Road From Coorain ~ Jill Ker Conway ~ 4/98 ~ Autob Export

Also, Everyone, please go look at the Rolling Readers folder in our very own Books & Lit! This is a program all across America where we, whether we've got grandchildren or not, go in and read to school children. I love the "mystery" part of it, makes reading that more exciting. Nothing more wonderful to share.

I have such conflicting emotions reading this first section: awe for the courage and determnation of the mother, shock at the lack of water!! No rain, no rain?? No water (under the ground but impossible to reach: they later did bore wells. Reminds you of the old photos of early pioneer Americans: usually photographed next to what meant the most to them, usually a well)...but underlying it all is a thin little voice saying something else? Am I the only one hearing it? Mother was a nurse and was never happier than when the person was totally dependent on her?....I'm hearing another little voice here cutting thru the overwhelming first impression.

Theresa: 20,000 acres!! ALMOST beyond imagining! Do they still continue to farm or ranch it? Oh, and by the way, Welcome, welcome!! My email is down, or I'd write you a letter, so glad to see you here, hoping to hear more about how they lived on 20,000 acres, and how it affects them even today?

In answer to the first question, I guess I'd say she started the book with such description of the environment because it was the overwhelming thing in their lives, and, at some times, their enemy. They spent all their energies trying to combat it and overcome it.

Still trying to take in this couple who would work all day in the dust and sit down to a formal dinner as if there were servants in the kitchen....it really DOES, in places, remind you of the American settlers.

Remember all those china cabinets left by the side of the westward trails?

Ginny

Ginny, you are very perceptive! You will see the character emerge much as you have already perceived. When I asked the question about the reasons she went along with the father's plans even though the bush life would never be her first choice, I was really "fishing" to see if anyone would say that it was a real love match, to the degree that she would support him in anything he was sure he wanted to do, and also that both are high achievers, possessing the strength and self-esteem to pull off feats many others would fear to tackle. In light of all they achieved individually at very young ages, I still think all that, but I think you have highlighted a very important part of her character: the need to have others depend upon her.

The tough landscape attracted tough characters, who became even more stoic and durable as survival pressures increased.

Hi, just wanted to tell you that I finally got Road from Coorain today from the library. They bought it because I had requested it! I will post as soon as I have had time to read enough to make sense of it. Sharon

Jo, You're right. It IS a very romantic story.

BEST

LJ, "romantic"? What is romantic about this story? Unless you think of two people's decision to stick together and keep their commitments is "romantic." I'd say it was just the other way around.

Ros

The elements of risk-taking and adventure and Conway's loving descriptions of the landscape of her childhood and youth, the love that drew and kept the parents together, that made the house a beautiful and gracious place wher the family "dined" rather than merely fueling up at the end of a hard day - these are all romantic, in a sense. Certainly the hard work and the environmental challenges are more realistic than romantic.

I had the feeling, in reading this story, that it was being told on two levels: the one for publication and the inner one of truth. I have had a hard time defining and separating the two. Am going back, for the third time, (which is telling in itself) and reread these pages to see if I can decide what I'm looking at.

Meanwhile, I'm struck by the thought that if I HAD a daughter, I wonder what she'd make of me--my motivations. Agatha Christie always thought a daughter could be the most critical, in fact, in her books she talks about the Mother Daughter relationship at length.

Anyway, this is a great discussion, want to back my my theories with facts.

Sharon: Good for you! You've struck a blow (or have we, too?) for good reading.

Ginny

Dear friends,

Welcome Theresa!! I am so glad to see you entering this discussion.

Jo and Ginny, of course you are correct. Jill's mother was never happier than when needed.

That is what I love about our discussions in this book club. I miss so much just reading the book through, but then when the discussion starts it becomes much more meaningful.

Thank you all......

After reading this book I thought of how I brought up my two children, now two adults, 40 and 46. Ah, if I only could do it all over again.I was much too easy going and permissive. Live and learn!!

Conway devotes much of her wonderful introductory section to describing how different was the "physical and spiritual" landscape of her homeland from the "Christian West." I had to reflect on an ironic connection between our country and hers: the fact that the first population of Australia, the "transported" convicts, landed there at about the time of the American Revolution just because England could no longer dump its convicts and undesirables in our "New World." Though the practice of transportation was discontinued after 1849, the rough-and-ready, often harsh "convict culture" of those first prison colonies persisted and must have outweighed the much smaller "Little Britain" culture in the earlier years. There seemed to be a contrast, too, between the sprawling multi-acre settlements in Australia and the sharply contained areas of early colonization in North America.

Earlier fiction about Australia emphasized the courageous independence of the white settlers, and often humorously disparaged the attempts of the Anglophiles to live as if they were still in England. Most of the 19th century stuff is out of print. Your local library might still carry two books by Henry Handel Richardson (a woman writing -- what a surprise -- under a man's name): a very bitter and despairing "failure story" titled The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, and a young-adult book, The Getting of Wisdom, which is a tender narrative about a girl who travels from the "outback" to a more urban boarding school and how she adapts to the change.

Ros

I guess "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". To ME, its "Romantic". (So far)

Best

Roslyn, thanks for the two reading tips- wonderful! I know more about the trasported convict-culture than I do about the "Little Britain" culture you speak of. Their are two plays that I know of about the convicts: In the Good of Our Country and Female Transport. The first one is the better theatre experience, in my opinion, but both are enlightening. The production of the first was extraordinary.

The American landscape seems to have been, on the whole, more "user-friendly" than the miles and miles and miles of hot, flat, dry, dusty Australian bush or outback (synonymous or different?) as characterized by Conway. All settlers of a wilderness have to be courageous, but new Australians evidently were even more challenged than new Americans were. Graziers like Jill's father had to calculate how many sheep their landholdings would support in the time of drought. The more land, the better chance of survival, because the sheep would take longer to graze the grass down to the stage where they were actually ripping up the roots and denuding the territory. When that occurred, the grazier was pretty well defeated: No water, no roots, no grass, starving sheep. That's why they resisted the breaking up of land holdings into smaller "reward' farms, after WWI, if I read her correctly.

Regarding the question about her mother:

Australia is a much more a patriarchy than the U.S. (The frontier mentality?) Conway points this out repeatedly---it was one of the primary reasons for her leaving her homeland for good.

Her mother was a bright woman with many talents, but she really had no choice regarding the couple's future. Women were not asked their preferences. Her voracious reading habits showed how much she hungered for an education, but that was impossible. Most of her talents were unused in the bush. Her whole life centered on her children, necessary when they were young and the family isolated in frontier country. But so often this results in major problems later. (Empty Nest Syndrome)

Conway's descriptions of outback Australia, and later other geographic regions, are beautiful. I have read her professional publications for some years; she is one of those rare academics who writes prose that is enjoyable to read.

Betty (Out of the Boonies; in FL. for now)

About the discussion point "How does the war affect their lives?". It seems about the same as in the United States except for two things; the bad way Australian soldiers were treated by British commanders and being much more vulnerable to invasion by Japan. The British in World War I had a low opinion of Australians and New Zealanders and seemed to think their only value was cannon fodder. It seems strange that they were so devoted to England and anxious to enlist. They were afraid of Japanese invasion since they are so close to countries where Japan was victorious. They had a small population and would have a hard time defending themselves without American and British help. Many things are similar to small towns in the US during the war. The Australian boys from the bush were the first to enlist. Like many others who enlisted, I joined the Navy as soon as finishing high school; probably to leave a small town and to see something different. In general, in the thirties and forties, I don't think the bush life was tremendously different from life on the great plains; there was tremendous hardship there with the dust bowl and the depression in the thirties. Dale Knapschaefer, Manchester, NH

A belated WELCOME to Fran, Ann, Dianne, Sharon, Roslyn, and, of course, LJ and Ginny, a a timely welcome to Elizabeth and Dale. I, enjoying your comments and gaining insight through them. I'll be back to comment more later!

Haven't read enough yet to comment on the book, but wanted to tell you that while I was getting my book at the library, one of the new librarians overheard me say that it was for my book club. She asked me about the club and said that they were going to start one shortly at the library. I explained to her that ours was online and gave her the SN info. She had heard of SN but didn't realize we had a book club nor had she visited. Perhaps she will now. She was very impressed with what I told her about you all! Sharon

Jill Ker Conway published her memoir when she was a successful university administrator in her early 50's, and had presumably been working on it for some time before that; so she was in the vanguard of the memoir craze. I certainly agree with Betty Kasper that she writes well - so charmingly that it is easy to lose sight of the dark strands of her narrative. She is writing about growing up in a conflict-ridden country vastly different from the United States in geography, social structure, culture, and politics. She is writing about her emergence from protected childhood into an adolescence governed by the struggle to become independent - first, to be recognized for her intellect rather than her gender, and more importantly to become free of the controlling needs of her mother.

I think several people have commented on her mother's "independence" and have hinted that this trait includes a great neediness - the need to have someone depending on her to enhance her feeling of being in control. When the "dependents" stand on their own feet, the "strong person" may become weak and demanding in order to maintain the ties.

So here we are again with mother-daughter conflicts. Do the feminists among us consider this a "feminist" book? Do the academics see it as a paradigm of the woman's struggle in academe? I'd be interested in knowing.

I could find only a passing reference in the early section to the "nardoo stones" which are later used as the keystones of her narrative and her adult viewpoint. Did I miss something?

Ros

I noted the comment about the mis-treatment of Australian soldiers in the British army. The American army was just as hostile to inside outsiders..

During the Cuban crisis, four National Guard divisions were placed on alert and two were called to active duty. The two divisions put on active duty were treated as "Slave Labor" by the army.

So much for "Service" to the nation.

Best

LJ, I'm not clear on the "inside - outsiders" reference. Do you mean the two divisions placed on active duty and treated like slave labor were of a "different" etnic group or that they came from some off-shore location?

Roslyn, I don't think you've missed anything about the Nardoo Stones. They are mentioned at least two more times after the early reference, but Conway doesn't make a clear thematic statement in which they are involved until the end of the book.

I mean they were National Guardsmen called up to active duty. I don't recall which states they were from, but I think one was the Kansas Guard.

Best

JO, you are off to a good start with Coorain and some qood questions to help focus and stimulate our thoughts.

The New York Times Book Review, I thought, had some insightful and delightful comments, a few of which I include here:

"Ms Conway vividly portrays the difficulty with which a child discovers that things in life that appear to be universal are often local, temporary and artificial."

"Coorain - the aborigine word means 'windy place'."

"At Coorain, the most distinctive bird was the kookaburra, 'whose call resembles demonic laughter . . It is hard to imagine a kookaburra feeding St. Jerome or accompanying St. Francis'."

Both the author's parents, but especially her mother, were betrayed by their absolute acceptance of the bush code, which said that 'when disaster struck what mattered was unflinching courage and refusal to consider despair'."

"Her mother had taught Jill to excel in everything. Perfection is no refuge for a child because it is always unattainable."

I expect to enjoy the second time through Coorain more than the first as time and health permit.

Russ

J.K.C.'s growing up in the bush and becoming her father's right hand, having to take the place of her brothers who were away at school, interestingly prepared her for a life that did not fit in the Australian Culture where women could not be independent, and where they had to remain second class citizens, not eligible for equality even when they excelled.

Had she remained in Australia, I am sure that her life would have been totally different. Would she have become frustrated, bitter and angry as her mother became? Very likely.

Betty

Welcome, Russell! I'm so glad you've joined the discussion! In light of the way you managed A Civil Action, we're lucky to have you contributing here.

Elizabeth (Betty), thank you posting! I've been trying to post myself for the last 24 hours, but something is wrong with the connection. I type my responses and then the connection disappears. This is a test! If I'm back in business, I'll be responding later. Thanks to all!

Jo

Russell, I'd like to comment on the very interesting NYT statements:

Ms Conway vividly portrays the difficulty with which a child discovers that things in life that appear to be universal are often local, temporary and artificial."

This is the only one I'd argue with. Conway's rendering of her childhood experiences and feelings never seem temporary or artificial to me. She recreates them in an adult, reflective way, and what she chooses to tell always seems significant and lasting in its impact on her development. Even the "local" can be universal.

"Coorain - the aborigine word means 'windy place'." Nice to know! Where would I have ever found out if not for you and NYT reviewer?

Both the author's parents, but especially her mother, were betrayed by their absolute acceptance of the bush code, which said that 'when disaster struck what mattered was unflinching courage and refusal to consider despair'."

"Her mother had taught Jill to excel in everything. Perfection is no refuge for a child because it is always unattainable."

I wonder how many actually extracted themselves from disaster because of their "unflinching courage" and belief in perfection?

(I am continuing - trying to adapt to the problem I'm having staying online.)

Elizabeth points out that Jill's responsibilities when her brothers were away at school actually prepared her for an independent life she couldn't have had in Australia. What seems self-defeating and destructive from one angle actually strengthens some people. I'm tempted to wonder how things would have been different if the parents had been more "sensible" and given up on the bush life sooner, but isn't that imagining what would have happened if they were two other people? The background of each was toughening. They expected to work very hard, to achieve greatly. in the case of her father, he was at home on those vast plains;I don't think any other life suited him.

Elizabeth, it is remarkable how Jill was prepared for a life of independence. Is Australia still so repressive of women?

I also agree with your previous statement about her mother's unused talents, but some talents were used: she created a beautiful environment in a harsh climate, expanded her mind, and kept the family informed about the war. Her reading program is impressive, considering how hard she had to work every day. The info. provided in the Sydney newspapers fed her discussions of Hitler's persecutions and Mussolini's fascists. She was able to predict Japan's efforts to expand in the Pacific. Little Jill knew who the world leaders were, and how they ranked in power! Her mother was a strong, perceptive woman, no quitter ...but if we refer to the New York Times review again, I guess that means she was also neurotic!

Roslyn wondered if this was a feminist book or "a paradigm of the woman's struggle in academe." Thought provoking! Don't the two frequently overlap? I hope somebody with more experience than me addresses this. Her discussion of her mother's bitterness over the way her own father abandoned her mother and their eight children has a feminist ring. Jill's mother left home went to work early, and lied about her age to get into nurse's training because she was tired of deferring to her brothers. she also rejected Catholicism because it stressed the primacy of reproduction over the welfare of the woman. Later in the book Conway tells of her resentment over preferential hiring when she and her colleagues interviewed for the Department of External Affairs - but that's later! I think this is more of a feminist book than a story of a disgruntled female academic, but readers who haven't read ahead need to consider the latter sections of the book before giving an opinion. I wish someone would give us more specifics on Australia's attitude toward women from the 'thirties on, including the present.

I wish someone would give us more specifics on Australia's attitude toward women from the 'thirties on, including the present.

Probably not too different from attitudes here in this country. Thinking of my own background... My mother, a college graduate, could not get a position teaching, because she was married. She claimed she was born 60 years too soon.

Good morning! It took me a day and a half to change the questions, but thanks to Larry and Ginny I may be able to do it faster next week! We're into the drought now, but I welcome and encourage any of you to address at any time the statement Roslyn made several days ago:

"She is writing about growing up in a conflict-ridden country vastly different from the United States in geography, social structure, culture, and politics."

I think the more insight we get into those differences the more we will appreciate what J.K.C. experienced. Life for her was obviously different from our childhoods in the United States. I really need more insight into the differences in the social structure.

At risk of overstating the obvious, this is the "big change" chapter for Jill. How is she changed?

This was certainly a section of major disaster, wasn't it? Her father commits suicide, the unimaginable drought...just unimaginable--continues, and the mother, o, the mother....every time the mother is mentioned I hear this muffled deep drum...boom, boom, boom.

