#Jetta Carleton

[monkeyssalad-blog]

1963 illustration by Fairbairn by totallymystified Via Flickr: For the story The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton. From Woman's Journal.

[zebydeb]

Avid Reader is the memoir of Robert Gottlieb, who was a New York publishing bigwig in the second half of the twentieth century. Obviously he read huge numbers of new books as they were coming out. And then as now, so much stuff was published that a lot of good books were quickly forgotten after their moment in the sun.

I’ve been keeping a list of novels that Gottlieb enthuses about but I had never heard of (or the author is famous for one book and he’s raving about a different one). He has really wide-ranging tastes, so this list has a little bit of everything. Sometimes he doesn’t even mention the genre, just how good the book was.

It will probably take me years to get round to all these, if ever.

If anyone’s looking for a reading project, may I present to you: The Avid Reader incomplete list of neglected novels

Niccolo Tucci, Before My Time (autobiographical novel by a writer who left fascist Italy - praised by Dorothy Parker)

Sybille Bedford, A Legacy (about German aristocrats - Nancy Mitford loved this one)

Rona Jaffe, The Best of Everything (young women juggling career and life in 50s New York, sounds a bit like a pre-women’s-lib Sex and the City)

Sylvia Ashton-Warner, Spinster (autobiographical novel by a New Zealand teacher trying to make school better for her Maori pupils)

Mordecai Richler, Barney’s Version

Bruce Jay Friedman, Stern

Jetta Carleton, The Moonflower Vine (an American farming family with a secret)

Robert Crichton, The Secret of Santa Vittoria (villagers try to outwit Nazis in WWII)

Chaim Potok, The Chosen (two Jewish boys growing up in Brooklyn)

Charles Portis, True Grit (source novel for the Western film)

John Cheever, Bullet Park (“dark and obscure”)

Lisa Alther, Kinflicks

Ross Macdonald (crime writer, no specific title was mentioned)

William Wharton, Birdy

Dorothy Dunnett, British writer of historical fiction, The Game of Kings (start of a series) or King Hereafter (standalone)

Joseph Heller, Something Happened

L G Buchheim, The Boat (translated from German, source novel for the film Das Boot)

Tom Tryon, The Other (psychological horror)

Robert Stone, A Flag for Sunrise

Evan Connell, Mr Bridge

[itsblosseybitch]

To his daughters as they grew up, Matthew Soames was God and the weather. He was omnipotent and he was everywhere-at home, at school, at church. There was no place they could go where the dominating spirit was not that of their father. And, like rain or shine, his moods conditioned what they did.

The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton (pg. 47)

[mamgt]

Did you ever stop to think that night is the true condition?

Clair de Lune | Jetta Carleton

[duo-log]

'Remember When?' Over Chai

Nibbling at a Ferrero Rocher at 2 AM, wide awake and thinking about the speed with which the past ten days went by is how jet lag feels like. We made a shorter than short trip to India to attend a wedding and the handful of days we were there were quite eventful, literally, and a little too much travelling if you ask me. As Indian weddings go, there were quite a few sleepless nights followed by long days, harsh lights, a lot of honking immersed in the musical throes of the shehnai and a cranky bunch of people missing their daily caffeine dosage. The end of the wedding ceremony, which lasted three days, was marked with some scintillating fireworks and my little one whooping, clapping, jumping and wincing all at once. I enjoy weddings, but by the time the fireworks came to a close, I was so tired that I sighed audibly before I rested my head on the window of the Ola cab and fell fast asleep on the hour-long ride back home.

In the days following the wedding, I had plans to visit my hometown and meet my one-year-old niece, but my tired mind and body were less than reluctant to leave the cosy comfort of the bed. Eventually, I managed to get my lazy behind out of bed and into a cab towards Rishra. We drove by the Ganges all the way and were deep in conversation about something that I cannot remember now, but my mind was engaged elsewhere as I found myself thinking of those rides on the busy trains as a kid with my mum holding my hand tightly on our way to visit my now late aunt. It has been almost a decade since she left, but her love and enthusiasm for the finer things in life still burns brightly in my memories. She kept the family together. I know that now for since she left, the family drifted apart, and that is how I end up visiting my hometown, my cousin and my niece after six long years instead of the usual annual visits we made growing up.

Riding the cycle rickshaw with my little one in my lap, I reminisced about the lazy summers aeons ago when we reached Rishra after a day and a half long train ride and hopped on to cycle rickshaws to take us through the last stretch. I usually sat with dad and he would point me to the school he went to, the playground where he played football, his friend’s house, the club where they played carroms, which was a tiny hut with a thatched roof and a low hanging bulb that lit the area of the carrom board and, much other silly stuff that I don’t really remember anymore. But I remember the allure of seeing something of my dad as a child and so, I showed my little one the staircase where I used to sit holding the rods on the window grill with both hands and my head poking out watching the thoroughfare of the bustling market and the road below hoping she will find my childhood moments amusing too. The road seemed narrower than I remember but just as loud. However, all my little one did was shut her ears to avoid the same hustle bustle that enthralled me as a child.

