It probably shows how bad my concentration is, or how little patience I have, during the lockdown that midway through Edith Wharton’s autobiography, I’m thinking of abandoning it.
It’s just not very compelling, which is a surprise. Wharton had a rich, fascinating life: she was extremely rich and was brought up in fashionable society, had a privileged life, had many intellectual friends (including Henry James), travelled often between Europe and the US and travelled widely, had many interests from architecture to gardening and interior design, wrote a book called The Decoration of Houses and a book called Italian Villas and Their Gardens, started writing fiction quite late in her life but became enormously successful (bestsellers), had many accomplishments, had an affair, got a divorce, then later in France worked tirelessly in her charitable efforts for refugees and the injured, and got appointed Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. She also became the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize, for The Age of Innocence.
Compared to many people in her time, especially women, Wharton had a fascinating, eventful, and enviable life.
And yet, the autobiography seems really dull and repetitive. The Wharton of A Backward Glance isn’t the Wharton of The House of Mirth or The Custom of the Country or even The Age of Innocence—the book isn’t really funny, and even though there’s some irony, some mockery here and there, there’s none of the sharpness we see in the novels, probably because she’s writing about real people. It’s quite bland and dull.
I’m nearly halfway through the book. She begins the autobiography talking about the background, her ancestors, family, then her childhood. In the adult chapters, she spends lots of time writing about the cultivated minds she knows, the intelligent, cultured people who help her with her writings (Walter Berry, for example), which becomes repetitive and tiresome after a while, as all the figures she mentions become fused together and get mixed up.
There are things I’m interested in that don’t get discussed in the book, such as her feelings about her mother Lucretia, or her marriage with Teddy. She doesn’t even write about the events that led up to the marriage. In short, in terms of personal life, it is a very conservative, and not at all frank, autobiography.
I can’t help thinking of Speak, Memory, which is stamped with Nabokov’s strong personality and filled with enthusiasms; in A Backward Glance, Edith Wharton’s personality doesn’t come out very strongly.
At this point, she hasn’t said anything about The House of Mirth. I may still pick up the book again, as I’m interested in her writing process, inspiration, ideas, thoughts on the success of her books, etc. I don’t know anything about the background of The House of Mirth, but my copy of The Age of Innocence mentions her original ideas, which were completely different. I’m interested in her writing process and artistic decisions, and also interested in her views on other writers, contemporary or classic. It’s just a pity that so far there’s so little of it.
Or maybe I just have very short attention spans these days.
You might enjoy Wharton's short 1925 book The Writing of Fiction. It might get closer to what you are missing in the memoir. I haven't read either.
ReplyDeleteYeah I tried to get that one from the library before the lockdown, but somehow the man couldn't find/get it or something.
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