Mother is a feminist. She was " used to being in charge." (p. 22). A "modern feminist," (p. 22), trying to make a living in a dust storm, in a land where it rained once in May of 1941 (p.53), and didn't rain again for five years. (p. 53)

She "lacked imagination," (p. 62) while the father's imagination "tormented him with ever darker visions of disaster." (p.53).

I thought it was very telling on page 82, when she said ," I did not understand the nature of the ecological disaster which had transformed my world, or that we ourselves had been agents as well as participants in our own catastrophe. I just knew that we had been defeated by the fury of the elements, a fury that I could not see we had earned."

In the face of a depresion and a horrendous 5 year drought, I'm not sure what anybody could have done, altho their Scottish neighbors managed, with far greated resources.

There's something not quite right about this tale. I can't put my finger on it, but it's a diversity of style as pertains to certain events but is not replicated in others.

Motivations of ONE character are absent in the telling of the move, for instance, to Coorain, which is told in a curiously flat, dry, voice without many inner motivations.

I've reread it, and I just can't get a handle on it...but something's being glossed over for a reason, but I haven't a clue why or even WHAT it is.

BUT, it suddenly comes to me, in answer to one of Jo's earlier topics, I think the REASON that the descriptions of the land and awful drought and the awful physical conditions dominate the early part of the book is the author's way of actually concealing what she only hints at later: perhaps, just perhaps the horrific conditions WEREN'T the only things to blame for the dream gone wrong.

But I may be way off base, still hearing that drum.

Ginny

Ginny, so wonderful and helpful! I just want to point out that the big rain was 1939!

"I thought it was very telling on page 82, when she said ,'I did not understand the nature of the ecological disaster which had transformed my world, or that we ourselves had been agents as well as participants in our own catastrophe. I just knew that we had been defeated by the fury of the elements, a fury that I could not see we had earned'."

Would you believe I forgot to put this question in??? In what sense where they agents of their own catastrophe???

I'll say no more for now, although I may go back and edit the questions - if I can! I have responses to what you have said, but I want to hear from others.

I think it was "The end of innocence" The dawning of the "Age of reality". It wasn't just the drought, her Mother's illness, her Father's death or her own "Maturation" It wasd her rejection of ALL the old social crutches and principles of her civilization. GOD, supposed to heed the fall of the Sparrow- thinks less of humanity; In Britain's eyes, Australia was expendable; Loyalty to Great Britain and love for Australia were NOT synonymous

Indeed, this period was the Axle upon which the wheel of her life turned, and the wheel was square not round and smooth.

Best

I am really enjoying reading everyone's comments, and want to comment myself on something that Roz said about being a feminist. I definitely consider myself a feminist, and think that Jill Ker Conway, thanks to her mother's allowing her to go to a good school in Sidney, and her early education at home.

Then, I think it was Russ who mentioned how some things that you thought were so....at later blush turn out to be not so. I remember being around 20 years old and working at Standard Oil of New Jersey in New York City. My dad was the Assistant Treasurer of Getty Oil, and stopped in to see me one day. Since I thought my father was just a little less important than God I was shocked when I introduced him to my two bosses, who held low level managerial jobs, and they were not very impressed. I don't know what this has to do with the book we are reading, but it came to mind.

Jo, thanks so much for the great job you are doing!

L.J., your comments are very perceptive and poetically phrased! I still haven't read very far, at least not far enough to comment. Sorry I'm so slow, but the new heart med I'm on just lays me out for a couple weeks after it's increased. Hope to read more this week. Sharon

Posting on Seniornet is getting to be as exciting as playing lotto - we never know whether our comments will appear or just be swallowed up by cyberspace! I tried to post last night to say that I think readers need to be very thoughtful when reading memoirs. Many of us fell into a similar trap with Angela's Ashes, though if you pay careful attention to McCourt's interview responses you see that he dances around the subject of selective memory and careful editing.

What Conway tells us about her "independent" childhood, her hardihood in doing what sounds like an adult's job of animal care and farm work, is just what she has reconstructed based on her adult perception of the child's memories. So are her descriptions of her parents, their pasts, their personalities. Remember, it's not fiction but it's not whole fact either. This approach to the review of one's life is perfectly legitimate but I don't find it productive to make broad judgments about the things/people she describes. I'd really have to say that she looks back and sees her mother as brave, strong, etc. She recalls the house as always neat, the servants as cheerful and obedient, the meals as delicious, the children always clean and freshly dressed . . . I don't feel that I can accept that all these things were exactly as she describes. This doesn't invalidate her descriptions as long as I view them in the light of adjusted, assembled, and organized recollections rather than as facts.

Ros

Memories are such tricky things. I read somewhere that two people can see the same thing and earnestly describe it, and both be totally opposed. I think that's done a lot in psychology classes, where someone bursts in, and then the class has to describe the person? Or may be seen in a crime scene. I think that's what makes writers write.

And, of course, our perceptions are clouded by our own experiences, and so we can lay down on paper anything we'd like: who's to say nay?

And since Ros mentions Frank McCourt, just a reminder that at 8 tonight on CINEMAX, the McCourts of Limerick with lots of photos and interviews will air. Apparently no punches are pulled about the bitterness or hardship. I look forward to viewing it. In that one we do have to remember the dead children.

Sharon, so glad you're back with us, I've missed your comments, and look forward to them all.

Fran: what did you think when your friends didn't think the sky had opened when your Dad visited?

I keep trying to put myself into the place of this family, finding it very hard: I'm not much for drought. No rain for years??......dying animals...I wonder what she meant by saying they were causative agents and participants in their own doom? Is she saying I wonder that they could have chosen a different life? Or maybe a bigger stake? Why did the neighbor get more acreage? Did they buy this or did the govt. give it and if so why did they get less? I missed that, somehow.

Ginny

I was all "typed up" and then kapow! The 'net dumped me! I'll try to be back later - thanks to all!

Let me try again. If anyone missed yesterday's posts (16th), please do a couple click-backs and read. There are some fine responses and helpful observations. LJ, you nailed it for me. What Conway heard and saw and lived through during these episodes dislodged the beliefs she had been taught and changed her thinking forever. Great metaphor: life is a square wheel! Been travlin' on it a long time!

Ginny, could the part you're not hearing or the uneven presentation be partly because we NEVER hear another voice - the mother's, for instance? Is hers the voice you miss when the decision to leave Coorain is made? Angus talked to Jill, you recall, and then went to her mother to persuade her to take the child to a different environment. Maybe the move never would have occurred without his intervention! Imagine!! I wonder what would have become of her? Roslyn points out that we only hear a narrow viewpoint and necessarily faulty memories in first-person biographies. Could that be the cause of what you describe?

Fran, when I was a wee tad I was startled to find out my father couldn't ski! I thought he could do everything, beause he could draw, paint, carve, ice-skate, whistle through his teeth and jump over fences. That was a big revelation for me, not as life changing as the ones that Jill experiences, but significant. Just recording this makes me appreciate him all over again!

Greetings all from Disney's Epcot Center!

I just had to stop ad check in with you in The Innovations Center. Yes, Australia is just as repressive today as it was when J.K.C. was there. Whereaqs The U.S. had made progress, they not had the movement for equality that we have had.

Academia, too, is always more discriminatory because the evaluations are less objective than in many areas of endeavor. I have seen the committees operate now for 40 years, and not a lot has changed in many universities.

I shall expand on this later when I return home.

Betty

You know what, Jo, I think you're right. The mother's voice is silent, we're hearing only Jill's perspective and Dad's in these pages. We do have direct quotes from Dad. How did Jill know Mom yearned back to her nursing days?

You're right, it's her voice which is missing.

On the subject of the reticent Australian, lots of cultures are reticent. The acknowledgment of truth or healing of grief or healing of feuds are usually non existant, as stoicism is praised and introspection frowned upon. Thus the proliferation of alcoholism, depression, frustration, and constant anger.

I read lately that if a mother fails to respond to an infant in just a matter of seconds when the infant begins verbalizing, the brain cells which were developing for language articulation die, and are never replaced, just sort of slowly acclimated.

I'm sure we all know inarticulate people. They are more at home with silence and silent suffering than they are "running their mouth."

It's not just Australian--and it doesn't help whereever it is, or whatever you call it.

Ginny

JO, such good posts by you and others! Especially, I thought the #47 post by Ros was keen analysis.

I'm running on "slow" just now but hope a few more weeks will see improvement. Meanwhile, I'm watching and enjoying!

Russ

In Academia change is slow because the tenured take too long to die.

Best

Thanks, Ginny!! Just returned from B * N where I saw Jill Ker Conway's newest book, When Memory Speaks, Reflections on Autobiography. Quite relevant to our thoughts on what considerations should inform our reading of autobiography, perhaps even hers.

Russ

Dear friends,

I have been completely well, and I am also running on slow. Wonder if it is the weather! At least in Delaware we haven't had the devastating storms the Jill describes now much of the El Nino problem.

As far as what I thought when nobody was as taken with my Dad's visit to my office as I thought they would be......I think that's when I grew up, and realized that just perhaps I saw things from a different perspective being a daughter who thought the world of her Dad, and others who saw him as just an ordinary man.

I am thinking of Roz's comment, and I suppose it is correct. Those are Jill's memories of her Mother and Father, and they too could be colored, but I, for one would, just take that for granted.

Am enjoying the comments as much as the book.

Sorry we don't get Cinemax here. Is this the same video that can be bought?

About memories: aren't Conway's - or anybody's - memories true? I mean, if this is what she remembers, then she was affected accordingly. Someone else's version of what happened won't have an impact on her development, feelings about the past and value formation but her own version will.

Ginny, I agree about the universality of reticence. I think Conway used the word about Australians in this chapter but I can't find it just now. Do you think all the sick symptoms have finally persuaded parents to try to communicate with their children more effectively? Remember how the parents'communication broke down? How the mother said after the father's death that he would not want the children to cry? Then she went off and cried herself!

I think the Kers had more trouble maintaining their ranch during the draught than some neighbors because others had more time invested, more land to graze, and more revenue accumulated that enabled them to weather some bad years as they waited for rain - Angus, for instance.

I want to avoid getting into a discussion about "truth," but because memory is a mental product that constantly undergoes revision I think its relationship to "truth" is questionable. Certainly what Ker recalls can buttress her own interpretation of events, but I don't feel I could unquestioningly accept that interpretation as simply a collection of true facts. So, although I can accept the way in which she recalls and evaluates her mother's behavior, and the way in which her perception of it affected her development, I would not necessarily believe that it must be a true account of what her mother was, or did, or - least of all - felt.

Of course this is a secondary issue that doesn't interfere with my appreciation of the book or with my admiration of the author's style.

Ros

Note that the ranch wasn't all that much of a failure in the long run. Mother held things together (As Mothers so often do) and ultimately it served the survivors in this family well.

Best

Yes, LJ, I thought about that quite a bit. It really did survive, after all! I'm happy that the mother was persuaded to take Jill away, though. She found long-distance ways to get the job done, and Jill was able to use her talents and expand her vision of life.

And Roslyn, I agree - my use of "true" about memories was misleading. I meant that Conway's version of what happened had lasting subjective impact. She would question another rendition of what happened or what her mother was like if somebody said she was wrong.

Was reading a book review about Conway's latest which states,"Conways approach to writing about heroines and feminist autobiography is heavily invested in the idea of personal authority that she terms "agency". Agency is what enables you to tell the truth about yourself in the face of all consequences that might befall you." From where I sit ,telling the truth about oneself is always going to be based on one's own perceptions and past experiences,no matter what their truthful intent or "agency". Any comments?

Since the readers of this folder are also the readers who so enjoyed "Angelas Ashes" I thought you might be interested in Conway's take on the book. The reviewer of this new book , tells us that,"Frank McCourt was never boring until Conway sank her teeth into "Angelas Ashes" and came away growling that "McCourt's MOTHER is the central character, the image of female endurance and oppression by men." Interesting to think of her as the main character of the book.

She was certainly worthy of consideration, and in spite of her later liason which turned her son against her, she deserves credit for the survival af what few of her children DID live. The Father turned out to be a "Deserter" comparable to the "Church". McCort seems to have glossed over this.

Consider also that the book was named for her.

Best

She was central to the book recounting McCourt and his brother's experiences. The author seemed disinclined to call his father a deserter, although I do see him putting the church in that category. An element of sympathy for the alcohoic, frustrated father came through, anyway.

Helen, I splurged and bought Conway's new book, "When Memory Speaks." It's about autobiography or memoir in general, not exclusively by or about women. After Coorain and True North, both so rich in detail, it does seem rather academic in style. However, I didn't find her reference to McCourt "boring," as the reviewer suggested (was this review in, heaven forbid, The New Republic? I wouldn't go so far as to suggest the Standard [smile]), but thought her brief evaluation of Angela's Ashes was quite fair. The reviewer might not have read far enough to discover that though Angela might have been a central character, she was no heroine. Conway spots McCourt's later disaffection with his mother's behavior, starting with her submission to the cousin who offers the family shelter in exchange for menial service and sexual favors. One of her themes appears to be the way in which women, writing their own memoirs, were able to overcome the romantic stereotypes of the passive little lady, the devoted housewife, etc.

Ros

Although we're about to begin a new segment, it might be worth-while to consider briefly, the exchange of menial service and the use of one's body for sexual purposes for food, shelter and in today's culture, drugs. Certainly in essence, most people perform services for food and shelter. The sale of a person's body for basic and not so basic needs is, I THINK, conciously or otherwise a fundimentally voluntary action.

Best

I've been following the discussion about this wonderful book. I read it about a month ago but after reading all of your posts, I'm going back over it and picking up on things I missed the first time and enjoying it all over again. Just wanted to comment on McCourt's judgement of his mother (Angela's Ashes) - at that point any sympathy that I had for him vanished.

LJ, o wise one of the hills, is it possible I detect a veiled reference to the unconscious? Freud must be waving his ghostly cigar in delight. But seriously, if we can tolerate looking objectively at the whole business of human transactions, what else do we have to offer, in exchange for the satisfaction of material needs, besides the provision of services? Extrapolate from "the sweat of thy brow" to: cook, sew, scrub, wipe noses or other body parts, hammer, chisel, paint, build or tear down, type, teach, add and subtract, cuddle, dance, titillate, invent, steal ... to earn a crust and shelter from the night wind. And there is no reason to exclude sexual activity from this list, though it belongs in other places as well.

I think -- if I understood you correctly - you have suggested that Angela's willingness to be intimate with the man whom Frank saw as both cruel and crude also involved an understandable need for adult intimacy. Here again, don't we need to look at the way memoir departs from factual accuracy? Perhaps any man who could command his mother's compliance would have seemed gross, ugly, and hateful to Frank at that age and stage. And in our discussion of the book didn't we almost uniformly condemn Angela for her passivity? She was no heroine to us, though she might have had the potential for heroism had she been depicted as stronger and more forthright.

Do you, then, see both passivity and activity as unconsciously motivated? If so, you've given us another way of looking at Conway's story.

Ros

I also read this book a few years ago. I found it and I am going to read it again. All of your comments are excellent--

I'm bowled over by this emerging analogy! So glad I read Angela's Ashes even though I wasn't a Seniornet member and didn't know the discussion was going on! My reaction to Angela was that she was desperate - for all the reasons suggested by Roslyn and LJ. I agree that a pre-adolescent boy would be disgusted and angry, and I don't grudge him his feelings any more than I condemn his mother. Hadn't they both had enough on their respective plates by that time? I reserve my disgust for the "cousin" who took advantage of their desperation so abominably.

