.

Wow, Harriet, THIS was fabulous, you all just shine today: Yet MG NEEDED a rationale for the children to lose intimacy and for Aaron to temporarily blossom under his father's attention. It was important to the story line and the author did it so well that I accepted her contention. I simply DIDN'T CARE about the perceived flaw.

Oh boy, so here the author has intruded...now, was there any other way that MG could have made Aaron blossom, I mean he appears to me to be the perfect kid every parent should love? Do you think in the natural course of things other things could have caused Aaron and Eliza to separate and the father to prefer one over another? The author is hanging a LOT on this spelling bee thing, isn't she? Or is she? Super point!

And thank you for mentioning the links to the author conversation, I was struck by the introductory quotes, did you all notice them? One of them is:

Are you really proud of me?


Rebecca Sealfon, 1997 National Spelling Bee Champion

I thought to myself, oh no, tell me there's not another Eliza out there?

---

Gail's remark about neither Eliza nor Miriam being "real" people made me remember what scene in the book for me it was when I first began pulling away from Miriam as a character. Isn't it funny how different things make you break away?

Of all things, for me it was Miriam in the auditorium? Her child on the stage? How did she feel?

Though Miriam is glad to be sitting here, a parent among parents, she cannot help but feel there is somewhere else she should be. Miriam knows this feeling well. It is rare not to feel the amorphous pull of some nameless, important task requiring her attention. She considers herself at her best when doing three things at once. The book she has brought lessens her sense of urgency, but....she feels guilty whenever she starts to read.

What? I stopped? Whenever she starts to READ?

Right there she lost me. I could take the strange shoplifting because of course in the end, right, of a fairy tale she will stop that and all will be the picture post card that Eliza pictures, and I can take her feeling she should be doing something more, the cleaning, but reads a book? When it's her own CHILD up there?

Nope. At that point Miriam lost any hope of aliveness she had for me, when did she lose it for you, Gail?

---

You know, we're getting a lot out of these first 82 pages!

Go, Harriet! You are a great teacher. And yes, I did have some wonderful teachers after Sister Mary Valerian (back in the olden days, a nun received her name from the Mother Superior. Obviously the M.S. knew exactly what type of person this Sister was.) It's the good teachers who have to work so hard, unfairly, to undo the Valerian effect. It took years before I could speak up in a classroom & before I accepted, despite many tests, that I was quite smart. Like Ginny with handwork, I still call myself stupid when I make a mistake. Yet the adult in us knows that we aren't limited to a teacher's label. I guess there will always be a child in us no matter our age and there are a lot of good memories too, huh, Ginny?

I still don't see Eliza running to a teacher for help. Obviously she and Aaron have always been the adults of the family and could count very little on their parents. Plus there was Eliza's experience at school. These two kids would not willingly trust an adult, sad to say. Even Chali is trusted only after Aaron decides that he's not much older then himself.

About Eliza's thought process & viewpoint: I see the author using a retrospective viewpoint. It is so hard to catch a child's perceptions when they are too young to adequately vocalize those perceptions. The best writer of children to me is Frank O'Connor. He sees things clearly through a child's eyes, uses adult language, yet you still feel that it is the child speaking -- in his case, the child in the adult. A difficult feat! If you are interested in reading really fine examples, try O'Connor's short stories such as "My Oedipus Complex," "Confession," and "The Drunkard." And if the MG isn't using a retrospective viewpoint what else is it? I'm really curious to hear people's ideas.

As far as Miriam goes, she lost me when Eliza was trying to find a way to talk about the upcoming area finals. No child should be that reluctant to approach a parent. Miriam is so distant. Eliza and Aaron are just shards to her and once acquired they are a small part of the pattern.

Marvelle

I have known a few people like Saul and they can be terribly overbearing,but I think it conceals a character flaw in that it enables them to avoid reality.

MG's characters seem to be each suspended in their own bubbles and their interaction with each other,is like bubbles bouncing off each other. How much do they really enter into each other's life?

I'm fascinated with Aaron's evolution or metamorphosis as he goes from being a conspiratorial insider (acess to Saul)to a point of becoming a revolutionary figure.

Speaking of metamorphosis,who's the Queen Bee here? Is Miriam the Queen Bee and Eliza the Queen of the Bees?

Is anyone getting the feeling of some impending catastrophic event about to happen?

Miriam is such a puzzle. On the one hand, she is seeking Perfectimundo with everything having to be just so. On the other hand, she lives on the edge with the shoplifting. She gets such a high out of it, reminds me of people who love brinksmanship...living just this side of safety from danger. Strange woman this Miriam.

Neither Saul or Miriam enjoy Eliza and Aaron for the children that they are. They only come into the parent's line of vision in any meaningful way when they do something special. They are not loved for who they are but for what they do. I do not like the way Saul takes over Eliza's studying for the spelling bee. He makes it be all about him, it is not her magical world anymore. Aaron may be getting a break since he has fallen from grace a bit in Saul's eyes as he becomes focused on Eliza and her newly discovered skill. At first he feels left out as he stands outside the study door with guitar in hand waiting. Then he begins to feel the freedom in this and begins to explore new ways of thinking. He "realizes he's bought Judaism without consulting the side of the box." If he was still in the scared study every evening, under Saul's thumb, he would not feel free to begin to wonder about all that his father has taught him.

Ginny, about those handmade potholders...mine were really ugly too. They were all kind of ugly, even the ones that achieved Perfectimundo!

Paige, I"m so glad you're back and your migraine is over? I think living with Saul and Miriam would give anybody a mirgaine, I loved yout point about the door? Aaron standing outside the door?

I just realized when you wrote that that the parents have erected actualy physical barriers, the closed DOOR, the lack, as Ed says, of relating at all? The big closed door that the child slides an envelope under? Now why is that? Miriam has erected the physical barrier of time? She is physically not present unless in the early morning hours?

Do we have any evidence that Saul is abusive? Why should the child hesitate?

Teriffic point!

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OH yes, what a fabulous interjection, also Paige, the potholders, even the "perfect" ones were ALL NON perfectimundo? How could they be otherwise?

Who yesterday spoke of SHARDS? They are all shards spinning in this kaleidescope and yes, Ed I certainly do have the feeling of impending doom, certainly do, what else could you expect, jeepers, it's hard enough even when semi-normal to deal with life's vicissitudes, I get the feeling that the slightes thing will topple this house of cards, has the slightest thing already occurred?

Ed, do the people you know like Saul retreat into scholarship or religious study, this is not the famous pilpul is it? There's no dialogue here. I wonder what the Rabbi thinks of his cantor here. I had no idea and still don't that the cantor is intended as some sort of clown or relief figure? Can somebody enlighten me here?

Saul the entertainer. Saul as you know is also a very meaingful name in the Old Testament, not a very good luck name despite its being so pretty.

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A good question, Ed, on who is the Queen Bee? Who in this family does the family revolve around? UP till now who has it been? Miriam or Saul?

When Eliza wins the BEE who does it become?

Wonderful dynamic family question.

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Yes, Marvelle, thank God there were others, and I suddenly realized yesterday that it was one such other that has given me the confidence I do have, such as it is, in literature. We hope, through our soon to be announced Lit Crit "courses" offered here on SeniorNet in the new year, to bring this confidence and empowerment to everybody, this joy of discovery, this secret garden, stay tuned for more details.

If you met me in person, however, you would find a pitifully shy individual with bottle thick glasses (concealed by contacs) and timid to a fault.

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I think maybe that's why initally we can feel for Eliza. Perhaps we were the kid in the corner from whom nothing was expected or, conversely, from whom everything was expected? Two different burdens, which is ultimately the most stressful?

ginny

Oh in the heading today are two Reader's Guide questions from Random House on Saul, what do you think?

ginny

I question whether anyone really gets free of the legacies of their parents,in particular those legacies that are negative. This becomes an age-old question about the "sins of the fathers".

I think that Saul's retreat into Judaic mysticism is ,in part,an attempt to have some magical wish fulfillment solve his problems (or what he perceieves to be his problems)

Ginny: remember the Golem in Kavalier & Clay? Perhaps Saul is (in his mind)trying to fashion a golem in his dusty library?Another aspect of Judaic mysticism is the Dybbuk..which is when a person is posessed by an evil spirit (which can be exorcised by a Cabalist)

[ Tangential interlude for a moment..one of the best contemporary pieces of literature is the play The Tenth Man by Paddy Chayefsky,which deals with a Dybbuk]

To me, Saul seems to be obsessed with dead things..old books that deal with arcane aspects of Judiaism...his library is sealed like a crypt and he seems to make it a quai-religious experience to be invited into the library, almost like being asked to approach an altar.

The question about Saul being abusive is worthy of contemplation. At this part of the book, I would say that some of his interaction with his children might be emotionally abusive. I'll reserve judgement of the physical abuse question,till further in the story.

Ed, what an interesting idea, to compare Saul to figures from Jewish mysticism. If we follow through on your analogy, do you feel that Saul is unconsciously trying to turn first Aaron and later Eliza into his own golems,...who are artificially created creatures without soul, designed to do his bidding... and destined to save HIM... from his own feelings of failure? It's a provocative concept. In Jewish mythology, the Rabbi who was the creator of the golem later destroyed it. What a chilling thought!

I felt that Saul saw himself as a nurturing father, but as Paige points out, he doesn't love his children for themselves, but only for what they do to please him. It's still all about himself... even when Saul is helping his kids.

And if Aaron and Eliza represent golems, does Saul himself represent the dybbuk? Is he sufficiently evil on a conscious level to fulfill that role? Or not? Ed, I love the way you discuss Saul in terms of Jewish mysticism. Paige's ideas come together with yours to create a feeling of impending disaster.

Marvelle, you knocked me right over when you talked about your two kinds writing viewpoint. Does a retrospective viewpoint mean that you feel MG consciously wrote about the feelings of Eliza, the child, while maintaining her own adult powers of observation and vocabulary? Maybe that kind of choice, made by the author, would render Eliza's thought processes more understandable? I hope I read you correctly. If not, help would be gratefully accepted.

Saul saw himself as a scholar, and I think that made it all right, in his own mind, to devote himself to his studies and to allow his wife to carry the burden of being the main breadwinner of the family. Since Judaism encourages the efforts of scholars, it also provided the rationale for him to isolate himself physically from his children as he pursued his learning. The lack of affectionate contact with his own father must have made him feel that his own paternal behavior was praiseworthy by comparison.

Add to that Ginny's perceptive comment about how Miriam set up barriers of TIME between herself and the two children, always being elsewhere, mentally or physically when the children were having difficulties, and the stage is set for problems. There is not much real tenderness coming from these two distant parents.

Oh, MaryPage! I wish I had seen that episode. Maybe they'll do a replay one day soon.

If one of the writers for Judging Amy really read Bee Season and, as a result, was moved enough to base an episode of his show on his reactions...what a tribute that would be to the impact of the book!

Isn't it fascinating how writers can impact one another?

Mary Page:  I saw Judging Amy last night. (I never miss it actually.)  I, too, wondered if  one of the writers had read Bee Season.

Does Saul's obsession with his religion and his study originate from the fact that he isolated and alienated himself from his roots.  His father "gave up interest" in him when his mother describes a world ruled by the Book, a world with little room for change.   From that point on a breach is made from which he never seems to fully recover.   He goes from one thing to another; drugs, women mysticism--  in pursuit of what?  Does he even know?  He is reaching towards perfection, trying to transcendend.  Only when he witnessess Elizas reaction on stage does he see it.  Now--- now all of the efforts can be transferred to the perfection of Eliza's skills.  Aaron takes the back seat now.  (Oh dear, I just thought -- now Saul "gives up interest" in his son, much the same as his father did with him.   Yes, I would call that emotional abuse but in all fairness to Saul-- he just doesn't get it!  He has buried his core, his roots with the estrangement from his father.  Everything he does from then on is to try to anchor on to his ancestoral lineage.  I agree with you, Harriet and Ed.  He has emplyed the powers of the golem.  What a great contrast to Kavalier and Clay.  Bravo!!

And what a great summary of Saul and his mindset, Alf. Bravo, again!

Thank you for all your welcoming words. I found you the other day and haven't posted one intellectual word. We are completely redoing our kitchen and I can't even get out the back door to purchase the book!! When I have a chance, I promise that I will join the discussions. Thanks, Keene

Keene, we'll be delighted to have you. Goodness, don't worry about being intellectual. We all just have some fun sounding off about books. Come and join us and have fun too.

I also had the same reaction to Judging Amy....

Ginny, you and I can relate to the surroundings of this book..Bucks County, Norristown and Philadelphia. I am just waiting for Frankford and Moorestown.

Read the first part of the book while waiting for my car to be serviced. I was so involved with the characters that I didn't realize I had been reading for two hours and my car was waiting for me.

I find Miriam is one of those "been there and done that people" and has no place to go b ecause of her own self centeredness. She had two children but only to prove she could do it. She accomplished the birth of Aaron and Eliza but the whole thing was mechanical with out any real motherly love. she did that now she can move on to other things. Even at the spelling bee her actions were mechanical. How many of us bring a book to read when our children are performing on the stage.

Speaking of teachers, I had a teacher who kept comparing me with my brother who was a good obedient student and I was the little rebel. I wAS GLAD WE MOVED TO A DIFFERENT NEIGHBORHOOD when I reached 3rd grade. I did learn from that. I vowed never to compare my children to one another.

My son had a teacher who tried to teach him to be neat by having him clean out his desk at a PTA meeting while all the parents were in the room.She set him up as an example of a sloppy child. She said he would never make it beyond the 5th grade. Well he did. He graduated from VATech with honors and is now Field Designer for a housing development in Florida and has helped design several golf courses but he never learned to keep his desk or his room neat.

This book has loads of room for conciliation. Haven't decided if I like it or dislike it so I shall trudge on.

Harriet, you explained my thought about Eliza's voice in the novel much better than I did. MG uses adult language to express Eliza's feelings and perceptions. Children are more perceptive than adults since they are experiencing things for the first time. The world is new to them. They just don't know how to express themselves yet. IMO Frank O'Connor is the author who best writes from this viewpoint in stories for adults.

Paige & Ginny agree that there is no such thing as a perfect potholder. Isn't that because there are so many variations to a potholder, not just one static image? Yet Miriam keeps striving for an elusive perfection. Once a perfect thing changes, like the shards in a kaleidoscope or children maturing, then does it cease to be perfect or does it transcend perfection?

One of the joys of life is change and the process itself can be perfection. Eliza feels that intuitively when she relaxes into the words in her mind. If Miriam were literary I could see her as a follower of deconstructionist theory, someone who moans about the elusive word, about how a word means many different things to many people. As if that were a bad thing. Deconstructionists want to pin a word to the mat like a butterfly and I believe that true perfection is a butterfly in nature. It is a natural process of change from egg to cocoon to emerging adult in its erratic flight, color changing in sunlight or dark -- elusive and beautiful in all it's stages and in its own way.

You too, CMac? And what a terrible experience for your son! Some people just don't think about how vulnerable young children are as Harriet said so eloquently. I bet your son has never fogotten that teacher just as you've never forgotten! Somewhere though we find, and remember, the good ones too.

Harriet, Ed, Alf -- your collective analysis of Saul is "perfect." Eliza has found delight in the play with words, they are alive to her, and Saul wants to impose his own ideas of perfection on her. He thinks he's being caring and supportive but I only see destructon in his wake. This cannot turn out well.

Well, I've gone from potholders, to deconstructionists, to a butterfly. Everything but the kitchen sink. I still waver about the book in its 'let everything be awful' outlook and her complete cast of misfit characters. Maybe the author needs more of life's experiences, more hard knocks, to understand there is a balance to all things? There, now that's the kitchen sink.

--Marvelle

I didn't see Judging Amy. Sure sounds like one of the writers read "Bee Season" & I hope I see that episode in reruns soon, or else a continuation of it.

About the MG's philosophy; of course there has to be conflict in a story or it isn't a story but I get the impression that MG is still in the either/or phase of life with no shadings. Once she gets the complexity of shadings into her writing there will be no stopping her. Her poetic expressiveness is breathtaking as is her ability to make characters come alive.

--Marvelle

CMac...did Ginny call you Clare?...that was a truly awful experience with your son's teacher. Were YOU at that PTA meeting also? If so, how excruciating it must have been for you as well.

For whatever consolation it may be to you, I'm pretty sure you got your revenge because that incident HAD to be a reputation destroyer for the teacher, not the victimized child. Any teacher who does such a cruel thing to a child publicly will absolutely have professional after effects to deal with. I'm sure every mother at that PTA meeting must have responded to the incident by silently and fearfully thinking about some of the the private imperfections of her OWN child. Without question they must have sympathized with your son and identified with you.

Marvelle and MaryPage, I have been considering the point that both of you discussed about the "down" qualities of our book. I've been thrashing it out in my head and having a hard time with it. I think it was Ginny that asked, "Is the only purpose of a book to be edifying to the reader?"

As I grow older I find myself more and more affected by things like violent war movies and books with painful emotional impact. Maybe part of it is that, the longer I live, the more my experiences teach me that everything does NOT always turn out for the best and life sometimes throws a few hard punches. So I find that I sometimes relate too personally to a book that describes painful situations and that can certainly be stressful. Where does that leave me in terms of reading? I CAN stick to escapist romances, mysteries...and I AM a not-so-secret aficionado of those.

Yet a book like Bee Season also provides a richness and magic... a carefully crafted glimpse into other lives, other life-styles, an emotional vortex that enriches at the same time that it distresses...and leaves me poised between rapture and pain. My mind, my emotions vibrate with greater intensity. My days would be poorer without the conflict.

Marvelle, you wrote so beautifully: "I get the impression that MG is still in the either/or phase of life with no shadings. Once she gets the complexity of shadings into her writing there will be no stopping her. Her poetic expressiveness is breathtaking as is her ability to make characters come alive."

Wow!

So, is it worth it to tackle the reading of distressing stuff? I'm truly not asking rhetorically. I do veer back and forth quite a lot and maybe someone else has something more definitive to say because, believe me, lots of people that I know personally have decided that it is better to avoid stimuli that troubles them overmuch. How does this play out with you all, and YOUR reading?

Hey, back to the book!

Today is our last day for discussing the first 1/4 of the book. Tomorrow we begin discussing pages 83-137. Time for last licks on the first part of Bee Season, particularly those parts that hint at future events in the book.

I was interested in Aaron's religious revelation when he was eight years old. He was plainly a child already deeply affected by the devoutness of his father, because only a boy who had already thought deeply about God could have interpreted his night time experience on an airplane with such a religious fervor. When a cloud became suffused with the pulsing red blinker light of the plane, Aaron felt that he had seen his God in the resulting beauty. Aaron's need for both a nurturing real-life father and for a relationship with God, may have set the stage for a path with many future consequences.

Both father and son were on an emotional journey. The airplane trip was bringing Aaron home from the funeral of his grandfather, an event which closed forever any chance that Saul could ever reconcile his own rejection by HIS father. Aaron was on a journey where he would begin to grasp his father's failed roots. Again, a potential for many future misunderstandings.

Usually a whole family travels TOGETHER to a funeral as immediate as the loss of a parent. If Saul cared enough to go in the first place, why didn't Miriam and Eliza join him? If Miriam was unwilling, why did Saul take Aaron and leave Eliza home?

Such a strange isolated family. MG writes of a photograph of the Naumann family on p. 65:

"The family doesn't look anything like the stuff of photography studios. Theirs is no pearl-finish portrait of interlocking hands and matched smiles. Instead, they more closely resemble odd puzzle pieces, mismatched slots and tabs jammed into each other to force a whole."

What does it all mean?

Actually I don't like much escapist literature unless it's a mystery with believable characters, and great plot & writing. I've had an active life, I've lived in war zones, been shot at & done some shooting myself, I've been near death, etc, etc. I just keep Viktor Frankl's philosophy in mind that even if you have lost your freedom, even that over your life; you still have the last of human freedoms which is "the freedom to choose one's attitude in any given situation".

I would argue that "Bee Season" is not realistic and is, in it's own way, escapist although it is a beautiful book. However, I can't keep saying this & so this is my last stab at trying to express my impression of the book. I enjoy the book, I would read more of this author's work but.... Well, on with the story! But I'll have to wait until after work tonight or tomorrow to respond to Harriet's interesting questions.

--Marvelle

Marvelle, you sound like you've had remarkable experiences and have learned much empowerment from them. Bless you.

Never cowardly, MaryPage!

We all deal with life in the ways that are best for ourselves in our attempt to get and give happpiness. Earlier I talked about the purity and passion of Eliza's experience with letters and words and mentioned how it lifted me when I read the book. It occurs to me that I neglected to mention another factor in my pleasure with the book.

That factor is our sharing of perceptions...mental and emotional...in this book discussion format. Here we all are, MaryPage... you, me, everyone of us... talking to each other, enriching our mutual understandings of the book. Every book has so many levels only because it is filtered through so many minds. There are no absolutes, but only the realizations we get by looking at life and literature through the gorgeous prism of another person's eyes. It certainly provides an emphatic "up" factor to even a "down" book.

So glad to have you ALL here. So very glad to hear all your comments.

I have sent notices, for those interested in continuing to receive it to REPLY .... since email addresses come and go are changed and boxes get full.

But I have not heard from a lot of people who post here regularly or the lurkers that are here.

SO .... if you still want Book Bytes.....
Click on my name.
Click on my email address
Send me an email with Book Bytes in the subject line
And I will add your name to the new list.

Oh, so busy this week! Don't know how I'm going to fit reading in. But I just had to put my 2 cents in this discussion.

Bee Season is full of people who are in pretty bad shape emotionally and/or mentally. There does not seem to be a lot of "hope" in the book. However, I find the family members very, very interesting and by virtue of that just HAVE to keep reading to find out what is going to happen to them. I love Jane Hamilton's books - and both "The Book of Ruth" and "Map of the World" were not exactly uplifting books. But both were powerful and so beautifully crafted that never once did I contemplate putting either of them down. I feel the same way about Bee Season.

I HOPE to be able to read the next 1/4 this coming week -- but if you don't hear from me, you'll know why!

You're a very welcome voice, Gail.

Starting tomorrow we discuss pages 83 - 137. less than 55 tumultuous pages. If you DO find a few spare minutes to read them, hopefully they'll put a bee in your bonnet that may help you decide to again "put your 2 cents in."

Anyway we certainly hope so. It will be lovely if you can find some time to join us. Hope your busy week goes well for you.

Had a few second to read while my clothes were finishing the drying cycle and noticed that the traditional title of the Christmas song on page 84 is "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" rather than as she has it and as it is usually thought to be "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen."

This book is very depressing, and I keep wondering if there will be any redemption for any of the characters. If there is any, I think it will be found in Eliza -- she is the only one who actions have shown any caring for others. At least she is trying to reach Aaron, she's aware that something is wrong --"Why don't you play your guitar any more, Aaron." And she knows that her mother was disappointed in her reaction to the kaleidescope. Some of this may be self-serving on her part, but if any of the characters are to come out of this book intact it will be her. But on the whole, I think they are all spiraling downwards toward some awfulness.

MaryPage, I had taped Judging Amy so watched it last night. I totally agree about one of the writers having read Bee Season. Especially when the girl was trying to spell the difficult word. It was like she, too, was seeing the letters inside her head.

A subtle but distinctive change in orientation on that traditional Xmas carol title.

Thanks, Gail. Never would have noticed that one. The placement of a comma certainly shifts the emphasis, doesn't it? Yay! You're reading!

Pedln, I was also moved by the part of the book where Eliza asked Aaron about his infrequent guitar playing. Of them all, I felt Eliza tries the most to reach out to other family members. Remember too how she tried to make contact with Miriam, asking her if she cleans because she can't sleep?

She may even have been consciously aware of her brother's pain at his banishment from the study. An all too human Eliza felt momentary selfish pleasure when her father chose to retain HER in the Study even though it was time for Aaron's guitar lesson.

Perhaps she wanted to feel the sensation of being INSIDE that closed door while Aaron waited OUTSIDE, as SHE had so many times in the past. Saul helped to create that momentary meanness in Eliza by his unequal treatment of the two children both in the past, and in the present.

But now her concern for her brother and her affection for him as her past confidante resurfaces, and she tries to talk to him.

Gail, I know how you feel, took yesterday off and came back in to 13 new messages and all of them full of substance and new ideas and beautifully expressed, and I congratulate you all on them!

Well done!

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Would like to start by thanking Ed for mentioning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay which we read in the August Book Club Online. That is proof that if you just stay with us and try to read the Book Club Online's suggestions then you will find yourself very well read on many fronts!

Here from that discussion is a description of a GOLEM, and a link to the story of the famous Golem of Prague:

Golem:

"In Jewish legend, a golem is an image or form that is given life through a magical formula, such as the power of the letters of the divine name. The word is used to denote anything that is not yet fully developed. In the Middle Ages is was believed that there were wise men who could instill life in effigies by the use of a magic spell. These golems then took the form of a robot, or automaton. They would carry out their master's command and could perform easy tasks, as well as protecting their creators." (from Cohn-Sherbok, Dan.) A Popular Dictionary of Judaism Richmond: Curzon Press, 1997 ISBN: 0844204234 (Trade Paper)



Rabbi Loeb and the Golem of Prague

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Ed, I loved your point about Saul's burying himself in the past, things of the past. And he does seem to have built his own altar there, something very elusive just flashed across my mind but disappeared. Something disconcerting as well. And your mention of The Tenth Man by Paddy Chayefsky,which deals with a Dybbuk makes me want to read that, too, just like I finally got to read Waiting for Godot after all these years when it was spoken about in another discussion. I will ask Charlie Wendell, our fiction coordinator, if he will schedule it and maybe Godot at the same time, a unit on the play.

Thank you for those comparative literature references!

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Andrea, super point here: Now--- now all of the efforts can be transferred to the perfection of Eliza's skills. Aaron takes the back seat now. (Oh dear, I just thought -- now Saul "gives up interest" in his son, much the same as his father did with him. Yes, I would call that emotional abuse but in all fairness to Saul-- he just doesn't get it! He has buried his core, his roots with the estrangement from his father.

Super perspective and somewhat similar to Harriet's startling take on the funeral, I had missed that entirely, Aaron sees his revelation returning alone from his grandfather's funeral!

At such a time every child is reaching out, my own youngest son dreamed relentlessly for days after his own grandfather's funeral that the casket was at the foot of the driveway here and when he went down to get the mail his grandfather would rise up (it had been an open casket) and he was all youthful as he had once been...children are affected by funerals and caskets, but my own mother kept me from them all my life, the first funeral I ever attended was as a grown woman and it was my grandmothers and her contemporaries would remark that she looked "so good," though she of course did not, and it took some getting used to, I'm unsure which is the best way to go with a child, vis a vis funeral traditions, what do you all think?

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I do think the drive by viewing is in poor taste, I don't care what religion a person is.

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Clare, it appears we have more than one thing in common, what did you DO when the child was ordered to clean out his desk at the PTA? I'm different now than I was then, I would do differently now, one wants so badly to not prejudice the teacher against the child, one hardly knows what to do. Thank you for telling us the triumphant end and BOOO to that teacher!

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My copy utility has gone insane and I no longer have the quotes and the people who said them in the correct order, please excuse here!

Children are more perceptive than adults since they are experiencing things for the first time.

Who said that one? That is so good! It's well known that children have a different perspective. You can pay a mint to take a child to Rome and the glories there only to find out later that the only thing the child remembers is a caterpillar crawling on a geranium leaf on top of Hadrian's Tomb.

