It’s very hard to come up with unique sentences, something never uttered before. Today, for example, I saw some Hare Krishnas on a fire drill. But I wasn’t the only one and I’m sure other people will go home tonight and recount that over dinner: Hey hon, I saw the Hare Krishnas on a fire drill.
But what I’m about to write, this just might be a unique sentence. Or, at the very least, a unique claim. When I finished reading Charles Baxter’s The Soul Thief, I decided to follow that up by re-reading Scruples. Of all the people on the planet, who else has done that? Who else would admit it?
First, the memory part: When I was 20, I got stuck at a scary-nasty hotel near LaGuardia because there was a screw-up with my ticket back to Chicago. I picked up a paperback copy of Scruples and read late into the night, glad for the distraction. There were some scary noises in that hotel.
Last month, a longtime book person remarked to me that there had never been another book quite like Scruples, that even Judith Krantz had been unable to replicate it.
Then I happened to see a handsome, trade paperback version of it and thought — I need that. I wanted to be reminded of the 20-year-old who had read it, but also think about why the book had been such a phenomenon when it was published in the late ’70s.
I found myself charmed by the anthropological aspect of it. If Judith Krantz had provided the same kind of detail about, say, coal mining, she might have been hailed as one of the great modern realists of our time. But, of course, she chose to direct her eye toward the shopping/eating/sexing habits of the very rich. And while the third part feels the most dated in many ways (closeted homosexuality is a big plot point in Scruples), the information about fashion and food is fascinating. Dated, too, but it’s as if one is reading the early chapters of the U.S.’s embrace of luxury goods. I was particularly charmed by a description of a chic, popular Italian restaurant, which filled its windows with imported bottles of olive oil and “rare brands of pasta.” Oh, and flasks of Chianti hanging from the ceiling!
I’m still mulling the central story of Scruples, which is about a gorgeous (but once unlovely), rich (but once poor) woman who finds her full humanity through love. Late in the book, Billy, as she is known, notices changes in her two most valuable employees, Valentine (!) and Spider (!!!!). “Billy realized that . . . she didn’t know either of them very well . . . She might have been indignant, certainly puzzled, if someone had pointed out that her sensitivity to the changes in Spider and Valentine were signs of an even greater change in her.”
I don’t know, but I thought that was a pretty cool sentiment in the heart of a sex-and-shopping novel, as the form was known. It is followed by Billy’s realization that her marriage will succeed only if she has a professional passion that rivals her husband’s love of making movies.
In short: Scruples holds up better than I ever would have dreamed. Except for the sex.
So what books of your youth can you envision re-reading or have you re-read? How do you think they will age?
No shame, Laura. In 1980, at the age of 28 ,in Calcutta, on Christmas eve- after a long painful 40 hour train ride from Bombay-second class unreserved- there is nothing to compare with that level here-I bought a paperback copy of Princess Daisy from a used book seller and retired to my not very nice hotel room to rest and read. The next day I flew to Burma.
Now I reread all of Jane Austen and Jane Eyre- bits and pieces- or chapters. Especially when I am coming off the worst part of a migraine when I need something soothing.
Now you’ve made me curious to see how some of the works of Judy Blume would hold up now that I am many years past the age I was when I first read them. I think the next trip to the library will involove looking for “Forever,” her book about first time love and teenagers (a very controversial one when I first read it.)
Mary – here’s a memory that may or may not be correct: When we (late elementary school girls) secretly passed a copy of Forever around our classroom, the two key chapters to read were 12 and 14.
I can’t vouch for 14. 12 was the chapter at my school.
How many years back do we get to go?
I tried some years ago rereading KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER which I liked when I read it. couldn’t get ten pages in.
I have reread TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD several times with pleasure though never quite the same thrill as the first.
When a tv version of A WRINKLE IN TIME was broadcast, i reread it with great pleasure. I had remembered much and it still worked. I own a boxed set of the trilogy because I’m a passionate fan of Leo and Diane Dillon, who did the cover art, so i could actually just reach for the book. that doesn’t happen too often, I usually have to rely on the library for “you know what i’d like to reread….”
Ramona. Now there’s a lovely thought. Maybe it’s time for a Cleary readathon chez Roscoe.
I re-read Catcher in the Rye over Christmas; my hero Holden Caulfield has become the identified patient in a family stuck in the first and second stage of grief. He still has my sympathy but now it’s more,”why is a kid (from NYC!) in a residential care facility?” Surely there was good counseling closer to home–family therapy?
I have THE ELECTRIC KOOLAID ACID TEST on the pile to re-read. I loved it on the 1st read in the early 70′s (which is when I was dropping acid also)and am looking forward to seeing if it measures up to my 35 year old memories. Or flashbacks.