Roslyn, what about the passivie - active comparison? Could you make that clearer? In Conway's memoir, everyone seems as active as circumstance and relationships permits, They were probably engaged in all the activities you list, with the possible exception of stealing and sexual activity. Was the mother's "passive" acceptance of Angus's urging to leave somehow unconsciously motivated behavior?

Youall (Ros and Jo) have spoken eloquently to the point.

Best

It's time for me to fumblefoot around with new questions for the next section, but before I start to fumble, I'd like to include a few comments about some of the questions above.

In order to consider Conway's statement that they were in some ways the agents of their own catastrophe, I have to rely upon her earlier comments about the management of grazing land. Evidently they did not have the deep financial resources necessary to maintain themselves and the property throughout years of drought. Perhaps they should have kept the herds smaller, allowing the animals to graze over a wider area, instead of buying and breeding more sheep to overgraze the stricken land too quickly. Perhaps they should have sold the ranch, or left sooner to find a different way of life before her father was pushed over the edge of despair.

But that would not have been a happy solution for her father, who was happy under those wide Australian skies in a way her mother never was. In fact, by the time they were packing to leave, the mother had reached the point where she couldn't bear to look at the dried-out landscape with the bleached, skeletal remains of animals in plain view. Conway said she shared her mother's sentiments at this point, yet she goes out and surveys the scene before they leave. She is reviewing the significant images of a childhood that at one point she called "idyllic." She almost seems to have loved the land as her father had, but like her mother she is quite ready to turn her back on it.

The parents' different temperaments are evident after their decision to borrow money to buy wheat and hire more help to feed the starving sheep. (Maybe THIS is the moment when they participated in designing their own catastrophe! ) Her father is more silent and depressed, more haunted by nightmares of disaster and of his past war experiences, but once the decision was make, her mother was "imperturbable." "Other memories of loss from his childhood were overwhelming him. He could not set out in mid-life to be once more the orphan without patrimony. As he sank deeper into depression, they understood one another less. She, always able to rouse herself to action, could not understand crippling depression, except by a brisk call to count one's blessings." (70) Like all of us who fill creation, each is fatally himself or herself. Jill comforts her father throughout the struggle, at her mother's behest following him on his dailyrounds, asking question, making him laugh. After his death, she comforts her mother, even though "the experience of cumulative dissaster had darkened my mood." Like her father, she still cannot conceive of leaving Coorain. She shows strength like her mother, but the capacity for patient intervention in her father's dark moods makes her different. While all this is going on, her vision of creation has changed, as LJ pointed out so many posts ago: God's not watching, nature isn't benevolent, the fates are "capricious and puunishing."(79) I wonder if her capacities for compassion and her deepened pereceptions would have developed so rapidly in another environment.

She (Jill) very perceptively (and retrospectively) evaluated the "Class System" and compared both the advantages and disadvantages of British colonial attitudes,(Pg 95) with succinct phraseology. She then went on to emphasize the "Non-Australian" Britishness of an ageing educational system.(Pg 98) I did wonder a bit as I compared American Education where I learned the same English Grammer, parsing and analysis. I never did manage spelling very well, and punctuation remains rather vague to me. We did have an abundance of "English" literature and that darn Shakespere. Thus, it seems to me that the major difference lies in Fiction, short stories, novels and "Scanson" (Whatever that is).

Best

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Now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

Ginny

If Ginny can - well:

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We will now resume our regularly scheduled program. Thank You!

I think one of the most poignant passages in "Road" is when Jill discovers that she doesn't know how to play with other children and doesn't know the rules that apply to procedures in school. It makes you wonder at the importance that our society gives to "play" now.

Good point, Shirley (re learning/knowing social customs we assume are a given). I marvel at how she moved thru so much isolation and emotionally depressing times to eventually become a college president, American and pretigious (sp?) no less.

Here's my chance to use a word I've often admired but can seldom fit into the conversation: concatenation, the linking of events in a chain. As I flipped back through the first sections of Coorain looking for some kind of unifying idea, I began to think about the shaping of Jil Ker through a combination of the times, the country, the family circumstances, and her innate personality. It seems vivid to me because of its difference in every respect from my own "chain of circumstance." I heard someone on a TV program quoting a proverb to the effect that "The man is nothing, the times are everything."

Had Jill Ker been born 10 years earlier, growing up in the 1920's instead of at the threshold of a war that opened up opportunities for women, would she have had the same experiences? And could she have taken advantage of them?

Born in England, she would have missed the unique geography, the exposure to hard work and a rugged outdoor life, combined with the opportunity to move from that setting to an exclusive private school. Though her education emphasized the glories of English culture, as a keenly intelligent and questioning "colonial," she was distanced from the mother country and had to be aware of cultural differences.

Ker's childhood was changed by her father's death, her mother's stubborn struggle to maintain control of her children's lives while at the same time demanding their loyalty and support. And, as I think has been mentioned previously, a unique condition of the Australian sheep farming -- the necessity for surviving literally years of drought and privation while waiting for the rains that would bring prosperity -- must have contributed to her ability to pursue a distant goal despite an arid and stifling emotional climate and the need for routine, slogging work.

Ros

There were places in this part of the book where Jill's commentary was related more to local or temporal or even universal circumstances, than to being British, colonial or female.

Practices (good or bad) which teach "Group Loyalty" or identity, common courtesy, good posture, local speech patterns, false values (Like useing prowess in sports to excuse other shortcomings and in our country, even murder or rape) and the dissatisfaction of almost everybody with "Institutional" diets and food, aren't related exclusively to femininity, colonialism etc.

At times Jill seems to confuse regimentation and urbanization with being "British"

Best

Good points, LJ. I hate to labor the point about young women's relationship with their mothers, but I'm seeing a lot of what Ker writes here as ways in which she was trying to reduce her mother to manageable size in order to be able to go on with her own life choices. Mother looms large on every other page, and I think some of the outworn practices and the false values you refer to represented (in her mind) Mother's beliefs and her world, and therefore were to be scorned, cast off, risen above.

I greatly admire Ker's keen intelligence and her strong personality. Maybe in the sequel I'll find her admission that the mother she had, and what that mother did for her, were essential to the woman she became. Her father affected her life by dying, her mother by living on.

Ros

What a great insight into "concatenation", Ros. And into the story of course.

One comment about the curriculum and social structure of the school. I think that most colonial outposts were more or less forced into replicating the colonizing country's educational system and mores. I am perhaps more familiar with the former French colonies, but the same thing was true there. There was very little relevance to the colony's location and structure. All of the former French colonies in Africa were forced to be educated entirely in French, study French geography, French law, French literature, French history & government. Even though those colonies are now independent countries, many, if not most, of that curriculum continues. Gradually, they are adding their own history and literature and language, but it is still quite limited in Mali, Senegal, Cote d'Ivoire, etc.

I have also noticed that in reading about people from Australia & NZ, that they refer to Great Britain as home and travel to it as if it were Mecca. I presume that attitude is depicted truthfully. The US doesn't seem to follow the pattern of most former colonies. Do you suppose that is because we are such a melting pot now?

I am really enjoying reading everyone's contributions, even if I don't post much. Sharon

Sharon, how right you are about "Home," usually with a capital H. The word is frequently used in Kipling's works, and I recall references to it in much other colonial literature and in autobiographies and memoirs - often with the disclaimer that for the writer, born and reared in some distant part of the British Empire, the term "Home" had two distinct meanings - first,the actual birthplace and residence and second, England itself, which was still the center of the culture.

Am I right in thinking that Australian "colonialism" was different from that of the Indian, African, and other outposts because
(1) there was comparatively less military strength?
(2) within the Anglos themselves there was a class system because the first settlers were expropriated convicts and remittance men of a distinctly lower social class than the later gentlemen-adventurers and entrepreneurial ranchers?
(3) the native population was more thinly spread across the huge half-empty continent and thus presented different problems of "control" by the immigrants?

As Ker implies, the principal struggle of the settlers seemed to lie in the effort to triumph over the land, rather than to keep the flag flying for King and country.

Ros

Another point to keep in mind as the worth of a "British Passport" disintegrates and no longer entitles a colonial unquestioned passage to England, is the changeing attitude of those who were or still are "Colonials"

Best

I'm enjoying the insights and the information provided by this week's wonderful posts. Everytime I try to get my oar in the gods of cyberspace tell me I'm disconnected, which I always knew, but to be told so rudely and so frequently - that's where the canker gnaws! Ros's concatenation observation and Sharon's comparisons on colonialism and LJ's wise reactions have added more than I could hope to andyway, especially about Australia and colonialism on other continents. I'm going to post now before I get kicked off again, try to gather my thoughts, and come back later. (Before we move on, please react to Conway's observation of "social distance" and life at Abbotsleigh - questions above!)

'...a simple world where we each knew our respective places." That was the setting at Coorain where Jill was comfortable being friendly with the workmen because the boundaries were clearly defined and of course she was at the highest social level there. She was shocked by the apparent reversal of ascendancy when she went to the state school, where instead of being respected she was tormented and laughed at. Her polite manners and careful speech were ridiculed. This could only have been puzzling and hurtful to a sensitive child. She must also have been aware of the pathos of her mother's determination to maintain all the niceties of the "better people" even though she was struggling with two jobs to make ends meet.

Abbotsleigh was more of the same. The staff and most of the girls belonged to some intangible, loosely defined "upper class," one visible mark of which was the ability to speak English without one touch of broad Australian dialect. Jill was comfortable there, and it was not until much later in her life that she began to notice the effect that class divisions had on individuals.

Jo, it is wise of you to call our attention to this aspect of Conway's store, for it has great significance as we consider the rest of her education and her later life.

Ros

I would like to point out the variations in "Spatial" distance, i.e. "Personal Space" It took me over a year living on an island in the Caribbean to become accustomed to the very small "Personal Space" respected by natives. I think I noticed it first and most in the grocery store lines. I even Growled rather hostily a few times only to be confronted by quizzical looks from the "Offenders"

LJ, I'll try not to crowd you!

In this section Jill has occasion for the first time to notice that she lives on a different level of society than other Australian children. She sees the children of the poor workers along the dusty railroad tracks and she has a brief experience at a state-run school where the power over the environment is in the hands of disenchanted children who do not seem to be learning anything. "I was too young and insecure to wonder what a good school might have made of such high-spirited pupils…." The work and struggle to survive on Coorain, the teaching she will receive at a traditional British-colonial school, and the new awareness of inequity are all parts of her learning experience.

Colonial seems definable as "the way we've always done it." Colonials mimic the school system and curricula of the homeland, taking a long time to realize that there is a new homeland with the lessons of its environment and social history to be learned. In the United States, up until the 'sixties, secondary English and history texts all but ignored the Native American creativity and involvement in our history, and they certainly omitted major figures in Black history and the arts, including soldiers and writers. Our move toward multiculturalism in education didn't occur until about three hundred years after the beginning of slavery.

Where IS everybody??

I thought that the crux of this week's section of the book lay in the quote, "How could I tell this woman who lived for me that I did not want to live for her"

I wonder if the silence in this folder isn't due to this universal concept with which most if not all of us must deal from the author's point of view, and with which about half of the population must deal from the Mother's point of view?

Waiting

Best

I thought this section, pages 121-151 had so many many things in it to talk about! Half of mine is underlined!

Think Jo's questions are just excellent, too, and TOUGH!! Try this one, for instance:

In what facet of her personality are the mother's strengths and weaknesses rooted?

The Mother-Daughter thing is really strong here. They go to Ceylon, but are not happy travelers: "I had been raised in a household of such precise regularity, governed by such an obesession with cleanliness, that I shared my mother's fears about whether our rooms were really clean, and I joined her in rejecting the unfamiliar food. Along with this low level anxiety, I was puzzled about how to understand and organize the daily flood of new images."

That's the best description I've read of why my husband hates to travel: it's a control issue.

Then Mom has to put a pin in the balloon of the Hindu wedding by talking about the child bride and the family's having bankrupted them selves (often) for such things, when she, in fact, had no idea of the age of the bride nor the circumstances of the wedding.

The first time I read this I marvelled at the author's perspectives, now I'm seeing both her and her mother in an entirely different light.

Then, on their return home, "a hurricane of disapproval" descends, and "an inner voice I had not heard efore remarked,'So, we are going to have to pay for it.'"

I'm going to go out on a limb based entirely on what Conway has told us and say that mom was obsessive, a control freak, selfish (" In fact, she thought little about the consequences for others of the plans which would serve her objective of the moment.)" (page 137). That's harsh, and I'm not the one saying it.

So here we have opened up the age old dilemma: do I insist the kids do what I think in my wisdom would untimately profit them, or do I let them follow their own star?

Look at Barry, who tried. and who began to be taciturn, stoic, and had difficulty in showing his feelings (pg. 136).

I think the mother's strengths were her determination to plod on regardless, but the obsessive control and cleanliness which had worked so well for her in advancing her career as a nurse did not translate too well to her children's welfare. I think she tried, but her neuroticism got in the way, and so her strength of control became her downfall ultimately: you might say her selfishness was at the heart of all of it.

Could be wrong, I don't know the lady, but that's what I'm seeing so far.

Ginny

A woman who cleans, scrubs, and sweeps, and keeps her children nice and tidy is not only a woman who loves order but one who intensely fears that she will succumb to dirt and disorder and will end up wallowing in it. A psychiatrist of my acquaintaince once commented, about someone whose superlative neatness I was envying, that she undoubtedly had something very untidy somewhere in her house. I would speculate that the physical orderliness and emotional control of Jill's mother contained (and for a long time concealed) the seeds of her wish to let go, thrash around, act helpless, and generally reveal herself to be the opposite of what she had pretended to be.

Her children's normal process of growing away from her and becoming independent terrified her, and she played on their guilt, particularly her daughter's, in the hope of forestalling it. I don't think we need to see her as an ogre. Jill needed to see her that way (just as we all had to perceive our parents as monsters at some point ... and believe it or not, our kids saw us that way too) in order to break the ties that go back to the cradle if not the womb.

We could get very metaphorical and talk about Australia as another maternal symbol -- the arid, backward country that devours its children and stifles their potential and won't give them what they need to become mature adults ... but we don't need to.

Similarly, Jill's sudden insights into the plight of the downtrodden, the lower-class, the differently colored, were part of her battle for independence. As I think she says somewhere, their struggle and hers were similar, meaning their entitlement and hers were similar.

Ros

(After dinner - I'm back.) I want to get away from the topic of mother-daughter conflict to comment that, whatever shaped Conway's path, it's heartening to think how fully she overcame many obstacles and succeeded in realizing her intellectual potential. Many women didn't have that opportunity. She had the money, the brains, the guts, and the energy to pursue her goals. She is obviously brilliant, and also was smart enough to find ways of improving her physical appearance so that she would be more appealing. (Say what we will about equality, pretty beats ugly every time.) She's also a respected scholar and was a successful university administrator. We might claim her story as a triumph for all women, but certainly it is a personal triumph for Jill Ker Conway, so three rousing cheers for her. I also like the level at which this book is written: She isn't sensational, and there's a certain ladylike reserve in the narrative. She doesn't talk down, and appears to be as honest as any memoir-writer can be.

Ros

I read an article yesterday that Katie Sturtz sent me about the talk by Frank McCourt and Mary Karr where they discussed their memoirs and their shock at how some people have received them.

Frank McCourt was surprised at some of the negative feedback he had gotten from his, saying he couldn't understand it: in Ireland they called that "bregrudgery."

Mary Karr, of course, was angry at her negative reviews, saying nobody asked ****to account for the number of romance novels he had written, so (just tossed this yesterday but it's in a prior issue of New York Magazine if you'd like to see it: very short article) apparently she too has gotten some flak.