One of the things I thought the author seemed to do well was that her approach to the narrative was sort of kaleidescopic, in that whirling images a child might notice were presented to the reader?

The whole experience is a kaleidescope, from the very first page, the scrape of the chairs, the "sun-bleached posters of puppies and kittens..." etc., etc., etc., they take up the whole page? On page 2 we have cinder block walls that Eliza expects to be "able to poke her finger into," and then this is juxtaposed by the very mature (to me) contrast in that "She can certainly poke her way through and past her teacher's voice...." Now that, to me, is not a childish way of thinking? Is it your idea of the way a child thinks?

And then the desks, and the pencils, the whole perspective is from a child's view, a helpless child's view, and I thought that was pretty authentic. Until we get in Eliza's head and hear her thoughts.

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MARVELLE!!!! HO! ... Miriam were literary I could see her as a follower of deconstructionist theory, someone who moans about the elusive word, about how a word means many different things to many people

What what?? I don't know this theory please explain? Is this what happens when you stare at a word so long it seems to be "wrong?" Have any of you ever done that? I have a feeling this is not the same thing, do explain, we've got Golems and Chayefsky, the kitchen sink and the deconstruction theory and reconciliation of father and son (who said this one?)? Both father and son were on an emotional journey. The airplane trip was bringing Aaron home from the funeral of his grandfather, an event which closed forever any chance that Saul could ever reconcile his own rejection.

Wow, well said!

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Harriet, I, too, sometimes tend to get totally absorbed in what I read, I mentioned this morning in The Curious Mind my very curious experience reading John Updike's Rabbit series and the effect it had on me, I was surprised. I really took it to heart and as a consequence, when I woke up and realized why the world looked so depressed and cynical and bitter that I was looking at it thru Rabbit Angstrom/ Updike's eyes and I did not need that in my life. Yet we long for a good experience in reading a book, that's why we pick up a new one, we're looking for something (but Rabbit Angstrom is NOT it, for me). hahahaha

Yet we can see something of that in the section on page 79 where the author says "Ever since Saul dissected a Snoopy Snow Cone Machine commercal for Aaron at age seven, Aaron has been aware of the manipulative powers of advertising."

Now here again, it's strange. My family dissected anything at all on television, took nothing at face value. I think it's something that comes naturally as you watch the screen, a voicing of your own unconscious thoughts, but once somebody points it out, you really can't help notice it? It becomes a pattern of looking at things.

By contrast my husband's family did not watch a lot of tv, and he does not watch it critically, nor make critical comments. Thus he thinks it's sort of.... negative or unnecessary to make constant disparaging remarks about or to the screen, it's just not his nature. We have a weatherman here I can hardly keep from strangling (WHY do they all have to be clowns?) but my husband thinks that it's unfair and strange to do that? I'm not sure...you know what? I'm going to take that up with him tonight because he has no problem looking through people?

See what reading does for you? It causes arguments! hahahaahah

---

ANYWAY!

I have a theory but I need help with it before we leave these first pages, let me go get some and return!

ginny

Such intuitive comments by everyone provide a real extension to the reading.

Harriet: In Post # 103 there is a mention about reading distressing books. That comment has given me some pause,because I never thought about NOT reading something because it was distressing. For me,there's a fine line between distressing and depressing,but regardless of that,I've read many "downer" books with much enjoyment.

The books,movies,plays,music,etc, that I enjoy the most,are those that "stay with me" long after reading seeing or listening.Bee Season is one of those books,for me.

With respect for those of you who like this book I must say that I've given up reading it. After ------'s third burglary of a private house I decided that they are all too insane for me. ....elizabeth

Elizabeth, we haven't gotten there, yet, don't give up on US, tho, the issue is not whether or not we liked the book but what we can learn from it, and from each other. I'm glad to see you here!! Appreciate your trying, anyway.

One year we read The Liar's Club in the Book Club Online. I have never read any book or encountered any author I hated more. I really hated the woman and still do, but the discussion was one of the best we ever had BECAUSE of the perspectives and insights of our readers. I will NEVER forget Eddie Marie Elliott in that discussion to my dying day, it was a revelation and we all ended up appreciating each other more.

I threw the book in the trash when it was over, it really pushed my buttons, but I wouldn't take anything for the experience and of course the odious Mary Karr has gone on and written another one, called Cherry and I leave that to others, but I did read The Liar's Club!

So glad you are here.

Ed, how does Updike strike you? Have you read the Rabbit series? I look forward to seeing more of your comments, and I have one now, hang on!!

ginny

I, too find this book a bit depressing, certainly not uplifting! It is well written and I appreciate the writer but not her story. It is not a book I would have chosen on my own but I do love discussing it here! Perhaps I am also a coward, MaryPage, because I choose what I watch on TV and tapes carefully. It is to the point where my husband watches TV in one room and me in another. He likes horror movies and ones with special effects with everything blowing to bits. Just not my cup of tea. I used to watch with him but found it all too disturbing and what's the point? If we can't enjoy what we watch now, then when????

Paige, I'm with you, I'm so glad we're discussing it here, too.

I never thought of cowardice having to do with what you choose to watch on tv or in the movies. The very first date I ever had with my husband was to go to the movies, that awful Steve McQueen thing where one of the characters was beating the other one half to death? I can't stand any sort of thing like that? Victimization? no no, I got up and made some excuse and walked out and stood in the lobby? He should have known right then what he was in for, but after dinner we visited some friends and he made the remark that was exactly like his mother and his friend said AHA! And there it was! hahahaha

Jeepers if you can't choose what you will enjoy for recreation then what choices have you left? I enjoy Mapp & Lucia and PG Wodehouse on television, that's OK, I like other things too, de gustibus, has nothing to do with cowardice.

Has to do with taste. hahahahaa

Back in a moment, just had a very definitive discussion with said husband over why looking "right through the deeds of men" in person is completely different from doing it to a television program. Or so he says!

g

Here's something I noticed early on in the book? Maybe it won't stand when it's examined, but hey, a theory is worth a thousand words, right? (I'm always full of crazy theories about what I read, let's hear yours, too!!)

Have you noticed how you seem to be able to understand what Eliza is thinking? And Aaron? We know what they are thinking but they never say "I?" And we know what Miriam is thinking as she sits there in the auditorium? We seem to be mind readers?

I've been trying to remember what that's called, we're seeing it through somebody's point of view, and I knew it wasn't in first person (I) or second (you) so it had to be third person (he, she or it, they).

But that business of knowing what the characters are feeling while referring to them as "he," that stumped me and I asked our DL's here and it's called, and Jane supplied it for me, the Omniscient Point of View. Check this out:

Point of View: The narrative perspective from which a literary work is presented to the reader. There are four traditional points of view.

The "third person omniscient" gives the reader a "godlike" perspective, unrestricted by time or place, from which to see actions and look into the minds of characters. This allows the author to comment openly on characters and events in the work.

There is a lot more and here is the url for that: Free Literary Resources from the Gale Group and they are really good.

But here I hesitate because I'm not sure that every character we meet here is one we know how they think? Isn't there one whose thoughts are not exposed to us continually???

???

I think there is!! And I think it's important and not by accident? And I think that the author has revealed this, either by design or accident, in at least one place in this section, on page 27.

For instance the author has Saul distanced in the story physically from his children and wife by his door and his studies and Miriam is distanced from her husband and children physically by her job and by time and by a secret life (which her husband also has) and which we will see more of tomorrow, and the helpless children who are beginning themselves to separate, to distance themselves from not only each other, but the family as well?

But the author is tightly controlling this distancing, even keeping us, the reader at a distance by her use of this particular point of view, using the third person which is about as far away as you can get (it's much more intimate if I say I love rather than you love and by the time we get to he loves we're pretty removed personally?) But this author makes US removed too, by her use of the third person, but at the same time tells us what they are thinking? Their inmost thoughts and strange urges? I mean we're getting it all strangely in the third person? The writing, the point of view also embodies distancing in its very structure? There must be a reason?

And that's not ALL!

Also the author is always using the present tense? Have you noticed that? EVERYTHING is in the present tense as if it's happening right this minute? Nothing is in the past, not even the flashbacks? It's a little strange I think, what is the reason, do you think? I have no idea, is it to give an immediacy, a "you are there," to each thing, but isn't it confusing? I had a hard time sometimes telling when the flashbacks were occurring?

There are places in this book where the author does a.....dance with the voices? A sort of contrapuntal dance, it's kind of neat. We hear from Eliza, we hear from Saul, we hear from Aaron, and then they all come together like a chorus swelling to the ....I don't know what you'd call it, coda in the story. But when they DO come together, one seems to be separated. I wonder now that I have found this ONE how many others there are?

---

One such place is the "envelope" thing? The child has put the envelope under the door? No response? She begins to try to find a ride to the Bee? On page 16 she decides to speak to Miriam. On page 22 she knocks on her brother's door. Always in the background is the increasing drumbeat, increasing tension, that she will miss the Bee. Eliza tells Aaron the story. They go to the study. There's a lot of conversation between Saul, Aaron and Eliza, but no introspection, no inner thoughts. Just dialogue. Just talking, each of them, no thoughts? Then the envelope is found? Page 27:

"It is Arron who finds the envelope..."

"Is this it?"

At this point of heightened tension the dialogue abruptly switches off, and suddenly we're within the minds of the characters again. Except for one. And the minds begin speaking alternatively in a sort of counterpoint to what's happening? It happens very quickly and is very well done.

"For a split second Eliza pictures opening the envelope and finding nothing there...."

"Aaron realizes that his standing mental image of Eliza is three years out of date; in his mind she is still a shy...."

and then it's Saul's turn? And what happens?

"The way Saul reaches for the envelope reminds Eliza of first-time Torch bearers, stiff-armed with their fear of mishandling the sacred burden...." We see Saul through Eliza's mind!

The action builds up and up and up and then....

"This," Saul says in a reverent voice," is a beautiful thing."

The "chapter" ends.

Yes, it sure was, I was actually thrilled when I got caught up in that, the contrapuntal minds against the physical happening of the opening of the envelope and I did not notice unil just now that Saul's inner thoughts are not being revealed like the others.

I bet there's a reason! (I love stuff like this, just love it, it's kind of like all of us are a giant brain, thinking and reacting together?) And this is what happens when you read, you form theories and they dissolve and you form more. Right now, I'm going to say that the author has separated Saul out from all of them for some reason? And I'm going to watch him and try to see if I can figure out why or what it means to the entire story.

Whee? or?

ginny

Keene, you can talk "kitchen" here, we have several people in the throes of remodeling, we're glad to see you check in anyway.

MaryPage, I thought this book had at least one remarkable positive thing in it, a secret I thought only I knew? How to get rid of recurrent nighmares? Did you all notice that?

You may not be talking about recurrent ones but I did not realize that everybody knew how to stop them, I found that super.

And it DOES work, too, did you all know about that before you read this book?

ginny

Omar Khayyam warns us:

The Moving Finger writes,
And having writ, Moves on;
Nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.


Rubáiyát. Stanza lxxi.

The written word...it forces us to watch helplessly as the characters in The Bee Season pursue the destructive courses predestined for them by their author.

Frustrating...very, very frustrating everyone.

The characters in books are beyond our control. Yet we, made omniscient by the author, have foreknowledge of the perils of their path, we are party to the anguish they endure, and, through the skill of the author, we are swept along in the maelstrom of their disasters and suffer with them. We can change nothing in the book. Yet, are we really powerless?

Book problems have some significant advantages over real life problems. Unlike beloved people in real life, when we grow tired enough of their peccadilloes, these book characters SLIDE OBEDIENTLY BACK BETWEEN THE COVERS OF THE BOOK and give us a well earned rest. That's sure an improvement over real life, right?

I never thought about it before... until we began this thread of discussion... but we, as readers, do exert a kind of final control. It is WE who decide whether these literary characters will have life. WE decide if we will OPEN THE BOOK and CARE about their lives and problems. And, of course we exert the most ultimate power. We can CLOSE THE BOOK at the moment of OUR choice and put them out of our thoughts.

Elizabeth, MaryPage , everyone... thanks for directing me to these ideas, which I find comforting. Perhaps, if we care to forgive the author a teeny tiny bit for making us care SO much, maybe we will reconsider and post more often... and show those ornery characters who their REAL BOSS is.

Your thoughts - and theories and explanations - are so helpful and exciting to me. Like I say, I am kind of a dummy when it comes to understanding more than what the story line is telling me. But your comments are opening lots of doors and ideas!

Your link, Ginny, to the Gale page leads to a wonderful resource. Thanks.

And as for dreams, ever since Sept. 11 I haven't slept well. I have ALWAYS had lots of dreams at night, but in the past weeks my dreams have included far more terrorists than I ever would have imagined possible. (And I live on the West Coast). Finally a couple of nights ago in exasperation I made myself some hot chocolate before going to bed, hoping that whatever it is that is in the milk would not only help me sleep but also have a better sleep. It has surely helped.

Luckily I am not bothered by the negativism in this book. But if a book has any kinds of animals in it and I detect a possibility of harm coming to one, I close the book and never go near it again! Torture of people or animals is out of bounds.

Ginny, about your post #121. I've bookmarked your Literary Resources site.

Someone I know told me that understanding the construction of a book and the intent of the author was like being admitted to a "secret garden of delights"...that enhanced a book and increased its pleasures many times.

When I read your post Ginny, I could sense the fragrance of the flowers in that garden. Oh my!

Gail, I know a bit about dreams. What is troubling us in our every day lives, we take to bed with us. We all dream 7 to 10 dreams a night, some we remember, some we don't. I think a lot of us have had troubling dreams since Sept. 11th. I've had the most violent ones of my life, very different from any others. Think about it, the terrorist attack has changed our lives and that transfers to our sleeping lives also.

MaryPage, three times in my life I have awakened laughing from a dream, it's the best isn't it? Unlike you, however, I could never catch the dream to see what was so funny! Left me in a great mood though.

Ginny, a way to get rid of nightmares? Have I not gotten to that part of the book yet? Surely I didn't miss it, did I? I know of a way, wonder if it is the way in this book? I must admit, sometimes it is hard to get back to Saul, Miriam, Aaron and Eliza! I want better lives for all of them...I find myself thinking, noooo...don't do that, don't go there, put down that dish and leave the strange house NOW. And on and on.

In week 2 of The Bee Season we follow the fortunes and/or the deterioration of the Naumann's. It's emotionally difficult to watch the characters do their thing. Was it Paige who wrote:

I want better lives for all of them...I find myself thinking, noooo...don't do that, don't go there, put down that dish and leave the strange house NOW...

Oh, but I agree, Paige, I agree.

In some crazy way, Eliza, Aaron and Miriam have finally found a unity. They are ALL responding to the same catalyst. The ABSENCE or PRESENCE of Saul determines much of the course of behavior of the other members of the family? True? Not true?

Saul's ABSENCE at home has a physical quality to it as Miriam expands, breathes with new-found freedom...to use HOW??? The distant wife and mother who avoided her bed to clean, and then clean some more, now has a higher self-imposed duty. From p. 102:

Tik-kun o-lam, tik-kun o-lam, beats her heart's steady rhythm. Miriam wants to feel this day on her body, wants sun to warm her skin, wants every part of her to feel this new phase of her life-long mission. She remembers a perfectly thrown stone. She is ready to heed the new call.

Has the presence of Saul for all these past years helped to produce Miriam's ABERRANT personality? Or has Saul's presence been the BALLAST that held Miriam together?

Aaron also feels the new-found freedom provided by the absence of his father. His need for a spiritual life originated with both his religious education and his admiration for his devout father. Is Aaron a boy who NEEDS a mentor to keep his emotional life together? If so, hasn't Saul failed him in the same way that Saul's own father rejected HIM? Except Saul never rejected Aaron... instead he just FORGOT about him while enmeshed in his plans for Eliza? If Aarons biological father fails him when he is only sixteen, is Aaron entitled to look for other sources of nurture...like the temple of ISKON?

Just what ARE Saul's plans for Eliza? At first I thought it was to create a notable student? But this is no longer as clear to me. Saul, overeager, wants to explain her destiny to Eliza, but then hesitates. Too soon, he fears. Take the jumps slower. Don't scare her. He tells Eliza genially that it's OK...she doesn't have to win the Nationals this year...and just BLOWS her confidence away. So what is Saul's goal? Maybe just not sure yet.

Eliza...little Eliza, happy at last, for a short while anyway. She departs for the Nationals wrapped in her father's attentions and her mother's blouse. A perfect moment...for only a moment. She has her father all to herself! Saul is PRESENT in his daughter's life and she is overjoyed.

Then the snake begins to crawl into Eliza's Eden. Saul's loving admonitions mean just the opposite of what he says. You don't have to study right away, Eliza, he says. Are you sure you don't want to go sightseeing? We won't study until YOU ask for it. But her father becomes distant, distracted if Eliza is not working on her spelling.

And how come the trip to the Washington Nationals isn't a family trip? Maybe Aaron would have enjoyed it if his mother were available to show him the town?

Even when he is invisible, Saul's PRESENCE or ABSENCE is center stage. A family finally unified for good...or bad?

oooo, Harriet, now that is GOOD! Here I came in here totally bewildered about this new section, and you have done a great job of making sense of it, I LOVED your thing about what IS it Saul really wants and also about what his influence might be on them, if he keeps Miriam IN line or hinders her?

It's pretty obvious everybody goes bonkers when he leaves, Miriam starts entering houses? I mean, now this is not kleptomania, is it?

Who can relate to Miriam? Nobody. I couldn't relate to anybody in The Liar's Club, either. What can we learn from this? Unless we are Housebreakers and collectors of ashtrays and other people's coin dishes we are unlikely to be able to relate to Miriam or to know anybody like her? A puzzle, why is she in the book?

You know what? This author has taken a perfectionist, driven mother and really made an extreme hash of her, hasn't she? She's a nut case?

(But she does have redeeming moments? Unlike the real child in the preface of the book, she does tell her child she's proud of her???)

??

She AND Aaron shuck off the clothes, as soon as Saul is out the door (I had to laugh over that one)....Aaron goes looking for something, (they're ALL looking?) They seem FREE but Saul doesn't seem....overbearing, does he? He's locked in a ROOM for Pete's sake, a closed door?

But we have a longing child here who did not cause this madhouse and whom we can relate to because we have been children and bemused or perplexed by the adult quirks (hopefully not this bad) around us?

I woke up thinking about Ed and the Golem, and dogGONE if Harriet's quote above doesn't have that stone in it again, the Golem was made out of clay. I wonder if all the characters are meant to represent something? You know, exaggeration?

So in answer to Harriet's question, it appears to me that Saul Who Sits in HIs Room With the Door Closed has more influence on everybody than we thought?? So they are actually revolving around him? Even Miriam wishes he were back home? Aaron misses his cooking and the Shabbat candles, Eliza wants him somewhere else, what does Saul want? I'm trying to figure him out (and so far, can't.)

Is this just habit, getting used to somebody, or???

What does Miriam do with all that STUFF, anyway?

Are they all looking for the magic "stone," the Golem, which will make their lives better?

(I do note how the author keeps throwing in some pretty heavy observations in the midst of nothing, like "Nothing amplifies failure like the hug of a stranger." (p. 117) and "teeth are essentially naked bones." (p. 135)....)

Hey, what was that stuff about Don Knottxs's eyes? I think that's sort of cruel, do you? I'm a big fan of Knottts/ Barney Fife (page 90, says his eyes give him the creeps?)

Paige I can't find the nightmare stuff again, did I dream it? But as I've looked back and tried to find it I AM finding a lot in this new section, including the kids are turning, with little twists and starts, into their parents!

THAT's a shocker!! (Did anybody else see that on the nightmares? Kind of an athlete zoning thing?)

ginny

And thank you for that nice remark, Harriet, I appreciate it, it may not hold up, tho. hahaahaha But it was fun while it did, so much in this section! Book is like a roller coaster, highs, lows, and sudden sideways DIPS!

ginny

You're a breath of fresh air yourself, Gail, thanks!! It IS exciting to read together.

You know, until you mentioned not sleeping well, I had hardly noticed that I myself am not? I find reading something quite light (like the Benson series) is a wonderful aid to sleep, you go to bed smiling (sometimes laughing out loud).

Paige, the "technique" only works with recurring nightmares? What you do is right before you drop off you envision and relive the dream all over again? With as much detail as you can (and you usually can remember them quite well) and you keep on, no matter how uncomfortable it makes you, until you get to the place which usually wakes you up? And at that point you change the ending? You zone into it by envisioning a different more acceptible ending? And you keep going over it and its happy ramifications and endings till you finaly drop off and the recurrent nightmare disappears? (watch me have my old warehouse one tonight! hahahaha) Well if I do I can get rid of it, doesn't work with normal nightmares, tho. (That I know of)

ginny

I'm reading along and haven't commented but I do need to say something about recurring dreams. I had one a long time ago. It was about losing something that belonged to someone else. Each time I had the dream the exact situation would change but the theme was the same.

I had a girlfriend's purse at a carnival and she was having a great time and I couldn't have a good time because I had to get the purse to her. I got lost.

I had my Dad's briefcase and he was boarding a plane to China. I couldn't get it to him.

In both, and other, situations I would get lost in a maze. I was very anxious to get the object to the other person. But then I got lost at the carnival or at the airport. The dreams became less specific but with the same theme. I had "something" which belonged to someone else. Everyone was having a good time except me. I got lost trying to get the object to the other person.

One night while asleep I felt myself going into the dream theme. So I said to myself, "This is a dream. Wake up." And I did!!! And I don't believe I ever had the dream again.

becky

A more relevant comment is in order perhaps. (g) It seems like Eliza is different from her family in several respects.

First, she is named a more contemporary name. I'm interested in the names. I started thinking about this when I realized that Saul and Miriam are old Hebrew names directly, Paul and Mary are the Christian equivilents. Aaron is also an old Hebrew name and continues in its original form even if it is used quite a bit these days in Christian families. Eliza is from Elizabeth, there is no Elizabeth in the Old Testament. The only Elizabeth in the Bible is the mother of John the Baptist.

The name Saul means "longed for."

The name Miriam is a combination of two Hebrew words: mar meaning "bitter" and yam meaning "water" or "sea."

The name Aaron means "high mountain, lofty or inspired."

Elizabeth means "devoted to God."

The second difference is that Elizabeth is seeking for something inside of herself. Saul is looking for meaning through his children. Miriam is seeking meaning through an obsessive-compulsive desire to acquire. Aaron is seeking a form of spirituality from the outside (religion).

I don't identify with any of the characters particularly, except maybe Eliza, but I can understand Miriam to a certain extent. She is not a kleptomaniac primarily, rather she is an obsessive compulsive over-achiever with a high desire to get what she wants. So she goes around seeking those things she wants and takes them.

Her story changes significantly when she goes from taking from stores to taking from other people. I suppose it's like going from marijuana to heroin. (?) But by focusing on her objective she can "achieve" again. And she can "escape" her mundane world. She constantly needs to escape, in work, in reading, in cleaning and in stealing. The premeditation is part of the escape.

I've got more to say but I'll quit now. (lol)

becky

Oh, and Rachel is the named one. She who has a name wins? Rachel means a sheep, also associated with innocence.

And Aaron is seeking the one who is nameless.

Becky

Bekka

Welcome to our discussion. We're so glad you decided to post.

It looks like you've got that dream beat. Congratulations!

My husband gets that kind of dream. He says that in his dream he always has to get to a particular place at a particular time. Something always blocks his way. If he seems to be making any headway then the locale in his dream shifts. Again he's in the wrong place, still trying to get to where he wants to go.

I don't remember my dreams much but I suspect I do dream a lot because ever so often an everyday real life event triggers a memory. For instance, today I was looking for my purse and when I didn't see it right away, the memory of a forgotten night time dream involving a search for my pocket book suddenly flashed into my head. Instant total memory about a futile, frantic hunt for keys and I.D.

Please post again, Bekka. You're very welcome here. As you can see, we talk everything from books to keys, and the kitchen sink. Do join us.

Ginny, your argument for staying with the reading was very persuasive and I love everyone's comments; they're funny and enlightening But it's too depressing for me right now. A good author pulls me right into her world--totally--and I just don't want to be in this world. ....elizabeth

Wow Bekka, I love your take on the characters and your well thought out comparison of their traits. I had just finished posting about my dream, and your jewel of a post popped up.

The...difference is that Elizabeth is seeking for something inside of herself. Saul is looking for meaning through his children. Miriam is seeking meaning through an obsessive-compulsive desire to acquire. Aaron is seeking a form of spirituality from the outside (religion).

That's a terrific summary.

I agree with you that Miriam's need to reclaim objects from other people's houses constitutes a more severe form of deterioration. We gradually learn more about the extent of her other aberrations in this part of the book. Remember how, as a young adult, she drove her car without headlights at night? By sheer luck she turned them on in time to see two people walking in the road. It's really a form of suicidal AND homicidal irresponsibility. This is NOT a well person!

YOU are just who we've been looking for. I believe several people have already wondered about the origin and meaning of the names of the characters. Thank you for the information. You sound knowledgeable on the old and new testaments. Is that one of your interests?

Elizabeth, our door is always open to you.

Perhaps you'll want to reconsider later on. I've read your posts in other discussions and always enjoyed them.

These were my feelings as I read the book...

How sad for Eliza that she was ignored by her teacher, her father and her mother... her brother was her only ally. And feelings of sadness for Aaron, who in his mixed up teen years needs the guidance, firm hand of a parent, was shunned by Saul, when Saul changed his attention to Eliza.

Saul's attention to only one child at a time... How can a parent separate his affections?

Miriam's behavior brought real anger.. An educated person who steals and does so with premeditation is not a kleptomaniac (In my estimation),

So I can see why Elizabeth can not go on reading ... It was just too much... I finished the book and told Ginny... I just couldn't think about it anymore... And it did give me some bad dreams for a couple of nights ... But no more.

I do like to read the your comments... they make it a easier to understand.

Miriam's parents were puzzled and felt alienated from her. Miriam never tried to breech this distance between herself and her parents, even though she secretly felt that she shared many traits with them. "Home is a place where her eccentricities have a clear source" (p120)

When her parents died in an auto accident, Miriam regrets never having shared the similarities she perceived with them. She had withheld her acknowledgement of their mutual familial traits in revenge for their distance. Now it was too late. Never could her parents now say to her, as she fantasized: "But...you are just like us." Never would she ever be able to modestly agree to the connection and feel part of them.

Awhile back Ed commented:

I question whether anyone really gets free of the legacies of their parents, in particular those legacies that are negative. This becomes an age-old question about the "sins of the fathers".

How true that is when applied to Miriam. The girl who maintained distance between herself and her parents is now the mother who distances herself from her children, Eliza and Aaron. Eliza arouses her interest only when she senses the germ of some similarity to her poor warped self. She probes the trait...and when she finds it takes on a form unfamiliar (and, in reality, more normal and grounded) to herself, she loses interest.

In this family, the adults JUST DON'T SEEM TO LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE. Miriam, the rejected daughter, becomes a rejecting mother. Saul, the rejected son, becomes a father who "forgets" about his own son.

Dang!  I can't find who said it but I think it was Bekka.  She said something about Mariam switching her kleptomanisa skills (?) from department stores to seeking personal belongings. Is this an attempt to claim intimacy ?
There is something about this woman that pulls at my heart strings.  Her obsessive-compulsive life is a total void.  She has been abandoned and remains unfullfilled, irregardless of her academic achievements.  She lacks depth, doesn't she?  Do you see her as being hollow?  Hollow!  Yes, that's the word.  She is starving emotionally.   Relishing in the smallest stolen, personal accouterments, she tries to  fill her meaningless, empty cavity that echoes with "love me, help me."  I keep thinking , doesn't she know a Robby, someone to talk to and guide her?

