If <a href=”http://jackpendarvis.blogspot.com/ “>Jack Pendarvis</a> were in charge of The Memory Project, I am sure he would be blogging about TCM’s recent screening of “The Trouble With Angels.” I loved this film when I was young and even read the book on which it was based. (Very witty, almost as good as MY SISTER EILEEN, which is my personal gold standard for humorous memoirs. Everyone, even David Sedaris, is rated against my internal Ruth McKenney scale.)
The film is better than I remembered. How often does that happen? Granted, I remembered it as being not very good, but still. It was entertaining enough that I wondered if there was a way it could be made with Julia Sweeney in the Rosalind Russell role. Then again, since Julia Sweeney has embraced atheism, she’s probably less likely to want to play Mother Superior. (An aside: I’ve downloaded everything that Julia Sweeney has on iTunes and suggest others do the same, but LETTING GO OF GOD might be my favorite, a reasoned, funny and moving depiction of atheism. And, as it happens, I’m not an atheist.) There was also the incomparably meta moment when Gypsy Rose Lee appeared, standing next to Russell. Please tell me you know why that made me squee.
But “The Trouble with Angels” also reminded me of my particular fondness for boarding school stories in books, including:
A Sense of Magic (doesn’t really hold up)
Apples Every Day (does)
The Great Brain at the Academy (I am still pining for Tom.)
That book about the girl from the Shenandoah Valley who went to the Catholic boarding school
Dancing Shoes (okay, not a boarding school novel, but it feels like one)
And, last but never least, Tony, by Patrick Dennis
Now I am a huge Patrick Dennis fan. I have read and re-read everything he has written, even the books he co-authored, such as Guestward Ho. I am a big fan of the biography of Edward Tanner, Dennis’s real name, although it inevitably changed the way I read these beloved books. AUNTIE MAME is probably his best book, although LITTLE ME is funnier. But I have a soft spot for TONY, a novel about a con man told by someone who has known him since boarding school. Tony is a liar, a cheat, a womanizer, a social climber, a solipsist – and yet the reader, like the narrator, can’t quite give up on him. It’s a really unusual book.
And to bring this full circle – Jack Pendarvis has a blog shout-out to Peter DeVries, whom I discovered because his books were close to Patrick Dennis’s. Although that never got me to read Neil Shute’s ON THE BEACH when all the Max Shulman books were checked out. Which Pendarvis also indirectly references when he mentions Rally ‘Round the Flag, Boys! in an entry about me. I think I need to go lie down for a while.
While I take to my bed, I’d love to hear stories about books and movies that have aged better/worse than expected, or any serendipitous discoveries you might have made because of the alphabet.
Beat the turtle drum, and poorly! I was crushed. Not unlike the spine of the girl that died, not that I care anymore!
OMFG, I really thought I was the only person in the world who’d read TONY. No one else I’d ever asked had even heard of it.
And The Great Brain generally… SQUEE!! (what a perfect word).
Laura,
You might want to add to your list of boarding school greats, the tales from St Maure’s Academy written by Father Francis J. Finn S.J. in the 1890′s. Can you pass up a book called “Tom Playfair or Making a Start”? How about “Percy Wynn or Making a Boy of Him”? There is also Harry Dee and Claude Lightfoot. They are all sort of The-Hardy-Boys-and-the-Mystery-of-Sanctifying-Grace. They held my brother Ward and me rapt in 6th or 7th grade.. The climax of the series is when Tom and Percy and Harry etc. confess that they each have a secret, and it’s the same secret! Each has been privately planning to enter the priesthood. These books did a lot (not enough, clearly) for my vocation.
On a different note, Julia Harris’s “Gentlemen and Players” is the best prep school book of this era. It swept through Boys’ Latin and Gilman last year.
A cousin in Florida sent me “Zorba the Greek” so I sent her “What the Dead Know.”
ab
Cornelia,
Until now I have never met another human who has read TONY.
I loved those GREAT BRAIN books – all of them. I gotta get my son reading them.
My response will be a bit off-track, but as soon as I read the name Max Shulman in your post, the memories flowed. I loved him when I was young (11? 12?) and I felt very sophisticated reading the books, even if I didn’t understand all the “naughty” references. I just checked the (loosely organized) childhood section of my bookshelves and I was amazed to find that I still have seven of his books. The first that I read was “Barefoot Boy with Cheek” (1945) which I must have pilfered as a kid from my father’s books. The others are “I was a Teen-Age Dwarf”, “Potatoes are Cheaper”, “The Feather Merchants”, “Anyone Got A Match?”, “The Zebra Derby” and “Rally Round the Flag, Boys!”. In fact, I decided long ago that if I were ever to try for my master’s degree, my thesis topic would be “Mid-Twentieth Century Humor – The Works of Max Shulman”. Alas, that day has not come. While those books did not lead me alphabetically to another author, as I roamed the library, it did lead me somehow to equally witty Jack Douglas. (When I checked my shelf for Shulman, I was delighted to find that I still had Douglas’s “My Brother Was An Only Child” and “Never Trust A Naked Bus Driver” there. For those of you way under 50 (my age), Douglas was often a talk show guest who was a great teller of tales. We don’t have room for many bon vivants on television these days, do we?
By the way, Roz Russell is a favorite, whether she is a Mother Superior or a stripper’s dysfunctional mother. She and I were born in the same city in Connecticut. I like to that think gives us something in common.
