Angry with Bronson Alcott Yet Again

[mrissa]

I wonder if it's a good idea to write a book because I'm really angry. I've read books recently by people who are very good writers technically, but the specific books made me think, "Why would you write that many words about something you clearly disliked that intensely?" And yet, this future 19th century utopian commune science fiction YA novel, I think it will have things in it I like, wood and apples and aliens and people who are willing to do what they have to do to leave it all behind.

Still and all. Today I went for a walk in the rain alone with the dog. I wore sturdy boots and cotton (denim) trousers and a warm wool jacket. We walked by the lake and past the slough and through the trees, and I noticed the violets coming up in the park, and the water lilies on the lake, and where a child had cut a path through the woods from the apartment complex, using a bad pocketknife (and I know what those paths look like, because I was once that child, and I had a bad pocketknife too, then). I kept the dog from disturbing the nesting mallards in the bushes. I watched how the rain made the white petals fall from the flowering trees. I knew they would like all of it. And I knew they meant that someone else should do all this, not a grown woman and not a technophile and certainly not a grown woman technophile. And I thought, well, screw you, Bronson Alcott, grown woman technophiles can notice violets, too. (I find myself thinking, "Screw you, Bronson Alcott!" with increasing force with each of Louisa May Alcott's books I reread as an adult. It's really alarming, the level of hostility I am developing towards this long-dead man.)

And then I think I haven't progressed as a writer since I was 11 years old and desperately wanted there to be a new ending of Rilla of Ingleside where Walter didn't die, because this book on the back burner, the one I've barely started to research, is really about getting Louisa May Alcott free of her father. And Louisa May Alcott isn't even in this book. But Magdalen Branch is, and there is a bad pocketknife in the pocket of her apron, and I can feel it all, the worn cotton around my hand and the smooth wood and rusting metal of the knife, and I can smell the rust and the flour and the goldenrod as she walks off, and I know I will write this book one of these days whether it's a good idea to do it or not.

Comments

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Thanks. As long as I'm stuck writing it, I'm glad someone might want to read it.

Re: "Don't you think Apple Slump would be a better name for it, dear?"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And that, in a nutshell, is why I would have to restrain myself from kicking the man's tombstone.

March...um. I think Geraldine Brooks got a little too into her research on Bronson Alcott, because there were things in March that Mr. March didn't do in Little Women/Good Wives but Bronson Alcott did. The people who have said that it's "seamless" and "has no inconsistencies with the originals" have not read the originals very carefully very recently.

Or it may be the same problem as in Wicked, where many people who don't spot inconsistencies have not dealt with the whole Oz series, or haven't recently. There's plenty to skew in the original without relying upon one's readers having read the entire series. Harumphharumphharumph.

Re: "Don't you think Apple Slump would be a better name for it, dear?"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I haven't read her adult stuff yet, but I'll have to before I write this YA.

Re: "Don't you think Apple Slump would be a better name for it, dear?"

[callunav.livejournal.com]

It's all online, you know. Just for when you do want to look at it again.

http://www.gutenberg.org

Re: "Don't you think Apple Slump would be a better name for it, dear?"

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Hee.

I need to read some of her adult stuff. I have a good friend who's quite a scholar of it, and tells me about it, but I haven't read it myself. I grew up on the stories LMA herself called 'moralistic pap,' and I retain a fondness for them, but when I went back to try reading them (on Gutenberg, of course), I couldn't cope any more. (Eight Cousins, for instance. I didn't dare try An Old-Fashioned Girl.)

And, okay. Your subject line. Quote. From where?

Re: "Don't you think Apple Slump would be a better name for it, dear?"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

An Old-Fashioned Girl has driven me further up a wall than any of the others so far.

Re: "Don't you think Apple Slump would be a better name for it, dear?"

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

Are you including the RPT and JRN stuff to in OZverse? For my tastes RPT just shines.

Re: "Don't you think Apple Slump would be a better name for it, dear?"

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I include some RPT at the very least (I haven't read all of it yet), but I wouldn't expect that a book that was supposed to be "the other side of Oz" would get through all of them. I would expect, though, that it would have read up through Glinda of Oz at least, or, hell, Ozma of Oz. If I can track down obscure Finnish monographs, Wossname can at least read three Oz books before he writes another.

[pameladean]

I'd read it too. I started reading Alcott as soon as I could read. The astonished disbelief and horror didn't kick in until I was, oh, gosh, who knows, thirty? and was reading them in order to write an essay about them. I never did write it, but holy Toledo.

P.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I've never been able to make myself read Rilla of Ingleside, so in my mental landscape, Walter doesn't die.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If he hadn't, I would be an entirely different person. I mean that literally: Walter's death in Rilla of Ingleside was one of the formative events of my childhood.