Hi,

Yes, I am familiar with the Bible but my interest is from long ago. I don't do much with that area any more.

What a fantastic comment, Alf, that Miriam is seeking intimacy. She steals things that belong to others. She goes into their homes to get these things. She wonders if the owners miss them.

Is Saul also stealing things that belong to others? Is he stealing Eliza's claim to fame? Did he steal his son's intellectual gifts? Is he going inside of Eliza when he redirects her studies?

Becky

Pat!!

Good to hear your voice! I'm SO glad that you've become a bit more comfortable with the book.

So much of the books that are current in these times are also "heavy"...dealing with people in dire circumstances and relentless situations. I've had trouble making my peace with this also. It's an education in human nature to note the reactions of the different people in this forum. We all must read in the way that, for us, provides the PLEASURE that books can bring.

Pat, I'm not really sure what kleptomania is, but I agree with you and Bekka that Miriam's premediatation is an important factor that may indicate something else as her problem. That woman is SO ill! She only comes alive when she is about to steal. The passion that others reserve for a spouse, the love that others invest in a child, Miriam feels this only in response to the objects that she steals. As she considers her "reclaimed" shards of herself, p 134, she finally understands "the smoldering heat of a lifetime of love scenes, real and fictional, that have left her cold." That's a lot of self-love, come to think of it...investing passion in objects that are part of herself. Interesting.

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This morning, each time I completed one of my posts, I found a new, fascinating post waiting to be read on the screen. What a treat. Alf, here you are weighing in on the subject of depressing...or is it "distressing" books. That's an interesting distinction that Ed makes between "depressing" and "distressing" books.

In your usual lucid way, you remind me that we have to find the kernel of pleasure that helps us adapt to a life that can bite. Life is not always enjoyable, but it still provides pleasure. And books that are distressing can provide an alternate view of life and other people's worlds? A valuable viewpoint to consider.

ALF, BEKKA, I've been wondering if Miriam's stealing is an attempt to fill her "hollow self" with self-love as opposed to intimacy.

The passages in the book where MG describes Miriam's passionate feelings about the stolen objects, p 134, physical things that really symbolize parts of HERSELF may suggest that conclusion. Any opinions?

I don't know Bekka. I don't see Saul as the bad guy here. As I said before, I just don't think he "gets it!" I think in his own head he is a good father, a mentor, the rabbi of their souls. He believes he is guiding all of them along their pathways.

Goodness, miss one day and there are 25 wonderful posts. This discussion is the one thing that keeps me with this book, which I find very distressing.

Bekka -- thanks for the input about the names. They are appropriate for the characters, I think.

Alf -- I was almost ready to agree with you about Saul not being the bad guy, but what he did to Eliza at the National Bee was cruel, although be may not have realized it. Maybe you're right -- he just doesn't get it. But Eliza was so pumped up and sure she could win, and then Saul tells her that she probably isn't ready to win this year, but next year she'll be unbeatable. That thoughtless man.

That poor family. They are all victims.

Oh absolutely, in his own mind Saul is guiding his children. I suppose my observation was based on my own history; parents with too much interest in their children's passions and "stealing the show", imo. In some respects, my Dad was very much like Saul. You get his attention through excellence as perceived by others. And then he "guided" you. (I felt like he was stealing my stuff.)

But neither Aaron nor Eliza felt like anything was gone. Rather they felt that they had been granted their father's attention. You're right on that one, Alf. Thanks. It's sometimes tricky to separate what's on the page from what's in your own background.

Speaking of depressing books, this isn't one, imo. I'm fascinated by these characters as well as the plot. Goldberg's style and structure are superb. Her characters jump off the page with life.

I see each member of the Naumann family seeking their place in the world, seeking love and acceptance and all the things we all want; wholeness. I care about each of the characters and hope for the best for them. Unfortunately, I doubt if that will come to pass. They're all too lost. But how many of us here in real life come to find all that? We find pieces of it, shards, if you will.

I had been tempted to recommend this to my other reading group but with so many here finding the book depressing I think I'll pass on that.

Becky

I don't recall if it's mentioned or not,but does Miriam know what she is going to steal before she enters a strange house?

Obviously she is looking for something that will enable her to do what?

I find that in some respects the book has an overlay of Newtonian Physics in that there are actions and re-actions that are bouncing off of each other. Each individual member of the family is trying to solve some very personal problem,but their interaction with each other,or their interactions with strangers are putting them in a pressure cooker,and the intensity is getting stronger and stronger.

MG definitely establishes that Miriam DOESN'T know the exact item that she is looking for when she breaks into someone else's home. But the search makes her "intensely, acutely alive." After she sees the object that she instinctively understands she has been in search of, she is "more fluid and vibrant.

That poor woman. Sex doesn't do it for her. The love of her children doesn't do it for her. She gets turned on by putting the different shards of her sad, broken personality together. She wants to be made WHOLE.

I'm packing up my Lap Top and heading for Florida. I'll read the book on the way when my son is driving. Incidently he claims we were more upset with his teacher than he was. He said she just made him mess up his desk even more.... I'll be posting from Florida......Wow that means I will be away two days and I'll have to plug through all of the new posts. Oh well that is the price one pays for pleasure.....Keep your eye on Miriam while I am gone so that she doesn't snitch too much... I'll be lurking. Ginny.... I wish I had time to meet with you but my son is in a hurry to get back for his son's birthday. We are hoping to make it to Santee's Country Inn and suites by dinner time. Clare

That poor woman. Sex doesn't do it for her. The love of her children doesn't do it for her. She gets turned on by putting the different shards of her sad, broken personality together. She wants to be made WHOLE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ No wonder the kaleidoscope was important to her. She is stealing what she subconsciously sees as all her missing pieces and hopes they will fall into place. Very odd. But I think that the thrill of obtaining them is more important than the item. Like a spendaholic focuses on the spending not on the items. The feel good is in the transaction. The feel good for Miriam is in finding the piece and taking it.

And Aaron is seeking his missing piece, focusing on it and acquiring it, although "seeing God" is not so easy to acquire.

Eliza did not focus on her father's attention and set out to get it. It came to her.

Saul doesn' t take what he's focused on, he switches his focus.

They're each doing this search for wholeness in different ways and just going past each other as people, bouncing off, kind of.

Becky

Hurry on down cmac. I'm awaiting you. Yes, bekka, that kaleidescope is a masterful point that the author has put in. I'm on my way to a golf tournie until Tuesday but I shall return. hahah---keep Mariam in shape.

Skim milk masquerades as cream....(Gilbert and Sullivan).

Wow, what great points, all!! Have fun, Andrea, we will miss you, doubtless on the links you will have new insights. I like to come here every morning having read your posts the night before and think over your points and form new theories and so much has, this morning, I myself, am a kaleidescope of your own bright shards, thank you, ALL!

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First off, CMAC, of course you must not drive a million miles out of your way, good grief, and you just eat those creme doughnuts, when we convene at the National Bookfest I will be waiting when your car arrives, napkin and drool in hand (CMAC lives near a Grail: the bakery shop of Moorestown, NJ, where they make the best creme doughnuts in the world!) She will bring us all one!!

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Saul's little speech which he does for the benefit of each new girfriend hit an immediate chord in Miriam (Page 87)

The mystics believe that in the beginning of the world God's Divine Light, containing all that is good, was enclosed in sacred vessels....but because there was already sin in the world, these vesels could not contain the Light and shattered into countless pieces. The Light was dispersed and the shards fell upon the world, becoimg poverty, haterd, cruelty , and all the other forms injustice takes. According to the mystics, it is our job to locate these shards and to mend them through good deeds, so that God's light can be seen whole again. This is called Tikkun Olam, or the fixing of the world.

Well of course that was all Miriam the Obsessive Seeker needed, that perked her right up, gave her roots for her "cause." As Shakespeare said, though, "This dream is all amiss interpreted."

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Becky, thank you SOO much for those names and their derivations, I had missed entirely the Christian Elizabeth, and appreciate your explaining the names.

I have spend a fabulous morning with the history of the real Saul? The first King of Israel?

We might want to consider Saul, the real Saul, and keep it in the back of our minds for the relation to this story.

Also we want to remember Miriam was Moses's sister, (and Miriam is connected with the oldest piece of literature in the Bible, Exodus xv , 21) Miriam was a prophetess. Aaron was Moses's brother and I had Aaron's role a bit mixed up, I now recall it was Aaron of whom Moses said at the burning bush, I can't do this, I can't do this send Aaron! And God said Aaron will be the spokesperson (Exodus 4 13ff,) and I will put my words in your mouth and you'll tell him and he will tell all the people. Aaron later also around the time of the Ten Commandments, became, with his sons and descendants, a priest of the temple, it's fascinating to read. So Aaron played a part that Moses did not, and entered a life of priestly service and scholarship: it's fascinating to read.

Lots of people who revolved around Moses in this thing, but no Moses. Is "Moishe" the Hebrew equivalent of Moses? If so why is Saul named Saul? Are you all familiar with the real Saul's story? It's fascinating, I'll put a little of it up in the next post, we can watch and see of OUR Saul has any parallels?

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I saw an HBO ad about the 61 Emmys they won, and among the clips was the terrifying thing on beauty pageants for children? Did you all see that? You must watch it if it's rerun, you will be horrified? Jon Benet Ramsey's world. At the conclusion of the documentary the child we're following wins something and the "trainer," for such there are, rushes forward in front of all the crowd, picks the child UP and CARRIES her to the stage, thus sealing glory for himself in the process. I was struck by the similarities here to Saul's waving and moving forward at the Bee and the implications?

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Do you realize that if YOU met the Naumanns at a Spelling Bee? At a PTA? At a neighborhood cocktail party? Do you realize that you would be impressed with them?

Is that a shocker? Yes, you sure would?

Miriam the high powered lawyer? Saul the Cantor (not a shabby position?) the Talmudic Scholar, the teacher of Adult Ed in the Temple? A scholar? Aaron a good student, a polite child. Eliza, a child with so much presence of mind on the stage she makes your own figiting (sp hahahaha) chlid look pitiful?

What a wonderful family, you would say to yourself, the boy is supportive of his sister, the girl has presence, the parents are professional people, they are Super Family, and YOU WOULD NEVER KNOW what lurks in the hearts of men.

But the Shadow knows? And the author had made US know and there is a reason, you can bet your bippy, there is a reason.

WHAT IF this story had started out without all these introspections? What IF this story just focused on Eliza ? I mean even SAUL does not know Miriam's little secret? Nobody does? Nobody but US?

Whenever I read anything which affects me or puzzles me or gets me all in angst, I ask myself WHY?

The fault, Dear Brutus, is not in OUR stars, but in this author's deliberate choice to show us all as omniscient people who can see Dorian Grey under his picture, but WHY, that's the issue? WHY?

more...

I spent most of Friday while selling grapes with eyes closed trying out Saul's instructions to Eliza? No wonder the child cried, what on EARTH was he on about?

Have YOU tried it? Close eyes, picture the first letter, etc? I did and I still spelled figit wrong and probaby did again then? Saul here has religious fervor and it appears he's leading up toward something else, but he missed the boat here, should have left the child alone, but how many parents of the Science Project have done the same?

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Did you notice how each child is subtly changing to be more like his parents?

Page 83, "Except that Aaron always worries he had left a door unlocked, always checks, and always finds that he hasn't."

oops, the beginning of obsessive compulsive behavior here next he'll recheck it two times then ten then 20 and he'll be well on his way?

I thought the passages where Aaron experiences the Catholic service to be splendidly written and very bright and certainly about as on tap as you can get, right down to the priest "knowing" and the faintness, that's great writing, very well done.

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Aaron is also withdrawing, a la Saul, on page 88 "The outer world is a fiction. His own body, with all its failings, is immaterial. The spark of the True Self lies within, an essence of the divind shared by everyone." This parallels Eliza's thoughts of her outward appearance on page 45.

As you all say, all the characters are reaching and searching for something else, just like we all are? Every man is looking for something else, for some meaning to his life. It just so happens that we can see the Naumanns for their inmost thoughts.

I heard a very striking thing once and can't get it out of my head. Suppose you are in a church and seated near the front. Suppose for some reason all of a sudden you turn and see the congregation in their fine clothes and smiles. But suppose you see the congregation as God does, with all their inmost thoughts revealed? The example given that I heard was they are a horror, almost too awful to look upon, what man has made of himself? Greed, lust, all the Deadly Sins, are represented, sloth, gluttony anger, etc...

Here we are starting out with our normal masks transparent, but twice the author has introduced the idea of the photograph, it would seem the only way Eliza can see (or we can see) what they really look like is to study photographs. So we're actually getting backwards the old saying "For man looketh on the outward appearance but the Lord looketh on the heart."

After reading this it would be hard to be God, wouldn't it?

In the photograph on page 65 we see that "hard lines around the man's eyes, a strange emptiness to the woman's face," and in the photograph on page 89 we see an image of Eliza between the principal and teacher "like fishermen showing off the season's record-breaking tuna."

The child feels used, this is only revealed in a photograph, and I betcha it will have significance later on. What is success doing to this entire family?

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BIG thing happens on the bottom of page 90!!

What does this mean?

Elly tries to catch Aaron's eye, but he its too intent on the TV screen. She leaves feeling as though she doesn't deserve what he has given her. Aaron is amazed by how easy it was to give.

Huh? What was it?

What's a bima by the way?

Also you can see again this outer appearance thing on page 111, "In exiting the house, Miriam is reborn. She has left her outer skin, like so much cracked eggshell, in the house where the dish once was, a weight she didn't know she carried until it was gone."

Aaron again takes up the mantle of Miriam: "Aaron who always feels he has to look as if he is doing something or at least preparing to do something to feel he belongs anywhere, is intrigued." (page 115)....

There's a lot in this section about "zoning," that thing the athletes do to win? You picture yourself winning, the theory being that when you do your actions you unconsciously follow a winning path and this allows you to win? Have you watched Olympic athletes before a race? Particularly the hurdlers, they are jumping each hurdle mentally, in preparation for the race.

I'm sort of divided on this idea? If they ALL do it, then won't the outcome be the same? Does it allow people to do their best only or does it give an edge? Could that be what Saul is trying to hint at with his maddening smiles (and what makes HIM an expert in spelling, anyway?)

ginny

I don't find this depressing either, Becky, not yet, and I agree with you and Pedln and Alf on Saul, he's trying but he has no clue, sort of everyman's nightmare of the stage father.

Ed I did like your take on the Newtonian thing, I was thinking, is this similar? Every action has an equal and opposite reaction thing, they ARE like marbles, aren't they? One comes in and the others shift. But they are all doing a dance and apparently revolving around Saul, as best I can see.

Harriet, I've been wondering about those parts of herself that she steals, what does she DO with them? Real kleptomanics, or so I have heard, get rid of the stuff, I wonder if we will find out what Miriam does with them, will be interesting to watch , because if they are her hidden lost parts she would want to keep them! Pitiful parts, I would say?

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ON the dreams, have loved all your recountings, all it takes for me is a piece of cheese in the evening before bedtime. (Remember what Scrooge said to Marley's ghost? "You may be a" (paraphrasing here) "blot of cheese, a bit of underdone potato.. there's more gravy than grave about you." Last night I started a new mystery and ate cheese before going to bed and had the second of a new recurring dream and it's a lulu. I'm going to leave off the mystery and the cheese tonight and see if it passes! ahhaahah

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Here is some of what I thought was wonderful background stuff on Saul? The real Saul? Let's see if any of it will apply later on?

See I've been wondering about the name Saul because it's a very unlucky name altho it's pretty?

From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Saul was the first king of Israel (reigned c. 1020-1000 B.C.) He was secretely anointed by Samuel (according to "royalist tradition") and presented to the people. The sacred lot also signaled him out (stones again!)

When the Ammonites threateed to wipe out the Israelites, "the spirit of God came mightily upon Saul," and he crushed the enemy.

Excavations at Gibeah (3 miles north of Jerusalem) unearthed a 170- by 115 foot stone structure, the simple rough palace fortress of Saul, which attests the warrior who had to defend his people rather than the oriental potentate who lived off them. (!!??) Think of modern "Saul" in the story!

His career, unfortunately, was blighted by his preoccupation with the growing influence of the politically more astute David and by his break with Samuel...

He failed in important sacrifices and religious duties. Samuel gave the prophetic word that Yahweh had repudiated him.

"Fits of extreme melancholy seized the King, for 'the spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him.' Gradually he suspected everyone of plotting against him (Judges 20:30 ff)..."

Saul's "mental derangement no doubt explains in part the military debacle that cost him his life and almost undid his earlier accomplishments. When Saul realized how desperate his situation was, he turned for help to the one man whom, more than anyone else, he might have blamed for his unhappiness. But Samuel was dead. The King must speak to him nevertheless; he insisted upon the services of a witch, or medium at Endor, but the subsequent encounter with the ghost of Samuel--whatever be our judgment of the identity of the 'ghost,' only confirmed his worst fears. " (28)...

The incident dramatically precluded the defeat at Gilboa, in which three of Sauls's sons were slain, and the King himself, grievously wounded, took his own life. (31).

So! You can see that the original Saul's life was no picnic either, talk about depressing, and perhaps you might want to read more about HIM in case there are any other parallels. I find it fascinating, this parallel between Saul and Brutus and the ghosts of literature, and whose FAULT all this really is.

ginny

Pedln, Alf, I too am trying to figure out Saul. As you and Ginny both pointed out, Saul is a man who sends out opposing signals.

Flashback to Aaron's birth. Saul sees his new son as his little "supernova." I thought that was a heartwarmer. I was totally ready to like Saul when I read that. I felt Saul was not merely a house-husband. He was a religious scholar who was playing a special role unique in Jewish culture. The tradition of respecting the privacy of the Talmudic scholar is strongly grounded into Judaism.

My mother, may she rest in peace, would sometimes tell me stories about our long-dead relatives from the europe of the late l800's...He, a revered scholar, spending his days in the studies of mysticism...she, a business woman, the main bread winner, the raiser of the children, the caretaker of home and hearth, and you know what else? She also waited on him hand and foot.

Hhmmph! thought I. At least, when they had children, it had to increase the world's gene pool of brilliant people. The scholar father would be jam packed with academic proficiencies, but the wife...the wife had to be an energetic genius, a superwoman adapting herself to working as a woman in what was definitely a MAN'S world and still functioning as a terrific wife and mother. What a woman!

Now, flashback to Eliza's birth. Saul explains tenderly to his son that his new sister will never be as big or as old as he, and Aaron must protect her. Gosh! What happened to those good beginnings?

Anyway, I was ready to accept and like Saul because he represented a particular type of tradition in Jewish culture. That was before the days of his emotional neglect and casual cruelty.

He has SOMETHING in mind for Eliza, but not having read ahead in the book, I don't know what it is. I'm only sure that, as Becky suspects, it has something to do with "living through her."

Ginny -- you are so right about the Naumann family at PTA -- "What a great family. Were so happy they are part of our school" -- (my quote, not MG's.) My mother used to refer to some people as "street angels, home devils." Don't know if that fits the Naumanns. I call them all poor souls.

Must get off this computer and pack for two trips -- to see Shoji and the Rockettes in Branson, and then off to D.C. for grankids' piano recitals and Thanksgiving. Will try to check in on all these wonderful posts from time to time.

Oh Pedln, What a remarkable observation! "Street angels and home devils." I'll have to file that one away for future use.

Ginny made such an insightful comment. The Naumann's would look like a marvelous family to the casual observer. Also It would be nice if they made more public appearances as a family. Togetherness is not usually their thing.

Well, Eliza has more backbone than I thought, since she was able to control the pain of defeat and bounce back by looking forward to the next step. And to my surprise I'm beginning to feel a wee bit of compassion for Miriam, after that suffocating visit to the messy and overcrowded house that yielded the "warm"-feeling ashtray. Her sickness seems more clearly delineated than the peculiarities of the other characters. She seems to be on a headlong course downward. Goldberg shows this by adding more words expressive of panic and fear in each successive description of Miriam's forays. What Goldberg is starting to do here, I think, is to use words and images skillfully to convey the family's varying emotional states -- Saul's suppressed emotionality, Aaron's burning eagerness to continue his quest.

Ros .

A couple of comments,

First, there is another Saul in the Bible. He's in the New Testament but from the old. This is Saul of Tarsus, a Jewish Roman citizen, and prosecuter of Jews who were following Christ. He then experienced a "blinding light conversion" on the road to Damascus and went on become a friend to the apostles and to preach to the gentiles. He was known as a disciple and later changed his name to Paul.

Second, in the Bible Aaron (Moses' brother) marries Miriam. 'Ive read ahead but not the whole thing. Seems a bit incestuous to me at this point but it may be simply developing the similarity.

Re page 90, Aaron has given Eliza his "birthright," his place as the "annointed one." He is surprised at how easy it is to give. She doesn't feel she deserves it.

becky

Oh super points, Becky!!

Which Saul do you think we're seeing here, if any? Totally forgot about Saul/ Paul! And in that case, the "Saul" there has a negative connotation, too, until his conversion.

So Saul would not be a great name for a child, depending on which version of which text you follow ( I nearly named a child Saul because I thought it was pretty, but was straightened up quickly by friends who knew better)...

This is so fun, I enjoyed the reading I did, too. At least we're learning, and thank you for explaining page 90, I had no clue what had happened, but I wrote "Important!" there, ahahaha, .

Roslyn! Welcome!! I had not noticed the accelerating words around the characters and Miriam's expeditions, are you seeing anger accelerating in Eliza? Or what are you seeing?

Miriam ought to be happy, it makes you wonder what she'll do next, really. What it will take next time.

By the way the author has presented this book, who do you think at this point is the person we are supposed to be concentrating on?

Harriet, that is so interesting that you had that same configuration in your own family, the scholar and the superwoman but she waited on him, good point, I noticed that Aaron was in charge of fixing the pot pies when Saul was gone, I guess that means Saul fixes dinner when he is home? So he waits on them? So what's wrong with Miriam, she can't fix a pot pie or bring home take out? Jeepers. She's sort of....disaffected or something, she showed Eliza she loved her, told her she was proud of her, what about Aaron? Apparently the kaleidescope she gave Eliza was the first surprise she's ever come up with, and Saul was a little jealous, I wonder what that says for her relationship with Aaron.

Becky, let us know what happens with the real Miriam, this is getting so interesting.

PEDLN!! What, off to see Shoji? Is he still drawing the crowds? I heard he was the most popular thing IN Branson, tell us when you return, I've never been to Branson, I hear the traffic is unbelievable.

ginny

Pedln, "street angels and home devils", I have never heard that and think it is one of the smartest observations I've heard in years! Thank you for that.

Oh, this Saul! It appears to me that he controls everyone with his silences, with the mystery about what goes on behind that door to his study. It was amusing to me also, that both Aaron and Miriam's first reaction to his absence was to take off their clothes! Aaron had permission to veer way off the spiritual path of Saul and began to investigate other beliefs. In trying to keep this strange family within the bounds of some normalcy, it truly is not unusual for young people to rebel against what they have been taught in their effort to begin their quest for independence. So, maybe Aaron's actions are not so off the wall. Miriam, however, is a whole other story! She begins to truly go beyond the pale entering people's home and taking things. It does appear that Saul's presence keeps her somewhat together. Keeping herself frantically busy is not enough to keep her demons at bay, she needs Saul's presence, silent as it may be behind the door.

I just do not like the way Saul takes over Eliza's whole world of spelling and makes it his. She won the first bee all by herself with her own method of spelling. I know parents who get too involved in their children's activities and none of it is about the child anymore. Think of the worst Little League parents.

Ginny, Eliza is the character that speaks to me the loudest in the book. It seems the same to me at this point as always. The spelling bees appear to be like a musical soundtrack to the book.

Oops! Miriam was *not* married to Aaron, she was the elder sister of Aaron and Moses. (I knew they were closely related.) I had to look this up, memory just doesn't serve the way it used to. (g)

She was a prophetess and possibly a mid-wife. She saved Moses from Pharoah (the bulrushes story), giving him to his mother to nurse. (Ex 2.) She assisted getting the Hebrews across the barren wilderness (40 years?) and to the Promised Land (Ex 15) although like her brothers, she didn't get there herself.

When Moses married an Ethiopian woman Miriam and Aaron spoke against him. For this Miriam was cursed with "leprosy" but Aaron "saved" her. (Num. 12)

Leprosy in the bible is not necessarily as we think of it but it could be any of a number of serious skin diseases.

That's Miriam of the Bible. So the name is very Jewish, the woman is a bit strange and she is the sister of Aaron. Also, I suppose that she did, by way of her brother Moses, enter the house of the Pharoah. (lol)

becky

About Saul, it may be important (in a way) that the Saul of Tarsus changed his allegiance from Judaism to Christianity. This is just like Saul in "Bee Season" changed his allegiance from Aaron (with a very Jewish name) to Elizabeth (with a more Christian one).

becky P.S. I'm not quite sure what to make of all of this name thing except that it's probably fun for the author and readers to find little "easter eggs." (a techie term)

Roslyn!!

WELCOME! I was interested in your exploration of MG's use of words to suggest Miriam's increasing descent into illness. The author also skillfully draws us into Eliza's two nightmares with her use of words. When the child contemplates defeat in her nightmare, the scene is leaden, spectators impassive...until the violent image with sharp teeth. p.91

I can't figure out the symbolism of the teeth? I wonder why THAT image.

In her second nightmare, after Saul has tinkered with Eliza's natural spelling techniques, Eliza feels suffocated by the letters that always before were her friends. "The letters squeeze themselves between her lips and flutter their terrible wings inside her mouth." p.107. More intensely descriptive images.

But which nightmare is THE nightmare, the one Eliza fears so much before the Nationals? The one against which she sets her alarm clock extra early, so she has time to recoup from its aftereffects? p.113. Not clear to me.

The light touch at the Nationals? Saul also has a dream, but his dream involves an exhibitionistic sexual performance on the Bee stage...wearing only a spelling bee contestant's number.

Now, how to read THAT?

More to come.

Paige, terrific insights from you! Where to begin!

How right you are that normal teenagers rebel. Even all Golems eventually rebel. It's not Aaron's rebellion that's so significant to me as the form it takes. This was a boy who felt like he was "entering into his kingdom" when he walked into a temple. He felt "strands" that connected him to all of the congregation during his bar mitzvah, making him at one with the worshippers. He felt himself destined for a career devoted to Judaism. All of this stemmed from his love of his father, the person who came to his rescue when he was being tormented by other kids.

When Saul "forgot" about Aaron, the lonely boy lost both his father and Judaism. Without his religious beliefs and connection to his father, Aaron was reduced to, I forget who used this term earlier, a "hollow void." And now that hollowness has to be filled with SOMETHING...that restores meaning to this boy's life. Aaron didn't rebel in a small way. He knocked the underpinnings right out of his life.

It's such a tragedy because, unbelievably, I'm convinced Saul still cares about Aaron and has no concept of the pain he is causing. Interesting. As I was writing it occurred to me that never for one minute did I consider Miriam as a source of alternate support. That is just one troubled "gone" lady.

This sentence "sang" to me. "The spelling bees appear to be like a musical soundtrack to the book." Great image, Paige.