Lastly, (whew), a lovely boarding school book is “To Serve Them All My Days” (Delderfield) that was also made into a lovely British mini-series about 25 years ago.
Marjorie,
I haven’t thought about Jack Douglas in years. What was the one with “Wolf” in the title, which centered on his dog and constantly-giggling wife?
Rosalind Russell played Ruth McKenney in the film version of Wonderful Town. But, of course, it’s as HIldy in His Girl Friday that I remember her most fondly. They should take more implicitly homo-erotic works and bring the romance to the forefront by changing genders. Starting with The Wire.
I adore Around The World With Auntie Mame, it makes me laugh until I cry.
“What was the one with “Wolf” in the title, which centered on his dog and constantly-giggling wife?”
Wow, I am impressed. I had forgotten “The Neighbors Are Scaring My Wolf”. I do remember how unusual it was at that time (the mid/late 60′s?) to see Jack and his Japanese wife, Reiko, on television. In the world of Rob and Laura Petrie, a married couple of different ethnicities was still unusual.
No discussion of boarding school novels is complete without A LITTLE PRINCESS by Frances Hodgson Burnett, as fine a study of social dynamics among little girls as has ever been written. I first read this book when I was seven, and still have that copy, cocked and battered as it is. Sara Crewe was my earliest literary role model, and I reread the book at least once a year.
I loved The Secret Language, a children’s novel about boarding school by Ursula Nordstrom, a great children’s book editor at Harper & Row in the 1960s. The book’s just been reissued and I can’t wait to read it again. As Martha, the book’s protagonist would say, Leebossa!
Hey, Laura! Theresa and I just watched Gypsy Rose Lee in a truly nutty psycho-noir movie called SCREAMING MIMI. And I would also like to take this opportunity to say that although the sequel to THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS is not so hot, it DOES feature Stella Stevens (hubba hubba!) as an idealistic, politically engaged nun. On the other hand, there’s Arthur Godfrey. Finally… what about THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT? It shares some thematic material with THE TROUBLE WITH ANGELS, and I believe it contains my favorite film score. (It’s by Elmer Bernstein.) I know this does not answer any of the questions you have posed. I will conclude by mentioning that I discovered Peter De Vries and the equally funny Thomas Berger at about the same time. For some reason their books were often discarded by the Alabama libraries of my youth! And vulture that I was, I picked up quite a few.
I am denying myself THE WRITING CLASS for a while because I know that I will enjoy it. I am a sucker for anything about writing classes. THE BLUE ANGEL, where all the students are writing bestiality stories, comes to mind. (Although I am still shocked to know that MY DOG TULIP is a real book.) Some of Mr. Pendarvis’s work, as well. Has Tom Perrotta ever written a novel about a writing class? He should.
Let me pause and insert a brief commercial message: Perrotta and Ann Hood will be teaching at Writers in Paradise this year. I wish they would let me leave the faculty and attend as a student.
I’ve moved on to the new Julia Glass. I had the good fortune to meet Julian at the Tennessee Book Festival (may be mangling the good festival’s name) and she was the most down-to-earth, lovely person. Plus, she was up for gingerbread pancakes.
Other TBR books — Roth, the newish Francine Prose, Ward Just and, finally, Tana French’s In the Woods, although I am deeply skeptical of any book that wins so many prizes . . .
(Please tell me you know I’m joking about In the Woods.)
I have a scathingly brilliant idea could be the new motto of the Memory Project, although I guess it would have to be: “I just had a scathingly brilliant idea, but I can’t for the life of me remember it.”
My nomination for one of The Most Under-Rated Movies:
Father Goose, with a very un-Cary Grant-like Cary Grant, and Eva Carron (?), and Trevor Howard….a talky, funny movie.
And another, better known but still Under-Rated Movie: Breaker Morant w/Edward Woodward and a buncha marvelous sounding Australian actors…
Clair,
Thank you for the chance to do a little Fine Lines <a href=” http://jezebel.com/5037652/a-little-princess-reversal-of-four-buns“>pimpage</a>.
Jack, I always got THE WORLD OF HENRY ORIENT confused with I LOVE YOU ALICE B. TOKLAS. But Thomas Berger — terrific writer, with a body of work that goes far beyond LITTLE BIG MAN.
As for library discards, there’s a very funny section about libraries and their patrons in the Jincy Willet book I just finished WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD. I really loved this book, but I can’t begin to think how to describe it to people. I just know that Dorcas Mather is one of the best characters I’ve encountered in contemporary fiction.
Jincy Willett is the bomb (if you haven’t read her short story collection JENNY AND THE JAWS OF LIFE, do! THE WRITING CLASS is good though not as good as her earlier work.)
As for boarding school books, yes to THE LITTLE PRINCESS and if you’re fans of THE GREAT BRAIN then seek out Gordon Korman’s Bruno & Boots novels, especially the early ones that he wrote when he was an actual teenager.
You didn’t mention my favorite part of The Trouble with Angels – the term scathingly brilliant idea. I work in a field that’s still rather dominated by men. I use this term all the time and of course none of them know where it’s from.
FYI–In the Woods by Tana French is a very good read; her latest book The Likeness, is even better. Excellent writing, good character development, clever dialogue, an ingenuous plot. Was as good as eating high-quality chocolate.