The rooms where my grandmothers lived, both maternal and paternal, were empty and instead of their old, frail and yet beautiful selves hugging and welcoming me home, I found their pictures framed with garlands hanging. The space they left behind felt like the vacuum, the pressing and painful kind. My little one will never know the bright, intelligent and witty women they were and that is unfortunate. I couldn’t stay long nor could I meet all the people I wanted to catch up with but I am glad I made the trip and introduced my little one to her cousin. They did not gel well. In fact, they are so similar that they fought and cried in the little over an hour they were together. It only reminded us of how we fought and argued and yet possessively loved each other. Growing up, if these girls find each other again, maybe they will enjoy each others’ company. One can hope.

I do not have a conclusion for these thoughts as my mind wanders and I look back longingly to all the lovely childhood summers spent in that little town. The late luncheons consisting delicacies that only my grandmother can cook, the stroll in the market with my aunt as she sneaked in a few treats from the ice-cream parlour for us cousins, learning to ride a bicycle, early morning visit to our neighbours who owned a sweet shop with the intention of devouring a few fresh and hot rasgolla, the addiction to playing ludo with the kids in the neighbourhood, watching movies on video cassettes late into the night and falling asleep over the dinner plate; the little things that jostle and tug the strings of the heart like sharing of adolescent escapades and matters of the heart are what I miss the most. Those people are now gone; those moments will never return; a lot has changed and yet! It felt like home. Maybe a little of the love we share seeps into the very walls and foundation of the place making it special.

“What was I going to do when such days came no more? There could not be many; for we were a family growing old. And how would I learn to live without these people? I who needed them so little that I could stay away all year - what should I do without them?” ―- Jetta Carleton, The Moonflower Vine

Read the other part of this Duolog(ue).

It Was Worth It, Every Bit Of It

One of my dearest cousins was getting married. After missing out on many many occasions as such, I had my mind made up. I was not going to sit this one out. Also, I cannot in a sane state of mind not attend one of the most important days of her life.

[ezm303-blog]

The Moonflower Vine

[desoax]

“Nowadays, perfectly respectable people went to shows on Sunday, they went dancing and played cards; lots of girls even smoked—and it didn’t mean they were going to hell. Hell had shifted its location; it was farther away than people used to think.”

-The Moonflower Vine, Jetta Carleton

[uninterestingtimes]

1963 illustration by Fairbairn by totallymystified Via Flickr: For the story The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton. From Woman's Journal.

[itsblosseybitch]

From Left to Right: Griffin Dunne, writer Kathleen Rowell, and Amy Robinson in 1985.

If you remember from the American Film articles I transcribed, Dunne and Robinson were working on an adaptation of The Moonflower Vine, a novel by Jetta Carleton. Rowell was supposed to write the screenplay. For reasons I'm not privy to, the project didn't materialize.

You can read more about it from Rowell's blog here.

[mamgt]

She knew him at once. She had been looking for him all spring, in the night, through the alleys and into the park, all over town, drawing closer and closer, never knowing that this was the one - not the other, but this one - nor that he would stand at her door with his heart in his mouth.

Clair de Lune | Jetta Carleton

[teenspl]

Clair de Lune: Naïve College Teacher Lives, Loves, Learns

Clair de Lune: Naïve College Teacher Lives, Loves, Learns

Title: Clair de Lune

Author: Jetta Carleton

Six Word Review: Naïve College Teacher Lives, Loves, Learns

Summary: Young, intellectual, attractive and single, Allen Liles is a new-on-the-job college teacher. She begins an after-school group to discuss poetry and literature with students, but the group’s numbers quickly dwindle down to just her and two boys, George and Toby. Allen and the boys start…

[quoth-the-raven-writingdesk]

She brought her mind down to the congenial finitude of the earth and the sound of the crickets sawing away in the grass. The night was filled with their anxious summoning.

Clair de Lune by Jetta Carleton

[desoax]

[itsblosseybitch]

We stared up the street. All the way to the Methodist Church, the street was parked solid. There were cars clear around the square. Everyone in the country, it seemed, had turned out for the funeral. We had forgotten that old Mr. Corcoran had not died a natural death. He was murdered, and murder had made him famous. The churchyard was jammed with people, children ran back and forth. Except for the presence of the hearse, it looked like a basket dinner. Death is always a social occasion, and this one was a jubilee.

— The Moonflower Vine by Jetta Carleton (page 41)

[mamgt]

I loved him and I wanted him back. And he came. And maybe it wasn't his love that brought him back, but hers. How seductive being loved could be.

Clair de Lune | Jetta Carleton