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Becky, Ginny, I had trouble making out the scene where Eliza asks Aaron about why he no longer plays his music. p. 90. Maybe he DID give away his "birthright" to her? That's certainly one valid interpretation, isn't it? I wonder why MG left the pronoun "it" so vaguely defined in the sentence: "Aaron was amazed at how easy IT was to give." That sentence practically BEGS for many second looks.

Aaron's original intent in this scene was to put Eliza down. He remembers and is jealous of the look of joy on his sister's face at the Bee. He is old enough and self aware enough to realize that his own love of the guitar didn't survive Saul's withdrawal of interest. That must have been painful for him. His solution is to go on the attack with the intention of destroying Eliza's pleasure and confidence in her own skills, and in her father's attentions.

Elly disarms him with her sisterly concern for HIM. Was part of Aaron's gift to her one of communication and brief caring conversation? But his eyes remained on the TV. Eliza felt herself dismissed. Perhaps that puzzle will resolve itself later in the book.

Becky and Ginny, I love the play with the bibical names. They add an element of fun to our discussion.

MaryPage, you may be right about the intent of the author regarding the name of Saul. Good to see you.

The portrait of the spelling champs at the Nationals is intense. We "see" their bitten-down nails and we learn about their anxiety dreams of appearing on stage in their underwear. (I think MG likes to talk about dreams as much as WE do.) We can feel the do-or-die pressures of "final chance" contestants and the physical symptoms, like shivering, that afflict these kids.

Eliza is confident until Daddy reveals HIS opinion of her. Whew, downer!

So, at this point I'm disliking Saul a lot. Under his guidance, a child who thought of Washington as HER city because the streets are laid out with beloved "letter" names is reduced to nightmares in which these same letters choke and overwhelm her. I'm prepared to discount and reject all forms of Saul's interference and pressure. No good, I think. Don't listen to him, Eliza.

Yet something strange happens during the bee. Before Eliza is "dinged" out, Saul's new spelling technique WORKS for her. "Let the letters show you the way," Saul has instructed her. And they do.

But why? What is MG trying to say?! What is the connection between Saul's new spelling technique and his great hopes for Eliza, and through her, his hopes for himself? The two elements are intertwined on pp.126 - 127, and it seems to me that MG uses a lot of care to align the correspondence between the two.

Eliza feels a vital moment of love and gratitude to her father on the stage in the round before she suffers elimination from the bee. It makes her more vulnerable to him. Maybe that's a bad sign for the future. Look how Saul dumped Aaron when he became interested in Eliza. Better that she remains angry at her father.

It doesn't make sense. Why does that insensitive boor of a Saul look GOOD for a few minutes? I'm VERY suspicious of him.

Hi Roslyn.Nice to "see" you again.

I'm not so sure that Saul is this terrible villain.It seems to me,that Miriam has totally abdicated her mothering and familial obligations and that Saul is the underlying glue of trying to hold the family together. But,I'm not sure that he knows how to do it,because his behavior (to me) is sorty of push/pull...pulling his children into his mysticism and pushing them away(perhaps in an attempt to teach them some independence).

I think that Saul's characterization reflects a lot of ambiguity that exists in the real world. Maybe the dynamics of this family are not so unusual after all except that the roles are mixed up or reversed.

In a traditional family, the husband/father would be away working most of the time (Miriam seems to have a more male role..."working" long hours..not much time for the children,whereas Saul spends a lot of time at home..although isolated..he still has a physical presence in the house.

Ginny: A Bimah is a platform is a synagogue that holds the reading table when reading or chanting portions of the Torah.

Ed, people are too complex to encapsulate in only one dimension. Of course you're right to point that out. Saul is much like a single father who is trying his best to function. You struck a really responsive chord with me when you noted that Miriam had abdicated her responsibilities as a wife and mother. It's strange, but I haven't been focusing much on Miriams's lack of maternal warmth...and that's a subject that I would normally broach in any other family relationship.

When I try to figure out why I've been by-passing total indignation of Miriam's cold and irresponsible nature, I suppose it's because I figure her to be so emotionally ill that I've written her off. I no longer think of her as a viable, functioning parent. You said it straight, Ed. "Saul is the underlying glue trying to hold the family together." Saul's "physical presence" gets the credit for whatever family life the Naumann's may have at all.

However, that said, I doubt whether he pushes his children away to teach them independence...maybe that's offering him TOO much leeway. Moreover he certainly is obtuse when it comes to empathizing with BOTH of his kids at the same time...and it's hard to see a clear separation between the goals he wants for his children, and the ambitions he has for himself.

Those two children are sure caught between the devil and deep blue sea, aren't they?

Where can I find a review or critical comments of the above book "girl with the pearl earring" by Tracy Chevalier? I belong to a book discussion group and need some more information on this book. Any information would be appreciated. Thank you/ my e-mail is: a.ciancarelli@worldnet.att.net.

Hello, Snowycurve, and welcome! We are delighted to have you join us, you have come to the right place for a reader.

We have not read Girl With a Pearl Earring yet, tho it has been nominated many times and we probably will, how neato you thought of looking for our reviews, you are in good company, a lot of book reviewers regularly read us for ideas, and SOMETIMES they either mention us or join in.

When we do read it, we will want your F2F (face to face ) bookclub experience, so do plan to join us and please look around and join us in any of our discussions coming up or ongoing.

Pleasure to have you here!

ginny

"Come to the ISKCON temple on Sunday and see for yourself."

Aaron receives an invitation from a man he met in the park. He is wanted, respected...his presence is requested. His opinion is valued. He has met Chali, a man who seems to have found answers in the search for God. Aaron is a boy who hungers for spirituality, and Chali is promising a feast.

Aaron needs order and connection in his life. Ginny has pointed out his increasing similarity to his mother as he begins to check and recheck the details of his life, like locking of car doors. He reacts to his father's abruptly changing attention with a pained withdrawal. A difficult combination of responses.

Why can't this boy confront his father?!! It's MY turn now, pop! I need some time with you too! Don't you see I still NEED you? Hey, mom! I'm making dinner for YOU! How about at least a THANK YOU??!! TALK TO ME! But the sound of silence reverberates through the Naumann house and pain vibrates in the echoes. Aaron DOES plan to take on Eliza, but she disarms him with her concern about his lack of guitar playing. I still see that as a strange scene in the book and I'm not sure if we've discussed ALL of its implications as yet.

Aaron's life is a series of contrived solutions on how to survive under difficult circumstances. How will the ISKCON temple fit in to all this? Aaron has begun to understand that even his few friendships are surface things, a compromise for the real intimacy with others that he craves. And above all. he needs to feel a spiritual intimacy with God.

If anyone knows something about cults, please weigh in. How are they different from organized religion? Why do they encourage separation from the past? These aren't rhetorical questions. I really don't know.

Opinions?

You all have made some stunning points, I had not seen this family, Ed, as sort of a reversal of what was once the norm, anyway, (let's face it, the house husband is a fairly recent innovation), but they are, aren't they? There was a time in some areas not too long ago when the father was a remote and stern figure who worked long hours, rarely broached or talked to by his children. That's not an unusual thing, but here it's both of them, Saul withdrawn and Miriam so preoccupied that she has to ask people to repeat things constantly.

I can't help but wonder what kind of lawyer she is, she seems to have NONE of the characteristics of any I've ever met?

Thank you for that definition of bimah, Ed, is the author deliberately misspelling it (bottom of page 91)?? Wouldn't that be interesting, or are there several spellings. Strange word for a stage where spelling bees take place, the author seems to be hinting, maybe?, that each character is on some sort of religious or mystic quest? I had not seen it in Eliza, but then again you don't find the stage of a school often mentioned in religious terms, either?

I did notice that Eliza also was turning into her mother, note the obesssiveness here?

Eliza checks her pocket three times for her room key before braving the hallway. (page 112)

I think that the author is very skillful in how she subtly paints a complete picture by little descriptions here and little hints there and leaves it to us to make the conclusions?

---

Harriet said, "Aaron's life is a series of contrived solutions on how to survive under difficult circumstances, " now that's interesting because they all live lives of contrived soultions, Miriam certainly does! And so does Saul. And now arron. Is Eliza's ...what is Eliza's "solution" to the problem of her family?

That's a good point. She seems the only one caught up in NOT having a solution. She resists Saul's "miracle treatment," even feels angry,

Saul is looking at her expectantly, similing his I've got a secret smile. The sight of this smile in the past has left Eliza yearning to do or say something to be let in on the secret too. Now it only makes her angry. For the first time, Eliza doesn't want to play her father's game. Instead of following the unspoken rules, she remains silent.

Something seems to happen there, I'm not sure what. And yet later, as Harriet noticed, Eliza realizes what Saul means, or the part of it he's explained to her, anyway.

Heck, Saul irritates me, if he's so smart, why ain't he rich, as the saying goes? What gives HIM the spelling insight?

I'll tell you what, tho, I loved this one:

Aaron reasons that, as a face loses its ability to cover its tracks it must fall back on what it's most used to.

What is it they say, you...how does that saying go, you earn the face you have after 50? Having just bought my very first skin product for aging skin and such? I can totally agree? It's scary, makes you want to smile more. Miriam's face has lines "at the corners of...[his] mother's mouth and between her eyebrows, echoes of her face deep in concentration." (p. 128). So I tried to do that too, have you? Scrunch up your face to look like that? (I'm telling you, between going around picturing letters in my head and scrunching up my face, this book has had a definite impact on me, physically anyway) hahaahaha

Do we know much about the physical appearance of either Saul or Miriam, except ....somewhere did it say Miriam was thin? But I mean how do you picture them? Is she dark or fair? How about Saul? Do we have many physical descriptions? These characters are all about the life of the inner mind.

Here's an interesting quote from Sherwood Anderson, the Name That Book Contest is now over and this quote has appeared in the heading?

"All men lead their lives behind a wall of misunderstanding they have themselves built, and most men die in silence and unnoticed behind the walls. Now and then a man, cut off from his fellows by the peculiarities of his nature, becomes absorbed in doing something that is personal, useful, and beautiful. Word of his activities is carried over the walls." ---Sherwood Anderson in Poor White

I think it's an interesting application here to these characters, too.

Becky, you're right about that, I love those "aha" moments, do you say they're called "easter eggs?" What does that refer to technically? Is it like "breadcrumbs?"

I love all these techie terms even IF I have no earthly idea what they refer to!

Well here we are, Andrea soon back off the links spitting divots and hopefully staying upright this time, Pedln off to Branson but looking in, and we KNOW what Gail T has been doing, just Feast your eyes on this!!

Well done, Gail T! You may see other of our talented Books folks and some other SeniorNetters by clicking on the left banner today (until 7 pm or so) on the bottom left of the page or here: A Gallery of NeedleCrafts

Amazing, Gail T!!

ginny

Hello to all: I am Gail and am just joining this group. Have been lurking and reading all along with you nice people. Just subscribed today. My first time with a book discussion and have only been on Senior Net for about one month. Am feeling my way around this and all the other groups I have joined.

Have read and finished Bee Season 2-3 days ago. Following all of your thoughts and comments closely. Don't think I will enter discussion but am enjoying the group.

Can't wait to read all your comments on the last 1/4 and the closing of the story.

Gail / 62 / Moonlight in Vermont

I don't have any personal experience with cults,but from what I've read,the group engages the individual with "love bombing" and total acceptance,until the individual severs his/her affiliation with friends & family and then the group becomes the family.

Gail Norma!!

MANY, MANY WELCOMES! Jump right in. The water's fine. We're waiting to celebrate your arrival with life jackets and hot cocoa! It wasn't so long ago that we ALL tried our first book discussion.

We hope you'll join us. The more opinions we hear, the more fun it is. You know, there are no wrong or right interpretations because we all filter a book through the prism of our own awareness.

We are eager to hear your opinions.

Gail Norma!!

I second Harriet's wonderful greeting, it's always good luck when readers join us mid discussion, we've got a long way to go yet, of course you must venture your thoughts!

So glad you found us, you have definitely come to the right place!

ginny

Gail T., some people are artists with oil paints or cameras, but you're an artist with needlecraft.

I also love your presentation of your work, with the pictures of your very lovely daughter and mother nestled in the folds of the fabric.

Just beautiful, Gail T! Thanks for sharing your skill.

What does this mean? From Ginny's post #154

Elly tries to catch Aaron's eye, but he its too intent on the TV screen. She leaves feeling as though she doesn't deserve what he has given her. Aaron is amazed by how easy it was to give.

Huh? What was it?

*******************

It occurs to me that this could be interpreted more than one way.

1. Aaron gave something to Eliza and he was amazed at the ease with which * IT* was given. (Emphasis here on the gift, what was it he gave? He gave her the freedom to pursue her new-found relationship with their father, without the anger he was about to unload on her.)

2. Aaron gave something to Eliza and he was amazed at how easy it was to *GIVE.* (Emphasis here on the act of giving, giving is not hard.) (He hae let her off the hook, he was going to give her a real scathing, hurtful speech and he doesn't. He drops it.)

becky

an email to you was returned

SeniorNet Books & Literature has a newsletter, "Book Bytes", that is emailed about twice a month. If you would like to subscribe.. Click on my name and send me an email.

Ed, thank you for your response. I look forward to the part of the book where we can discuss Aaron and cults in greater depth.

Becky, it looks like great minds think alike. After I thought about "it" awhile "it" began to make me tee-hee. As a matter of fact, I began to feel that "it" is a lot of fun.

In her post #154, Ginny brought up the mysterious "it", a pronoun on p. 90 for which MG has stubbornly refused to provide an antecedent.

You brought "it" up in your posts #161 and #182.

I brought "it" up in my post #168 and again briefly in my post #174

On page 90 of Bee Season, the "it-ness" of it all reigns. The pronoun "IT" has no mamma or pappa. "It" is an orphan. "It" is a puzzlement.

I sure agree with you, Becky. The sentence "Aaron is amazed by how easy IT was to give." leaves us ALL up in the air about "it."

Becky, thanks. I don't know the real answer about "it," but I'm enjoying "it".

Miriam is gripped by her illness more and more, The missing parts of herself, held captive in the homes of other people, call out to her with increasing force. She needs to integrate, make herself whole. She needs to STEAL.

Does she see herself reflected as she really is? Does she understand that she is a thief branching out into break-and-enter burglary? How deeply is the glass of her internal mirror cracked and crazed? Does Miriam's mirror contain only distorted glass? Since early childhood Miriam has felt that she took ONLY what was REALLY hers. It's worked out for her also. No one in her family knows. No one in her past has EVER known.

If a tree crashes to earth unwitnessed, does the sound of its impact really happen? If Miriam "reclaims" objects that are really hers, and nobody sees or knows...is it really theft? How deep is Miriam's obsession...how thick the skewed glass in the mirror of her self image?

Two incidents.

Incident one: In her final year of prep school Miriam drives her car at night with her headlights off. The normal boundaries of life and death disappear. She knows she may crash into an unseen object at any moment. All normal control is gone. She feels exhilaration and joy of life...fully lived! Then, panicked, she turns on the headlights...just in time to see people walking in the road.

Miriam has narrowly missed a life-changing, irreversible event. Immediately she understands that there could have been no more life as she normally knows it, if she had killed those people. She is terrified, and later flashes back to that moment when her parents die in a car accident.

Her skewed mirror briefly reflects TRUTH.

Incident two: Saul is in Washington with Eliza. Miriam sits in the same room as Aaron and loses herself in her thoughts of her SEARCH.. Can she see her disconnected, distant, distracted self through her son's eyes? Or is her self absorption too intense? Does her mirror reflect her son and HIS needs at all? Does it interrupt her thoughts of entering other people's houses?

Then she thinks of Saul and his return. Into her head suddenly flashes three words. "Breaking and entering."

When she sees herself through Saul's eyes, Miriam's mirror CAN reflect truth.

A strange marriage, yet she still connects to her husband on some level? But how about her children?

It's the same "it" as in the sentence "It is raining." Or in "It is sunny." Or "It is terrible to hear."

~grammar are me

Maryal

Welcome! You is completely right!

No it?

haahahaha, you all are crazy, it's a pleasure to see you here, Maryal, too! hahahaha

It's nice to be here! hahaahha

I got up thinking about and I have not read further, trying to keep within our schedule, but something Ed said a long way back there keeps ringing in my head.

You know when a person retires, the entire family dynamic changes? This can be a great time or a very bad time for a family, when something happens to ONE member, they all change?

Look at the titles already out there, Will Success Spoil.... etc., "Absolute power corrupts absolutely..." etc.

Here we have a child who wins a spelling bee and who somehow sees the letters in her head?

OK.

But her win changes everything in this fragile family? I'm beginning to think it's not actually about or is not supposed to be about the BEE at all? That maybe the BEE is just the fulcrum on which the rest of the family spins and they appear to be spinning out of control?

For all her knowledge, Miriam is not in tune with this? Saul, for all his seeking, is not either. Saul is not as bad as he could be here, he tries to hug, to have some familiarity with his wife, she's the original plastic woman, is having none of it.

I contend that she is exaggerated for a reason, that this is simply a family dynamic. It's got the favored child very much like Edna Ferber's So Big but the difference here is that the child suddenly becomes favored.

Because of her success?

I think that is quite rare, have you ever heard of such a thing? Usually if a child IS favored it's from the get go.

The child reminds the parent of somebody or something or there's a bond, who KNOWS?

But in this case the child has earned by succeeding, her parent's favor: Saul.

I think this is not about a BEE at all.

What do you think?

ginny

To Bee or not to Bee, that is the question?

This message is for Alf: Hi Andy I'm lurking in Florida...Read your E.Mail Clare

I'll join in the discussion later if I can stand this disfunctional family long enough.

Well, Ginny, you've got that right about retirement changing family dynamics.  I've got twice the husband and half the money.
However, when it comes to your statement about a favored child, I tend to disagree with you.  I don't believe that A child is always the favored one.  The preferences change in many families (dysfunctional or not.)  One month a certain child can be made the exception, praised and supported fully and the next month another one is the pampered child; the favorite.  I think there are many parents who accommodate their young this way; blessings, compliments and endorsements abound in families daily.

E's "success" as you call it is favorable for Saul ONLY, in this family!  Excellence is the reward he strives for and he finds it in Eliza's new found spelling skills.  It is his triumph and  he is flattered.

Maryal:  Where have you been?  Have you a bee in your bonnet?

cmac:  I'm here.

What a prolific writer we've found here. This sentence rocked me.

"She (Miriam) can hear pieces of herself calling from their scattered prisons like fifteen-year locusts, a constant high-pitched grating noise impossible to tune out."

Good grief, one expects to see her absolutely shatter.

Ginny Your are so right about a family spinning. They are out of control.

Andrea, is that true? I thought in families where favoritism happened that it was pretty one sided and all the time? We really need to read So Big here, it has issues everybody can relate to, it's a great book.

I'm not sure I agree with you about Miriam? I thought Eliza's success even got HER attention? At the Bee (that BEE again Maryal ahahahah) she saw for the first time that concentration which comes from loneliness and she realized that she had brought that on that poor child herself. She gave the kaleidescope (which for her was really something) and she tucked her into bed and told her she was proud of her.

The poor child had to try out "I love you" in the dark, I guess so she would not have to see the rejection or shock that brought.

Yet there are families in our upbringing, that is, not so long ago, that never told their children they loved them? Or that never saw the parents embrace or anything else? So that, at least is not strange.

I wonder whether we are all more affected by the events of September 11 than we realize? I look back over the books we've read here in the Book Club Online in the last 5 years. We've read the Gary Gilmore story? That thing was unreal. You talk about dysfunctional? THAT family wrote the book. It was recently a TV movie, Shot in the Heart, by Mikal Gilmore and the whole thing was stranger than fiction and very painful to read, but it was REAL?

Now what's the difference? Is it because of the times? Do we think that if we read a non fiction book that we can learn what not to do but if we read fiction that the author should have spent her time writing something else? Uplifting? Flowers?

I am fascinated by all the reactions to this book, negative and positive? We are about discussing the book and hearing everybody's reaction, not only reading what we like or can relate to. Trust me, NOBODY could relate to the Gilmores.

Well heck, how about Pat Conroy? How about.....was it The Great Santini? Where the father said this food is not fit for a dog and threw it on the floor or something? And bring me something fit to eat? So his wife went out in the kitchen and opened a can of dog food and served it up to him with rice and he ate it, unknowing?

I mean, you talk about mean (Gilmore), oppressed and nasty (Santini) just plain smart mouth and hateful (The Liar's Club) and this one, in this one, these people are not even in the BALL park? And the adults are....are they only hurting themselves?

OR??

ginny

Ginny - I feel that these characters are right there as being real, that I can certainly relate to them. I have met them in my own family and in others. So, it is painful to read about such characters. Many, many other characters in books I cannot even relate to and so read blissfully on. Their lives are just in a book, whereas this family's life is too real for me as they could be living right next door, as we speak. (But I know they are not, thank goodness.

Kathy

“All happy families resemble each other; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." (Tolsty, Anna Karenina)

Unhappy families have been the subject-matter of novels since "Tale of the Genji." (Japan, 11th century) I have no idea if we relate to the unhappiness more today or less.

The Corrections is the newest hot literary thing. It's pretty unhappy too. I can't think of a novel I've ever read about a really happy family unless that fact was largely tangential. But then, how much plot or interesting character analysis is an author going to have, working within the confines of a happy family? (g)

becky

The word that comes to my mind about this book is dreary. Saul may be the glue that holds this family together but it's a weak, flour and water paste. They just hardly every connect, any of them. Saul pays attention to the child that is doing well at the moment. He tries to get a little shine from the spotlight that the child is enjoying. Aaron when he did so well at his bar mitzvah and Eliza and when she won the spelling bee. He has no qualms about dropping Aaron for Eliza in a heart beat. Miriam is barely holding herself together, not capable of giving much of anything to her family.

I promise that I will start on this novel (which I am teaching next semester) this weekend. Truly I will. Then I will be a real contributor instead of just a jokester. Or at least I think I will be. We shall see.

An aside--In one of my freshman classes yesterday, we were discussing Kafka's "Metamorphosis." I think we were on the part of the story where the father hurls apples at poor Gregor to scare him back into his bedroom. One of the apples gets embedded in Gregor's back where it stays and rots.

One of my students said, "When I was six, my dad shot my dog for peeing in his room." I don't know how I know these things, but I knew what he said had happened. Tone of voice, the look on his face--something. Some of the students near him said, "C'mon, man, that's not true." He said it happened, in his basement. I asked him if he had SEEN it and he said no. Had he HEARD it? He nodded his head.

Tell me there aren't dysfunctional families all around us. I made some kind of remark, by the way, along the lines of "After this happened, were you a little afraid of your dad?"

The answer was, "Ma'am, I was already afraid of him."

I wish that there were no real life families like the Naumann's, but I agree with Kathy that there are probably a lot of real people with at least SOME of the traits in this family, only not so bad, I hope.

What can an author write about if the oddities of human nature are off limits? Becky really brought up a valid point. Shakespeare explored dysfunctional families in Hamlet, Lear, you name it. We'll succeed in boycotting many classics of fiction from Tolstoy's Anna Karenina to Dreiser's Sister Carrie if we won't read about dysfunction or emotional stress in books. There are plenty of non-fiction books exploring painful subjects also. So where do we draw the line? At what point does sensitivity become self-censorship?

I find this book fascinating. I don't deny the negative qualities of Saul and Miriam, but I think MG does a super job of bringing this family to life and the book moves right along.

Yeah and tomorrow we'll move right along into Part III and we'll have all sorts of strange new things to consider.

I'm wondering, Harriet, if anything is off limits now? Maryal would know this better than I do but is there some sort of "shock" lit going on and when did it start?

Used to be there were hints? In Hamlet, the protagonist was reacting to what had been DONE? It was a reactive kind of thing? In this new book (good luck on teaching it, Maryal, we await with bated breath your thoughts), but in this book the protagonists themselves are in the process of doing strange things? Kleptomania? I mean.....it's a new type of literature and it seems the stranger the better. This woman can really write, she has some great moments, we'll see what remains for us at the end.

---

Kathy I am sooo glad to see you here, I'm sorry that there are reactions that you too have that make it painful, I wish you would just tell our other participants here what you do, your travels, I think they have no idea about you and we've got a whole day with sort of nothing new to say before tomorrow, if you like tell us about your latest trip so our assemblage here can get some feel of who all they're actually talking to?

I have the greatest respect for our Kathy, and for ALL of you here in our Books, we're quite an assemblage, let's get to know each other better??

---

Paige! There you are, I am so glad to see you back too, hooray!

Did you think really that Saul had no qualms about dropping Aaron? Do you think , is it possible that Saul is such an...what's the word? Egotist? I mean I think his scholarship is sincere, remember when the kids finally got in the Inner Sanctum that he turned to Aaron with a piece of excited scholarly discovery? Remember what he told Eliza about this shining "I've got a secret" stuff? Could it BE that he thinks Aaron is now well suited to continue on, job done, secrets revealed and now he'll start on the second one? OR???? is he just dumping the child for his own interest?

Ed said quite early on that Saul was a user, a leech, I'm now wondering about Miriam in this in an emotional application?

---

That business about the child and the guitar IS very painful, isn't it?

---

Becky, would you allow me to move your very intersting Easter egg post over here? I can do it easily and I think people would like to see it? It will disappear from where it currently is, tho? Please let me know?

It's interesting you mention The Corrections because it, too, concerns a dysfunctional family at...is it Thanksgiving?

You know, of all the holidays Thanksgiving, to me, is the least stressful? I love Thanksgiving, I don't know why?

But family gatherings like family reunions bring out...what? Bring out all the repressed resentments that have festered a long time. Is there ANY family free of these? That Corrections is really a hot seller, wonder if people hope to see themselves there and learn how not to do or hope to see themselves there and say well heck, we were never THAT bad, compared to THEM we're practicaly Norman Rockwell.

People who read this book, wonder what they think? We're getting a really good diverse set of perspectives here. I guess Miriam to me is not real, and thus she doesn't bother me, she's flat and outre, I can't relate, thus I'm watching her as I would a cartoon, I can admire the fine writing (and it IS) and I can admire what's going on, but relate? No, so don't you see, it puts up a shield for the reader, at least for me? I think this was deliberately done by the author, I hope I find out why in the end.

---

Maryal, have you seen the movie......AGGG....Renaissance Man? Danny DeVito starred in it as a teacher at just a military base? He had the students write why they joined the Marines and each story was just heart rending, your Freshman's story is likewise, and it's not the first time I've heard something like that, but don't get me started on MY pet rant, cruelty to animals and the effect upon children, I'll be off on another planet.

ginny

Andrea, loved your take on family dynamics.

A real life bit of family dynamics, related by a friend.

Her late husband came from a very well-to-do family. By the time she and her husband inherited his family home from his parents, they couldn't afford the servants that her husband had been accustomed to in his childhood.

One evening they were entertaining eight for dinner, cooked and served solely by her in their large dining room. The dining room had an electronic buzzer left over from grander times, that connected to a bell in the kitchen for summoning servants during dinner.

She was in the kitchen busy as a bee with the food. Her spouse was holding forth at the dinner table. After a while he decided that the wait for food was overly long. He called to her. When she didn't didn't respond immediately, he reached over for the buzzer and rang the kitchen.

My friend figured that her beloved was out of line. She carefully disconnected the bell from the kitchen, placed it on a tray and served it to her embarrassed husband.

He was certainly no Saul, but even in the best of marriages it's a chancy business to do right by children and spouse all the time. Of course Saul's great gift is reading everyone in his family wrong most of the time..