(There isn't a rule that formative events actually have to have happened, is there?)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Stupid italics.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You know the bit in "Galaxy Quest"* where they try transporting the pig-alien-thing, and the lovely Thermian guy says, "It turned inside out. And exploded"? His is the voice in my head, about my head, about some of the formative novels in my childhood.

*If you haven't seen "Galaxy Quest," run, don't walk.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The ending makes me cry. Where they land at the con and salute the fankids for saving the day. I tear up every time.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh yes.

When they call on the communicator and the kid starts his, "I know none of it is real" -- "It's all real." -- "I knew it!", oh, oh. And the bit with his parents and the fireworks, oh.

I liked Sigourney Weaver and Tony Shalhoub and Alan Rickman and even -- dare I say it -- Tim Allen. I liked all that. But the fankids totally made the movie for me.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

Oh, I understand that completely. I didn't read LM Montgomery until I was in my early 20's, so even if I did read the book, it wouldn't have the same impact on me as it did on you. Why I didn't read LMM when I was a kid is weird and convoluted and tied up in family politics that I still don't completely understand. And probably never will.

My formative books were the Little House books. And Gone-Away Lake. And The Trumpet of the Swan. And a book by Clyde Robert Bulla called Viking Adventure where a little boy goes off with a Viking ship to Vinland and when I was done with it I looked and looked and looked on my National Geographic map of the world that was on my bedroom wall for Vinland until my dad came in and asked me what I was looking for and I told him and he told me it didn't exist and in the back of my head I thought to myself, "Vinland does so exist! I'll prove it!" I still have that book. It is one of the only books I still have from my childhood.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It does too! Honestly, just because we call it something different....

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I know! Silly Dad!

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Elizabeth Enright, author of Gone-Away Lake also wrote The Melendy Quartet, which is fabulous. Re-reading them has been one of the great pleasures of my adult life. I liked them as a little girl, but as an adult I was absolutely floored by the meticulous craftmanship and the beautiful writing of the books.

A reverse experience of Alcott.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I haven't read those. I missed a lot of "classic" children's fiction--I'm not sure why, because I was a voracious reader and would read as many books as I could get from the library. I suspect it's because my mother wasn't aware of the books because she hadn't read them and none of the librarians saw fit to take me in hand--so I read a lot of series, like Lucy Fitch Perkins and the requisite Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I never read Spiderweb for Two when I was small, so when I saw it at the library, I squeaked and grabbed. I still haven't reread Then There Were Five, but it's on my list. I always liked Rush best, so Spiderweb for Two was a bit of a disappointment.

Also, the incident with Mona's nails really got on my very last nerve. Still love them, but -- gahhhh.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I wish you would write the book, because I'm still pretty ticked at Bronson Alcott too. I find when I read Little Women it's best to just try really hard not to think about him because Mr. March is so obviously a wish-fulfillment of what she wanted her father to be and yet he's *still* so far from a great father. (Though I do like the bit where he tells Jo they will just have to "comfort each other", about Beth's dying.)

You know, part of what makes, say, Number of the Beast (which I read in tenth grade) fantasy for me is the whole concept that you'd be hanging out with a bunch of people and they'd all be familiar with the later Oz books. And for that, you can substitute, say, the books by E. Nesbit where they all know and love Mrs. Ewing's books or the ones by Eager where they all know and love Nesbit. I did not meet anyone who read the same books as me that I wasn't related to until at least high school, and IRL they're still rare for me.

I know lots of people who do know the same books now online, but as I know them (you) via words on a screen, in some ways it still feels like the way I "know" fictional characters via words on a page. Therefore it doesn't seem strange to me at all to be influenced by a fictional character.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

That is sad and funny.

It makes me think I'm spoiled - I have a large number (well, to me it's a large number...three or four that I see on a regular basis in person, and some more that live in other states but are still RL friends) of people around me who can recognize a majority of my conversational quotes, and who can, when I say, "Augh, who is it who said, 'I don't take vows, I make decisions,'" tell me after a moment's thought. And so I get frustrated with my workplaces because there is no one who shares my thought-vocabulary. It makes me feel stranded and alien and unhappy while I'm working.

The thought of not having anyone who did to come home to, either, makes me shiver.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Well, those particular things just don't become conversational quotes. You end up quoting things like Monty Python instead. And there are always books to come home to, and people who understand you and love you even when they don't follow you into books. And people online to quote from books at :-) But you're right, people who love the same books and recognize your quotes are wonderful to have around either on or offline.