Now we're in Jill Conways's memoir and the memoir is the hottest new genre going, but it makes you think WHY ? If I write about my own childhood, why am I doing it? What possible interest would it be to you to read it? What is the history of the memoir, anyway, and WHY are there so many all of a sudden?

I'm trying to COMPARE this one to the two others we've read. Compared to them, there's been no ?? has there?? severe parental trauma, no household horrors....Would you write one only IF you were famous and everyone wanted to know more about you, or IF you had such a uinque or different story it just cried to be heard??

Or should the memoir take on a literary merit of its own?

I keep wondering what Jill Conway's story would look like if McCourt or Karr wrote it.

Ginny

"How did I get where I am today?"

Some years ago in an excellent British comedy-drama series called "The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin," the lead character was played by Leonard Somebody (the name will come back to me later, I'm just having a Senior Moment). His recurrent statement, either defending or explaining his actions, was, "I didn't get where I am by ... " (whatever he was rejecting or criticizing). That quickly became, and has remained, a catch-phrase in our family. I think it may also be a key to the origin and to some extent the current popularity of the memoir.

In the recent discussion about the ongoing gobbling up of big publishers by bigger ones, someone has said that the memoir has replaced the autobiographical first novel - easier to write, less demanding in style, easier to edit, cheaper to publish, easily personalized with talk-show appearances, bookstore signings, etc. All those are economic considerations, and economic - marketing - considerations are, alas, profoundly affecting what is published and sold and what we are now invited to read. "Lowest common denominator" is taking on a new and sinister meaning.

To return to the core motivation, I think that a successful person, like the rest of us, looks back at the path life has taken and takes account of the journey. The need to reflect and report on this journey and the wish to describe it in writing sometimes coincide with the interest of a literary agent. And, as Ginny suggests, the shape of the memoir depends on the personality (and often the public persona) of the author.

How did the little girl on the isolated Australian sheep ranch become one of the most distinguished women in the American academy? Jill Conway's life journey has included geographic isolation, hard physical work, family losses, family conflicts, educational ups and downs, gender-based discrimination, difficult decisions, and travel to distant places. It has also included political, sexual, and life-style experimentation, and a typical struggle between family ties and the need for independence. She could have written a sensational horror story. Instead she shaped a fairly straightforward and unimpassioned account.

Ginny, I think McCourt would have personalized the narrative, added humor and skipped most of the socio-political and geographic details. Others would have underlined the sexual elements, embellished the story of the parents' marital relationship, and made an ogre out of every opponent within and outside the family. Conway's relative reserve, depriving us of thrills, easy tears and facile outrage, forces us to use our own experience and knowledge to reflect on her text.

Ros

Ros: Rossiter. Leonard Rossiter. We should open a folder entirely made up of old British sit coms, I have every one memorized. It was the boss at .....what was it foods?? Who used to say I didn't get where I am today. Love that show...you're right.

What excuse then, had Mary Karr? She was a poet??

The idea of point of view is very interesting.

I am probably the only person in the world with a complete set of Dad's Army, but that is appropos of nothing.

This is a good thought: "Conway's relative reserve, depriving us of thrills, easy tears and facile outrage, forces us to use our own experience and knowledge to reflect on her text. "

That's what's happening, we're interweaving our OWN perspectives into this, I bet everybody is seeing something different. Interesting.

Ginny

I should get kicked off Internet on a weekly basis - come to think of it, I do! My "server" experienced several days of technical difficulty, which means that when I finally got hooked up here today, I had a wonderful reading experience! I not sure where to start to respond; I want to see if this "posts" before I begin!

How about that! It still works!

LJ, is the "universal" you mention the struggle we all go through in making our youthful declaration of independence from family? If so, how apt are Ginny and Roslyn's recent words about the "typical struggle between family ties and the need for independence(Ros)" and reading memoirs through our own perspective. I thought we would get around to this, and I think that's 'way more than half the reason memoirs are so popular lately. We aren't all Jill Ker Conways or Frank McCourts, but we all remember Mama and the stuff we went through in trying to determine our own destinies. So much resonates with my experience - even the counterproductive diet that Jill was served at home and at school and which she blames for her teenage chubby period (when I was a preadolescent they labled certain clothing sizes "chubbies").

Ros says,"I would speculate that the physical orderliness and emotional control of Jill's mother contained (and for a long time concealed) the seeds of her wish to let go, thrash around, act helpless, and generally reveal herself to be the opposite of what she had pretended to be."

WOW! That takes my breath away! It makes wonderful sense, and I'm tempted too quickly to apply it to certain situations with which I am acquainted. I'll say no more, at least about the personal things. Jill's mother certainly must have felt that she didn't dare let go after the death of her husband, and I think after Bob's death part of her does "let go" - nowadays some folks would say she "loses it," meaning her sanity. The compensating behavior is the demanding, accusatory, controlling behavior, which seems to go much further than it did previously, even though it was always in her nature.

I see her INTRANSIGENCE as the facet of her personality in which her strengths and weakness are rooted.

JO, I have no quick, all encompassing answer, and indeed you've already begun to summarize and answer the question.

Remember the old saying "A son is a son till he takes a wife. A daughter's a daughter ALL of her life" Does this refer just to "Momma" who perforce must take a back-seat to a Man's wife and Children (Sometimes gracefully, sometimes not).

There are at least four major aspects to this. Boys (Men), Girls (Women), Mothers, and Fathers.

Best

My children are exhausting.... I'm glad to take the "back seat," when I get the chance! If they hadn't married, when would I have a chance to discuss a book on the Internet???!!!

Ginny, I think it was you who asked how JKC became such an outstanding women in light of the difficulty of her early life. Don't you think that the axiom, "The fire that melts the butter, tempers the steel." explains a great deal of this. I agree that that is somewhat simplistic, but think that Jill's strength is what supports and leads her through all her trials and tribulations.

In discussing the motivations of an author of memoirs, I think that Frank McCourt and Jill KC both wrote partially to instruct the world as to the history of their countries and the difficulties of living there.

By the way, Ginny, who won the book? Here I was certain it would be me! along with the Readers' Digest Sweepstakes! Ha! Sharon

Sharon, and anyone else who is still waiting for the Prize Patrol:

The winner of The Color of Water is none other our own
Fran O !!!

She is the one who read the book and recommended it as a BC nomination in the first place!

Soooooo as soon as Fran returns, we will be sending her an alternate prize, as well as the surprise bonus (she also selected Kentucky as the winning team).
Way to go, Fran!

Hope the rest of you had as much fun as we did!

Congratulations FRAN O!

Sharon Ede , I think you 've made an excellent point about McCourt's and Cameron's wish to tell readers something about the unique characteristics of their native lands. In both cases, it's possible to cherish a romantic and wholly inaccurate picture of the geography and the living conditions.

I've recently read some travel narratives by V. S. Pritchett which go back to his youthful wanderings after World War I. What a beautiful, relaxed, dreamy place his Ireland was! In spite of the soldiers at every street corner, he was captivated by the wonderful landscapes, the soft speech of the people, and so on. That's not what we learn from McCourt.

I had read a number of books by Australian writers but somehow, though my picture of a hard and challenging land was clear, ideas about the culture (both European and indigenous), the educational system, and the position of women were lacking. Cameron has certainly changed that!

Ros

For JKC, this was the period of intellectual crisis and awakening. In Ceylon, she meets non-European culture and history, and begins to see herself as part of a world larger than the one she has previously experienced. "Our first visits to Buddhist temples and sacred sites gave me what then seemed the astonishing information that this great religious figure had existed nearly six hundred years before Christ. Each great temple contained relics of the Budda, objects of veneration, just like Christian relics. Why had no one taught me more about this earlier faith so similar to Christianity in so many respects? Moreover, why had I been taught to date everything from the birth of Christ and the emergence of the Christian West, when great capitals like Anuradhapura, among whose white, gold, and grey ruins we climbed, had been thriving three hundred years before Christ's birth?

To her political knowledge about the British Parliment she adds information about the political history of Anuradhapura, "the thriving empire...and the political conflicts which had flourished there, (which) made me realize that there were other political traditions about which I knew nothing."

"This was a Buddhist and Hindu country. I wondered idly what Australia was (!). Did people in Ceylon believe in karma and a cyclical view of history to explain away the terrible inequities between classes and castes? This set me to wondering what beliefs we had at home to justify our inequities."

With these "subversive perceptions" back to Australia where she learns the Treaty of Versailles, the vengeance toward WWII enemies, the beauty of King James and Shakespeare, and the desert snd whitening bones in the landscapes of T.S. Eliot , "great poetry about a landscape I knew.. . . his imagination was rooted in a midwestern American landscape. I just knew that it resonated for me in ways English romantic poetry never could."

All this is added to her restlessness with her circumstances at home. Her eventual departure is foreshadowed in many ways by the intellectual experiences she details in this chapter.

Jo, one always hesitates to use the word "intellectual" because so many people sneer at it, but your comments helped me to recognize that Conway's narrative at this point is about intellectual growth. Maybe this is one of the things that make the book exciting. Here is a young woman who has gone through childhood and an embarrassing physical adolescence and now finds that she is gaining not only knowledge but understanding, and the ability to integrate her ideas and "connect the dots." She starts to wonder, as you quote, "what beliefs we had at home to justify our inequities." That's a keen observation.

How wonderful to have those feelings and insights when one is young enough to think that something can be done!

Ros

Jill and I certainly have one thing in common, although perhaps I'm even more contemptuous of the French addiction to the pronunciation of their language than was she.

Best

"Contemptuous," eh, LJ? Not "defeated," not "cowed," not "discouraged," not even "bemused"?

I wonder whether the broad Australian vowels would have made it even harder to approximate Parisian French. (And Parisian French is spoken so rapidly with so many slurs, elisions, and swallowed vowels, that "pure Parisian" wouldn't be helpful at all.) My French teacher, who was from Arkansas, scorned the trilled "r" and didn't bother forcing us to discriminate among the different nasalized vowels, and this was generations before "hello-how-are-you" sentence drill became popular, so maybe that's why I attained at least minimal conversational fluency and the ability to generate original sentences to convey my meaning without being embarrassed by my flat middle-Western pronunciation. Let 'em laugh!

Again, I wonder if this is yet another sign of the way we are influenced by our teachers and how they in turn are influenced by their social setting, and isn't that one of the things Conway learned to think about as she was becoming an educated adult?

Ros

Well, notice the mess again! I'll have to consult with Larry to get the nice color and format back. Notice also that I'm late and only dealing with one chapter - there's so much detail, so much internal experience in addition to all the usual life changes a young woman has to deal with. Maybe we'll do two chapters next week ??? Or take a bit longer??? I'll be back later!

Somewhere in the book I read about the Aborigines and the nardoo stones - how they used them - but now I can't find where I read it. I believe they are used for grinding grain in a hollowed-out depression in the rock, and as noted in the quotation above, they were a very important part of Aboriginal culture which the white settlers didn't worry about when they appropriated the stones for front stoops. I plan to try to find out more at the library. The last time I was there I couldn't find much about Australia, but I'll try "Aborigine" this time.

I'm interested now especially because I love the way the two "stones" have come together in this chapter: GREY stones of the Quad at the unioversity, PINK nardoo stones of Aborigine now used as steps and foot rest by white settlers. The Australian culture, as Conway insists, developed from both strands of history and geography.

Ros & LJ, hate to dispute your opinions on French pronunciation, but...! Correct pronunciation IS important! If you want to speak Canadian French, you can get by without the distinctions between the nasals, but Parisian French really does make them. True that there are rapidly spoken elisions and swallowed vowels, but without the r's and the different nasals, it really doesn't sound like French--with or without a midwestern accent (I have that too). However, if your teacher succeeded in getting you to speak without too much self consciousness, she did do a good job. LJ, usually, one doesn't run into the rude contempt of mispronunciation in France except in Paris, which, like NY, is an entity of its own. Sharon

I've enjoyed the rolling of Italian "R's", The gutterals of the Hebrew "Ch's", the nasal umlauts of the German vowels the distinctions between ecclesiastical and classical Latin and of course the nuances of regional English.

It is surely a failing on my part that I have never felt sufficiently motivated to approach the unfathomable mysteries of French pronunciation.

My intention was to indicate a communality (Is that a neologism?) with the brilliant authoress of our present book, not to offend the Francophiles among us.

Best

Sharon, how right you are about the lovely subtleties of pure French. Alas, I didn't have the right combination of ear and vocal apparatus to approximate them, and since my French classes are almost 60 years in the past you will understand that I didn't have access to the audio-tapes and other technological devices that help today's students.

Miss Myra Virginia Smith could speak Parisian French when necessary, but she didn't feel that pronunciation should be a bar to the beauties of the language which we could approach through our understanding of the universal principles of grammar, vocabulary, cognates, sentence structure, and context. That was my reason for bringing the matter up in relation to Coorain - had someone barred my access to years of pleasant reading, watching, and listening because I couldn't discriminate between en and an, I'd have missed a lot. Miss Smith didn't do that, and I was the richer for it.

Ros

At the risk of monopolizing the discussion I feel I must mention that I've just listened to Terry Gross's NPR "Fresh Air" interview with Jill Ker Conway on the subject of memoirs. (She's just published a book about memoirs.) Conway said that at the time she wrote Road from Coorain, she was seeing her life largely from the viewpoint of her difficult relationship with her mother and her own need to leave Australia and become independent, so those were the central issues in the memoir. Had she written it much later, she said, it might have been a different book. So I think we've been on target in seeing this particular aspect of the book as highly important.

Conway's second memoir, True North, is vastly different in terms of the ideas and even the style. It's densely written and clearly reflects a more adult viewpoint. Of course, it is also more of a success story as it depicts her immersion in the scholarly atmosphere she had only dreamed of, her participation in the fight for the advancement of women in the academy, her marriage, and her own steady rise from one prestigious administrative position to the next.

In her interview Conway also remarked on the tendency of publishers (she blames the public rather than marketing interests) to convert the story of even the most high-achieving, dynamic professional woman into a cottage-and-apron romance, as if that must be not only the most important, but the only real goal of real women.

Ros

Ros & LJ, I really wasn't offended by your comments regarding French pronunciation, but as a die-hard francophile, had to comment! As I said, Ros, I think your teacher was a very good one to impart the knowledge and insight into the language without inhibiting your desire to communicate--with or without correct pronunciation. I, too, lacked the tapes & videos to copy until my senior year in college. Consequently, I never really threw off my American accent either, even though the words were correctly pronounced. Sharon

Ros, did Conway discuss her mother, either on NPR or in True North? I'm interested in how her feelings/perceptions may have changed. I checked my copy of Coorain: earliest copyright given is 1989. I wonder if her views have changed all that much -?

I was impressed with the succinct all inclusive summary of the "Mother-Daughter" relationship when, upon reading Jung's "Positive and Negative aspects of the Mother Archetype" Jill says "There I was, described to a T. There was my Mother, sitting on the page before me"

I've been enjoying your (collectively) comments on the issues of Women's equality. I have felt somewhat like an outsider, not having personally suffered that particular form of prejudice and having lived (As have most of you) through the eras when various aspects of the problem were viewed in different lights. In some situations (e.g. basic military training) its my personal feeling that the "Tail has begun to wag the dog", but even there, I have learned to keep an open mind and to keep my mouth shut. (That's about the only place I keep it shut)

Best

Jo, I felt that Conway made it clear in the interview that her viewpoint had changed as the distance from that period of her life increased and as she became a mature, independent, and successful adult; and she stated specifically that had she written the book at a different time she would have produced a different book. When her own husband died, Conway understood more of what her mother experienced when she became a widow, how she bitterly surrendered much of what life as a wife had meant and found an emotional outlet in the effort to shape and control her children's lives. In her second book, Conway describes some emotional reconciliation with her mother's memory. She reveals how her husband helped her to see many of her mother's characteristics in herself, and how those traits, turned on their heads, so to speak, contributed to her strength, achievement, and success. Being childless, Jill Conway didn't face the test of whether to be a controlling mother; but in her career she appears to have used much of her talent for control, direction, and assertiveness.