I feel like we are being awfully hard on Saul. It seems to me that with our "omniscient" view, we can see what Saul SHOULD have been doing to balance his crazy wife (and yes, I think she had a very serious disorder that was becoming worse). But if we take away all we know, what we end up with is Saul, who marries a bright woman who can relate to him intellectually, who has a profession and is willing to support him while he does the kind of study that is soul-satisfying to him (don't we wish WE had someone like that), who has at least initially a satisfying sex life, at least enough to provide him with first a son and then a daughter (the perfect family?) and who learned to accommodate himself to the actions of a strange wife whom he loves. All four are involved in the Temple and in the various observances in the cycles of Jewish life. On the surface I do not see this as a particularly abberational family -- with the omniscient view it is VERY abberational, of course. But Saul doesn't have that knowledge. He does his house-husband bit, does what he considers the best for his kids, and frankly, is a whole lot more attentive to his kids than my dad was to me, or my husband to our kids.

Saul is operating from a stacked deck that he is unaware of. There is no way he can win, much less play the game in a reasonable manner. He is living with a psychopath and doesn't know it, and his whole family life is a reaction to that. I feel very sorry for Saul. I feel sorry for Miriam too, because she sure wouldn't have been this way had it been her choice. The kids, I think, have a great deal of inner strength in spite of all this. They take control of their lives to the extent that they can. We may not like a child leaving his family religion and going off into what we consider a cult, but Aaron does it not out of a reaction but as a search for something like all teenagers go through. (When I was 18 I got on an Emerson "Self-Reliance" binge that nearly drove my parents to distraction for a year. It was a terrible time. I abandoned everything they taught me. This, as you can see, caused lots of problems, beause I thought I was right and they were wrong.) I do not consider Saul the culprit in Aaron's move from Judaism to Hare Krishna.

Now, I am not saying that all that we know about this family from the writer's perspective is not true. But I am saying that the family does not experience themselves this way. And it surely is true that it can be a picture of the dynamics under the surface of families that we may not even be aware of.

I feel very sorry for Saul. He doesn't have a clue, but he is shortly to find that his family isn't what he thinks it is. He is kind of blithely going along, putting little bandaids on things and assuming that "this too shall pass."

Drats!  My last comment was lost in cyber heaven when we experienced that  glitch.  Let me try to post something akin to my brilliant thought last time.  Hahaha
I was thinking about the powerful, emotional reactions  that have been expressed by each one of us.  This wonderful gifted writer has evoked from us these concepts  and criticisms with the introduction of her characters.  She has succeeded in capturing our attention and placing us smack dab in the the midst of their  miserable existence.  Senior Net Books has taught me that it doesn't matter one whit whether I like the characters or not.
Nor does it matter if I can "relate" to or identify with them.  The author has forced us to look at them  and consider them in the context of the story that she's created.   She has succeeded.  Like a great actor playing the bad guy, we hate him and begrudge his evil actions.  That means that he has done his job.  This fool doesn't even realize that he's the villian, but we are compeled to see him as such due to his fine performance.  As Gail said, our characters don't realize that they are aberrent. This writer excels at prodding us into where she wishes us to go.  This is the first time in a long while that I have wanted to reread a book I've chosen to discuss.  I think this story is as meaty as it gets.  We bring our own experiences with us to these discussions.  Don't we all know these people?  Haven't we met them?  (and shuned them of course?)
Even just a little bit of their personalities?

Ginny, I'm not back, I never left! Been reading along every day to see what others have to say about this book. I don't think that all books need to be uplifting by any means. Perhaps because this author is very good, I feel so hopeless about this family ever finding a better way. I know that dysfunctional families abound but this one is so totally humorless. Often there is a bit of dark humor in dysfunctional families, if it is here, I'm not seeing it. I feel on a downward spiral with them. I know that there are all kinds of families and all kinds of dysfunction. What is normal? Read somewhere that normal is a setting on a washing machine, that's it! All of the characters are so repressed in this family situation. Aaron breaks away and is off into the cult and Miriam does very strange things out of the house. There is a great deal of tension within that home, feels like you could slice it with a knife.

I love books and reading, and I love our discussions. This book is just not one of my favorites, but I do like reading it and sharing it with all of you.

Catching up here:

First, yes, of course you can move my Easter Egg post here. This is where it was meant to be. I do wonder what the John Adams folks could possibly have thought of that!

Next up: I doubt that "shock fiction" is new. Are you talking about surprise endings? O. Henry was a master. The best detective novels are especially good at that. And Goldberg does a masterful job of building the suspense. Everything in her book is geared toward that. The odd, unpredictable characters in tense situations and a short-sectioned structure lend themselves to the build-up.

Or by the term "shock novel" are you talking about the content? It's really not that shocking to me. I would have been more shocked with "Doll's House" by Ibsen had I read it when it came out. Or "Lolita" by Nabokov or Mann's "Death in Venice."

And: Did I detect the word "bee" again? As in "busy as a bee?" This brings up a whole realm of possibilities. These guys are like buzzing bees with nowhere to go! Talk about "Bee Season!"

Becky And has anyone mentioned quilting bee?

Boy if this third section with all its revelations didn't bring enough meat to the table (or surprises like the banana sliced with needle and thread which I think is the most novel thing I ever heard, was that new to you? Love things like that!!) your posts sure have!

So much new in this section, huh? A "new" Saul? Saul has a Secret? The Secret Revealed? Miriam the rapist? Aaron to a cult? Eliza unlocks the secret of Abulafia?

Wow. Quite a blaze here, enough to warm the wandering reader, anyway?

I have a new/ old (hahahaha hold on!!) theory here and it's in answer to the critics who say the author is "dishonest" and it's badly written? I'll get to it after your own super points.

---

First off, Harriet, that "buzzer on a tray" was riveting! Have never heard anything like that, the truth is stranger than fiction, huh? Good for her!! (Did that marriage last?) hahaahahah I would not have had that much nerve, bet he did not do that again, good for her.

What an image, tho, can any of you get it out of your minds?

---

Harriet mentioned, Of course Saul's great gift is reading everyone in his family wrong most of the time..

Again here we are looking at Saul from the outside, note how Gail T sees him:

Saul is operating from a stacked deck that he is unaware of. There is no way he can win, much less play the game in a reasonable manner.

and I feel very sorry for Saul

Those first two statements reflect our knowledge of the perspective or POV the book is written in, the Third Person Omniscient Point of view.

The author tells the story, using the third person; s/he knows all and is free to tell anything, including what the characters are thinking or feeling and why they act as they do.

Remember that old Walter Winchell show where the poor hapless person went about his day and this awful deep voice told us, "Paul does not realize it but his life is about to change."

I used to hate that show, hated knowing what he did not, wanted to live it with him? Felt empathy for him. I HATE this type of presentation, I want to LIVE through the characters, not sit in the clouds knowing their every thought, why did the author DOOOO this?

Gail that was marvelous, I loved that post. In one place, actually, entering this part III the characters actually seemed to be spinning out of the author's control, living their own lives, that brought me up short, too.

No, the author's presentation of the POV as omniscient will not render the reader another Abulafia, or make him omnipotent or all wise, but it saves this author, for me, from the cries of disgust that some have dumped on her head. More about that later on.

---

So some of us feel empathy toward the characters. One of the Reader's Guide Questions for this section reads like this:

Bee Season presents the narrative viewpoints of all the family members. How does this technique add depth and nuance to our understanding of each character? How do the self-portraits differ from the portraits, implicit or explicit, sketched by the other members of the family? Which characters become more sympathetic or appealing through this juxtaposition of perspectives and which ones become less so?

That's an interesting point there about the self portraits and how they differ from the portraits sketched by OTHER members of the family, a fascinating diversion. How do they?

---

Andrea, you said, Isn't it absolutely amazing how this first time gifted author has placed us right smack dab in the center of their universe, living their insanity? Now that is what reading pleasure is for me.

So you are caught up in the family. I find I am not. I wonder if perhaps if we could have seen into only ONE of the characters we might have bonded more closely with that one? I feel at arms length here from the whole group and any time you feel a certain way it's because it's been done TO you , not the other way around.

I agree the author CAN write and that She has succeeded in capturing our attention and placing us smack dab in the the midst of their miserable existence.

She definitely has our attention. Most of mine is spent wondering when each character will come a cropper, because it's obvious they all will. It's only a matter of "when." I have not finished the book, and only read Part III last night but it's obvious to anybody that Miriam cannot continue, Saul will be disappointed or worse, Aaron will diverge from this holy path and Eliza? Eliza is the question but....

---

Didn't you wonder just a little bit about Abulafia ?

I LOVE, absolutely LOVE to learn something new in a book. Just love it. I learned in this book so far about Abulafia and have put what looks like a reputable source in the heading to him. Love it. I loved learning about the banana. I loved learning more about the Hare Krishnas and that spelling of the word Krshna with the dots under it is common in illuminated manuscripts, those dots, so again I was very excited to see it.

In the Krshna does it denote missing letters? Is that common in Hebrew also?

But hey.

Wait a minute, the whole time my mind is saying, hey, surely Abulafia and Eliza were struggling with totally different languages? I don't know much about Hebrew, you all can straighten me out, but I thought a letter could mean more than one thing, thus lending itself to permutation a whole lot easier than our English alphabet does?

That the study of ...is there an ancient Hebrew or is it all Hebrew, I'm totally igorant in this area and would like to learn, but hermeneutics (the study of the methodological principles of interpretation [as of the Bible]) is not the same thing as a spelling bee?

I got a little hung up on that, did any of you?

---

more...this is too long...sorry

I think the two burning questions for me in this section are fairly simple.

If you had to say right now what this book is about, what would you say? What's it ABOUT?

Is it about seeking God? What? What is this book about?

Every character, to me, seems to be looking for something. Which, so far, in your opinion, is the most successful?

Is any character going about his search in the right way?

More...

Will get the questions up in the heading and go find your Easter Egg thing, Becky, and move it here, it was CUTE, I think people would like to see it.

---

Paige, I am so glad you never left!! I loved this: There is a great deal of tension within that home, feels like you could slice it with a knife.

Yes there sure is, the roller coaster we're on, having dipped and slid sideways is neariing the top of the hill, the tension has built, we're about to have a plunge, I'm afraid.

You said, Read somewhere that normal is a setting on a washing machine, that's it! That's clever! I agree, I've heard there are no normal marriages, and I hope this is not one.

---

Super point here, Paige:

I love books and reading, and I love our discussions. This book is just not one of my favorites, but I do like reading it and sharing it with all of you.

Becky, no, I was not talking about a surprise ending (Sherwood Anderson called O Henry's endings "poison plots," according to the Name That Book Contest: you can learn a lot from playing that game here)....I love O Henry. hahaahah Different strokes for different folks. I was talking about articulating things in print that a lot of people know but don't feel the need to talk about. Like end of life things that happen, etc. Most people are familiar with bowel habits for instance but one doesn't always want to read every detail. Yet lately in books it seems you get the entire expereince with some authors, who needs it? That was where I was going there.

Geez even the commericals now you see people entering bathrooms and even have sound effects? Personally I don't need it amplified, but it does seem a trend lately in all our artistic experiences including art?

The bathroom trend in literature.

---

Several critics of this book have been scathing. The say the introduction of Saul's Secret here 3/4 of the way thru the book is unfair to the reader and dishonest. They say it's not well written, not plausible and not good. First time writer. A mess.

I myself feel a bit angry at the author but I think that the author did give fair warning, and it's in that little contrapuntal dance of the envelope we saw a long way back. The author is following a pattern here, did give warning that Saul was holding something back, but it was subtle. She's giving other warnings, too, and you all are picking up on them, Gail feels sorry for Saul, Andrea is right in the middle of it, Harriet ties into the stress on the marriage, Becky, Ed, ...we've all caught the wave, and are ourselves, the readers, bending forward, moved by their struggles and trying to mentally zone them back on a safer path. (I was totally stunned by the author's actual use of the word "Zone," on page 156).

I have a feeling that when we're thru this book if we went back and looked hard, we would find other small flashing lights placed carefully by the author that we may have overlooked.

How did you feel about finally finding out Saul's Secret? So we know he knows HE can't do it, so what is he doing in that library all this time?

I guess Saul here is the big enigma, he's a new Saul in this section, the loving father, the abused husband but he tries, and who is Saul for himself?

Who IS he and why don't we know, what does HE want?

ginny

I read this today and it reminded me of this family.

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage." - Lao Tzu

Do they indeed love one another (in their own ways)?

Do any of them feel loved?

aaron is courageous to leave home and it does have something to do with love. He feel that he belongs now, he has found a family to surround and protect him.

Easter Eggs is the name given to some funny "secret" animations and features hidden inside software. Here are some of the Easter Eggs that are hiding inside some of the Microsoft products. http://noeld.com/eeggs.htm

also: http://www.eggscentral.com/applications/

Example:

Egg Title : Word 2000 logo

How to crack it: 1. Start a new Word 2000 document.

2. Select Help, About.

3. Hold down Ctrl, Alt, Shift.

4. With the left mouse button, click the bottom line.

becky

So much is happening in this third section of the book. There are whole blocs of pages that carry an unbearable poignancy for me. The power of the missed opportunities for communication between Saul and Miriam, between parents and children, between brother and sister carry emotion and, for me at least, an opportunity to sympathize with Saul. I feel the power and the fascination of the book is increasing as I continue to read.

Saul emerges as the thwarted scholar, constantly searching for the elusive goal of "shefa." From page 172: He hopes to achieve a state of transcendence that renders him receptive to the "influx of divine communication." He isn't having much luck, but the search for the goal and the hope of divine revelation springs eternal in him. He's stunned by the power of Eliza's concentration and sees a true pathway for HER.

Is he altruistic? From page 188: "If Saul wants his daughter to have a decent chance at "shefa," she must be permitted to develop a feel for the letters on her own." That sentence suggests that Saul unselfishly wants to help Eliza toward an experience of supreme joy. Or, maybe NOT. As someone suggested earlier, does Saul only want to live through Eliza, to become associated with the glory of HER divine revelations? Or maybe he feels a mixture of both motives? And Saul misses entirely that Eliza sees divine revelation as her pathway to school popularity. She thinks with God behind her, she'll know exactly what to do or say with the other girls at school.

I was constantly struck by the contrast between Saul's intentions and his actual behavior with those he loves. Finally, he's lonely for his neglected son, Aaron. I found the scene on page 192 where Saul and his son say goodbye before Aaron's leaves for his secret ISKCON temple weekend to be poignant and moving. As the omniscient third person, (thank you, Ginny, ) I think that this may be a more significant goodbye than either one suspects. Whatever good things once DID exist in this father-son relationship have been nullified by Saul's selfish neglect. Yet I still felt the pathos of their farewell and the force of Saul's too-late love.

Saul has a habit of living in fantasy. He has a long list of good things that he means to do with each member of his family, but somehow those things remain unrealized. Even his break with Miriam and their separate sleeping arrangements because SHE has been raping HIM, becomes tramsmuted in his fantasies into a temporary arrangement to further Eliza's studies.

And Miriam? Oh boy, I'll have to talk about her in another post. What a cauldron of emotions we have simmering away in this section of the book!

AGGGG, thank you for putting that here, Becky, I've got XP, and it won't work on mine, I'll go to the site and try! I love hidden things like that!!

---

Have spent most of this gorgeous warm Fall Saturday trying to figure out HOW the banana thing is done? Physically? Needle and thread, then you'd enter at the bottom? And you'd go across or would you ....how does it work?

DOES it work? Is that a real trick??

I thought I had heard of them all, but that one intrigues me, how might....I don't see how it could be done?

ginny

Harriet, we were posting together, back later!!

ginny

I don't know if this book is about seeking God,because I don't know what that means.

I think that this book falls into the category of a "quest".Personally, I'm not "put off" by situations that are distressing or depressing. I've enjoyed this book from the point of the author's choice of words and the weave of the plot.

One posting mentions a quilting bee,which lead me to think that a BEE is both a communal project and a contest, so is the Nauman family engaged in an inter-locking project...with each family participant working of his/her own part of the quilt an attempt to make something whole?

If you're looking for examples of wonderful writing, you don't have to look far in this section, it's full of them. Aaron feeling "home" in the Krishnas (now we know how they get such a hold on people, you have to work UP to their standards but they love you all the way and say that only a few make it to the TOP it to the top?)

That "mantra" thing makes me want to have one, did it you?

I was shocked to find one in another book I'm reading, and you wouldn't BELIEVE the title: Feng Shui for Dummies! Yes, a real mantra, I'll copy it in here tomorrow.

---

The episode with Miriam and the housebreaking and the dog is a jewel, wonderful wonderful writing. The reader is screaming at her no no NO what if they're HOME? But in she goes, the garage door goes UP and here's this "giant" dog, this "German Shepherd or Doberman" flinging itself on her, she barely gets away.

How wonderful that part is! There's a huge difference in the bark of a German Shepherd and Doberman and a beagle, for Pete' sake, but when you're scared, things magnify, that was marvelous and the coda, the end was the light in the top of the house (THEY'RE HOME!! She would have been CAUGHT!!) and their own reflections on the beagle, I just loved that part.

It was very very good.

ginny

Ed, an excellent point:

so is the Nauman family engaged in an inter-locking project...with each family participant working of his/her own part of the quilt an attempt to make something whole?



It was Becky who mentioned the quilting bee, and I love this image, will put it in the heading too.

One of the definitions of "bee" is "a gathering of people for a specific purpose."

I am going to say in answer to you.... hmmmm, how would we answer Ed?

I would say that NONE of the people here are trying to advance the Naumann family as a whole?

Their motivations are all different and involve the self?

Do you agree or disagree? Can we get a dialogue going, so many good points have been raised, I believe this book has allowed us to raise so many many terrific points!

---

Andrea, I'm putting that in the heading too, thank you for the quote, so do any of them feel loved?

Aaron does? As a result of his own actions, I don't think that any of the rest of them do, right now?

---

Harriet, your post was full of so many great ideas!!

You began with I was constantly struck by the contrast between Saul's intentions and his actual behavior with those he loves.

I've put this in the heading in the form of a question, why IS this?

You said Saul has a habit of living in fantasy. He has a long list of good things that he means to do with each member of his family, but somehow those things remain unrealized. Even his break with Miriam and their separate sleeping arrangements because SHE has been raping HIM, becomes tramsmuted in his fantasies into a temporary arrangement to further Eliza's studies.

And then you said He has a long list of good things that he means to do with each member of his family, but somehow those things remain unrealized.

Oh wow. Now we all know what the "road to Hell " is paved with, and here you've touched on something I keep wondering about.

Ok let's say your spouse suddenly is exhibiting very very strange behavior?

If you cared would you seek help for that person?

Why does Saul not?

ginny

We have three new points for your consideration in the heading this morning supplied by YOU, our reading group here, what is your take on them or do you have a point of your own to raise?

Let's hear from you!

ginny

Ginny: There are many ostriches in our own families, who find it easier to keep their heads buried in the sand, then to face any reality. One would say "they find it difficult to extract their own heads from their rear aperture."

Sometimes strange behavior in a marriage can pass for a temporary bad day... or a bad mood. If you.ve never thought of a spouse as crazy, it's a big leap to consider that possibility.

But Miriam's behavior in bed with Saul, combined with her unwillingness to talk in any meaningful way DOES send up a clearer than usual flag.

Could his position as a religious leader in the community make him more willing to hide from reality? Come to think of it, he isn't much into reality in most of his life.

When we got our first computer (a Mac) about a year and a half ago, the only thing I knew how to do was play Solitaire. I did it with passion.

After losing the game 99 times out of a hundred, it occured to me that one of the taunts the game threw out was: "What a cheater you are!"

I began to wonder why and I started to press every combination of command, control, shift keys that I could think of in conjunction with cards that were losers.

Thrill! Turned out there were a whole bunch of beautiful, game- winning, cheating moves...easter eggs, built into the program.

I LOVE easter eggs. Still play that particular variation of Solitaire for a real chance to win. Now the game's taunts have real justification and wow, do I like it!

OK, I caught up to you all. I must admit the novel I read seemed different from the one I thought it would be having scanned your comments. Now that I have read it, I will go back and read with careful attention.

As a start: One interesting technical move that is made in this novel is to present both present action--the spelling bee, Aaron and the Krisna folks, Mom the klepto turned housebreaker (think about the implications of that word)----and past action--what Saul was like in his youth, Miriam's childhood and adolescent in present tense

This use of Present tense for both present events and past events has the effect of merging past and present to form one whole of action and behavior. These four people are really very much alike. More on that idea later. [My time tonight is limited because I have to read King Lear (whoa---now there's a happy family!)]

It is unusual to narrate in the present tense (until recently reserved for avant guard fiction such as you find in The New Yorker). It is even more unusual to narrate the main story in the present and NOT use past tense for events before the present, which is what Goldberg does here.

Think for a minute about tense and storytelling. Past tense is the one we expect: "Once upon a time there WAS a king, and he LOVED his only child, a beautiful princess." When a writer chooses to narrate in present tense, we are thrown a little by it because of expectations. Goldberg uses this technique to double advantage here, I think, by making the four individuals, Eliza, Aaron, Saul, and Miriam distinct from each other. You have to slow down a little whenever the section changes to make sure you are following the right character. At the same time, the suggestion is made that these four people are very much alike.

Second main point for tonight---this book is wonderfully written and even humorous in parts, especially the earlier parts before everything hits the fan. However, despite all the terribleness, I hope to argue (later, of course) that we have a qualifiedly happy ending here.

Enough. More later.

Maryal

Andrea, so you think maybe this is just a case of denial on the part of Saul? The kids are not in denial so the only other adult who seems....barely with it is Saul? So are we now saying he's the only responsible adult in the home and it revolves around him?

Teriffic point!!

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Harriet, another super point: Could his position as a religious leader in the community make him more willing to hide from reality? Come to think of it, he isn't much into reality in most of his life.

Wow two points, no there is not much reality in his life, come to think of it, he's always seeking something else, withdrawing into the past and his book, which I can sort of understand? I understand that stance and reaction, but his wife's a NUT. And the point about the temple, also, just saw a thing about a Rabbi who may have hired a hit on his own wife, you see strange families among the faithful all the time, you may be dead on there!

---

Maryal, thank you so much for explaining what the present tense adds to the story, Roslyn was the first one who pointed that out to me (would you believe I had not noticed it?) and I thought (as posted earlier) that it lent immediacy, can you explain further why this is important?

This use of Present tense for both present events and past events has the effect of merging past and present to form one whole of action and behavior. These four people are really very much alike.Goldberg uses this technique to double advantage here, I think, by making the four individuals, Eliza, Aaron, Saul, and Miriam distinct from each other.

We have noted several instances in which the kids are becoming more like the parents, but you're saying that this use of the present tense makes them more distinct, while at the same time merging them with the past?

That's very exciting, how does it make them more distinct, as, say, in contrast to if the past tense was used?

Is the author saying your past makes you who you are and thus the kids are doomed or something??

Can't wait to hear what else you come up with!!

ginny

The Spiritual Quest is one of the foci of BEE SEASON. Saul at one time wanted to be a rabbi (he succeeds as a cantor); as a student he saw a connection between LSD trips and the Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism). Miriam wants to heal the broken world by collecting pieces of it that she "recognizes" and assembling them over EIGHTEEN YEARS! Aaron has been on a religious quest at least since he was 8 when he thought he saw God on an airplane (the wing's red light reflected in the clouds). Eliza actively pursues Kabbalistic spiritual revelation.

NAMES in the novel are very significant: SAUL (once Sal), the first king of the Israelites, who displeased God and was replaced by David. MIRIAM, the sister of Moses, who watches after Moses is placed in the river and who has one of the loveliest songs of victory in the Bible. AARON, the brother of Moses, who spoke for him to the people because Moses had no gift for oratory. And finally ELIZA whose name includes part of the earliest name of God in the Hebrew Bible, Elohim. A number of other Old Testament people have "El" in their names--Eli,Elijah, Samuel, Elisha, Daniel.

More later, Maryal

I was a little disturbed by Saul's putting sort of steps up for Eliza, it sounds a warning bell in me but I'm not sure what I'm hearing?

On page 173 Saul tells Eliza

Spelling is a sign, Elly. When you win the national bee, we'll know that you are ready to follow in Abulafia's footsept. Once you're able to let the letters guide you through any word you are given, you will be ready to receive shefa

Ok why am I dismayed here by this statement? The National Spelling Bee? A goal of spelling kids all over the nation, is just a step, no, it's a requirement for following in this Abulafia's footsteps?

Ok here I'm going to ask how many Spelling Bees Abulafia won? How many did Saul win? How does Saul know that this is a "sign?"

No wonder Saul does not have a handle on "shefa." He does not have a clue.

I feel real anger here at Saul. I also feel that this is abusive behavior of the "Keymaster" here and is stupid. Sorry, but I do. Adults, no matter how personal their own quest, need to have a grip. Saul needs instruction himself.

This new requirement on the poor kid is not good, how did you all see it?

ginny

Still trying to figure out the banana trick, nobody here knows how to do it.

Maryal on the "housebreaker" good point, another droll point was "Charlie" the friend, "Chali."

Droll, there IS a lot of humor in this thing.

The book is also full of parallels, note on page 179 the words, "There is care in the way he carries the book on the short journey from its shelf, as if it were constructed not of leather and parchment but of flesh and blood." Again Saul, again book, cf the earlier quote (I can't do it again because I gave my marked copy to somebody else) but where it seemed tenuously carried like the Torah bearers of old?

It's in one of my earlier posts but I don't have time to go back and find it, the point being careful parallel construction cleverly thrown in to the narrative.

ginny

Ginny, I noticed Saul's restriction on Eliza also. WHY does he set conditions on her continued study of Abulafia?

Up until this point, Saul has been on a real roll with his daughter. He's been a terrific teacher, motivating and inspiring her. Eliza is thrilled with Abulafia's theories. She loves how they fit in with her own natural talents and inclinations. She even finds a personal reason to love her studies. God will lead her toward popularity, thinks Eliza.

She is feeling new warmth and connection with her father as she pictures him when he was younger. Their relationship is becoming more unguarded as Saul watches Eliza fulfill HIS youthful dreams.

WHY can't that man leave well enough alone?!

Saul has a gift for misreading his family. Remember when he told Eliza that she could win the bee NEXT year and just blew away her confidence? He thought he was encouraging her. I guess he really thinks that Eliza WILL win next year. Maybe he thinks that will supply her with the motivation to continue her studies.

Saul hasn't grasped how turned on his daughter really is RIGHT NOW. And how would he handle it if Eliza doesn't win the bee next year?

Oh no! What a missed opportunity.

Oh Harriet, oh, or maybe not a missed opportunity but maybe the beginning of a lifetime quest just like his own? Something he's very familiar with? More familiar than winning?

??

ginny

Here's something eye opening?

I just got some new living room furniture so I thought I'd consult a book on Feng Shui which I got as a joke, well this one, Feng Shui for Dummies, goes a little bit farther than I had planned?

Start outside your home in front of the front door. Place yourself in a calm state of mind.

Position your hand in the Heart calming Mudra and recite the Heart Calming Mantra (Gate gate para gate para sam gate bodhi swaha) or your mantra of choice 9 times.

Change your hand on the Blessing Mudra.

Visualize the three dimsneional color progression of orbiting balls.

Step into the house and see the blessing light and power from the colored balls shining everywhere through the house.

Walk through the house while seeing the Constantly Turing Dharma Wheel moving with you.

