Things I Think About When I Think About Icebergs

"Ice. It's trippy, symphonies frozen, the unconscious come to life, and smacking of color: blue. [...]

There was something unspeakably noble about their age, their scale, their lack of consciousness, their right to exist. Every single iceberg filled me with feelings of sadness and wonder. Not thoughts of sadness and wonder, mind you, because thoughts require a thinker, and my head was a balloon, incapable of thoughts. I didn't think about Dad, I didn't think about you, and the big one, I didn't think about myself. The effect was like heroin (I think), and I wanted to stretch it out as long as possible."

- Where'd You Go, Bernadette

"Christopher lifted his chin and looked up at the Dright's face. The smooth brown features did not have any expression on them at all. But Christopher stared, trying to see the person behind the blankness. What feelings the Dright had were so different from his own, and so lofty, that for a moment he felt like an insect. Then he remembered that glacier, years ago in Series Seven, which Tacroy had said reminded him of two people. Christopher knew that one of the people was the Dright. Like the glacier, the Dright was cold and high and too crusted with ancient knowledge for ordinary people to understand."

-The Lives of Christopher Chant

"Sometimes it was so great I couldn't believe how lucky I was that I got to be me. We'd pass icebergs floating in the middle of the ocean. They were gigantic, with strange formations carved into them. They were so haunting and majestic you could feel your heart break, but really they're just chunks of ice and they mean nothing."

- Where'd You Go, Bernadette

"What Lies Beneath"

- This is the title of a mediocre Harrison Ford movie. It has nothing to do with ice.

Some Books I Read In 2012, part two

Where'd You Go, Bernadette
by Maria Semple

This book is deceptive. It's easy to read and has a cartoon on the cover, so you might think it's a beach book for the lit-unsavvy, but my heavens, that is not the case. Maria Semple is a former television writer - think Arrested Development - who turned to novels a few years ago, and wrote this one as a gentle satire of her adopted city, Seattle.

It's so much more than satire, though. The titular Bernadette has withdrawn into her falling-apart home, and eventually disappears. The book is a series of primary documents assembled by her brilliant teenage daughter, Bee, in an attempt to figure out how and why she left. There are e-mails between Bernadette and her virtual assistant in India, emergency room bills for her neighbor, FBI files, academic articles, and TED-talk related blog posts, all punctuated by Bee's clarifying and very funny commentary. The story unfolds slowly but surely, just enough at a time. I really had no idea where the F Bernadette had gone by the end, and I really, really wanted to find out. I've been thinking about the novel a lot.

The American Girl doll above is dressed up as Bernadette. Dark glasses, chic scarf, fishing vest.

You should go read it.

Some Books I Read In 2012, part one

Death Comes to Pemberley
and, as a result,
Pride and Prejudice

Obviously, P&P was a reread. No one graduates from Kent Place School for Girls without a studying this book, possibly for an entire trimester (raises hand). For a time, any blue mood could be cured by revisiting Book 3, Chapter 1, when Lizzie first visits Pemberley.

Sidebar: in current times, could you write a female heroine who firmly rejects someone, reconsiders only after seeing his giant estate, admits to him that she only began to change her mind upon seeing his magnificent home's "delightful grounds," and have her remain likable? I posit no.

I purchased the BBC miniseries in college - a big deal in the early 2000s, when DVDs were pricey and illegal downloads limited to music - and would watch twenty minutes of it every day. "I just need a hit," I'd tell my roommate, as she glared at me for not inviting her to join in on Bingley, Darcy, Georgiana, and Elizabeth's awkward meeting at the Inn at Lambton.

So when fanfic sequel Death Comes to Pemberley, came out in late 2011 to decent reviews, I snapped it up for the perfect read to start 2012. It was okay. It includes a lot of summarizing of the original book, which, as you may have gathered, I found pointless, and paints the older Elizabeth Darcy as a bit of a bore (unforgivable). The real value is that it inspired me to reread Pride and Prejudice from start to finish, something I haven't done since tenth grade. I'm glad I did, because the novel is not how I remembered it. Not worse. Not better. I just look at things differently.