LJ, I trust you recognize that the struggle was real and that it still exists, despite the trivial nature of some of the questions that are raised. The examples from Conway's personal narrative are both familiar and instructive. Not many years ago, one of my daughters was dismissed from an administrative job in a medical facility because she wasn't seen as sufficiently deferential to the all-male professional staff. She was replaced by a former nurse who knew how to bow and kneel appropriately.

Ros

Ros, I feel even as I read this account that she appreciated much of what her mother had accomplished, even when she feared being swallowed up by her needs. Her mother provided many of the experiences and the formal education that empowered her later. Earlier I said that the mother's weaknesses and strengths had the same root in her personality: her tenacity. (OK, I know I said "intransigence" before, but I like tenacity better now!) Tenacity enabled her to find ways not to lose ground, not to give up the good future she wanted to provide for her children(espcially Jill, it seems). It also made her hard to deal with when she was ill, or when Jill was struggling with independent decisions.
Your information about how many of her mother's strengths are reflected in Conway in her later life are helpful in seeing the positive side of this personality.

Jo, I like your change of adjective -- our dialogue somehow reminded me of the "I am/You are/She is" gimmick popular a number of years ago, illustrating the shades of meaning with which we struggle to describe our own and others' behavior. "I am tenacious, you are stubborn, she is intransigent!" Thank goodness for just that quality of language which enables us to draw distinctions and helps us think about the danger of judging behavior without considering its context.

You are right in pointing out that throughout the earlier book Conway often refers to her mother's good qualities and shows appreciation of her determination to help her children grow up to a good life. She fondly remembers her mother's aesthetic sensitivity which found expression in lovely gardens and an attractive house, and her encouragement of academic achievement. She was wounded by her mother's uncontrollable tendency to criticize and disparage instead of praising. Above all, her mother's refusal to accept her children's need for independence pervades the narrative and is freely described as the strongest motivation for Jill's decision to leave "Mother" Australia as well as "Mother" Conway.

What was her mother's name? I've looked for it and haven't found it though I was sure it was there somewhere. It was just "Mother." No acknowledgement of her identity as an individual, just her monstrous role as the tyrant of Jill's youth. Is that significant?

Ros

No name given for either parent! 'Way back in the early chapters I asked if anyone else had noticed names for them, and no one volunteered any, so I kept looking ... even went back and reread (I did that anyway). She gives NO NAMES! It has the effect of distancing them, making them seem more like background or stage props instead of the influential beings they are! I'm looking forward to reading her later book to see if her changed perspective is apparent. I reread the Demeter and Persephone myth, but I think I need to check on the Jung reference to understand fully what was meant by the analogy. Demeter weeps when her daughter is taken from earth to the underworld. In a way, Jill's mother seems to be threatening to "bury" her herself at one stage of her life. I don't think Jill was ever in great danger of that, though - she is too strong and gifted to be repressed. It is interesting how she makes connections among various forms of repression: her own, the Australians, the original native population, and women seeking professional lives. The real bombshell was the rejection she experienced when she applied to the Department of External Affairs. She had commented at length previously on ignorance and injustices observed in Ceylon and in Australia, but after this incident she really becomes attentive to such issues. She had always loved history; her determination to research and write about Australia is nutured by all these observations and experiences.

Jo, thanks for confirming my impression about Nameless Mother and Father. That does tell us something, as does the other thing you mention, her powerful sense of rejection. Perhaps this book started out as just an innocuous memoir and became a vehicle for catharsis, for pouring out all that resentment.

Ros

This last segment has a number of stimulating segments. I started out with another of those many places wherein I was able to identify with Jill. She comments that she'd have been unhappy working in one of the stuffiest parts of the Australian Civil Service. It immediately breought to my mind a picture of the Virginia State Department of Public Health, where I was once interviewed by a supervisor wearing a wing collar (I'd swear it was celluloid) and Prince-nez glasses. I was fortunate in being looked upon in an unfavorable light.

Brushes with discrimination are familiar to many of us. I even had a grandfather (A cantor) who wouldn't speak to me (I was only nine) till my mother removed a little gold cross from my lapel. Jill seems to have had her own full share of family problems.

Jill's tale of the bright caretaker's child sent to work because of class consciousness was poignient, however I sometimes think that the West Indian British are more sensable than we (in the U.S.) by sending less apt students into the work force rather than wasting money on educating the unwilling or those not equipped to progress satisfactorily.

Her comments on the interest of the Anglican church of Elizabeth I being more interested in the worship of the British Empire than in matters of salvation and damnation reminded me of my impression of Charleston South Carolina where they Honor the dead and worship God and Vice Versa.

She (Jill) ill concealed her resentment of the British Government in the comment on its "Self satisfied exploitation of colonial peoples...clothed in rhetoric in peacetime and exposed as cold calculation in time of war. I doubt that any nation would be guiltless on this account. Nations, like governments have as their first priority, the preservation of themselves in power.

Enough for today

Best

Happy Easter, Everyone!

Some interesting easter tidbits:

The word for Easter in French is Paques m. plural. The word for passover is Paque f. sing.

Easter [ME estre, fr. OE eastre; akin to OHGostarun(pl)Easter; both fr, the prehistoric WGmc name of a pagan spring festival akin to OE east east]

Now, if that doesn't interest you, perhaps this will. Our own trash-talkin' Mary Karr's Easter poem, appeared in today's Book World in the Washington Post:

Mary Karr's poignant, tough-talking memoir of a Texas Gulf childhood, The Liar's Club, was on bestseller lists for 60 weeks. It's probably one of the best-loved, most widely read works of literary nonfiction in this decade. Her newest book, her third book of verse, is called Viper Rum, and it's published by New Directions. Here, for Easter, is one of the poems:

The Grand Miracle

Jesus wound up with his body nailed to a tree --
a torment he practically begged for,
or at least did nothing to stop. Pilate

watched the crowd go thumbs down
and weary, signed the order.
So centurions laid Jesus flat

on a long beam, arms run along the crosspiece.
In each palm a long spike was centered,
a stone chosen to drive it. (Skin

tears; the bones start to split.)
Once the cross got propped up,
the body hung heavy, a carcass --

in carne, the Latin poets say, in meat.
( -- The breastbone a ship's prow . . . )
At the end the man cried out

as men cry. (Tears that fill the eyes
grow dark drop by drop: One
cries out.) On the third day,

the stone rolled back, to reveal
no corpse. History is rife
with such hoaxes. (Look at Herodotus.)

As to whether he multiplied
loaves and fishes, that's common enough.
Poke seed-corn in a hole and see if more corn

doesn't grow. Two fish in a pond
make more fishes. The altar of reason
supports such extravagance. (I don't even know

how electricity works, but put trust
in light switches.) And the prospect
of love cheers me up, as gospel.

That some creator might strap on
an animal mask to travel our path between birth
and ignominious death -- now that

makes me less lonely. And the rising up
at the end into glory -- the white circle of bread
on the meat of each tongue that God

might enter us. For 2000-near years
my tribe has lined up at various altars,
so dumbly I open this mouth for bread and song.

("The Grand Miracle" by Mary Karr, from Viper Rum. Copyright 1998 by Mary Karr. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.)

I had to return my copy to the library, but when Jill is driving to the station and has the flat tires, doesn't the man who aids her ask her if she is ---- Kerr's daughter? I think maybe it was Bill, but am not sure. Hope you will check it out if you still have the book. Sharon

I think you're right, Sharon, just read that last night, but will go back and recheck. Seem to remember she was touched by the man's remembrance, when so much in her life seemed to focus on her mother's neediness.

Well, well, well, it seems our old friend Mary Karr is staying true to form with her Easter poem. I know we all had differing reactions to her, am glad my initial impression has stayed with me. Thanks for bringing that to our attention, Jonkie, had missed it.

Sort of a "Ain't I the cutest thing? Here's a finger in your eye, by the way...oops? Did that hurt?? Oops, well, too bad, I'm so cute." Can't stand the woman. Still outre, still "smart ass." UGGGG.

Hope we never read another one of hers, but am glad we did, as now I know what people are talking about. Was just stunned to see how MANY best sellers we HAVE read here in our books. We're definitely keeping up with the world in here, if not leading it!

Oh gosh, and is another book drawing to a close? Say not so! Am so enjoying the comments, and the masterful job done by JO, say it's not over!!

Well, of course, if you don't NAME it, (her mother in the book) it has no power over you, and will be forever subdued to your will.

I notice a distinct change at the end of the book in attitude towards her mother, when she notices that others (her brother and sister in law) are beginning to recognize what seems to be real mental illness. It's almost as if she's proved the point that Mom was a mess, and she can now forgive herself for her private thoughts and move on.

At the end of the book, the romance, etc., I'm wondering again why people are moved to write memoirs, am not sure I care about her romance, as fascinating as the subject was to her.

Could it be intended as a "I did this, and you can too," type of thing? Here's how I did it, the chances I got, and TOOK, and you can too?

I liked her overcoming of her setbacks, that was well done.

Ginny

Sharon, the men were not named. The older one had been her father's friend in tha AIF; the younger one, a Scot, was a "Newcomer"

Ginny, I guess you'd call Mary the kind of woman who should post in "Salon"

To me, her biggest opportunity in Australian academia was the opportunity to write her own syllabus. I doubt that Australian Academia was any more hierarchical than American.

While reading about her qualms over lectureing to a large class for 50 minutes, I recall doing the same for two 50 minute stretches (separated by a ten minute break) thrice weekly, to an international class of 200, while chewing tobacco the whole time (And nobody ever knew it).

Best

Oh, LJ, for heaven's sake, of COURSE they knew it. I never will forget approaching one of my students, a football player, and asking him in great concern if he had a toothache!!

hahahahahh

My goodness.

Ginny

LJ, Conway makes the point, or perhaps it's in the second book, that she developed the ability to lecture to a huge crowd without being nervous but that she remained shy about confronting a small group of strangers, for example at a cocktail party. That's a familiar pair of situations to me. Provided I've done my homework, large formal groups hold no terrors, but walking into a social group of strangers is a different story. That's a dichotomy that is experienced by many, I think. However, Conway's later narrative lets us know how splendidly she overcame all her emotional handicaps.

Ginny, "True North" raises further questions about her motivation. Of course, as we've commented vis-a-vis earlier authors, once they start getting published they just seem to keep at it. Seriously, though, I've just begun reading "When Memory Speaks," Conway's serious examination of the memoir as a literary type. She explores aspects of our culture that relate to the popularity of memoirs, as well as issues of gender and socio-political factors. The book is directed to the literate general reader. I have the feeling that some of our questions will be answered there. I'll keep you posted.

Ros

Ginny,

All the student had to do was say "Yes" and you'd still not have known.

The trick is to usa a small "Cud" and never ever, ever --- spit.

Best

LJ - "Jill's tale of the bright caretaker's child sent to work because of class consciousness was poignient, however I sometimes think that the West Indian British are more sensable than we (in the U.S.) by sending less apt students into the work force rather than wasting money on educating the unwilling or those not equipped to progress satisfactorily."

Yes, LJ, but at least the child or family involved should have the opportunity to try for something else. Conway's anecdote suggests that the decision was made on basis of class, not ability. This observation reminds me of how she felt when she saw the poor families by the railroad tracks when she and her mother were on their way to Sydney, and when she left the state school for the privatie school and the kids yelled out, (punctuated with expletives) that they didn't blame her for leaving the ******* school, because it was no good! Conway wonders what some of those lively individuals might have become with a good education!

LJ - "She (Jill) ill concealed her resentment of the British Government in the comment on its "Self satisfied exploitation of colonial peoples...clothed in rhetoric in peacetime and exposed as cold calculation in time of war. I doubt that any nation would be guiltless on this account. Nations, like governments have as their first priority, the preservation of themselves in power."

Nations don't seem to develop much compassion nor do they exercise justice toward all unless they are absolutely sure of the security of their own positions. Great Britain has been visibly slow in the fairness department. My information on the history of notable examples is shallow, no doubt, but it was interesting that Jill was in France when DeGaulle decided to libereate Algeria from French rule. Would Britain have done that if it had been their colony at the time, I wonder?

Sharon, you are absolutely right! Page 224, 14 pages before the end, and the first and only time that a parental name was given! He was Bill Ker! I kept wanting to know their names earlier!

JO, we seem to be in complete agreement. DeGaulle (A consummate politition, manipulator and egotist beyond all equal even in England) was at least a realist where Algeria was concerned. The British equivalant (and failure for lack of realism) was Ireland.

Best

Sharon, thanks for the detective work on Father's name!

Jo, I believe you're correct about the way in which Britain clung to its multi-level stratification of classes and opportunities as long as possible. I guess that would be characteristic of a colonial empire and perhaps the U.S. was guilty of the same thing.

We might speculate about the economic considerations influencing the decision to let a colony go. At some point does military surveillance of a territory become too expensive? (Remember the American colonies?) And does it become more profitable to do business with an independent state than to keep financing business in a colony?

If I think back to the way I learned American history as a child, it seems to me that when independence was granted to a territory, the impetus was described as coming from the U.S. rather than from the strong wishes of the indigenous population. Good old paternalistic Uncle Sam, and possibly good old paternalistic John Bull as well? (Incidentally, is there a male figure that represents France, or is "Marianne" the only one? If so, one might speculate about the connection between national policy and the gender of the national image.)

At this point it is a bit difficult for me to comment on Coorain without bringing in my impressions of True North, which - because it describes her mature career achievements - provided me with a vastly different picture of Conway. But by the end of Coorain we can see that Jill has begun to manipulate her mother and to translate her fiercely emotional reasons for her determination to leave Australia into something diplomatic that an Admissions Committee can swallow.

I think there's a lot of cosmetic hindsight in the last pages, a prettifying of the raw post-adolescent amputation of the past, a lot of extrapolating from her personal need for liberation and advancement to the loftier goals of studying, writing about, understanding and acting on the social injustices she sees, and a touch of possibly contrived nostalgia about the red dust of home. Nevertheless, the book ends on a dramatic and hopeful note, leaving the reader with a sense of satisfaction and at the same time a feeling that there is more of the story to be told.

Which there is.

Ros

I haven't read "True North" but I'd like to.

The "Between the lines" or partially untold story that I sense from the latter part of the book is the Mother's bordering on a Paranoid Schizophrenic break and Jill, recognizing that insanity breeds insanity had to get out - all the way out - as a matter of self preservation.

I liked her recognition that "There was no pretending" that she wasn't a scholar. These, like real teachers, are kindred spirits. Born not made.

I also latched on to her recognition that "The place I was most at home in was the Bush" I don't think this was literary nostalgia written for effect. It too, is a "Mind Set". Those who have it always feel a bit "Artificial" living "In Town"

The "Affair" she enjoyed added a softness to the book and made it an overall more pleasant reading.

I give it a 9 or 88% a good solid B overall, but an A+ 98% in it "Genre" as a memoir.