Recite the Six True Words (Om Ma Ni Page Me Hum) or your mantra of choice throughout the entire ceremony...

and on.....

Fascinating, huh?

ginny

Look out for Ginny.....She is becoming weird.....

I agree with Maryl those names sure have a bibical meaning and are suggestive of marveless tnings but some where along the line this family has spun into another world where they are each seeking an idenity of his or her own supreme being who will bring each of them back to a world they can all tolerate. I don't know if I am explaining this right..

Andy, I'm ready for Harry Potter.......Let's go....

Ginny put that book back. I'm worried about you.....You are liable to see youself right back on the tennis court in Moorestown.....

I can give you some insights on a dysfunctional family as I am spending several days with my husbands relatives...Wow...

By the way if Saul asllowed Eliza to read the who book about Abulafia's Theory there wouldn't be any more story for us to read......The author know what she is doing even if sometimes we don't think her elevator goes all the way to the top.

Ginny: Ohhhmmmmmm.  Ohmmmm. Ohmmm, Ohmm.  Ohm.     zz-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-z-

Cmac and I are off tomorrow for lunch, shopping, a visit with Harry Potter and friends. We will be taking our brooms. Ta-ta.

Ginny, you are cracking me up with your fung shui and your preoccupation with the banana!!! I've studied fung shui a bit for a few years, have several books on the subject and have never run across anything as complicated as what you describe. Try a different book!

Okay, about that silly banana. I have an idea about how perhaps it could be done. Picture this: insert the needle and thread through the banana, hold just the thread on both sides and gently pull across creating a slice in the banana on the inside...being careful to stop and not go through the banana peel. Slide the thread down and make another slice, reinserting the needle when needed as you work your way down. Noooooo I havn't tried it! Just think it is possible.

Back to the book. I felt sad that Saul and Aaron missed such a chance to truly connect when Aaron was saying goodbye before his "camping trip." They did make more of a connection than I have seen in this book, did tell each other "I love you." That is the first of any of that going on, expressing love is something rare in this family. It could have been so much more.

It is frightening to read Miriam's downward spirial. She is way out there on the ledge now. The book is becoming a page turner for me as we are nearing the end. I do want to know what happens to all four of them.

Ginny your instructions in Feng Shui sound like Harry Potter in Professor Flitwick's class - sure you haven't mixed up your books?

Finally finished all 233 posts trying to catch up - what a wonderful group of posts - such depth and variety - especially the depth is so wonderful to read. I only started to book tonight and I'm only on page 65.

What has been so exciting, many of your posts urged so many questions and of course that pressed me to set out satisfying the Why and Wherefore with one discovery leading to the next. Well I am now not only reading with added pleasure because of y'alls work, but I've been nodding and noting and underlining my thesis induced by my rummage. I'm having the time of my life.

I need to catch up - just had to ask, as y’all did, when and where did the activity we call a spelling Bee become the activity as described by Myla Goldberg. What I found is so facinating.

History of Spelling Bee

Get-togethers for a variety of purposes. In allusion to the social character of the insect (originally in U.S.): A meeting of neighbours to unite their labours for the benefit of one of their number; e.g. when the farmers unite to get in each other's harvests in succession; usually preceded by a word defining the purpose of the meeting, as

• apple-bee
• husking-bee
• quilting-bee
• raising-bee
• spelling-bee
• lynching bee

Paige, I think that Saul is like a commuter who always just misses his train. His timing is so-o-o bad.

When Saul and Aaron part before the pseudo camping trip, Saul is sincere in his sentiments of love. Aaron is uncomfortable, eager to leave home despite his verbalizing of "I love you" to his father. Still a poignant scene though, And I agree Paige, that it is full of might-have-beens.

I wonder if Saul's sentiments weren't sparked by his awareness of Aaron's increasing independence. If his son had continued needy and desperate for his attention, might Saul not have continued to ignore him? A shift in the family power balance has brought Aaron into Saul's focus. I'm not sure that Saul's goal is to have power over Aaron. It's just that under the old status quo his son just fades into the woodwork for him. Now that Aaron is finding a substitute for his father's love, Saul is finally hot to communicate with him.

Eliza...that's a different matter! Ginny, the more I think about what you said, the more interesting it sounds. Does Saul plan to shift the weight of his lifelong attempts at religious transcendence onto Eliza? I believe Saul does want power over his daughter...to turn her into another Saul? Hopefully a more successful version of himself? To share an interest in religion is one thing...but for Saul to encourage a life-long avocation in mysticism in a little girl? Ouch!

I'm still baffled by Saul and Miriam. Saul HAS tried to talk to Miriam. That lady is a total loss. To continue an earlier analogy, Saul's commuter train is derailed where Miriam is concerned.

Barbara! Welcome?

Good heavens, Harriet, I believe this is a record for people entering (and leaving) a book club discussion!! Now don't ANY of YOU go away, you know this is Harriet's first shot here at this for us and she's one of our very brightest new Discussion Leaders here in the Books with a VERY difficult book to cut her teeth on, by the time we're thru here we all will have learned something!

But not how to slice a banana!

PAIGE, that is not going to work? How can you pull the thread DOWN? Won't you slice thru the skin? Do you start at the top? Then how can you go down? I am wasting bananas by the ton here, Goldberg would not have mentioned this if it weren't real? Everybody will have banana salad Thursday if this keeps up!!!!!

ON the Feng Shui, yes indeed, everybody run to their newest bookstore and join Andrea in the OMMM, you'll find directions on page 322, in the book Feng Shui for Dummies!

---

Barbara, thank you very much for the history of the first BEE, that was very interesting, and this remark, as well Finally finished all 233 posts trying to catch up - what a wonderful group of posts - such depth and variety - especially the depth is so wonderful to read.

We appreciate that, we are giving this slim book our all and I personally am learning a LOT, never heard of Abfulafia, that's for sure.

We look forward to your remarks!

---

Paige said They did make more of a connection than I have seen in this book, did tell each other "I love you." Good point, prior to this the only expression of love has been Eliza's in the dark to her mom, but back then (and when DOES this take place?) Back a while nobody said that much, did they?

Clare (CMAC) You and Andrea just go on now and have a ball and show here how New Jerseyites can EAT. (Clare and Andrea as you can see are taking their brooms for a Ladie's Day Out today). Clare and I are from the same home town, Moorestown NJ and Ed and I are from the same home town, Phila, PA, where I was born and where Ed lives near the setting of this book. I must admit when I saw the jab at Bucks County and the cheating it made me laugh.

---

Clare, terrific point, can't get this out of my head and stop rewriting it in my mind, I agree that the author knows what she is doing, too:

By the way if Saul allowed Eliza to read the who book about Abulafia's Theory there wouldn't be any more story for us to read......

Also Clare, super point: this family has spun into another world where they are each seeking an idenity of his or her own supreme being who will bring each of them back to a world they can all tolerate.

Eliza's world will be popular and full of happines, Aaron's world will be acceptance, love, and popularity, Saul's world will be.....renown because he's finally trained or reached Ablufia (sp)'s goal? Fame? Fortune? Vengeance on his father who turned aside from being Jewish?

Do you watch Curb Your Enthusiasm?

Did you see the hilarious thing Sunday where Larry David, creator of the Seinfeld series, playing himself, a Jew, attended a wedding of his wife's sister in which her intended groom, also Jewish, was to be baptised into the Christian faith before the wedding? But Larry came late to the baptism, had never seen one, and thought one man was drowning the other in the river, interfered, and the baptisee nearly drowned as the celebrant , startled, loosened his hold and the babtisee was swept away by the river.

Everybody plunged in to help, and later on as all were drying out, the family of the potential groom expressed thanks to Larry , a mitzvah (sp) that their reliative had been spared conversion, as the groom refused to continue with the ceremony and the wedding was off? It ended in a stand off, it was totally a riot. Just a not so subtle reminder of the bonds that tie a person to the faith of his fathers, just a riot.

Strange show, if you can catch it, do you watch it, Ed? It's your sort of thing, I think? Nicer than Oz!

And Miriam? How will she or we know when she has reached what she's seeking?

---

Harriet with that rasor mind!~

The commuter train, what an image, he's commuting, all right, he's always commuting!! Always in commute, never reaching the destination and it looks like he'd like that for his daughter, too. The journey is in the details, how does that go?

Joy is in the journey?

Or is it that it's easier to be questing than reaching the goal? If you reach your goal what do you do then?

Harriet said, A shift in the family power balance has brought Aaron into Saul's focus

And that's a super point too, it may, could it be that all this is about power in the family?

If his son had continued needy and desperate for his attention, might Saul not have continued to ignore him?

Good point on Saul, here, is he replaying his own childhood, perhaps?

You know psychologists say we do act out, unless we make a conscious effort NOT to, what was done to us in our own family dynamic? And this "feeling" we get when we meet somebody is less "chemistry" and more "feeling close" by identifying various aspects of family life experienced, for good or ill? An identifying ??

Given that, I think that these poor kids....altho keep in mind they don't seem to KNOW what Miriam is doing but they're beginning to see the strain, what hope do they have for any sort of life as adults?

I reject that Miriam's parents or Saul's parents turned them into this, too. Rubbish. They are grown adults and Miriam needs chemical assistance and therapy (she needs to be locked up).

