Post Episode Conversations

To me, Strout's novel sounds like a Story Cycle novel. Did anyone else get this impression? Or, perhaps, if someone has read it, is it? Does it join greats such as Winesburg, Ohio and The Country of Pointed Firs?

I enjoyed listening to Hirsch's conversation -- it was so personal and direct. I detected a sense of resignation not in any defeatist sense but in a detached sense -- healthfully, so. I like Edward's observation that there will be resolution of the conflicts (possibly) only in the grave. This observation, in my opinion, says that a positivist approach is unlikely to ever resolve and reconcile the conflicts -- we need something beyond. Hirsch evokes his dad's death as the anchor to hope.

When I was listening to Hirsch, I was reminded of a poem by an Indian sufist, Kabir Das, where he sings of the Abode of the Beloved (as Hirsch's reflection on his dad) as thus:

In that Place There Is No Happiness or Unhappiness,
No Truth or Untruth
Neither Sin Nor Virtue.
There Is No Day or Night, No Moon or Sun,
There Is Radiance Without Light.

There Is No Knowledge or Meditation
No Repetition of Mantra or Austerities,
Neither Speech Coming From Vedas or Books.
Doing, Not-Doing, Holding, Leaving
All These Are All Lost Too In This Place.

After Sarvas notes that he purposely avoided too much description of Harry’s work life as a radiologist, Wolitzer notes, “people don’t want to write about actual work in novels, I’ve noted . . . I think writers sometimes like to sort of say what the job is and then don’t want to actually put in the time.”

Strout points out that she is interested in the world of work in her writing, and Dan mentions Joseph Heller’s Something Happened, which Ed Hirsch agrees is a now classic depiction of the work place. In addition, Sister Carrie surely comes to mind as well when discussing the depiction of work in the novel.

What work novels, or poetry about work, do you know and like, and what do you think of the panel’s general conclusion that work is an underwritten subject in American Literature?

In discussing the bifurcated structure of his book (thefirst section is entitled “More Than Halfway,” the second, “To the Clearing”)and the book’s concern with middle age as a subject, Ed Hirsch says “I’m morethan halfway to the grave, but I’m not half the man I meant to become.”

Mark Sarvas says he could have used that line as theepigraph to his book because his character, Harry, is not the man he wanted tobecome, either.

We already have a discussion of Jane Eyre going on the site(a book also made reference to by Meg Wolitzer in this episode) so it isperhaps not surprising that this idea resonates with the aggressive confessionthat Rochester makes to Jane during their first evenings talking together inthe dinning room at Thornfield.

When, in Chapter XIV, Jane tells him that his “claim tosuperiority depends on the use you have made of your time and experience,”Rochester replies “I have made an indifferent, not to say a bad, use of bothadvantages.”

Meg Wolitzer describes the choices her characters have to make:

“Once you have children, and you leave the workforce for a while – the idea of going back to a job that maybe you never loved, or that never loved you, is much more complicated.”

After the roughly ten year period to which Wolitzer’s title refers has passed, and the children no longer need you because you’ve done your motherhood job right, the question is, now what?

Wolitzer says, “I think women, regardless of what they then decide to do, have to kind of take stock and think, do I want to return to something I once did? Do I have a passion to do something? Do I just like my life, and I can afford it, the way it is?”

Keeping in mind, as Wolitzer says, that she is not examining the issue of whether or not women should leave work to raise children – all of her characters have made that choice already – what do you think of how she frames the question facing her characters, and how, perhaps, has this scenario played out in your life?

David Hajdu's proposition (with some evidence) that censorship led to sharp decline of the comic industry in early 1950s is only one explanation. As David himself alludes to in his book and discussion, there are many other compelling reasons.

Comics were a source of expression and outlet for the immigrants. They were alternative forum for commentary on the society and body politic.

And here is an important data regarding immigration population. After very sharp increases in the immigrant population between 1900-1930, the numbers started declining in 1930s and 1940s with even more sharp decreases in the 50s and 60s.

So really the immigration population and hence the obvious readership for comics started declining in the 50s because of the aging of the old immigrants and the declining number of new immigrants. The decline in the comic industry is probably is better explained by the decline in natural readership.

And this does not ignore the prickly and prudish censorship of the 1950s but one has to concede that a society's tastes also change over time.