Best

Thanks for checking out the name for me. I thought I was right but wouldn't have sworn to it. Ginny, we're still in agreement on Mary Karr (poetry or memoir). I thought the same as you but didn't write it as I had lambasted her so much before. Since I will be gone for the next 10 days or so, I'll submit my evaluation now also. I would rate it as a 9, I believe. It was a little slow getting going, but was quite interesting generally. Like many have said, there is a certain aloofness, reserve, or objectivity not usually present in a memoir. I'm not sure whether that is good or bad. It reduces the emotional connection between the reader and the author, but does tend to give weight to the author's version of events of the time. What do you all think? Sharon

Sharon, I suspect that the reserve reflects her personality. Did you notice how many times she says (paraphrasing) Because we are Australian, we didn't talk about it....? She spent many years talking to few people, and there seemed to be no playmates other than her brothers when they were home from school. Wouldn't such a childhood foster shyness, introspection? Also, in her affair with Alec she dealt with stoicism vs. emotion and happiness. He told her she was supposed to be happy, an idea that seemed strange to her.

Gee whiz, LJ, "insanity breeds insanity"? I don't think so.

(1) First of all, as I'm sure your scientific/medical background has made you aware, "insanity" is a legal not a medical term.

(2) Second, what evidence (from the text) would you cite to support your diagnosis of late-onset paranoid schizophrenia?

(3) Third, assuming that your labeling was correct, your reference to "breeding" suggests what the 19th century novelists used to call a "hereditary taint," and simply removing herself from proximity to her mother would not have helped Jill avoid it.

(4) Fourth, wouldn't a paranoid schiz. have to be awfully skillful at disguising her symptoms in order to become president of Smith College? It's not as if she were going to an all-male institution where they didn't understand women.

(5) I'd certainly agree that maternal neuroses (NOT psychosis) may give rise to filial neuroses that fit like yang and yin. We do see some hyper-mature nurturing behavior developing in Jill in response to her mother's assumption of profound neediness. (6) However, I think the impulse to flee was a healthy assertion of her need for becoming an adult on her own terms, not a permanent bandage for her mother's wounded self.

(7) Finally, I have to admire Mother's courage and fortitude through a dozen years of a lonely battle to rear her children, keep the ranch, and maintain some of the standards that were important to her, even the standards that her daughter saw as fultile, provincial, and outdated.

Does anyone agree (or disagree) with 1 through 7 or any part thereof??

Ros

I'm not gonna touch the paranoid-schizo stuff, but I have to tell you I gave a not-quite-silent cheer when I read numbers 5 and 7!!! (What happened to 6???) They are a wonderful summary of what I wanted to say about both women, if I were quick and articulate!

Well Ros, Its hardly worth the trouble of an arguement. Were I better at spelling in French I'd have cited "Follie a deux" as an example of insanity breeding insanity without any genetic connection (Which I assumed was obvious from my usage).

The child in this instance recognised a problem with drugs (Alcohol) in response to Mother's paranoia and irrational interpretation of her environment.(Adolph Meier would have called that "Merergesia")

Insanity is a perfectly good word (derived from the Latin) whether used medically or otherwise and although the definition like many words (Which are but an approximation of reality) may in some areas be less than clear, I think the intent of my post was obvious enough.

Best

Pax, LJ! I do understand the points you make, and I have to admit that "folie a deux" occurred to me when I read your first message. I'm just conditioned to bristle at any use of the term "insanity" to refer to anything other than legal status. The rest was just playfulness and I guess I was relying too much on your tolerance for badinage. One promises to reform and hold one's cybernetic tongue.

Jo, point 6 was included in the paragraph about point 5 as I thought they were related.

Your question about Conway's choices is thought-provoking indeed. I think we're looking at a weak point in Conway's reminiscence when she implies that her thinking and motivation were crystal-clear. Was she drawn to the US because of Alex? Or because she found England too stuffy and convention-ridden, and thought the US would have some of the pioneer freshness of Australia without all the Empire-loving baggage or the stifling "reserve" she resented? Did she hope that US academic standards would value freshness and honesty above adherence to the traditional line? Was her awakening feminist consciousness a factor? Maybe all those things? Or is she (with the best intentions) second-guessing? As the suspect always protests on the cop shows, "How can she remember that far back?"

Ros

Ros, What a delightful word "Badinage"; Please Do Not "Hold your cybernetic tongue" Sometimes you girls have to remember that ALL boys aren't dumb.

PAX (with an A not an O)

Best

Ros, sorry I didn't see the 6 - until after I asked where it was! I hope you don't mind being part of the lead-in this week!

I think Conway was interested in that fresh perspective she hoped to find in the U.S. She despised the "imperial complacency," and in England that, with apologies to M. Arnold, would have been the dark glass through which she viewed Australian history. Her belief that Australia had been exploited during the war and the rude treatment she received in the Oxford or Cambridge commons room (don't know which) influenced her decision. I don't know about Alec as a factor - she says it was over by mutual decision, but I really don't understand the decision.

LJ and Ros - Thanks for the great posts and the chuckles! That "a" and "o" distinction is important and useful!

A few bits about Us. Academia vs. Austalian from Britannica Online: Elementary woman teachers in U.S. - 84%; in Australia, 71%. Secondary woman teacher in U.S. - 46%; in Australia, 45%; women in HIGHER EDUCATION in U.S. - 24%; in Australia - NOT AVAILABLE! Australia granted women the right to vote in 1894 - 26 years before the United States. They were slower, however, to allow them into Parliament. Immediately after stating this, the Britannica article continues: "In 1973 full adult suffrage was accomplished when property qualifications for the upper house were finally abolished.' Women not allowed in Parliament until 1973??? Omitted information??? (Some of our states granted women the right to vote long before the federal government did - example: Wyoming, 1869.)

Please pardon this brief interruption...

It's time to start thinking of the next Great Book Selection! You are welcome (and encouraged) to register your preferences! Lots of ways to get into the discussion. For starters, just click this nifty graphic the banner-makers have created...

Dear friends,

I did read "The Road from Coorain" ages ago, and enjoyed it very much. After I read it I lent it to a friend. The point of this being that I had better hang on to the books we are going to discuss from now on, because I have no idea what you are talking about.

I know that the parts of the book that impressed me the most were of the struggles of the early years, and the difficult time Jill had in school when she was treated unkindly.

For some reason I thought that the book would take us right up to the part where she becomes president of (was it Smith?). I wondered how she and her family felt about making that leap. Of course I do understand that it took years and years of preparation.

Enjoying your discussion very much. Thank you for adding to my knowledge.

Our main phone line is knocked out by the lightning last night, but the computer line was saved!! This, after being awakened by the stupid alarm in the barn screeching about the phone lines being dead!!

So I've had lots of time to read and have started Cold Mountain and just want to say I groaned after reading a the first 21 pages, thinking I'd never finish it, but then I hit ADA, and everything changed! I can see WHY it won the National Book Award, and we've got another one in Into Thin Air now being read in the Travel Adventure Boks Section, so please grab a copy of both and join us when we begin.

Meanwhile, I think your comments are so good on this book, it's a shame we can't publish our own book--we're that good, (I'm not, but you are).

On the subject of neediness, I tend to run as fast as possible when deep, unreachable neediness rears its head with me. I wonder if that's a sign of mental illness? Which is healthier, to stay and try to fill up the unending hole, or to run? Or to try both?? Jill, it seems to me, tried both. She tried and tried, but her Mother, whom I recognized from the first as neurotic (takes one to know one, maybe) just got worse. I note a similar theme in the Katherine Graham book, ( which just won the Pulitzer Prize....you can't say we don't read good books here)...and am glad I don't have girls!~! No telling what they'd say aobut ME! (My youngest son keeps threatening to write a "Mommy Dearest" book, anyway). hahahahahha.

I think this statement, from the heading, is profound, but am not sure what she means: ""My parents, each in his or her own way, had spent the good things in their lives prodigally and had not been careful about harvesting and cherishing the experiences that nourish hope."

What does she mean here? Prodigally? The first time I read it, I had read "prodigiously," thinking she was saying they had spent all the good like it was water from an undening stream, but didn't appreciate it (cherishimg the experiences that nourish hope). She seems to be saying that they were profligate with their drive and energy, but not cultivating enough to build on it, so it was wasted.

I hate the word "harvest," it's so often used, it seems to me, in the wrong context. Hunters talk about "harvesting" deer.

I looked up "harvest," and it said: "to gather in (a crop), to gather, catch, hunt of kill (as salmon, oysters, deer) for human use, sport, or population control. to remove or extract (as living cells, tissues or organs) from culture of a living or recently deceased body esp. for transplanting. to acumulate a store of, to win by achievement, to gather in a crop for food. The season of gathering in agricultural crops, the act or process of gathering in a crop, a mature crop( as of grain of fruit) yield, the quantity of a natural product gathered in a single season (deer) an accumulated store or produtive result."

To me, the word "harvest" means to reap what you have sown. Nowhere in this new dictionary do I see the connection there.

So her parents had spent out, but not gathered in those things which made the spending worthwhile? So essentially she's saying their lives were empty? Or they made the lives of others empty??

Ginny

Ginny, I hardly took the time to read your message carefully before I felt I must post an answer. I think Conway was trying to split her writing self from her actual self, trying to look back at the way she remembered feeling at the time of this separation. By the time pen touched paper she was at least 20 years older and must have had a different outlook. Which of us, as adolescents, hasn't felt that our parents partly or wholly wasted their lives? ("Prodigal" to me suggests that like the son in the parable they carelessly dispersed their wealth of property, character or opportunity without reserving anything for the future. But who knows whether they needed all they had in order to survive?) Her father's sudden death left her mother bankrupt spiritually as well as materially, but she did recover.

Which of us (at least by my age, you're still too young) hasn't brooded over lost opportunities, unrealized potential, wasted time, gone forever like our physical attractions and even more regretted?)

Currently an old friend is facing the inevitable end, and every day one of us visits to remind her of how much she achieved, how successful she was, how many people she helped . . . so that she won't dwell on the fact that her future is dwindling. I know that my children decided long ago that their parents were nice, paid for their education, etc., but really didn't achieve much, could have been much more than they were. After we're gone they will have a chance to rethink their judgments.

I sympathize with her frantic efforts to unchain herself from her demanding, controlling parent. However, I suspect Jill was basing much of her youthful opinion on the fact that her mother had not achieved status as a scholar or an otherwise "important" person, and was disregarding her monumental struggle for survival as a widowed mother in what Jill herself had described as a bleak, socially constricting, rigid environment. "Why wasn't she a more important person, more like my ideals of the teachers at school or the authors I admire? Then I could have loved her more." Why do you suppose Mother's Day is so commercially successful?

Sorry if this is incoherent. Maybe it has emerged from those early-waking reveries when one reviews life and wonders about whatever future is left.

Ros

Oh, MY! I'm so glad I finally got back to this! When I first read the line, I thought Conway's impression of her parents was based upon her father's apparent "suicide" - a behavior easily labled as prodigal, and perhaps some feeling that they hadn't managed the land and livestock resources properly knowing that they could be at nature's mercy. All along I thought that she realized her mother had done as well as she could professionally in that era, but maybe subconsciously she wanted her to do more! I'm exercising my remaining capacity to look at things through the eyes of youth - and this has the ring of truth! In my first quotation (above), I noted that she thought her mother had insufficient outlet for her talent an creativity, but maybe a part of her thought she simply had not pursued and grabbed that outlet.

It seems we are on the wind-up trail with Coorain. I have enjoyed this experience for two reasons. The book itself absorbed me completely on its own merits - the description of a young woman's life in challenging circumstances, the history and geography vivified by her viewpoint and talented rendering. On the personal level, I was thrilled to discover how much I have in common in my own humble history with a much brighter person (deliberate understatement)! I give the book a 9.5.

That's my first reason. My second is I have enjoyed and learned so much from the experience itself and from the commentary of our faithful posters and their colorful honesty about their own reactions - often brilliant stuff, always enjoyable! Please don't jump ship, if you can help it, without responding to my last question - the one in red! I am interested in any responses you may still have to any issue the book raised, so get 'em in! I hope we meet again soon after this ship sinks!

Here's some info that may interest all who have read this book: Jill Conway will be on C-Span program Booknotes on May 24th to discuss her new book "When Memory Speaks". C-Span also has a website that carries the dialogue if you miss it on TV.

SHIRLEY! How fabulous!! Thank you so much! We're so lucky here, it seems every time we are reading a book (or do we just pick topical books?) we luck up with interviews and programs! YAY!! And we're lucky enough to have people considerate enough to tell us about them, too!

For those who don't know, Shirley is one of the BANNER makers who make the banners you can see in the top right and left hand corner of your screen every day! And they've agreed to help illustrate our SeniorNet Book, too. Think we're very very lucky. Our own Pat Scott and Larry of the Books help coordinate this effort and Shirley is joined by Terri and Jim D in their fabulous work.

Ginny

Jo, as the skipper of this turbulent voyage you have been steadfast and courageous and it's been a delight to sail with you. Your last question, about which of Conway's travel experiences was most influential, is a tough one to answer. I'm afraid my view of Road from Coorain was much affected by my exposure to the second volume, True North, and also to her new book, When Memory Speaks, in which she distances herself from her own experiences and contemplates the writing of memoirs by others. However, I think it was the cumulative effect of her several trips outside the setting of her early years, rather than any single adventure, that influenced her career decisions. The "what" - to be a historian - began early and was strengthened as she saw more of the world. The "why" of going away from Australia must have become clear as she finished her undergraduate work and realized she'd get nowhere in Australia. Perhaps the "where" came from seeing the limitations of the British Empire and the possible language limitations of going to a non-English-speaking country, as well as from her happy contact with an American and her admiration for the achievements and viewpoints of American scholars. . .But maybe someone else will have a more definitive answer.

I've enjoyed the book and the productive discussion. In terms of style, construction, and content, and the author's ability to draw us onward, I'll probably give it at least a 9. And three cheers for the discussion leader!

Ros

Oopsie!!

Let's see now, I've got my splendid Shirleys mixed up!!

Shirley Schutt is the banner maker extraordinaire!

Shirley Streff - is our VERY helpful member who told us about the Jill Ker Conway interview on C Span on May 24.

I don't want to have to do without either, but I COULD get them straight!

Ginny

Is it better late than never or better never than late? Finished the book, but have been otherwise occupied and therefore unable to join you in this lively and cerebral discussion. I have followed your posts… most enjoyable.

Among so many other things, I particularly enjoyed watching Jill evolve. Her intellectual endeavors seemed to become not a matter of choice but rather she was driven to pursue them, her appetite for them becoming increasingly unquenchable, the realization of finally having a focus for using her gifted mind, one which brought her such joy, and of course getting to the place where she knew she had to physically leave to put real distance between herself and her mother in order to survive and her ability to do make the move. Considering their history and her upbringing this decision must have come at some considerable emotional cost to Jill.

I do agree with those of you who felt the mother was severely neurotic rather than psychotic. I don't think we had access to sufficient information to make another diagnosis. I was taken with the relation ship between her and her mother, it was so complex, so important in who she turned out to be,both the pluses and the minuses. I agree that once again these observations have come with the passage of time and the maturity of having lived one's life. I know from my own experiences that I have re-evaluated my own judgements about my mother and upgraded them considerably as I have ripened on the vine and raised my own children; they in turn will do the same, I am sure.

It seemed as if, in her retelling of her life's story, almost every character left some mark on her, had some role in who she turned out to be, and they were a goodly number that she wrote about. I just thought about the professor who asked her to teach his course on American history and how involved she became with researching for it and her new found fascination with the subject matter. Would her choice of place to settle have been America without this experience?

Thanks to you all for the postings and especially to Jo who has done such a wonderful job in keeping this discussion fresh and always moving.