ginny

Most interesting posts this morning! Somehow I find it heartening when people go back and actually READ the previous posts. It can be a real labor of love. Good on you, Barbara.

~~~~~~~~~~

In college Saul was a guru of sorts, the preferred guide on LSD trips while he, at the same time, delved into books of Kaballah, the esoteric Jewish mysticism which he desires to penetrate. He does not, however, as we discover later, have the wherewithal to move beyound a certain point in his studies.

In the present, Saul accepts the fact that he himself will never get THERE (to God-presence) but that he MAY, if he is very lucky, guide someone else there. It will be the closest he can come. First, he centers his attention on his son, Aaron, who shows an affinity for study (study is absolutely required for the journey Saul has in mind), who is gifted enough to make the TAG program at school. Aaron has the spiritual thirst that is required. But he doesn't have the special trick of mind that allows one to work out endless permutations, solving a code that will lead to transcendence. He finds his spiritual quest better answered in the Krishna movement where he feels totally accepted.

When Saul discovers that his daughter Eliza MAY have this talent, he takes HER up as his student, intending all along to be the guide until his student goes on beyond him.

Saul fails to listen to either of his students/children: "It's gotten to the point where she expects to have to say things twice. She wonders if Aaron also had the problem of only being listened to when Saul expected something" (81). Eliza understands that her father is concentrating on something HE wants and not hearing what she says as they study for the Spelling Bee.

Saul is not unlike many parents who would like to see their dreams fulfilled in their children.

Maryal, who wishes all a blessed Thanksgiving

Barbara!!!

I'm seconding Ginny's welcome with extra fervor, Barbara. It was the wee hours of the morning for me, so please forgive! Heavens, I didn't see you even though you were front and center! You are a wonderful addition to the discussion. PLEASE stay and write to us as often as you choose. We sure hope you'll choose OFTEN. I promise I won't be so obtuse as to not see you again.

I explored your clickables and was enchanted with your archival type photos of Spelldowns. I love old photos and historical things. Can that really have happened all of eighty years ago? I have photos of my mother stylishly dressed in shoes and clothes much like the ones in those photographs. How hard it is to grasp that so much time has passed.

What a taste of reality is the picture of little Justine Pearsall, the spelling champ of the first Spelling Bee "Spelldown" in 1922. Her shining alert little face is ageless, and now I find I'm associating Eliza Naumann with the very real Justine's face.

MG wrote of Eliza that her face had the kind of bone structure that would tend to keep her appearance similar, even in adulthood. Doesn't spelling bee champ Justine have that look about her? Justine hugs the giant dictionary she got as a prize in her photo. Wouldn't Eliza have adored that HUGE book of words?

---

Maryal, I feel the same way as you do about Saul. He is SO involved with himself. The tragedy in it is that he is capable of tenderness and nurture, and provides it to each of his children just enough to "hook" their love. He is ALMOST reachable. Saul has prepared their food, held them as infants. These children surely feel that there must be a magic button to press for a constant fountain of understanding and love. Eliza thinks she's found it with her spelling skills. Aaron found...and then lost... HIS magic button, with his guitar playing and his keen mind

Eliza loves her mother, but like Aaron, understands the difficulty of reaching out to her. When she thinks of her mother, Eliza thinks of brilliance and the separation of vast, unreachable distances. Miriam is a distant star to her children. Saul has only the barrier of the door of his study between himself and the children...an obstacle that both children set out to overcome.

Somewhere in the book MG writes that Miriam is aware of how lost and sad Aaron is after Saul drops him. She is aware, but has no power to console or comfort because she is caught up in her illness. No wonder Aaron turns elsewhere for caring people.

Harriet---Yes, there is terrible irony as well as tragedy in the fact that Saul can ALMOST be reached. But not quite. There is something that he always withholds. I'm not at all sure that we--the readers--ever find out exactly why he is a withholder. But he surely is.

~Maryal

Maryal, I find the same sad phenomenon when I consider the relationship of Eliza and Aaron. There are so many possible points in the book where they reach out to each other, either in their thoughts or in reality.

It's so hard to overcome the barriers their family life has placed between them because they have been cast as rivals. Once they enjoyed an easy intimacy. They were natural allies in their earliest years.

I wish to all a happy and joyous Thanksgiving filled with the good things of life.

I've got a bee buzzing around in my head from Barbara's spelling bee clickable.

Earlier in this discussion I was troubled at how Eliza, a child who was an average student, managed to outspell so many other more academically gifted kids. I came up with a personal theory that Barbara's clickable site may possibly reinforce.

Here, from that site, is a list of the words that won each young champ the crown in the Washington National Bees for three different years.

1997 Rebecca Sealfon: euonym
1998 Jody-Anne Maxwell: chiaroscurist
1999 Nupur Lala: logorrhea


Now are those words killers, or what?

Is it possible for each of those children to have memorized a dictionary so completely that study could prepare them for THOSE words? It would be a miracle of coincidence and luck for a child to be asked to spell JUST the very impossible words she had studied when it was her turn to step up to the microphone. Uh-uh! Study must have played a part, but was it the determining factor?

Instead, I believe that there are musical prodigies like Mozart, who composed music that he heard, fully realized in his head, when he was too small to reach the pedals of the pianoforte. There are math prodigies also, capable of instantaneous complex calculations in their head, faster than any computer.

And maybe there are prodigies with a mysterious "feel" for letters and words, like our spelling champs...and like Eliza. Eliza's skills far surpass the mechanics of merely visualizing words in her head...but I believe that so do the true skills of the real-life champs at the Nationals. Just look at the words they spelled! There had to be an instinct, a "feel" about letters guiding them?

There are passages in Bee Season where we crawl into Eliza's skull as letters tumble into their appointed places in her head, each one with its own textures and characteristics. We experience her joy as the letters assume their final positions. For her, letters are friends with personalities and physicality. Her gift and "feel" for letters goes above and beyond her normal academic skills. Her mystical gift may eventually enhance the rest of her studies...but it is not necessarily dependent upon them initially.

It is her passion for the letters and their permutations that permit Eliza to implement Abulafia's theories so effectively. And it is our understanding of her thinking processes with letters that later lends credence to her success in the beginning stages of transcendence.

I wonder if the author carefully set up the understanding of Eliza's "genius" skills with letters at an early stage in the book, even though they seemed unlikely in a child of her age, so that her mystical talents can flow from them?

Whew! Eliza, the genius with words? Akin to Abulafia, the Hebrew transcendent?

Harriet---I think your idea of the prodigy, the child with a gift for something far beyond his/her age is right on target for describing Eliza. She's not an idiot-savante (remember RAINMAN?) because she is not mentally retarded, but she was just an average student until she discovered her hidden talent for spelling. Afterwards, however, her ability as a scholar blossoms, the result of a growing self-confidence perhaps?

And it is certainly hard to believe that little kids who win spelling bees with words they have never heard or even know the meaning of can spell words like chiaroscurist, a word I only learned in college! Logorrhea is easier, I think, because of its connection to diarrhea. I don't even know what euonym is, but I'm gonna look it up right now!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

TALK about OBSCURE!

Here's the only entry I could find. From the Encyclopedia Britannica:

aptronym

a name that fits some aspect of a character, as in Mr. Talkative and Mr. Worldly Wiseman in John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress or Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's play The Rivals. The term aptronym was allegedly coined by the American newspaper columnist Franklin P. Adams, by an anagrammatic reordering of the first letters of patronym (to suggest apt) to denote surnames that suit the occupation of the name's bearer (such as Baker for a baker). Both aptronym and the synonymous euonym are rarely encountered.

~obscurely yours, Maryal

Wow I love it Maryal - well this Mrs. Quiryman has opened pandoras box again - Wait until you see what all I found just based on y’alls posts! I hadn’t even cracked the book yet when I spent an entire evening finding all this stuff!

I know - I go on forever with my rummaging for answers to all the questions in my head - and the questions - the links - I just do not know how or were to stop.

First of all, each of our impressions to a book seem to me as if we are taking a Rorschach InkBlot Test. We read scenes, phrases or words that jostle our memory, likewise our lifetime of learned information.

Relative is my understanding of kleptomania and shop lifting,. My learned information is someone, usually a woman or child, troubled by an abusive powerless dependency expressing their need for power by covertly taking it. They cannot or rather, their experience has trained them not to openly seize power nor acknowledge their inherent self empowerment. Kleptomania, often an unconscious act but even pre-planned, has more to do with secretly taking power in order to compensate for the trained or real helplessness of surrendering their own power.

And so when I read posts that said Miriam was suffering from kleptomania I concluded Miriam was or had been helpless protecting herself from another taking her power.

---

My immediate response to the Title was a mental picture of a beehive rather than a spelling bee and then I found this little tidbit while tracking down how we came to have spelling bees.

1823: "For the clergy, in country places, one or twice a year, they have what they denominate a 'bee,' or 'hive.'...The members of his congregation make repairs to the minister's dwelling, each person taking (repairing) something, either an article of clothing or victuals."

Following a thread of Bee Hive this is some of what I found

A Bee-Line to the Bee Hive - Doesn't take a night ... shares the same doctrine. Devout, hard working and with a deep respect for tradition;

what could be more traditional than the study of Jewish mysticism

The Bee-Hive is the name of the journal for the London Working Men's Association (LWMA).

That word working again - as in working bees.

• A hive needs about 25 pounds of bees and a Queen called a nucleus.
• Bees glue everything in their hive together with beeswax and propolis.
• Bees dance to communicate
• They have a social nature and labor division.
• Robber bees come from another hive
• Bees can forage up to five miles from the hive

Still hadn’t read the book but I was seeing a pattern here just based on you’re all’s posts. Honey Bees and Beekeeping - Keith S. Delaplane, Extension Entomologist, University of Georgia College of Agricultural & Environmental Sciences

Reading site after site - there is so much information - here is a deluted array of quotes that I thought compare the characters and their behavior in Myla Goldberg’s story to the life in a Honey Bee Hive. My comments are in color.

The Queen always likes to move upward in the hive as she lays as many as 200,000 eggs each year. That is what I call a busy bee - Miriam, yes, MIriam? Only the Queen produces pheromones, the chemical scent that stimulates and is responsible for the control of a hive as a cohesive unit. If the queen is removed, the worker bees increase their activity, and become defensive and agitated within 30 minutes. and so with all of Miriam’s obsessive addictive behavior worker bees would become defensive and agitated with increased activity.

If the hive is Queenless and the hive is left alone, they will raise their own Queen. Do not know if Miriam leaves but I wonder if her closed off emotions, demonstrated in her obsessive cleaning, writing, her head work, her kleptomania, leaving the family feeling motherless much as children of an alcoholics - Or is this the characteristic that maybe dysfunctional in a human family but would be normal for a Queen Bee.

There may be an immature Queen impossible to find because they are not full grown and look just like a worker. Hmm is this Eliza or is this Eliza - the up and coming Queen By smoking a hive the new Queen will fall out surrounded by some attendants, is Aaron an attendant as well as those who attempt to help her with her spelling. Or, a swarm will occur and the new Queen will be in the center of the swarm. Does Saul in affect start the swarm that envelopes Eliza.

The "old Queen" will lay an egg in the cell as usual, but before the new queen hatches, the old queen will have left the hive. Prior to her exit, the workers will have fed the old queen less and by the time she leaves with the swarm, her weight will have dropped enough that she can easily fly. Shortly before the swarm leaves the old hive, the bees engorge with honey and scouts will leave the hive in search of a new nest site. Are we facing Aaron as well as Miriam physically or emotionally leaving the hive - Miriam passes the baton to Eliza with her gift symbolic of her childhood resolve toward perfection. Eliza renaming studying "practice"...for the "up coming bee...protective of her practice sessions...When Eliza studies, it is like discovering her own anatomy." Eliza feels sweet power, control by causing her father to leave his study and especially by not than employing his help.

With her bee success she enters vowelhood. Hmmm what is it called with a word sound so much like another. "Death to the ultimate consonant." Wow, is this the handwriting on the wall or is it. Miriam realizes she is exactly like her daughter, more so than she intended.

The "Queen Bee" in life makes sure everyone else is a worker or drone and deviating bees are eliminated from the hive. She is not concerned with balance in life. To her, life is work and work is life. She is competitive, aggressive, decisive, dominant and influential. She is driven by a need for power. OK this seems to be supporting the view of Miriam in her "military precision."

To display traditionally female behaviors in a predominantly male environment {PLEASE LOOK IN ON THIS ONE} would take a tremendous amount of individual strength and determination... she is female and may exaggerate her femaleness with very high heels and other accessories; she has absorbed and integrated behaviors, which are stereotypically male. and isn't our Miriam stereotypical male?

Drones, male bees are few in number, mate with the queen bee, gather nectar, make honey, and protect the hive. Unfertilized eggs develop into drones. They can never produce a larvae that could become a worker or a queen. Once a Drone emerges, he is fed by Worker bees for a few days, then feeds on honey stores for about two weeks before beginning mating flights.

On these flights, they leave the hive and fly to areas where other Drones congregate in search of virgin Queens which might have left their own colony for mating. During the fall, Drones are commonly observed at the hive entrance or found dead outside the hive. They are apparently driven out of the colony with the onset of winter.

Bee lore says that Aaron may be driven out of the colony if for no other reason than the human urge to find a mate.

Sexually undeveloped females called Workers perform most of the tasks; gathers nectar, makes honey, repair hive and clean it. All Workers are female bees. The majority of the bees in a colony are Workers and are smaller than the Drone bees.

Nurse Bee are the young bees. They feed developing larvae, second stage of bee, grub like stage, a mixture of honey, pollen and glandular secretions known as Bee Bread. A richer food known as royal jelly is made from special glands in the Nurse bees head.

Would this be Aaron making royal jelly when he used his imagination (his head) to entertain Eliza while they are children. When Eliza is an infant Saul asks Aaron to love her and help him look out for her.

If royal jelly is fed to a larva less than three days old, the larva will develop into a Queen. If something has happened to the old Queen a larger cell cup is built to hold the larva of a new Queen being prepared by the hive.

As the larva grows, it passes through five stages, Mariam the sole surviving progeny receives the best of everything five times over and sheds its skin after each stage except for the last one. During this time, Nurse bees will visit an individual an average of 1300 times daily. The Nurse bees spend all of their time checking on and feeding the developing brood... Ten days later a nurse bee becomes a wax making bee

The last task before a bee leaves to become a Field or Forager bee, is to work as a Guard bee. They patrol the entrance to the hive and investigate incoming bees to make sure they are part of the colony, recognizing members of the hive by scent. Guard bees will also release alarm scent if the hive is disturbed.

The bees stinger allows bees to defend themselves against less threatening insects and survive...

Are the evergreen needles in the hedge symbolic stingers that pierce Aarons chest during the fight. Is the bloodied talon of Ms. Rai’s manicured hand another stinger trying to attack Eliza

...but forces them to forfeit their lives when facing the bigger dangers posed by a mammal. This costly act of sacrifice activates an alarm system that calls other bees into battle and enables the colony to take advantage of strength in numbers.

Were Marvin and Billy Robber Bees from another hive, but still insects and therefore less threatening so that Aaron could defend himself because he clearly did not set off an alarm for numbers.

Eliza seemed like she did not want to acknowledge even to herself that Aaron was not matching her security fantasy, caregiving protecter.

Because the success of a beehive is dependent on collaborative efforts, bees have developed an extensive communication system, including the use of chemical odors known as pheromones. When a bee stings, it releases pheromone that alerts other bees to join the attack.

Bees talk by dancing in a figure eight.

The dance of numbers as the contestants identified by number deliver their words at the spelling bee ...Saul wants to jump to his feet and dance where he stands.

Although he inherited from his father... the call to protect his daughter...watching his destiny unfold, he sees it as witnessing an execution.

Bees help seeds develop by collecting pollen and taking it from flower to flower. The very survival of our agricultural production is dependent on the busy bees pollinating activities.

This says to me bee hives are valuable and the bees within are indispensable and therefore regardless how dysfunctional a similar family appears there is value that adds to our survival.

Furthering the analogy I don’t see the family unit as the hive. I see the family as simply the labor division and the hive, rather than a dwelling, is; the perfect truth expressed within traditional thought and word that transcend the limitations of time and space.

Marvin and Billy are not from the "Word" hive.

• "And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speach"
• and later in John:
  "In the beginning was the word...and the word was God."

As a result of his silence Aaron passes into the realm of his father's study where he can mount his quest for the perfect truth within traditional words that transcend the limitations of time and space.

The family shares a passion for words -

• Saul and his library/study,
• Eliza, her spelling,
  
  life in one inescapable moment,

  Miriam, her letter’s to the editor and her profession as an attorney.

  So far I have no clear picture of Aaron with words.

The exception is Aaron's perfect bar mitzvah;

because of his father’s attention his "service is flawless."

Music that he shares with Saul breaks up time

but is not about the perfection of words and mystical thought.

Aaron of "pale chest that can be a liability
• with bird head, man body, goat legs"
• mistaken for a "dog"
• keeping "quiet and stay out of their way as much as possible"
• A "silent son..."
• Thorough in absenting himself from his sister’s life
• in the lunch room he is eating alone
• His eyes to the sky, he looks for a soft pulsing glow, nothing too dramatic or everyone would notice
• A pulsing red light emanates from the cloud’s whiteness

Aaron wonders if God lives in all clouds,"

Pale chest - cloud’s whiteness; soft pulsing glow - a pulsing red light

Reminds me a red vibrant heart beating within a ambiguous Aaron. Aaron feels total love keeping to himself and linked to God through the forty-six in the congregation.

YES FINALLY this brings us to the hive - look at it - Kircher, a Jesuit priest drawing of the Kabbalah Tree It looks just like the cells of a bee hive, The Naumann/Newman hive.

Further definition of the Kabbalah

How about reading these sites with the sounds from Eliaz’s memory of a light bulb commercial - the Pachelbel Canon

The greatest minds have studied the Kabbalah, Jewish Mystical Thought. Kabbalists study so they can explain Kabbalah completely and so perfectly to attain perfection, and take control over his life and transcend the limitations of time and space. In this way he realizes his true purpose in life...

The Promise of Kabbalah is Immortality: The Inevitability of Eternal Life.

The relationship between master and student is the study of:

• The Struggle Between The Darkness and The Light
• The Tree of Life and The Tree of Knowledge OR
• The Ten Sefirot of the Kabbalah
• Channels of Energy
• Angels
• The Illusion of Mortality
• Immortality Now.

The Kabbalah is the most ancient wisdom known to man - and offers penetrating insights on the nature of reality, the origins of evil, and the underlying causes of the chaos that strikes in every area of our existence. Importantly, Kabbalah reveals the secret codes of the universe.

The Talmud stipulated that only men over 40 years of age, married, and steeped in the wisdom of the Talmud - commentaries on the Bible - were to study Kabbalah.

The one thing a Jew cannot do without. It does not matter if it is only 5 min. a day. A Jew must study... it was suspect but never confirmed, that my paternal grandmother was from a German Jewish family. This comment, "A Jew must study," makes me believe I have inherited her secret. Current Torah Parshot (chapter), the law, the Talmud, Mishna, Prayer, and yes, even Kabbalistic

A kabbalist insight, “... the root of all the thoughts we have is in our desires. They cause the mind to imagine. Someone absorbed by thoughts controlled by desire, can’t pull out the kernel of truth unclothed in those thoughts.”

The photos on Saul’s desk include: Mordiecai Kaplan
This guy was excommunicated by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada. The first in its forty-three-year history, against Dr. Mordecai M. Kaplan, dean of the Teachers Institute of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

Is this Saul still rebelling - if so is he rebelling against his destiny, or does he still have issues with his Father's secularism

There are three authors who introduce the reader to a more classical Judaic approach. Pearl Epstein's is a good general introduction, GERSHAM SCHOLEM's is a scholarly account, Ben Zion Bokser's is purely traditional. (Other sites about Gersham Scholem are written in German.)

SHMUEL YOSEF AGNON 1888-1970: 1966 Nobel Laureate in Literature, for his profoundly characteristic narrative art with motifs from the life of the Jewish people.

Aharon Appelfeld was born in 1932 near Czernowitz, (then Romania, now the Ukraine). When Appelfeld was eight years old the Germans invaded his village and his mother was murdered. Expelled with most of the Jews in the area to Transnistria, he was separated from his father during a forced march, and spent the remainder of the war on his own. He immigrated to pre-state Israel in 1946. His short novel tells the story of a Jewish girl abandoned by her family, who spends the course of the war wandering. The heroine is a woman, a child/women.

• Abraham ben Samuel Abulafia
• Language, Torah, and Hermeneutics in Abraham Abulafia
• Quote Abraham Abulafia

Let's bring up the rear with those stones, pebbles - according to my copy of "An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols" by J.C. Cooper the Hebrew reveals the essential part of the stone as:

The baetylic stone of Jacob was a meeting place of heaven and earth and of communication between them. The stones from the river Jobel were indestructible and formed the foundation of Jerusalem. The foundation stone of the Temple was the centre of the earth and supported the world. Stones denote a place of indwelling divinity; the dwellings of the spirits of the dead; the meeting place of heaven and earth; the sacred; holy ground. Stones are also prophetic 'stones that speak', from which comes the voice of the divinity.

In "A chorus of Stones,' Susan Griffin, the author, says, "It is said that the close study of stone will reveal traces from fires suffered thousands of years ago...a round triangle of black granit polished to a shine. At the center is the impression of a centipede, long segmented creature which left this ancient self-portrait, image of an ancestor from millions of years into our past. All history is taken in by stone. And perhaps it is this knowledge which made them weep when Orpheus sang."

Good heavens what a wealth of stuff here today, Barbara, Maryal, Harriet, the mind is a kaleidescope here, lots to ponder over that low fat treat coming tomorrow!!!

---

FIRST off, I've finished the book and it's amazing what reading the end does to the book as a whole, you can see why it's recommended and we will have a SUPER time hashing THIS one out, I can see that.

We will begin our look at the end of the book on Sunday, but till then I'm still slicing bananas (making a royal mess of it, if you really want to know,) but just LOOK at what all we're learning here!!!

---

Harriet, thank you for that research, what words, what words@!!! It's possible these spelling kids (me, too, Maryal, the first thing that came to my mind was idiot savant but Eliza is simply a C student) have what used to be called total recall or a photographic memory? If they read it once they have it.

There are a lot of people like that.

As Maryal says, those words are pretty darn obscure, but thanks TO Maryal, we now know what aptronym means, and the derivation, not going to forget that word soon, amazing what you can glean out of the discussion of a slim work of fiction. I love it!

BOY do I have things to say at the end of this book. BOY!

---

Scrabble, I worried all night over Scrabble, another letters thing, another thing where you take letters and make words or whatever?

I have never been good at Scrabble, just hate it, usually win, but it's just by sheer grit and determination, grasping snarling of board, knowing arcane words. I asked my cousin once, a nuclear physicist (figured he knew more than I did) and he said something about it's a different part of the brain being used (or so I understood him, and have parroted it ever since)...oh no, you see I can't play the stupid game because that part of my brain was used up in being brilliant elsewhere? hahahaha

It's always amazing who DOES win Scrabble games, if you follow my drift and if YOU are a constant winner, well...your brain is well developed in that area. hahaha

Imagine...this is ugly, I apologize, imagine Eliza with a Scrabble game.

Sorry, Spring is the mischief in me.

---

Anyway, now BARBARA with the research, how intersting I love your parallels. I disagree that Miriam is helpless and/ or abused, she is a rapist?

She emotionaly abuses and shamefully neglects her helpless children and her husband and is a rapist. She is not a true kleptomanic, (I thought all those links to kleptomania and other medical sites were in the heading but they aren't, must be buried in an old post, but it appears there are several differences in Miriam's patterns and the true kleptomanic, as we have discussed).

But other than disagreeing with you on that point I love the other parallels you have made. We have bees here on the farm, we have 5 hives. The bee is a fascinating object of study. One of the few insects which will die if it stings you so they're very careful not to sting unless it's a last resort. I don't fool with the bees, we have a beekeeper, we have Italian bees which are supposedly more tame?

If you get too close to a bee hive, they will actually dive bomb you and bounce off your back without stinging to give you a chance to get away, almost as if they know if they do sting they're gone. So if you're walking in the woods and you feel some small thuds on your back, hit the road, you're too close for somebody's comfort.

I jumped right UP when you wrote this:

If the hive is Queenless and the hive is left alone, they will raise their own Queen ....oh BOY Barbara, I think you have hit on something there, don't lose that thought!!!

Also

and isn't our Miriam stereotypical male? Well in that she..."goes to work and supports the family" on the surface, that distance may indicate yes, she may be somebody's idea of the sterotypical male? Maybe.

She's not mine? Even a male can be nurturing.

On the surface.

On the surface, Barbara, that's a very important concept you have unwittingly raised, hold that thought, too.

LOVED the "drones," just loved it, well done!

And the "Mordiecai Kaplan" research, the photograph on the table again, well done. Soooo yet another view of Saul here...love it.

Well what a rich feast we have here for our group!

I'm off until Friday, will see you all then, look forward to what you have added to our wonderful garden of ideas and delights here!

Happy Thanksgiving!

ginny

Happy Thanksgiving Folks I'm off to College Station for the weekend. I may be back Saturday night but for sure on Sunday. Hope y'all have a great Holiday!

Happy Thanksgiving, All


~Maryal

Happy Thanksgiving Everybody!

Harriet

Happy Thanksgiving!!! Also, to Eliza, Aaron, Saul and poor Miriam.

I have been a good girl and have not read ahead in this story. Last night I cheated and finished it in its entirety. AMEN!

Enjoy your friends and families today. I am thinking of you. I love you all.

Andy

Andy, luvya back! You and everyone here add so much to my life.

So here I sit after the feast, digesting, enjoying...expanding! After dinner our son played with our computer, updating and doing magical things. He's helped me so much with using and learning about our Mac.

So...I read ahead too. Can't wait for Sunday! Of course it makes me look at the current section of the book differently. Now I'm almost as omniscient as our author. With all that hindsight I went back to look at parts of the book that now seem more significant to me.

After Eliza loses the spelling Nationals, Saul cooks a family "victory" dinner. The contrast between the inner thinking and the outward behavior of each person is exquisitely drawn in a prolonged dinner table scene. (138-140) Eliza is probably the most aware of them all, acting as buffer between her brother and father, but still never managing to connect with either one. Saul, who prides himself on being a liberal and modern parent, entirely misses Aaron's increasing alienation. Miriam, lost in her own thoughts, becomes uncomfortable when Eliza talks to her and makes her focus on the real world. Four people are sitting around a dinner table together, but they are separated by distances so vast that they may as well be on different planets.

The characters are drawn with such painful clarity. The complex, misaligned world of the Naumann's is revealed in their intimate family conversation. Just about every verbal gambit that anyone makes has an effect different from what was intended.

Of the four family members, only two...Eliza and Saul...are still actively TRYING to maintain the integrity of their home. But not one of them has an inkling of what the others are thinking. I'm moved by the contrast between what IS, and what MIGHT have been.

Harriet

Harriet, I've only skimmed through this discussion because, as you perhaps knew, I wasn't crazy about the book; but I did want to record my absolute awe at the amount of thought and hard work you put into your debut as a discussion co-leader. It bodes well for your future as a dynamic and enthusiastic leader and that's a delightful prospect for all of us.

Best wishes,
Ros

Thank you, Ros. I appreciate your very kind words.

I hope your Thanksgiving was wonderful and that the coming holiday season will bring you joy.

Harriet

I've always felt that a cult had to be a negative thing, separating the misguided victim from his rightful origins and loyalties. Aaron's relationship with the Krishna's shakes me up because the relationship really seems to help him.

Aaron comes from a home where his mother is concerned with her personal agenda. She's smart enough to be aware her son's distress, but unable to motivate herself to console or intercede. Aaron's father lives in a Peter Pan world where he believes he dispenses love, perceptive parenting and informed guidance to his children. The reality of the quality of his parenting would prove painful to him if he were more aware.

Whenever I look at Aaron's world through his own eyes I am struck by its barrenness and loneliness. The boy is made inarticulate and awkward by the weight of his needs. What an effort it is to try to communicate his longing for parental contact with Saul before he encounters the ISKCON temple.

Yet, just look at Aaron on page 193 during his weekend sleepover at the ISKCON TEMPLE. The awkward Aaron begins to move freely in his Krishna robe and dance.

"He is laughing now, his head tilted toward a ceiling painted a cloudless blue. Aaron occupies the center of a dancing circle. Every face is smiling. Every arm reaches toward him."

Is the cult really the wrong thing for Aaron? I'm mixed up here by my sympathies for this boy. Can all this happiness be wrong?

Aaron could have chosen a much less desirable group to find the love and attention that he needs in the stressful maturing years he is facing.

He needs to belong.. The Krishnas took him in and encouraged him to belong on their terms, and in return showed him much love.

Hi, Pat. Thanks for your comment.

It's not clear to me where the Krishnas will ultimately lead Aaron or whether he will be able continue with them happily. All my negative feelings about cults have stemmed from my feelings as a parent. I sure wouldn't want any child of mine putting himself beyond my reach..

It's so sad to understand that Saul put HIMSELF beyond Aaron's reach a long time ago...even though he actually loves him.

Harriet

First of all, I think it is hilarious that way back in my last post I mispelled feng shui, not once...twice! I have read about it for a very long time, don't know why I did that and in "The Bee Season." Just too much focus on letters floating around, as in Eliza's head!!

It is not difficult to understand why Aaron left the house seeking acceptance and approval somewhere. From page 195 there are these insights from Miriam. "Miriam knows that she should probably do something to console Aaron, but Aaron has always been Saul's child. Even as a baby he seemed happier in her husband's arms. The effort required to resist the houses leaves Miriam just enough strength to ghost the motions of her daily routine. There is no surplus energy for motherly words of wisdom to a boy obviously replaced in his father's attentions." It is sad that he choses either Aaron or Eliza, never both. He is exclusive rather than inclusive. I don't think the chosen child of the moment is so fortunate with his overbearing, taking over of their studies, the hours they study, what they study, how they study. He does try to create some kind of normal life for his family by cooking meals. This is not a small thing and totally beyond what Miriam is able to do. This family is soooo fragmented. They truly do pass like ships in the night with an almost connection every once in awhile. The reader holds her breath and hopes that maybe this time it will happen, but it actually never does.

I do think they are all seeking something. Maybe not God, but a connection to someone, something. They are all loners, especially Miriam who is totally lost.

Paige described Saul: "He is exclusive rather than inclusive. " I love how you expressed that. And again about the Naumann family:

"They truly do pass like ships in the night with an almost connection every once in awhile. I do think they are all seeking something. Maybe not God, but a connection to someone, something."

Thanks, Paige. That seems like a wonderfully true statement about our Bee Season family. All of them, even Miriam, do need a connection of some sort. Miriam doesn't find meaning or sense within her family. She looks for her joy within the houses of strangers. Saul tries to make his life work for him poring over the ancient pages of Abulafia's Hidden Eden .

Aaron exhausted all his methods of making a connection within his normal life. While he was running on empty, his father turned away from him. Eliza still wanted a connection with her brother, but the sister and brother were hampered by their status as rivals.

Harriet, I thought you made a super point about the "victory" dinner. How many stories in fiction center around the dinner table, including the new Corrections.

The Norman Rockwell depictions of family life around the dinner table are like some of the commercials Eliza wants to mimic, more hope than substance.

I went back and reread this victory dinner part again and was struck by how each parent's inner most....vulnerabilities, if you were, were broached by interaction with each child? Aaron asks if he can go to the movies and in a flash Saul sees him through a "stranger's eyes." "he realizes that Aaron at sixteen is as mockable as Aaron at ten. His son is a walking target, an invisiable yet umissable KICK ME sign forever pinnned to his back. Of course girls don't go out with him."

Again, is this normal? I've never felt that way about my two sons. I expect here that Saul is more disturbed that he feels that way, rejecting as his own father rejected him, than he is anything else, he's ashamed of his own little boy.

Miriam is asked by her daughter "did you go on dates in high school?" "It is an intentional conversational shift." Eliza, newly reuninted with her brother in a hug, "feels the need to protect him." The two children are the only ones connecting here and they both reach out in different ways and they are both embarrassed and rebuffed by their parents, again, because the parents have MAJOR deficiencies?

Miriam blushes and wishes she could fob this delicate question off on a book A Mother's Dating Life.

Ok well at some point in life you grow up? If you weren't the prom queen you say so? And you don't blush? Or is this part of Miriam's need to be perfectamundo?

Boy when we hit Sunday you all better hold on to the sides of your seats, the ending of this book really hit a nerve with one of us!!!

hahahaha

---

Paige, did you misspell feng shui? That's better than mispronouncing it? I've made such a fool of self mispronouncing it that nobody knows what I'm saying any more. It's about as bad as my first attempts at Baedecker's Travel Guides, and boy you don't want to know how I pronounced that!

I loved what you said here!

They truly do pass like ships in the night with an almost connection every once in awhile. The reader holds her breath and hopes that maybe this time it will happen, but it actually never does.

I do think they are all seeking something. Maybe not God, but a connection to someone, something. They are all loners, especially Miriam who is totally lost.

Well Saul is certainly seeking God, for what reason I don't know, in order to prove to his father finally he counts, to restore to the family line its correct place in the Jewish faith? Aaron is seeking God or so he thinks? For what it will give him? A sense of "home." Seeking God and having love and companionship offered in the meantime. Miriam was galvanized on her quest by a religious thing Saul quoted about restoring the parts in the world, his quasi religious bedside talk, but it rang a nerve with her. She's fragmented, a kaleidescope herself, and that "religious" talk gave her the go ahead, the OK, to continue her own projects.

And Eliza seeks shefa which is true communion with God, so that she can make all the pieces of her fractured fairy tale work, so she's also trying to make things whole.

Shefa will erase years of average report cards, undo seasons of unfulfilled expectations, and legitimize Eliza's new place by her father's side. Shefa will neutralize the guilt she feels when she sits opposite Aaron at the dinner table. Shefa ie Eliza's national bee back up plan. If she can get God on her side before bee season NOTE the title of the book appearing! begins, she can be assured of avoiding dings and Comfort Counselors. With God on her side , the national trophy is as good as in her hands. (Page 191)

They're all moving as Paige said, independently yet together in orbit, seeking the answers they need to be whole, like pieces again, moving toward perfection of pattern in a kaleidescope.

---

Lots of good writing in this section before we leave it, here's one:

Page 196: The world has become Miriam's empty mansion, rooms stretching to the horizon waiting to be filled.

---

I found it interesting how Aaron sees Saul suddenly? He has gone from priest gingerly carrying the Torah to an organ grinder, did you notice?

Page 177: "Once upon a time he aspired to his father's place. Now Saul seems more like an organ grinder leading a troupe of trained monkeys."

So it seems that all the characters are beginning to see each other more clearly, the veils are beginning to fall off.

The driving at night by the way? With no lights on? I had a boyfriend ages ago who insisted that no person needed headlights at night, that the eye adjusted well enough without if you just let it? Am I the only one who ever tried it?

Trust me, you need headlights. Perhaps Myla and I encountered the same boyfriend.

And tomorrow we may just disagree here!

hahahahaa

ginny

The ending of this book is probably one of the most powerful, beautifully crafted, emotional pieces of writing that I have ever experienced. Step by step, in a succession of mortal blows, Saul is forced out of his world of illusions. But does he ever fully enter the world of reality?

Ginny had mentioned in earlier parts of the book that Saul is a mystery because we are seldom allowed to wander through the thinking processes in his head. We now get plenty of access to Saul...with devastating effect. Door after door slams against him in his world, everything that he thought he knew is proved wrong, all of the taken-for-granted aspects of every part of his family life explodes away in the winds of change.

Miriam, who couldn't be troubled to hang a picture in their own bedroom, has devoted a lifetime to creating perfectimundo in a storage vault...and Saul hasn't the slightest idea why she calls her creation a kaleidoscope. Miriam is arrested for burglary on the same day that Aaron leaves home...but Saul doesn't even know that his son is gone because he doesn't look in on Aaron's room after he gets back from the police station. Eliza is left alone all night, sleeping on the floor, thumb in mouth...and Saul never thinks to phone home and discover that her brother never showed. Finally, Saul figures out that Aaron quit school to live at the ISKCON temple. But he doesn't know how to locate his son because he never thought of inquiring for details about Aaron's close friend, "Charlie."

Eliza, like her mother, is tormented by constant obsessive thinking. Her father is as oblivious to this as he is to all of the problems in his family. What about that horrific scene on page 264 where Saul tells both his children about their mother in the cruelest possible way? Yet I also feel pity for that destroyed man.

And then Eliza has her transcendent experience. She is reborn? Better than her mother and free of guilt toward her father? Free enough to break the pattern of life that Saul had planned for her?

I feel like there's too much to absorb, too many feelings, too many puzzles resolved in this last section of the book. It's overwhelming.

is the main character after all. The novel begins and ends with her and her spelling talent. I do believe that she has "escaped" from Saul and from expectations that come from him. She has a life of her own ahead of her.