Mr. & Mrs. Bennet
Mrs. Bennet gets a rough go in P&P, ignored by her husband and mocked by her cleverer offspring, painted as a ridiculous, hysterical woman constantly shoving her daughters at the nearest available suitor and retiring to her bedchamber in a fit of nerves when they refuse. But why does Mr. Bennet get a pass? He has some top-flight quips, to be sure, but spends a lot of time either reading in his library or insulting his wife. Look how he treats his family's future! He tells Lizzie that by the time and Mrs. B realized that they wouldn't have any sons, "it seemed a bit late to start saving." Mr. B? Lydia is FIFTEEN YEARS OLD. Therefore, you have had a DECADE AND A HALF to have started saving up some cash so your family has a place to live after you die. He also lets dumb Lydia go off to Brighton, knowing full well what a terrible idea it is, so he can have some quiet around the house. I loved Mr. Bennet when I was fifteen. Now I think he's an asshole.

Lydia
Lydia is still a twit, to be sure. I'm guessing that in Edwardian times, when people routinely started families at eighteen, her immaturity would have been shocking to the reader, kind of like Selma Blair in Cruel Intentions. But now her poor judgment, indifference towards privacy, and inability to accept or acknowledge criticism just make her a Millenial. Come to 2013, Lydia! You'll fit right in.

Jane's Visit to Netherfield
Jane's visit to Netherfield reads as one thousand times more awkward to me now. Conversely, the Netherfield ball seems more tolerable. I'm not sure why.

Elizabeth and Darcy
Oh, Elizabeth and Darcy! Fear not: I love these crazy kids as much as ever, but I found that over time, I had been coming down harder and harder on Elizabeth for rejecting Darcy when he first proposes. Yeah he's reserved, but his fortune generates ~$600,000 a year and he's better than Mr. Collins. Then I reread the book, and was reminded of how Darcy describes her when they first meet:

She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me; and I am in no humour at present to give consequence to young ladies who are slighted by other men.

Then he realizes she heard him, sees her go spin the tale to her friends, and feels like a moron. No wonder this book still resonates: doesn't this happen all the time on the Internet? All I'm saying is, I can see how it took Lizzie a while to forgive him. I also identify a bit more with Darcy, aside from the millions of dollars thing, because he's shy. Shyness and aloofness are indistinguishable to many, and it's easy to look like you don't give a shit about someone's life when really, you just think it would be rude to ask.

BBC, Keira Knightley movie, Lost in Austen (in a brilliant move, our modern-day heroine who's stuck in the story makes Darcy go swimming in a white shirt. I'd do the same)

What I realized more this time around is how quickly E & D grow to like each other, but stubbornly hold on to their initial, publicly expressed distaste. Also, how awkward is Darcy? At the end of the book, he's violently in love with this woman and just spent upwards of a hundred grand to save her family's reputation, yet this is the best he can do with the proposal:

You are too generous to trifle with me. If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever. 

What?

In General

Pride and Prejudice assumes a certain level of knowledge; there's a reason we all had to read Letters to Alice in high school before even starting on the novel itself. I agreed to read some mannish book whose title I currently forget this year at Dan's request, under the condition that he read P&P, but I realized he'll need some schooling on what constituted a big deal to members of the Edwardian-era landed gentry if the whole "Lydia and Wickham Take Off For Gretna Green" plot is to make a lick of sense.

But despite requiring a familiarity with the term "entail," P&P is kind of a potboiler. There's so much PLOT. Shit is constantly happening at Longbourn and the surrounding environs. Red herring suitors are dropped in and then yanked out with a vaudeville cane, friends become foes, foes become friends, and marriage plots, however unfeminist, are literally a matter of life and death.

Remaining Questions

• How on earth did Elizabeth and Charlotte remain friends after the Mr. Collins thing? I get a distinct "frenemy" vibe from Charlotte once she moves to Rosings.
• If Darcy's first proposal had excluded all those dings against her family, I think Lizzie would have at least considered it.
• Are Jane and Bingley literally the biggest pussies to have ever been written? Seriously, in the first book Bingley gets talked out of proposing to Jane because she's too quiet. Give me a break. 
• Having met Elizabeth at Rosings and observing her headstrong nature firsthand, did Lady Catherine de Bourgh really think that showing up at Longbourn with a litany of insults was the way to talk Lizzie into rejecting a million-dollar marriage?
• I prefer the original title of the book, First Impressions, for expressing the theme. Pride and Prejudice sounds better, though. Point Austen.

Next: books I read for the first time in 2012, about which I will probably have way less to say.