Two Books About Women Making Trouble

Dear readers,

If autumn is “the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” (as Keats so Keatsily put it), then late August must be the season of steam and weary sweltering.

Here are two novels to lower anyone’s temperature. The first is cool; the second downright icy.

Brrr,
Molly

I’m tempted to simply type out a list of quotations from this book and call it a day, adding only a “BUY IT NOW!” button at the bottom — but I’ll be a responsible correspondent and write a proper endorsement.

One of my favorite games is to read an obscure novel without knowing what year it was published and then try to guess the year. Usually it’s a boring game and I come within 24 months of pub date; most books give themselves away. Not this one! You could have knocked me over with a cat hair if you told me the year was 1929.

It’s not the topics that are fresh — sex, love, marriage, infidelity and work have been fiction fodder since novels were born — but the approach, which feels too advanced even for now. How did Ursula Parrott do it? We can’t ask her because she died in 1957 of cancer in a New York City charity ward. We must conclude that she possessed supernatural gifts of insight, as well as a talent for acid aphorisms and peppery dialogue. (And an instinct for self-protection: the book was scandalous enough that she chose to release it anonymously.)

The story concerns Patricia, a sexy blunt object whose life in New York City circa Prohibition revolves around writing ad copy, drinking rivers of Scotch and negotiating life as an ex-wife at the wizened old age of 24. This edition features a gorgeous introduction by Alissa Bennett. You might as well split the price of a copy between five pals because this book is bound to end up in friend-circulation.

One quote from the book, because I cannot resist: “The only use for advice is to put it in your pocket and save until, if ever, you feel like taking it.”

Read if you like: Being wicked, shopping, breakfast for dinner, bearing distress with dignity, Elizabeth Jane Howard’s “The Cazalet Chronicles”
Available from: McNally Editions

“Two Serious Ladies,” by Jane Bowles

Fiction, 1943

The serious ladies of the title are Miss Goering and Mrs. Copperfield, acquaintances from a faintly sketched East Coast social scene. They meet at the beginning and end of the novel; otherwise they pursue their own adventures — the wealthy and gullible Miss Goering ruminating on sin and salvation alongside two housemates in the greater New York City area as Mrs. Copperfield pursues anxious lesbian encounters with prostitutes while traveling in Panama.

This is the only novel by Jane Bowles and it wasn’t a hit at publication time — based on the précis above, can you guess why? — but it has collected a cult following as a futuristic literary oddity. It reads as if written by an extraterrestrial who spent five minutes on Earth and became bizarrely determined to write a comedy of manners. The plot is almost totally absent of momentum and the dialogue reads as if Georges Bataille wrote fortune cookies. Defies explanation.

You know those bumper stickers that say “KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD”? If you need to “KEEP [insert your name here] WEIRD” you need only lock yourself in a room for six hours with this novel.

Read if you like: André Gide, Ivy Compton-Burnett, port cities, cockamamie schemes, Francis Bacon (the painter not the empiricist)
Available from: A good bookstore or the library (or free to borrow online)

Why don’t you …

• Copy a figure in “The Bathysphere Book” and name your TOY POODLE “Psyche”?

• Display zero qualms about printing out Becca Rothfeld’s majestic essay on beauty and absorbing it in a BATHTUB BRIMMING WITH FRAGRANT OILS, which is where I believe it is meant to be read?

• Frolic in the garden of medieval thought with Johan Huizinga, whose book on play I recommended a few centuries ago? There is a newer translation of this tome with superior images but it costs nearly $70. If you decide to go with the 1996 version, which I enjoyed, be prepared to supplement the (frankly garbage-quality) plates with lots of Google image-ing. One benefit of the 1996 translation is that it is available to borrow free online, although your eyes might turn into wasabi peas over the course of its 400 pages.

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