In case I don't check in for the voting I give it a an all around solid nine.

Thanks to Ros, and to Helen for the wonderful posts. Thanks also to Shirley for the C-Span information. I certainly want to catch that one. I'll be back.

Jo M.

Do you think that Jil's mother is the key as to why she became to successful, or would she have turned out the same way without her mother's influence and possible neurosis’s. I do believe that we are all products of our environment, and wonder if her mother's illness helped her in some way? Or have you already discussed that aspect?

I did enjoy the book a lot, and I too rethought my relationship with my own mother, and with my duaghter. I find it hard to believe that I will be remembered with such esteem by my daughter as I now hold for my mother, but who knows. At least it is something I don't worry about.

I will rate the book an 8.5, and Jo's leadership a solid 11, and the discussion, which I must admit was over my heard many time a 10. Thank you all for making me think about something other than my "Printer is not printing, I have to catch up with this or that, etc". This club has certainly broadened my horizons.

And lest you think it is just me you are helping......wrong!! Each month I have lunch here in Dover with four other women friends, and it has evolved into a book discussion group. They have read Angela's Ashes, and only two of the five of us thought it was great. One thought it was just okay, and two of them wouldn't finish it because it was too sad, and they didn't think it was true.

We've all read "The Color of Water", and that received unanimous applause, and one other and me read "Cold Mountain". Will tell you about that when we start discussing it.

Speak to you soon.....Love, Fran

Fran, we should credit Jill's mother at least partially for her success. All success or failure is a result of nature and nurture, and she certainly made sure that Jill had a great education. She also set an example in her own perseverance over difficulties - no lazy behavior would have been tolerated by these people! Remember when the boys were at school their father thought that they were loafing when they were actually working hard to appear cool, unruffled by pressure, to give the impression to their peers that they weren't working. The parents coudn't understand such an approach, but I'll bet many of us have been in similar situations, where we didn't want our contemporaries to realize how hard we had to work, how seriously we were taking our academic responsibilities.
As for the mother's neuroses, that too was a kind of negative incentive for Jill to keep pursuing her truest nature, to give herself space in which to develop the best of that nature. That, of course, turned out to be space away from mother!

A final note on the influence of Jill's travels:
I think they bring into focus her belief that Australia has its own culture, a culture that is changing, becoming, not merely a rigid extension of British culture. In Ceylon, a "Far East" territory closer to Australia that England, she discovers Buddhism, a culture and a faith more ancient than that of Britain, about which she had previously known nothing. In her observations of England, she admires the traditional monarchy in existence side-by-side with representative government in Parliament. She enjoys many of the people she meets in England, but she censures the snobbery and class-consciousness. She observes how the "comfortable bureaucrats" personally profited by lending money to Australian ranchers and farmers whose lands they would claim when the Australian owners went bankrupt during periods of drought. Most of all, she protests the colonial mentality that resulted in abuse of power over the "luckless colonial people (who) had been obliged by superior force to accept the benefits of British rule." (207)
Her travel experiences affect her viewpoints and play a part in her decisions about her future as a history scholar. Australia had to discover its relationship to the East as well as Europe and become itself in relation to the rest of the world. So did Jill.

And yet, she didn't return to Austraila. I think travel is very broadening, really opens your eyes. I can't wait for every trip, have "two trips:" one while dreaming and planning it (like Susan Toth says in her books) and the second while taking it. Yet I always come home more and more enamored of my own home. Even crossing this vast country of ours, which is something I think everyone should do, you can marvel and enjoy, but home sure looks good.

But she left...

Of course, she was young, too, and many of us have left where we grew up to find a better place.

I sure have enjoyed this discussion, I'll give Road From Coorain a 9, not for itself so much, but for the really good conversations it's allowed us to have. And I'll give Jo a 15 from 1=10, how she did that with two days notice, I'll never know.

I think we're stronger for every member who hosts our Club, and would like to entreat you all to consider trying your hand at it!

If you're not reading Cold Mountain, you're missing what may be the book of the year. Certainly we can talk about this one till the cows come home. We'll start on IT on May 1, as we traditionally start Book Club Online on the First of the Month.

Till then, please begin, starting tomorrow, to nominate a book or two you'd like to see us read for July. I've got one in mind, but want to start it first to see how it reads!

Thank you Jo, that was fabulous!

Back with nominations (VOTE TOMORROW thru the 26th, too!!)

Ginny

Where are the July Nominees ???

Best

We're to start nominating them TODAY, our LJ!! Everybody nominate one and we'll nominate and we'll vote on Coorain through and including Sunday.

Ginny

I voted - 9.5. I loved the book, but I'd like to know if she ever did write any Australian history. (Ros????? are you there ????) I went to the library last night and I could find only a collection of autobiographies with Conway making the introduction. I'll look for True North at the book store. What kind of book are we supposed to be nominating for July? Nonfiction?

We can nominate anything we'd like to read as a group for July. I think I'll open the nominations with something dangerous: I've not read it. It's a very short (123 pages) easy read in paperback by Penelope Fitzgerald, and was published in 1978. Penelope Fitzgerald has written several books, and has won the Booker Award in England for Fiction, and this book was a finalist, as well as several others of hers.

BBC Kaleidescope calls it "A beautiful book, a perfect little gem." Times Literary Supplement sayd "A marvelously piercing fiction. "

This books has just been published for the first time in America. It's paperback, the list price is $10.00.

"In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop--the only bookshop--in the seaside town of Hardborough. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: that a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wants one." The nastiness that small towns are capable of, apparently.

The reviews swing wildly on this one: TENS or THREES!! People either loved it or hated it, loved the ending or hated it. Jeryn, here on SeniorNet, has read it, and says it's a lot of "bang for the buck." I'm half afraid to try it, but I think it's intriguing, and we might want to consider it as one of our possibilities.

Ginny: That's my first one, what's YOURS??

Ginny, what's the TITLE of Penelope's book???

hahahahahah, It's a Mystery?? hahahahahahha Can we see what happens when a frazzled woman tries to post in a lightning storm?

Maybe we should all guess?

hahahahahhahah Oh me, I needed that!

The book is titled hahahahahha The Bookshop

I do like to keep people on their toes!

Ginny

While we're waiting for all the other nominations, here's something Barbara Nelson sent me yesterday. It's from a dicsussion titled Bis' Busy Nest, found in the Wit and Wisdom folder on SeniorNet, and it's full of cute things:

"Biscuit - 02:39am Apr 22, 1998 PDT (#1161 of 1168) N. Little Rock, AR (The Natural State) posted + 2

Introducing the new Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge device, trade named BOOK.:

BOOK is a revolutionary breakthrough in technology: no wires, no electric circuits, no batteries, nothing to be connected or switched on. It's so easy to use, even a child can operate it.

Compact and portable, it can be used anywhere--even sitting in an armchair by the fire-yet it is powerful enough to hold as much information as a CD-ROM disc.

Here's how it works: Book is constructed of sequentially numbered sheets of paper (recyclable), each capable of holding thousands of bits of information. The pages are locked together with a custom-fit device called a binding that keeps the sheets in their correct sequence. Opaque Paper Technology (OPT) allows manufactures to use both sides of the sheet, doubling the information density and cutting costs. Experts are divided on the prospects for further increases in information density; for now, BOOKS with more information simply use more pages. Each sheet is scanned optically, registering information directly into your brain. A flick of the finger takes you to the next sheet.

BOOK may be taken up at any time and used merely by opening it. BOOK never crashes or requires rebooting, though like other display devices it can become unusable if dropped overboard.

The "browse" feature allows you to move instantly to any sheet, and move forward or backward as you wish. Many come with an "index" feature that pinpoints the exact location of any selected information for instant retrieval. An optional "BOOKmark" accessory allows you to open BOOK to the exact place you left it in a previous session, even if the BOOK has been closed. BOOKmarks fit universal design standards; thus, a single BOOKmark can be used by various manufactures. Conversely, numerous BOOKmarkers can be used in a single BOOK, if the user wants to store numerous views at once. The number is limited only by the number of pages in the BOOK.

You can also make personal notes next to BOOK text entries with an optional programming tool, the Portable Erasable Nib Cryptic Intercommunication Language Stylus (PENCILS).

Portable, durable, and affordable, BOOK is being hailed as a precursor of a new entertainment wave. Also, BOOK's appeal seems so certain that thousands of content creators have committed to the platform and investors are reportedly flocking."

Isn't that cute? Thanks, Barbara!!

Ginny who hopes the next time she sees her name here there will be a million nominations in front of it!!

Thanks, Ginny, on both counts! Wrote down title and author and printed "Book" to show my grandchildren! I may have a copy framed!
I've been concentrating on the B&L titles already listed, so anything I would suggest for July would be really old, probably more appropriate for "Great Books." I'm stumped for an offering, at least at the moment!

I have been trying to locate Joan Pearson's E Mail address, and just when I was about to E Mail Ginny for it I decided that I should really share this with all of you.

Yesterday I received my bonus prize for guessing that Kentucky would win the basketball contest, as well as the correct, or almost total points scored in the last three games.

Well, as my prize for guessing Kentucky I won the most wonderful gift. It is called a "BookWorm" and you should all have one. Picture a small round colorful blackjack. You lay it on the book while the book is open, and it keeps the book opened. It's a no hands needed bookmark. As it happens I had read about it and seen the advert in last Sunday's New York Times, and thought "How clever"! Now that I have it, and have tried it out, I know it is really wonderful. When I read downstairs I am usually drinking a cuppa, and this remarkable friend, keeps my hands free to drink while reading, and I don't lose my place. But better yet.......I often read in bed, and half lie down. Can't do that easily if I have to hold the book also. Soooo....I just place my little heavy bookworm in place, and voila, the page stays open. I think it will be a joy also when I am reading recipes, and want the book to stay open on the counter.

Thank you very very much for my wonderful surprise. I will use it every day, and thank SeniorNet, this super book club, Ginny, and of course Joan Pearson.

And now Ginny....May I have Joan's E Mail address. Thank you!!!

Speak to you soon.....Love, Fran

Fran: It's jonkie@erols.com, I'm so glad you liked it!! This IS the best book club, and we've got yet another great Guess the Book Contest coming up on May Day.

Ginny

News Bulletin:

I am very excited! Went out to play a quick nine holes with Jer this morning and was joined by a lovely youngish woman who turned out to be a Professor of Physiology and Pharmacology and an Administrator at Adelphi University of which I am an alumni and where Jill Kerr Conway sits on the board.

Well it took us awhile to get to it. I mean one is supposed to be concentrating on one's golf game. When she told me she was a professor at Adelphi I quickly mentioned Conway as I know she is on the board of directors.

Turns out she knows her extremely well and said she is the nicest person you would ever want to know, has a great sense of humor and is lovely both socially and as a colleague. When this woman asked Conway about things in the book, like was it the work ethic that made her so strong in her life. Conway replied,"Oh I never quite thought of it that way."

About leaving Australia her answer was that young people leave there all the time. It is the thing to do, the place to leave to make a future for oneself.

This same woman told me that when Conway first came to the University the men on the faculty had not read her "Coorain" book. She declared,"they have now". Obviously she's gotten their attention.

Ros and the others who may have read "True North". Am I correct in saying that she did not reach the point where she becomes President of Smith College? According to this woman,Conway says she's not up to it yet. "I don't have it in me". Perhaps the rest of that would be YET.

Conway spoke at Adelphi a few weeks ago and I was so disappointed as I was unable to go. It turns out I would never have gotten in. They allotted one ticket per student and faculty and the hall was on overload. However, Conway stayed until the last guest had his/her book personally autographed by her.

Really a glowingly positive description of the woman we've been reading about and discussing all these weeks. I could have talked to this gal for hours,but it was not to be. However maybe I'll meet her on the course another day.

Is this the place to recommend books for the month of July? If so I would like to recommend "Tuesdays with Morrie". I have not read it, but I am intrigued with the story.

It is the true story of a Detroit Sports writer who discovers that his old college professor and mentor is being interview by Ted Koppel about dying. The student decides to visit him, and ends up spending Tuesdays with him. The book costs around $14 at Amazon.com, and you can read some of the reviews there, that go from 6 to 10.

Sounds to me like a book we could all discuss with great interest since I am sad to remind you that we all will be dead someday, and it is interesting, to me at least, how someone does it with grace and dignity.

Fran, thanks for "niggeling" my brain...I have wanted to read Tueday's with Morrie since I first heard about it. It sounds like such an interesting and beautiful book. You are right, sad as it seems...someday we're going to die. I think it's time I started learning about how to do it ith dignity and grace and hopefully I'll have time to master it! (Don't think I am the type to be able to go "gently into that good night"!)

Thanks for suggesting it Fran, it has my vote.

Eddie

Fran, I saw an interview with the author of that book on one of the television shows and it did sound interesting.

I have a book to nominate. While I have not read it my wife just finished listening to it on tape and highly recommended it as a possible selection for this book club. As she listens to many, many books on tape and seldom comments on one, I thought this might be worth nominating.

The book is The Last Six Million Seconds by John Burdett. It does not appear to yet be out in paperback so may not be appropriate for this discussion. To read more about the book just click on the following: The Last Six Million Seconds

Larry

How about considering "Palace Walk" for July? I would love to finally get to read it, or if you think it is too much for a summer book keep it on the list for next fall.

"The bestselling first volume of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Naguib Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy is being published in paperback to coincide with the hardcover release of Palace of Desire, the second book. His "masterwork" is the engrossingh saga of a Muslim family in Cairo during Eqypt's occupation by British forces in the early 1900s."

Helen, "True North" ends as Conway is headed for Northampton to assume the presidency of Smith. Your conversation with someone who knows and has worked with her certainly confirms the pleasant impression I've received from hearing several interviews with her.

Palace Walk, which I read with enjoyment several years ago, tells a good story and a shocking tale of the status of women in the Egypt of that period. I'd find it worth reading again.

Larry, I checked the link to reviews of "Six Million Seconds." If we're due for a thriller, I suppose it might as well be what the Kirkus review termed a "twisty" one. I wanted to compare it with another book about the HongKong changeover, Paul Theroux's "Kowloon Tong" (do I have the title right?) but at that point B&N hung up and I didn't want to risk that the interminable wait would turn into an all-too-terminal cutoff. Theroux's plot is convoluted too, but it seemed to me he was confronting the personalities and the sinister East-is-East-and-West-is-West idea rather than any idea of espionage.

Fran and Eddie, I've read and thought about your recommendation. As a Detroiter I've read Mitch Albom's columns for years. He is a sports writer and a good one, an attractive young man, and he's had a radio talk show. I've read excerpts from "Tuesdays with Morrie." Yes, the subject is surely important and the circumstances are touching -- I can mist over as readily as the next old woman when I read about confronting death -- but for me, that is not a criterion for recommending a book that this group is to discuss for several weeks. (It's a democratic group, of course, and naturally we all have our personal criteria.) I certainly wouldn't campaign actively against "Tuesdays with Morrie" as a BC selection, but I'll be honest and say that I wouldn't vote for it either.

Ros

I think I am really losing it, I am hoping that someone here still has it and can help me. I know that I have seen that somewhere (I thought it was in the big book sellers on line) they were providing the first chapters of books for our reading pleasure and to determine if we thought we'd like to buy the book or not. I've been to Amazon and B&N and don't see this feature. Can someone help me out with this? Please either post it here or e-mail me.

Helen, there is a "Chapter One" by the Washington Post which they say gives the first chapters, also reviews and discussions. Don't know how many books this covers. Since it is an up-to-date Web Site, it is pretty slow-loading for me, but you might want to check it out. It is
< http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/books/front.htm >

Where are the nominees listed?, Where is the NYT best seller list? Surely there's not a vote coming up in just two days.