Aaron has escaped as well, but I find his escape a little less believeable. My problem is that from what I have read about young people who opt for cult membership, they have had little or NO religious training and thus are ripe for the plucking, ready to listen to any message they perceive to be "spiritual."

Here we have a different situation; Aaron has been raised in Judaism, his father a cantor. Yes, he rejects all this (mostly because of losing--as he perceives it--the love of his father) but I don't think the whole Krishna business computes.

Eliza, on the other hand, is totally believeable to me.

Maryal

Eliza has taken a long journey in this book, moving through many stages. She has been a helpless supplicant to Saul...adoring daughter...wary acolyte... guilt-ridden child. She has passed safely through her father's difficulties, becoming the gifted and enthusiastic transcendent that Saul himself was never able to be. She has mirrored her mother's obsessive problems when she becomes an out-of-control permuter of letters, unable to concentrate in school or at home....and finally, through her ultimate traumatic contact with transcendence, she becomes an evolved person in her own right. Does she symbolize some part of all the rest of her family in this book?

Eliza wishes Aaron were present when she "throws" the spelling bee. She is striking a blow for him as well as for herself. They have both been used by Saul. Yet as she looks at her father's face, she also feels sympathy for that unfortunate man who suffers so many personal losses in his family. I can't help caring about him also. So many good intentions...so many wrong turns.

I still find myself confused by Aaron. He certainly has had a lot of spiritual background. Enough to resist the call of the Krishnas? But then, was he running toward God when he accepted the ISKCON temple? Or was he running AWAY from a lifestyle with no dignity or personal acceptance?

Miriam is finally a fully fleshed figure. When she sat woodenly at the dinner table ignoring her family, was she tormented by her inner voices that impelled her toward the next piece needed in her grand design? After tuning in to Eliza's concentration difficulties while SHE was obsessed with permutations of letters, is it not possible to be moved by Miriam's futile struggles against total madness?

I visualize Miriam on her long, jobless days as she pursued her daily search for "the" perfect complementary piece for her kaleidoscope. I can see her doing her solitary, painstaking work in that storage room, arranging a design of supreme beauty that she can never share with anyone else. Now, at the end of the book, Miriam has finally become real to me. She has finally achieved pathos.

ALF and Harriet, my reaction to Aaron (I just finished the book and have been lurking but not posting because of my VERY mixed feelings about the book) is that he seeks out the Hare Krishnas not because of a deepseated RELIGIOUS fervor, but because of his deep loneliness and his status as an outcast. I remember being at UC Berkeley in the 70s and the "moonies" used to hang out in Sproul Plaza looking for downcast, lonely looking students to lure off to some dinner in a big house.

I simply do not believe anyone could be so clueless as to not notice that they are married to a schizophrenic. There is NO way that Saul could have missed such obvious signs. His character ruins the book for me - he is simply not believable.

Is this an ultimate "coming of age" novel? Eliza finally cuts the umbilical to become her own person. She does the ONE thing that nobody else can do for her. It's her own decision, and I would like to believe that she is free.

Is Miriam "free" also? She no longer has to search for perfectimundo. Does anyone here feel that Miriam suffers from MPD?(Multiple Personality Disorder). Which personality is the "real" or integrated Miriam?

What about Aaron? Will he ever be "free" and his own person?I wonder if he will always need a "caretaker" of some sort. Like Blanche Dubois does he need to "depend on the kindness of strangers"

Saul? I think that he may always be in denial OR he is a modern day Job..everything comes crashing down upon him,yet he keeps on going.

I found Bee Season to be a delicious book,to be savored,to stimulate the mind,and to have a lasting impact.

Ed----Hadn't thought of it as a coming-of-age novel, but it certainly is now that you point it out!

I think that Miriam is "free" in the sense that those who are mad are free. But then, she really has been for a long time, taking no real responsibility for her family except, of course, cleaning everything all the time. It doesn't seem to me that she has enough personality to be a multiple, but I am no diagnostician.

I don't feel sorry for Saul, but I do find him a believeable person; I have problems with Aaron, as mentioned above.

I really have enjoyed reading this novel and reading all of the comments here. And now I'm all warmed up to teach it next semester.

~Maryal

I don't know what catagory of mental illness Miriam fits into, but she has been ill a long time. One of the best descriptions to my mind, in this book is the storage unit...kaleidoscope...that she created. I don't see her as free, even by madness. She is so locked into her obsessive behavior that she is unable to do anything but follow those compulsions.

Denial is very strong in dysfunctional families, but Saul takes the cake! He had to know on some level that Miriam was very troubled. Not just neurotic, way beyond that.

I think Aaron has a strong need to belong to something, someone. After Saul rejects him in favor of Eliza, he turns to the cult, knowing his father would not approve. He needs acceptance very acutely and finds it quickly with this group. Ed, you used one of my favorite quotes from Blanche Dubois about depending on the kindness of strangers. I don't think Aaron feels loved or accepted by anyone in that family. Seeks it elsewhere.

Yea for Eliza!! She is the only one that may be okay by claiming her independence. Being as young as she is though, one wonders if she can sustain this state because she is left alone with Saul!!

Paige, you reminded me - the kaleidoscope brought to mind some art I saw recently here in California. A couple of artists have been collecting plastic garbage at a certain beach out in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area for years, and making it into art. They'll make a huge animal or a beautiful landscape, and it's only upon looking closely that you realized it's made of beautifully colored plastic junk - those red plastic "knives" that you use to dig cheese out of those little plastic containers, water bottle lids, tampax inserters, those round plastic things that come out of kids' guns, and so on.

I guess Bee Season definitely qualifies as a "coming-of- age" novel, and so much more also. Parts of it keep hanging around in my head. Maybe that's the sign of an excellent book.

Sarah and Paige felt that Saul should have known how sick Miriam was. Yet I wonder. In our group alone, we've already had a few separate diagnoses. When we referred to Miriam, I talked about obsessive, Ed about multiple personalities, Sarah about schizoid...maybe the truth is, it's pretty hard to get a definite handle on what constitutes mental illness in real life.

When the book opens, Miriam is SUPPOSEDLY regularly employed as a lawyer and SUPPOSEDLY the main financial support of the family. She spends at least part of every night in her husband's bed and maintains the bare outlines of a marriage. I seem to remember that we had some debate early in the discussion about how the marriage could appear normal if Miriam and Saul were each simply the reverse gender. Outwardly, she functions.

We know about Miriam's illness way before any of her other family members because, courtesy of the author, we FOLLOW her into her housebreaking activities. Saul's first serious hints come when Miriam is so aggressively, coldly sexual to him... actually raping him. At a later point Saul is on the verge of asking her to get help...but decides to wait and hope things get better.

Is it possible that the demarcation line between normal and abnormal thinking may be a blurry one to family members who are ACCUSTOMED to living with a moody and strange person? Maybe it isn't as simple to define mental illness as it all seems from the outside, especially when the term refers to a beloved family member? Which was the exact day that strange and quirky transformed into mentally ill? Is it possible to notice that a serious deterioration is taking place ONLY after one looks back over a prolonged period of time?

Harriet

Paige pointed out that some of the most lyrical prose in Bee Season is devoted to describing Miriam's cache of stolen items, her storage room kaleidoscope. Oh, I agree Paige! I certainly do! From pages 223 - 224:

The perimeter is composed of glasses lying lengthwise on the floor, but with the aid of marbles, beads, and shot glasses, the line arches upward in a graceful curve to join a column of stacked wineglasses, brandy snifters, and champagne flutes reaching higher than Saul's head. When Saul gazes at the tower, he sees water reflecting the sun, he sees a night sky of stars, he sees the patient, timeless ice of the poles.

I see MORE than MG describes also. I see the part of the book that is left to our imagination. Ginny asked several times in the discussion, "What does Miriam DO with all her stolen stuff?" Let's add my question to that. "If Miriam didn't go to work, what did she DO with herself each weekday morning when she left home?"

Now I can finally visualize the course of Miriam's day. She must have spent a part of each day in department stores looking for the perfect item to enhance or transition a segment of her kaleidoscope. Perhaps she had to hunt through several stores each day. Exhausting...but NOT as tiring as the irresistible impulse she later felt to break into houses.

Next she would drive to the storage unit. What ferocious decisions she must have had to make! She had to consider the perfect location for each treasure. Perhaps, shoes off, treading lightly over her sacred ground, she tried several placements to gauge the effect. Then she would have to replace the items she had removed from the floor to make room for her entry into the area she was decorating. In her madness, she was an artist devoted to the creation of perfect beauty.

No wonder she decided to come home LATER than 6 o'clock at the height of her "artistry." Arranging, rearranging, meticulously replacing items she had removed for easier access until everything looked "just so"...Miriam's WAS a busy life. And when she came home, there was no time for children or husband. Perhaps she was thinking about whether she had REALLY determined the most exquisite placement for her treasure of the day...or should she rearrange all tomorrow?

Also, consider the magnitude of the gift Miriam offered Eliza when she gave the child the original kaleidoscope that had triggered her visions. Thank heavens that Eliza didn't know how to respond appropriately! If her mother had sensed greater empathy, would she have begun to share her madness with Eliza...weighed the child down with the burden of the needs of BOTH of her parents?

Miriam is now a poignant and tragic figure to me, but what a miraculous escape for Eliza when she didn't "understand" her mother's gift.

Harriet

Welcome to "The Age of Aquarius" - this keeps running thru my mind.

Everyone feels liberated , albeit pathetic Saul. Eliza, unrestrained, has now disengaged herself from familial influence! Or has she? I'm a great believer in those so-called early years of security lending strength for adjustment at a later date. Can such a young child raised in this environment ever really be decontaminated? Won't that internal compass spin out of control (as it did with her mother)when she is faced with life's burdens? As an adult, how will she cope? With readiness and deliberation, will she direct her attention to the problem at hand as she did while permuting? OR , perhaps she will choose to camouflage and enshroud problems that are raised, as Saul did.

There is a great deal to digest in this novel's ending but I am constantly pulled back to Eliza's aility to cope and survive in the future because of her precarious, ambiguous roots.

Will the malignancy spread to her children?

This child had full blown grand,-mal seizure activity!

Alf, you and Paige have brought up the fly in the ointment.

As the book ends, Eliza is only about 11 years old. She has to go home to live in her father's house after she "throws" the spelling bee. She has, as Alf expressed it, "precarious and ambiguous roots."

If Saul doesn't understand that her loss was deliberate, will he begin a new campaign of study to "encourage" his daughter toward new heights of concentration in spelling? Can Eliza resist? Has Saul learned anything about his children from Aaron's departure?

MG leaves us with hope, however. She hints at the future as she describes Eliza's ultimate transcendent shefa experience. From page 270:

"She can feel parts of herself crumbling away. Eliza realizes that a RETURN TO HER OLD SELF IS IMPOSSIBLE. The thing she has become and the body she left behind will cancel each other out upon impact. For this she is thankful. There is the sensation of drowning, of suffocation, her lungs filling with a substance that is both thicker and thinner than air. This is the pain of creation, of life emerging from void, of vacuum birthing being."

If we accept that Eliza has had a true mystical experience, then she has NOT suffered a grand mal seizure and her future holds promise. I feel that the intent of the book is to encourage acceptance of the reality of her shefa experience, because Eliza is now free of her obsessional permutation-of-letters thoughts and looks on the world, her father, her school with new eyes of maturity and compassion.

I hope?

Harriet

Super posts here today and perspectives. I enjoyed them all and want to go back and revisit some of your questions.

This last section of the book with it's little "I've got a secret" revelations really jerks the reader up, doesn't it?

Sherwood Anderson called plots with tricky or surprise endings "poison plots" and decried writers like the beloved O Henry for using them. He'd have loved this one.

Certainly the reader is surprised, but is he convinced, that's the question? What's that line from Amadeus, the emperor says to...is it Salieri, or Mozart: " you are very ....., but you do not persuade."

Despite all the glorious writing and the wonderfully descriptive adjectives of light etc., etc., in describing Miriam's own creation of shefa or perfectamundo, the giant kaleidescope in the warehouse, I found the description of the room strangely amorphous and undefined.

I think I tried, and I tried to believe. I tried to flesh out in my own mind (which of course is totally necessary) the descriptions like Harriet quoted above, water? Water towering in champagne flutes to the sun?

I tried to reconcile that with button cards on the floor and stacks of shoes, mismatched shoes, old and new shoes, hanging from the ceiling?

Folks, there is no way you can hang a stack of mis-matched old shoes or new shoes or any kind of shoes from any kind of ceiling in any kind of room with any kind of light over a floor of button papers and have anything but a stack of shoes hanging from the ceiling over button papers.

For me, the author does not succeed here in what is intended (and clumsily foreshadowed) as the climax of the book. There has been no hint to the reader, despite the author's letting us know all about the very inmost and delicate thoughts of every character, there has been NO hint of this at all.

And when this particular secret IS revealed, it's not through the inmost thoughts of the characters, the way the rest of the book has been? No, it's through a phone call and a trip with a policeman to a warehouse.

The reader is stunned, and since he's been lulled all this time by his omniscient knowledge of not only the main characters, but the adjunct characters? Remember Ms. Lodowski's "Tag, you're it?" Remember the Principal with his thoughts of his own child? Since he's been accustomed to knowing everything that goes on (and some things he would rather not have known) this new revelation shocks him.

And it should. It's out of sinc. It's not the only thing.

How about Chali? What inner thoughts of his can you describe? Book is uneven. Plot is uneven.

I feel used by this ridiculous room with the shoes and the buttons.

In this, the most important section in the book, the climax, for me, the author fails.

Oh the grand images: shoes and champagne flutes WITH WATER in them glinting from the sun. What sun? Have you ever seen one of those storage bins? They are not as big as warehouses or small gyms? They do not have windows at all. NOT THE FIRST WINDOW. It's a security issue, no windows or sunlight or moonlight only neon in a storage facility.

There is no sun for the water to glint off of.

I know what this means: "When Saul gazes at the tower, he sees water reflecting the sun, he sees a night sky of stars, he sees the patient, timeless ice of the poles."

It means that the stack of revolving shoes and the buttons on the floor, we are supposed to believe, symbolize to Saul the night sky and the sun...? And the ice of the poles.

The transition from shoe to wineglass is barely perceptible, the shoes as they stretch toward the glasses actually assuming shapes that reflect or contain a wineglass within them.

Horse puckey.

"The transition from shoe to wineglass is barely perceptible. "

In whose world? Yours? You can't tell the difference when a shoe ends and a wineglass begins?

And then we have Eliza.

Why?

Why did she do that deliberately?

What did it prove and who did it hurt most?

Was it an action against Saul?

Did it get her out of study,....let's see, no National Bee no shefa. But she doesn't need Saul now, right?

So this WAS an act of anger against him for trying to cover up to them their mother's condition because it matters not how awful parents are, the child still longs for a parent?

Is Eliza blaming Miriam's condition ON Saul? Is this a positive or a negative ending? Is there hope here, some of you seem to feel she's come of age and made her own decisions?

Didn't she just decide to hurt herself?

Buttons on the floor and shoes hanging in the air turning into castles and kingdoms and the night sky and perfectamundo.

Nice try.

What is the POINT of this book?

ginny

Aw, ma! Do I really have to eat ALL my vegetables?!!

Isn't that a lot of reality, Ginny, for a fairy tale about transcendental mysticism? I LIKED the ending, surprises and all! The princess said the magic words of Abulafia and a mystical spell surrounded her like a benison, protecting her and blessing her future?

Wasn't Miriam's storage vault like a fairy cave of treasures, filled with all the wonders of Miriam's world?

If you want to talk about things that are really pifflepoof, there are a few more points with a lot of too-much reality also.

Where did Miriam's top lawyer come from? Did friendless Miriam ask the police nicely, so that they agreed to scout the phone book for a good criminal lawyer? Or was this lawyer a residual legacy, managing her money after the death of her wealthy parents? Could he have handled the family money for years, with Saul and the children as co-legatees, without ever meeting her husband, the ONLY one home near a phone every day, by the way?

Was it the lawyer who arranged for Miriam's accommodations in Holliswood Psychiatric Hospital, with no consultation necessary from Saul, Miriam's next of kin? If Miriam has now been certified as over the hill by doctors, wouldn't this lawyer's obligations now revert to Saul...as Miriam's husband?

There ARE gaps in the book, but when I look at things too closely, they are bound to be found wanting. I liked this book very much. It moved me. Out of deference to the pleasure it gave me, I'm prepared to give leeway to the author. Few things are absolutely perfect in this world? When MG pulled together so many strands of Saul's unawareness toward the end of the book... and hit him with body-blow after body blow about the reality of his family... I was awed.

The point Ginny raised that troubled me the most was: Why did Eliza decide to lose the bee? Ginny, you feel that it was anger at her father? Saul arrives at the bee and "cannot stop grinning. He is a man in love." Eliza feels like a protective mother who is going to give her infant an innoculation for his own good. From page 272:

"Looking at him, Eliza feels incredibly old. Old like she is his grandmother, like they are in a doctor's office and he is here for his shots. She wants to take him aside and tell him that it will be okay, that it will only hurt for a little while."

Eliza sounds like she is sorry that she is going to hurt her father. If her mother is lost to her, why would she now want to administer the coup de grace to her father?

A puzzlement?

Harriet

Ginny: The point of the book may be that there is NO POINT.

Like in "real life" there are ebbs and flows. I'm not sure that there are many watershed moments in our lives where we can definitely say that This was the POINT where my life changed. There's a constant flux and,at least for me,only in retrospect can we see the changes.

This was an enjoyable book for me and a very stimulating discussion among the participants added much to the reading pleasure. My congratulations and appreciation to the DL's for an OUTSTANDING job. WELL DONE.

WOW - I am totally blasted by this book - for me the individual behavior of both Aaron and Eliza is so alike only dressed in different cloth - each chanting hoping to reach an inner level of completeness. Some may even say a replacement for love but rather than words like love - fear - good - bad - evil - to me, is putting a moral picture on the happenings in this story. I prefer looking at all the behavior sans morality and only bring to the story impressions of voluntary powers.

Voluntary power as in; perseverance, resolution, willingness, obstinacy, rejection, impulse, habit, motive or the absence of motive, intention, chance, avoidance, requirement, the means, store, substitute, adversity, pitfall, undertaking, cunning, artful, defiance, command, master, compulsion, acquisition, booty - Rather than moral judgment like; legal, respect, disapprobation, flattery, vice, detraction, virtue, innocence, guilt, orthodoxy, worship, temple.

Once moral judgement kicks in I think the author's message can be lost to our own un-comfort with the behavior of the characters as well as, our individual interpretation of wonder or beauty.

As I read the story they all "WANT" either from each other or from God. Wanting is putting a values on self pity and brings about self pity which leads us down the path to and allows dependency. Dependent on an obsession the characters are throwing themselves away trying to bring about perfection or "king of the heap" in their chosen undertaking. Being increasingly dependent on finding the un-named feeling they want, which many of us can assume to be found in love, the characters are than easily giving themselves away to a need for approval, have unrealistic expectations, fear failure rather than simply seeing life as offering opportunities to correct, feeling despair, expecting certain behavior, abandoning others as well as their own inner selves and being isolated.

For me the most valuable sentences that summed up the book are Saul saying " Why can't you be like me..." followed by Eliza "This is the pain of creation, of life emerging from void, of vacuum birthing being." Seizure of not, I thought the scene so well written as it unified every opposite, the ying and yang of all creation into a oneness, not necessarily unity but a whole with nothing having more value than another.

This said volumes to me about how I am more comfortable when folks behave and speak as I approve or understand often without realizing what I am really "wanting" - which is for others to be more like me. In Eliza's experiencing shefa or simply her reverie or intense meditation or grand mall, which folks have often said is a sign that God is visiting that person, she sees the absurdity of difference as well as any practice that is repeated just in the hopes of control. Control for our vision of what God should allow or how we should experience a feeling of God or how we think our family members should act or how we should feel and think.

To me it is ending with Eliza the only character understanding and coming out on the other side of fear and neediness or wanting - banishing the need to be approved of by another. Now she can live true to herself and within reality rathering than chanting her letters trying to bring about the reunion of her family or life controlled on her terms.

I have to say this, I just have to, have you SEEN the new Disney World commercial?

Starts out with a little Eliza like clone at a spelling bee?

Eliza spells M-I-C and the moderator loses it and goes K-E-Y and begins to boogie all over the stage and the audience jumps up and spells M-O-U-S-E!!! and dances all around the room, and the kid stands there and looks at them like they're nuts.

And the voice over says , It's YOUR Generation and it's celebrating Walt's birthday, come join us or something? I don't know what it said, I was dancing all over the room going "Why? Because we LIKE you!"

hahahaha, I thought of you all and Eliza, you really must see it.

Back in a mo.....

I've been fascinated by your points here.

You've pointed out a sense of power or lack of same (Barbara) Eliza taking control (Paige) worry over whether she can sustain it (Andrea) coming of age or turning point novel (Ed, Maryal) Saul's unbelievablity as a character (Sarah) and the improbabilities of the plot (Harriet). Somebody pointed out a couple of the characters, maybe Aaron, is living off others, by the grace of others and of course we see at the end that they all were?

Off her dead parents. I don't know if "poor" Miriam is multiple personalities but she's certainly not a kleptomaniac, and is obviously mentally ill. You have to hand it to the author for allowing us to "feel their pain," as a popular Democratic president used to say. I can't help reflecting how totally grateful I am that he's not in the White House now, we'd be worrying over ol Osama's trek thru the Afghan wastes and wanting to talk to him to see how he feels: the Afghan wastes they said could never be conquered. OOps, sorry, who threw that in here?

Anyway I do have a question and that is about Bildungstroman or the "coming of age novel." Does the time frame mean anything at all? I mean, what's the TIME FRAME here? All the coming of age novels I ever read, including the Thomas Mann's ponderous Magic Mountain, took the character from youth to a little older youth? Compare The Fires of Spring?

Has a year even passed? This is a very young child? Maryal, can you have coming of age just because a child discovers her parent is hiding something? Is her seeing thru the parent ENOUGH to make it a coming of age novel?

Not sure here.

"He reads much, he is a great observer, and he looks right through the deeds of men." (Julius Caesar: Shakespeare)....are we saying that this ability constitutes "coming of age" and that makes this a Bildungsrtoman?

(Note the ease with which I throw that term around? I never heard of it before our SeniorNet Books sections? Stay with us and learn the world! hahaahha) (Note the use of the parenthesis, Maryal, which I also learned from her).

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WHOA! Harriet! Super points, hey hey hey, rasor old mind you, I missed it (I think I was drowning in seeing shoes as sun catchers)...yes, the lawyer, some police station, on its own called a Super Lawyer, don't we all have that? I can see sent for Psychiatric Evaluation but this seems a bit more and seems entirely out of Saul's hands, as you said, commitment. Not sure that happens, in the case of a person who has only shoplifted and not killed?

??

An array of items in a room does not call legally, (Sarah?) for commitment to an asylum?

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OH yes you need to eat your veggies. hahahah...or not, the choice is yours. Reminds me of a movie I once saw about ancient Rome, where, if you look closely, one of the Roman soldiers is wearing a watch.

Et tu, Brute? Then fall, plot. And fall book. Nothing is perfect but each little thing that pushes the reader back and makes the reader think about the mistakes (but Brutus didn't wear a Rolex), interferes with the book's effectiveness.

Thank you for that compliment, Ed, I'll give YOU one, thank you for suggesting this book! It's certainly memorable, it's arguable, look at all of us!

Some of us think it's great, some of us literally hated it, (truly some of you did), some of us see positive things, some negative, but we're all here chatting away on the merits of the book itself. And the next time somebody mentions BEE SEASON, why yes, you did read it.

You may not have gushed over it, but you definitely discussed it.

Let's have some parting shots here, any more commments?? Let's see what the expert questioners had to ask, more later....

I'm going to give a premature but very mixed report card to this book.

Writing ability: A
Innovative Plot Devices: A+
Plot: C


Believablitiy: F


Still thinking about the final grade.

ginny

I guess I do give it high grades on its artistic value - by that I mean - to me I could get more from the book if I laid it out as a flattened work rather than 3-D. Looking through a kaleidoscope is how I could describe the books best - a broken family, each having their own color and place in the whole.

Some of the broken pieces have a commonality - to name a few - both religions have a temple and prayer chants - both Miriam and Aaron have a naked scene that dwells on their own body - both Miriam and Eliza take what they think will fulfill their lives.

Saul needs Miriam and for a time Miriam needs Saul as an addition to her fetish. Aaron needed Eliza to save him as he lay like an old dog during the childhood games and Eliza thought, as so know many children do, that she was the cause of her parents not sleeping together and if she can only study harder God will fix it. The family seems to relate based on their neediness and assigned roles.

Rather than giving their roles and neediness value, I thought to flatten it out as this is their reality and simply as part of the broken view we see and admire when we look through a kaleidoscope or observe a non-representative painting - like Mark Tobey's "Threading Light" or Gorky's "Agony" or Marc Chagall's "I am the Village" or some of Picasso, Braque or Léger's work.

In literature I think we prefer a story that shows us a slice of life where that we can relate to one or more of the characters - more like the work of Monet or Matisse or Modigliani or even a Salvador Dali. All these artists use perspective and recognizable images to tell us their story - I see Goldberg using recognizable images but if we focus on depth I think her message is lost because the characters can easily bring out our dis-comfort with their behavior.

She also quickly switches in short spurts the telling of the story as she focuses on the viewpoint of each character's scene. I think we are left to fit much of it together much like the lead holding the broken glass pieces of a Kaleidoscope. The scenes do not follow a sequential life pattern and rub up against each other and yet amplify a preceding scene much as shapes in a non-representative piece of art.

Ginny having seen an art exhibition at Laguna Gloria using shoes I was Ok and could even imagin the interior of the storage shed. In the Laguna Gloria exhibition the one small piece that caught my eye and I laughed was of a high heal shoe painted matalic colors, the heel was studed with rhinstones and arranged inside the shoe, with a sculture sense of shadow and shapes, was a cell phone, kitchen spatula, a crumpled list and a piece of a road map. It was entitled "Mom."

And yes, I can really see this as a coming of age story. Not the film version but simply a series of snapshots {maybe even broken snapshots} that show her family's past and present and that moment when she feels there isn't enough air and chooses not to fill the room with the air of fulfilling all their dreams, wishes, needing her to succeed in the arena they value.

To commit someone in California takes some doing, as we have a law (Lanterman-Petris-Short, passed under Ronald Reagan in the 60s when he was governor) that opened up the institutions and gave those previously committed significant rights. Whether this was a good thing is now the subject of debate since so many of our homeless are also mentally ill.

Barbara, thanks for your opinion about the effect of Goldberg's dysfunctional characters on readers. Sarah, interesting commentary in view of Miriam's situation. Thanks so much.

Ed, thanks for your kind words.

We want to thank everyone for their participation. Your posts have been wonderful and thought provoking and a pleasure to read. This discussion remains open until Nov 30th. Please use that time to add any further thoughts you may have and to weigh in with your opinions on the book. It has been a very great joy to have talked with you all.

I liked the book and found it a fascinating. I'm still thinking on my final grade for it.

Harriet

Thank You, Harriet and Ginny for your fine leadership during this read.  Harriet, You've done a commendable job on your first assignment.  Isn't it fun?    I loved this book and really didn't mind the discomfort that settled over me as I stepped into the Neumann's lives.  Akin to the kaleidescope I enjoyed watching their fragmneted egos, their own intense hues  and their fragile angles.

I give it an A + and will pass this one on to my daughters.

Barbara, several good points and so vividly expressed! I loved this one I think we are left to fit much of it together much like the lead holding the broken glass pieces of a Kaleidoscope. and the broken snapshots, because that's what they were, they were little fragmented slices of past lives (and present) for that matter, good work there, I loved that.

Sarah, thank you for that legal view, as well, I know here it's pretty darn hard to get somebody committed (don't try this at home!) haahahahah and wondered....this is in PA, and I bet it's not easy there, either.

Andrea, did you see any hope at the end at all? Did you take Eliza as hopeful there at the end?

Harriet, what a super job you did here with this totally difficult book and the totally different experience, I'm so proud of you!

I'm going to go look up and put here reader reviews of this thing, just for the heck of it. Do we want to do a review with OUR name on it?

Surely do appreciate everybody who tried on this one, it was not easy and it's been quite a learning experience for me.

ginny

Terrific job Harriet and as always Ginny - the posts in the discussion have been outstanding and I can't help attribute that to the great leadership that helped bring out the best in all of us that tackled this book as well as finding the inner ticking of this story. I was especially thankful to read some posts written by those that had a more initmate knowledge of Judiasm. Thanks Y'all - now on to the holidays -

I give it a B-. Nice try, good writing, but ultimately not believable. I think this author has a great deal of potential, and will read her next book.

Well the "Customer Reviews" are in on both Amazon and B&N, and they are a total kaleidescope hahahah of variance. They range from * on a scale of * worst and ***** better, to ***** and "I wish I had more stars to give!"

It's interesting to see the negative ones. The booksellers have very carefully stacked the negative ones against the positive ones and some of the authors of the positive ones look a tad suspect but HEY!

Tons of them go look, meanwhile here are a few, sorry the ***** did not display, but you can pick up their thoughts from their words, anyway:

Disappointing, October 12, 2001 Reviewer: A reader from Los Angeles, CA United States I completely agree with another reviewer that the book starts strong and then meanders into chaos. I had great difficulty finishing the book, because, by the end, I didn't care about these characters.

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author needed to know how to spell "editor", October 17, 2001 Reviewer: hharris214 from east hampton, new york Myla Goldberg is very talented, but she needs an editor. The book begins well and stays on track UNTIL the girl's mother de-rails the plot. Had an attentive editor counseled the author to forget about making the mother a kleptomaniac, the book would have worked as well or better.The characters, except for the mother, were honest and true. The mother was unbelievable; had no reason for being. It seemed as if the author had made her up out of whole cloth in order to keep the book "interesting" and colorful. In fact, the mother was distracting and undermined the book's intention. Myla Goldberg is, however, clearly someone to watch. This is an impressive and beautifully written first novel. She can obviously write; what she most needs to do is find an editor. -

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Powerful storytelling, October 24, 2001 Reviewer: Bonnie Powers (see more about me) from Berkeley, CA United States This is the kind of book that should be winning the major literary awards for its unexpectedly moving plot and unusual characters

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Not a pleasurable book., November 1, 2001 Reviewer: starleigh from Portland, OR USA I agree with the others here who have said they expected something very different from this book. I expected a fairly straightforward novel about a young girl who becomes a spelling champion - a "coming of age" story possibly. I was interested in the emphasis on language, because I have always been good at language and spelling myself. However, now that I have read 3/4 of this book, I've found that I don't relate to it at all. It seems to become more extreme and unbelievable with each page I read. It is not about a normal girl who goes to spelling bees, or even about a troubled girl who goes to spelling bees. It is about the religious obsessions of her father and brother, and the even stranger obsessions of her mother. Maybe I would understand this book more if I were more interested in religion. A book doesn't have to be about characters that are just like me, but I generally enjoy a book more when I can relate to the characters or when they appeal to me in some way. I will read the whole book, because I want to find out what happens to this bizarre family in the end. But I can't say that reading it has been exactly pleasurable.

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Obsession or Transcendence?, November 3, 2001 Reviewer: whizzer4 (see more about me) from Hillsboro, OR United States I read this book back in May of 2000 and I still think about its characters. Initially I thought it was a book about religious obsession, but eventually decided I was wrong, and that instead it was a book about transcendence.

As the reader, you are taken on a painful journey and into the lives of the dysfunctional Naumann family. You literally experience their unraveling. This is not a "downer" of a book, Myla Goldberg makes certain to reward her readers for their efforts.

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A flawed but fascinating novel., August 8, 2001 Reviewer: bluemamma (see more about me) from San Luis Obispo, CA USA Bee Season is far from a flawless novel, and certainly not for every reader. I came very close to abandoning it several times in the middle, and if I had reviewed it without reading the final third, I would have given it no more than two stars. But in the end it comes together so beautifully that itÕs impossible not to forgive the author for some clumsiness along the way.

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Too too much, January 23, 2001 Reviewer: azvudumom (see more about me) from Phoenix, AZ United States While I liked the pieces of this book, there was just too much going on with too many characters for me to get truly enthralled. An elementary schoolgirl communing with God, her 17 year old brother converting from Judaism to Hare Krishna, and her mother living a secret life of crime--any one or two of these stories would have been interesting. But taken together in a not-too-hefty novel, they didn't allow for terrific character development. Although Myla Goldberg is clearly a gifted author, I felt like she bit off more than she could chew with this story

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A reviewer, a bookseller from Seattle, April 19, 2000, If only there were more stars to give... This book was AMAZING-- you will not believe how smoothly, as a first novel, it flows. Topics explored include changing religious beliefs and definition of religion, marriage, parental loyalties, and sibling rivalry. The ending is unpredictable and shocking. This is the best book I have read this year.

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Jane, an avid reader, October 16, 2001, disappointing and boring I found this book to be intriguing at moments but usually tedious and slow paced. The ending was unsatisfying and felt like the author couldn't think of where to go next so just stopped. The story is unbelievable with no attempt at giving it or the characters credibility. I would not read anything else this author writes - nor would I recommend this book.

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A reviewer (TCohn@aol.com), a guy who likes e-mail, September 27, 2001, Now I know what the buzz is all about I remember all the buzz about the book Bee Season, and thinking to myself that this was just the type of book that I would not want to read. Well, a yearlater the book fluttered my way, and I became interested. For starters, the book has a lot of potential. The premise of framing the story around a school-age girl competing in spelling bees is irresistible. Then, put this girl in the middle of a 'dysfunctional' American-Jewish family, then add a heavy dose of religious issues, and you should have the ingredients for a wonderful, comic novel. The problem is, however, that towards the end the story takes itself a little too seriously, as the downward spiral of the family seems unrelenting. The witty tone of the first half does not entirely sit well with the drama of the second half. The tory, like honey, is very sweet, though has a bitter ending.

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A reviewer, a 7th grade teacher, July 27, 2001, Shows how difficult it is to be an adolescent A must-read for educators and parents to get an insight of the 'loners' in a classroom as well as how adults, especially parents, shape children's emotional worlds in very subtle ways. The impact of the 'low' vs 'gifted' class made a huge impression on me. An excellent read.

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Lolita Folasade, 17 yr. old student from WA, March 29, 2001, Great read with unexpected twists here is a great story of what starts out with a little girl who wins a spelling bee and unfolds into a tangled web of crazy idiosyncracies within her family. it became a story totally unlike what i was anticipating but was definitely a refreshing read and I look forward to future releases by this author

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This one precisely reflects my feelings about the book:

Too too much, January 23, 2001 Reviewer: azvudumom (see more about me) from Phoenix, AZ United States While I liked the pieces of this book, there was just too much going on with too many characters for me to get truly enthralled. An elementary schoolgirl communing with God, her 17 year old brother converting from Judaism to Hare Krishna, and her mother living a secret life of crime--any one or two of these stories would have been interesting. But taken together in a not-too-hefty novel, they didn't allow for terrific character development. Although Myla Goldberg is clearly a gifted author, I felt like she bit off more than she could chew with this story

Just came home for the day, and the discussion is exploding with new posts. Wow, how nice!

Alf, I felt as you did. I was fascinated with the Naumann's. I was eager to read each week's pages and reluctant to stop at the end of them. However I'm glad I read it fragmentally because reading the whole book at one time would have HAD to have colored and affected my perceptions of all the characters. I thought this particular book was enriched by the gradual revelations about that dysfunctional family.

Thanks for all those nice words, Alf, Ginny and Barbara. My first co-leading discussion has been a remarkable learning experience, thanks to all the wonderful people who posted and expressed their comments so very well. Thank you, Ginny for being the best ever and being there to help and encourage everyone, and especially me! Words can NOT express... Luvya!

The opinions of the reviewers are as diverse as our opinions were in this discussion. Myself, I think I'll remember Eliza and her strange family for a long time. They moved and involved me and I felt the book was an emotional experience. I'm going to give this book an A+. It's not an easily forgettable book for me.

Harriet