Actually, the only reason it was bothering me recently - I mean, not having people around who know the later Oz stuff - was because I was wearing a rainbowy skirt yesterday and thinking I could to wear it for Halloween with ribbons pinned to my shirt and colored streaks in my hair and be Polychrome, the rainbow's daughter.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

You could still go that way and tell people you were "a rainbow" or "the rainbow's daughter," but it wouldn't be the same, I know.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

I think I really wil say "Polychrome", because it's such a perfect name for a rainbow's daughter that I suspect anyone who hasn' read the books will just figure I made it up or heard it somewhere. And you never know, someone might recognize it.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I found that kind of friends when I was 11, and it definitely changed my world, so I can see where the lack of it would make for something very different.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

And I read your descriptions of playing Swallows and Amazons with great pleasure for you, and envy for me that I didn't get to do that. (Never mind that I only first read Ransome within the last five years and have still only read the first book. )

Though I'm pretty sure none of us wouldn't have agreed to be Titty.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Titty is clearly the author-sympathy character, though, in the series at large. When we started, Peggy -- er, Hilary; in my head she is still my Mate Peggy, and about half of my e-mails to her have a slip akin to that, even 16 years later -- thought she might try being Titty because Titty got to do so much. But there was no good in it; Peggy was Peggy was Peggy, and the two of us were Amazons together. And Erin joined us last, and she was smaller than the rest of us (I was by far the biggest), and she was Titty the way Hilary never was. And we occasionally sniggered up our sleeves, because we this was '89-'90 instead of '39-'40, but there was really no arguing that she was our Titty.

I can't read the books without the overlay now, without "knowing" how Nancy would have felt at various moments better than I know how other characters would, that kind of thing. It was an intensely immersive fan experience.

That wasn't the only thing we passed around that year, though. It was just the one we played. We lent a million other things back and forth, Madeleine L'Engle and Lloyd Alexander and I don't even remember what-all.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Whereas I didn't get people to share books with until the end of high school and then in college, so it was a completely different experience.

The ones I have to share book with now are all online - the interesting part about that is I think we tend to talk about what's in the books more than I do with people I know in the flesh. Probably because we're not going off doing other things and because having the books in common tends to be the main reason we met.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

IME girls seem to find those friends even in the darkages when I was growing up. I wish I had.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

dichroic is female, so we have at least one person who doesn't fit that generality right here on this post.

But I'm more of a natural social hub than most people of any sex, so. I don't mean to. I just find people, and I tend to keep the ones I find.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Bronson Alcott can join William Godwin on my list of So-Called Fathers Whose Daughters Should Have Killed Them With A Shovel.

Also, I think Screw you, Bronson Alcott is a perfectly good reason to write a book.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

I would absolutely read a Bronson Alcott anti-feschrift s/f novel. I went through an LMA obsession several years ago (I loved her books growing up) and was surprised to find that they often resembled the "moralistic pap" she said she hated. I still have a very soft spot for Little Women and Eight Cousins. Always hated the books after Jo married the Prof.

I then read several biographies of her life. The best one (in my opinion) is Martha Saxton's Louisa May Alcott: A Modern Biography.

I've pilgrimaged to most of the places she lived (and are still standing).

I also have a LMA project that evolved during my obsession. It's a play set during her European tour. It's been on hold for several years now.

My only comfort in confronting the topic of Bronson Alcott is that his daughter is better known that he. When I think of all the greats wandering the woods near Concord (sort of like Into the Woods but crammed with writers and thinkers) I never find him. I run into Louisa, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Emerson, Melville, and even Whitman, occasionally John Brown, but never Alcott. It's like he's frozen in a museum tableau, while the others still live through their words and thoughts. Bronson missed out on the one thing he truly desired: immortality.

I'll second the recommendation of her gothics. It's like reading Jo's work. If you ever want to talk resources, or just biography, let me know.

zipping in from elsewhere

[reveritas.livejournal.com]

can you explain this (did i miss it in the last post or something)? why are you mad at bronson alcott and WHAT do you want to write to stick it to him?

cordially,
confuzzled in california

Re: zipping in from elsewhere

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, you didn't miss it in a previous post. The people who knew what I meant were drawing on more shared background.

If you read some of the material linked in other comments, some of Bronson Alcott's flaws will become clearer. He was the kind of idealist 19th century male who had no problems with letting the women in his life -- primarily his wife and daughters -- bear the brunt of the practical consequences of his idealism. Also he had some really toxic notions about what was and was not appropriate for women and why, mixed in with a few genuinely progressive attitudes.

"Stick it to him" is not how I would have phrased it. But a YA novel wherein his general approach is rejected by a main character would not strike me amiss.