I re-read SHIBUMI recently, and while it was not as intellectually cool as I thought in the day, it still held up well.
I’m amazed that you saw Hare Krishnas!
The Hardy Boys have not aged well.
I was a big Henry Huggins, Beezus, Ribsy, and Ramona fan and have reread a few of those stories to see if they can reassure me about life like they did the first time. They can.
Unlike Bryon’s Hardy Boys, they’ve aged well. (Good one, Bryon!)
I’ve reread “That Hideous Strength” by C. S. Lewis a few times; it’s my favorite dystopian novel. (Maybe not an original sentence there, but certainly not a common one.)
And while not quite my youth, depending, I read “Straight Man” by Richard Russo when I first got out here–being a small liberal arts college in southern Indiana–and while I enjoyed it immensely at the time, it wasn’t until I reread it eight years later now and realized the richness of his portrayal of faculty life at just such a college.
And I like to reread Wodehouse and Thorne Smith every now and then. Those I discovered when I was very young–too young for Smith, certainly, if I had to slap a movie rating on the books. They hold up well at least in terms of plot and counterplot. Some of the details are dated, but they’re much fun.
And I love Craig Rice, also discovered her just after I’d outgrown Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, also much too young for some of the hijinks. I love dipping back into those on a regular basis.
Somehow I skipped the whole “young adult” novel phase, but the few I read for school were hideous at the time and no better now. (Helloooooo, Separate Peace!)
I am still imagining Hare Krishnas on a fire drill. Did they line up quietly or spin and twirl or do whatever it is that they do? It reminds me that a friend of mine’s brother was once a Hare Krishna and that he is black.
Gone With the Wind was my favorite book at age 14 and reading it was a monumental task at over 1000 pages. I would like to try that one again even as I try to find an easier way to do it (like On Demand).
The ones that hold up best for me are the children’s books: Tom’s Midnight Garden, The Secret Garden, Tuck Everlasting, and yes, the wonderful Beverly Cleary books. Oh, and Maude Hart Lovelace’s Betsy, Tacey and Tib. They take me back to the days when reading was pure joy and not something to be critiqued. I’m ten again and lying in bed with my feet making dirty marks on the pink walls.
Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Velvet Room and The Changeling are two that I reread on a regular basis and they both still work for me. For pure escapism, the “malt shop” books of the 1950′s are fun. My favorite teen and chilhood rereads though are the Williamsburg series by Elswyth Thane.
When I was a kid, I read CATCH-22 so many times that the cover fell off and some of the pages fell out. I haven’t read it since I was a young, stupid person. It had an eternal effect on me. I need to read it again. We’re about to get all our stuff out of storage. I will read it again, I promise! I still have my worn, chamois-like copy – so smooth. No cover.
On the school bus, however, the novelization of the Robby Benson basketball film ONE ON ONE was passed around because of a purported saucy passage. I wonder if the novelization of that Robby Benson movie still holds up today!
The Secret Garden was this week’s Fine Lines book, at http://jezebel.com.
And I love The Changeling, along with The Egypt Room. I met Snyder once and was a babbling fool.
I too like to reread Elswyth Thane’s Williamsburg books & the Secret Garden. Also, some of Elizabeth Goudge’s novels (The Scent of Water, the Damerosehay trilogy, Linnets and Valerians [YA]). But my very favorite reread from younger days is Diamond in the Window by Jane Langton. I like it even better now than I did as a child.
At dinner last night someone mentioned Tom Wolfe eulogized their father. That made me remember arriving home from parochial school and finding my paperback version of Electric Koolaid torn in half on my bed, my mom’s never-ending attempt to move me to the right. And Tom is a fellow Virginian! I didn’t even bother explaining what the book was about (Still not “right” nor a druggie.) Guess I better re-read that book.
My re-reads: To Kill a Mockingbird, Crime and Punishment (only on vacation), Siddhartha and other Hesse books, Gone with the Wind. would have never occurred to me to read Scruples, i believe i remember most of the plot line and can’t imagine revisiting it.
I’ve re-read all the Anne of Green Gables books recently. My daughter started reading them, and I found myself smuggling them out of her room after she went to sleep to re-read them myself. They still have the magic from when I was a kid, and I find I can relate more to the later books now, when Anne grows up and gets married and has children of her own.
That said, I may now rummage through my boxes to find my own copy of Scruples. I never thought to re-read it, it seemed enough the first time, but reading your post nudged my memory and somehow I can actually remember the story…
On a totally unrelated topic, I was just reading Publisher’s Weekly here at work and came across the delightful announcement that there will be at least 3 more Lippman novels to look forward to!!
And that doesn’t count the one in progress, or the Mystery Project, which is not a novel.
Of course, I actually have to write all those things. That’s the stickler.