Best

OK, All, LJ is right, have moved the day of voting back ONE day to April 28, Tuesday.

The books we've nominated so far are in the chart above. Anyone can nominate thru today. Will post the NY Times best seller list in here today (IF I can get it from the web site...they've started charging, but I'm a subscriber anyway).

So please look in here tonight and be thinking about those books and these above. I think there are some really good ones suggested already.

HELEN: I swear, you carry some kind of spark or aura, everywhere you go you run into celebrities!! Thanks so much for that, it sure was a concidence, wasn't it? SO nice to be UP on what's happening in the world. We've read so many of the best seller lists in our book clubs, I think I'll make a list of them here, too. How exciting for you and us to hear about Jill Conway from an associate. Makes me feel VERY well read, indeed! Thanks!!

Fran, I've been wanting to read that, too, but was afraid it was depressing. I will look it up on Loma's site:

LOMA! What a wonderful lead: thanks so much for that one, that is great. Need to make it a clickable.

Helen, I do hope Barnes & Noble will be serializing or at least doing a chapter or two of books, it's all so new here, their partnership with SeniorNet, that I don't have a clue what will happen. I think Amazon DID have The Street Lawyer in first chapter for a while.

Thanks for all the nominations, today is the final day to get them in, and we'll vote TUESDAY.

I believe I will just nominate one more time a very light summer reading book: Anything Considered by Peter Mayle.

You all know his series: A Year in Provence , well, this is a light summer book about an adventurer...sort of a David Nivenish character: a sort of mystery. I found it very good for hot days, having read it in the 800 degree London hotel room last August.

I really want to read Larry's Party, but it's still out in hardback, and we might want a paperback change from all the hardbacks we've been buying.

And, of course, we've got our own Larry, so I guess we can hear about his parties vicariously!

Everybody, have you NOTICED the brand new B&L Main Page? It's different as of yesterday, do go look! All of that work is our own Larry , and I love it. It's fast and smart looking, and very up to date!

Like us!

Ginny

Thanks to Loma and Ginny for trying to help out with the first chapter request. I tried to plug in the URL for the Post but it said it wasn't correct so I'll do a search when I have the time. I KNOW I saw this feature somewhere but can't for the life of me remember where it was. I guess we get so much info from the net that unless we bookmark it (oops I had better check those too) it's hard to keep track.

Helen, I copied the URL from my prior message for Chapter One by the Washington Post, and got in fine. I'll learn later how to make it clickable, but again it is:
Chapter One by the Washington Post
This page has choices for (1) a list of first chapters put on for the last two months at about four a week. So older books would not be there. It does include Grisham's The Street Lawyer, Ted Hughes' Birthday Letters, Larry Gelbert's Laughing Matters, Joe Klein's Primary Colors, Wislawa Szymborska's Poems New and Collected 1957-1997 etc.

Another choice on that page takes you to (2) this week's Best Sellers:

Best Sellers
Evidently only some of these have the first chapters available, but they include The Street Lawyer, Cold Mountain, and Tuesdays with Morrie.

So there may be more first chapters of recent books, but it seems that the only way to find out may be to try the (3) Search.

This site is slow-loading and hard to get around & back for me, but it does have some good first chapters.

Clickables added by B&L Host

Here is this week's NY Times Best Seller List, and I was shocked to see Fran's nomination FIRST on the NonFiction Hardbacks!! (Shouldn't have been, our Fran has perfect taste).

Now, if you'd like to nominate one of these, please do so, as there is no way I can put all these up in the heading.

Then we'll vote RIGHT HERE on TUESDAY for our July Choice. PS: Selections in RED cannot be chosen, as they are already chosen or have been read by one of our book clubs. SEE how well read we are here?

 
                                               Last 
                                               Week 
                                                     Weeks 
                                                     On List 
       1 
          THE LONG ROAD HOME, by 
          Danielle Steel. (Delacorte, 
          $25.95.) A woman who grew up 
          in a fractured family tries to find 
          the courage to confront the past.
 
                                                3 
                                                       2 

       2 
          BLACK AND BLUE, by Anna 
          Quindlen. (Random House, $23.) 
          After her husband turns violent, a 
          woman flees to Florida with her 
          young son to start a new life 
          under a new name.  First Chapter
 
                                                9 
                                                      11 
       3 
          PANDORA, by Anne Rice. 
          (Knopf, $19.95.) A 
          2,000-year-old vampire recounts 
          her experiences, from imperial 
          Rome to 20th-century Paris and 
          New Orleans.
 
                                                2 
                                                       5 
       4 
          THE STREET LAWYER, by 
          John Grisham. (Doubleday, 
          $27.95.) A young lawyer comes 
          to terms with himself after 
          discovering his prestigious firm's 
          dirty secret.  First Chapter  
          You can also see here that First  
          Chapters are available on the NY  
          Times site.
 
                                                1 
                                                      10 
       5 
          MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE, by 
          Nicholas Sparks. (Warner, $20.) 
          After finding a seaborne bottle 
          containing an enigmatic letter, a 
          divorced woman encounters love.
 
                                                       1 
       6 
          COLD MOUNTAIN, by Charles 
          Frazier. (Atlantic Monthly, $24.) 
          A wounded Confederate soldier 
          journeys home toward the end of 
          the Civil War to meet an old love 
          and a new world.   
          First Chapter
 
                                                4 
                                                      42 
       7 
          PARADISE, by Toni Morrison. 
          (Knopf, $25.) A small black 
          utopia in rural Oklahoma 
          experiences tragedy and 
          regeneration when it encounters 
          the ''real'' world. 
 
                                                5 
                                                      14 
       8 
          MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA, by 
          Arthur Golden. (Knopf, $25.) 
          The life of a young woman 
          growing up in Kyoto who has to 
          reinvent herself after World War 
          II begins.  First Chapter
 
                                                8 
                                                      23 
       9 
          HOMEPORT, by Nora Roberts. 
          (Putnam, $23.95.) An art expert's 
          troubles, personal and 
          professional, lead her to seek 
          counsel from a seductive art 
          thief. 
                                                7 
                                                       4
 
      10 
          TOXIN, by Robin Cook. 
          (Putnam, $24.95.) When his 
          daughter becomes seriously ill 
          after eating fast food, a physician 
          takes on a hospital and the meat 
          industry. 
                                                6 
                                                       3
 
      11 
          BLOOD WORK, by Michael 
          Connelly. (Little, Brown, 
          $23.95.) A retired F.B.I. agent 
          undertakes to solve the murder of 
          an alluring woman's sister. 
                                                12 
                                                       6
 
      12 
          AN INSTANCE OF THE 
          FINGERPOST, by Iain Pears. 
          (Riverhead, $27.) The mysterious 
          murder of an Oxford don in the 
          17th century.  First Chapter
 

 

         HARDBACK NON-FICTION                                            Weeks 
                                                     On List 
       1 
          TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE, 
          by Mitch Albom. (Doubleday, 
          $19.95.) A sportswriter tells of 
          his weekly visits to his old 
          college mentor, who was near 
          death's door. 
                                                2 
                                                      27
 

       2 
          TALKING TO HEAVEN, by 
          James Van Praagh. (Dutton, 
          $22.95.) A ''world-famous 
          medium'' discusses 
          communication with the other 
          side.  Read an Interview With James 
          Van Praagh 
                                                1 
                                                      16
 
       3 
          ANGELA'S ASHES, by Frank 
          McCourt. (Scribner, $25.) An 
          Irish-American writer recalls his 
          childhood amid the miseries of 
          Limerick.                 3 
                                                      84
 
       4 
          THE GIFTS OF THE JEWS, 
          by Thomas Cahill. (Talese/ 
          Doubleday, $23.50.) What 
          Western civilization owes an 
          ancient nomadic tribe. 
                                                11 
                                                       2
 
       5 
          SPIN CYCLE, by Howard 
          Kurtz. (Free Press, $25.) A 
          journalist reports on how ''the 
          Clinton propaganda machine'' 
          deals with scandals and contends 
          with the press.  First Chapter 
                                                4 
                                                       6
 
       6 
          THE MILLIONAIRE NEXT 
          DOOR, by Thomas J. Stanley and 
          William D. Danko. (Longstreet, 
          $22.) An analysis of the lives of 
          wealthy Americans discloses that 
          they have seven characteristics in 
          common. (+)  First Chapter 
                                                5 
                                                      66
 
       7 
          AMAZING GRACE, by 
          Kathleen Norris. (Riverhead, 
          $24.95.) A poet reflects on her 
          discovery of religious faith and 
          the meaning of its language. 
                                                       1
 
       8 
          APHRODITE, by Isabel Allende. 
          (Harper Flamingo, $26.) A 
          novelist celebrates the pleasures 
          of food and sex. 
                                                       1
 
       9 
          CONVERSATIONS WITH 
          GOD: Book 1, by Neale Donald 
          Walsch. (Putnam, $19.95.) The 
          author addresses questions of life 
          and love, good and evil, guilt and 
          sin. (+)  First Chapter 
                                                9 
                                                      71
 
      10 
          INTO THIN AIR, by Jon 
          Krakauer. (Villard, $24.95.) A 
          journalist's account of his ascent 
          of Mount Everest in 1996, the 
          deadliest season in history.  
                                                7 
                                                      51
 
      11 
          MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN 
          OF GOOD AND EVIL, by John 
          Berendt. (Random House, $25.) 
          The mysterious death of a young 
          man in Savannah, Ga. (+) 
                                                6 
                                                      197
 
      12 
          THE MAN WHO LISTENS TO 
          HORSES, by Monty Roberts. 
          (Random House, $23.) The 
          memoirs of a professional horse
 
          trainer. 

 

PAPERBACK FICTION: 

s 
           Week 

                                                     Weeks 
                                                    On List 
            1 
               PRETEND YOU DON'T SEE 
               HER, by Mary Higgins Clark. 
               (Pocket, $7.99.) A chance witness 
               to a murder must live 
               anonymously to save her life. 
 
                                                       1 

            2 
               HERE ON EARTH, by Alice 
               Hoffman. (Berkley, $13.) 
               Returning to her Massachusetts 
               hometown after 19 years, a 
               woman encounters her old love. 
 
                                                       6 
            3 
               SANCTUARY, by Nora Roberts. 
               (Jove, $7.50.) A photographer, 
               coming to grips with her past, 
               returns to the Georgia inn that her 
               family operates.  
                                                       1
 
            4 
               A THIN DARK LINE, by Tami 
               Hoag. (Bantam, $6.99.) A 
               Louisiana deputy is determined to 
               correct a botched murder case. 
 
                                                       2 
            5 
               THE PARTNER, by John 
               Grisham. (Island/Dell, $7.99.) The 
               pursuit of $90 million stolen by a 
               Mississippi lawyer who is hiding 
               in Brazil.  
                                                      14
 
            6 
               PLUM ISLAND, by Nelson 
               DeMille. (Warner, $7.99.) A 
               detective probes the murder of a 
               Long Island couple who may have 
               been involved in germ warfare 
               research. 
 
                                                       1 
            7 
               DIVINE SECRETS OF THE 
               YA-YA SISTERHOOD, by 
               Rebecca Wells. (Harper Perennial, 
               $13.50.) Three generations of 
               Southern women. 
 
                                                      10 
            8 
               LONDON, by Edward 
               Rutherfurd. (Fawcett, $7.99.) 
               Two thousand years of life in 
               Britain's capital as seen through 
               the eyes of six families.  
                                              
         1 
            9 
               OUT TO CANAAN, by Jan 
               Karon. (Penguin, $12.95.) 
               Volume 4 of ''The Mitford Years,'' 
               a series about life in a small North 
               Carolina town. 
 
                                                       2 
           10 
               *EVENING CLASS, by Maeve 
               Binchy. (Dell, $7.50.) Secrets, 
               aspirations and passions surface 
               during a course in Italian at a 
               Dublin school. 
 
                                                       5 
           11 
               CHROMOSOME 6, by Robin 
               Cook. (Berkley, $7.50.) The 
               missing liver of a corpse floating 
               in a river may provide clues to a 
               criminal's murder. 
 
                                                       5 
           12 
               THE NOTEBOOK, by Nicholas 
               Sparks. (Warner Vision, $5.99.) A 
               World War II veteran meets an old 
               flame who is about to be married. 
 
                                                      14 
           13 
               SECRECY, by Belva Plain. 
               (Dell, $7.50.) The horrifying 
               memory of a teen-age experience 
               haunts a woman who is a member 
               of a leading family in a New 
               England town. 
 
                                                       1 
           14 
               THE GENESIS CODE, by John 
               Case. (Ballantine, $6.99.) A 
               detective's sister and nephew are 
               two of the victims in a series of 
               mysterious deaths. 
 
                                                       5 
           15 
               THE HORSE WHISPERER, by 
               Nicholas Evans. (Dell, $7.50.) A 
               woman seeks solace for her 
               daughter and their horse from a 
               wrangler. 
 
                                                      23 

PAPERBACK NON FICTION: 

           Week 

                                                     Weeks 
                                                    On List 
            1 
               JAMES CAMERON'S 
               TITANIC, by Ed W. Marsh. 
               Photographs by Douglas Kirkland. 
               (Harper Perennial, $20.) The 
               making of the film. 
 
                                                      15 

            2 
               INTO THIN AIR, by Jon 
               Krakauer. (Anchor/ Doubleday, 
               $7.99.) A journalist's account of 
               his ascent of Mount Everest in 
               1996, the deadliest season in 
               history.  
 
                                                       1 
            3 
               A NIGHT TO REMEMBER, by 
               Walter Lord. (Bantam, $5.99.) A 
               historian's account of the Titanic 
               disaster. 
 
                                                      13 
            4 
               THE LEONARDO DICAPRIO 
               ALBUM, by Brian J. Robb. 
               (Plexus/Publishers Group West, 
               $15.95.) An illustrated biography 
               of the film actor.  
                                    
                   8 
            5 
               LEONARDO DICAPRIO: A 
               Biography, by Nancy Krulik. 
               (Archway/Pocket, $4.50.) The 
               actor's life. 
 
                                                       5 
            6 
               UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN, 
               by Frances Mayes. (Broadway, 
               $13.) Life in the Italian 
               countryside. 
 
                                                      29 
            7 
               A CHILD CALLED ''IT,'' by 
               Dave Pelzer. (Health 
               Communications, $9.95.) The 
               autobiography of a man who 
               survived his mother's abuse.
 
                                                      26 
            8 
               LEONARDO DICAPRIO: 
               Modern-Day Romeo, by Grace 
               Catalano. (Laurel-Leaf/Dell, 
               $4.99.) The life of the actor.
  
                                                      11 
            9 
               THE COLOR OF WATER, by 
               James McBride. (Riverhead, $12.) 
               A black writer remembers 
               growing up with his white mother 
               in Brooklyn. 
 
                                                      61 
           10 
               TITANIC: An Illustrated 
               History, by Don Lynch. Paintings 
               by Ken Marschall. (Madison 
               Press/ Hyperion, $29.95.) The 
               construction, launching, sinking 
               and rediscovery of the liner. 
 
                                                      10 
           11 
               THE NIGHT LIVES ON, by 
               Walter Lord. (Avon, $5.99.) 
               Mysteries surrounding the Titanic 
               disaster. 
 
                                                       7 
           12 
               INTO THE WILD, by Jon 
               Krakauer. (Anchor/ Doubleday, 
               $12.95.) How a young man's 
               obsession with the wilderness had 
               a tragic end.

Ginny