Let's Do This...Let's Talk Jane Austen

Jane Austen is timeless because her stories are about women struggling with friendships, family, and of course, men. Every year somewhere some woman writes an article on Jane Austen for some lady mag like Vanity Fair or Cosmo and every year it's true: Jane Austen understands us. She tells it like it is. No we're not all still obsessed with marriage and we live in a different world in terms of law and career and we don't need men to SURVIVE. But most of us still like to dream about romance...to dream about someone who will be a gentleman. Also she simply writes about real people that we all know. The fact that these novels were written two hundred years ago is so beautiful to me. So much has changed in terms of technology and the way we court each other and live our lives. However, the human being is much the same, and the way we feel and interact person-to-person remains unaltered.

Sometimes I nerd out because some of these stories feel like looking in a mirror. Do you ever feel like Elizabeth Bennet and you're surrounded by Mr. Collinses? I do. Or you're Emma and he is Definitely an Elton and she is Definitely a Mrs. Elton? Me too. Or you are crying over some son of %^& bastard and you realize you really are being ridiculous....you're being a Marianne Dashwood, and you know deep down you'll get over this. Even though that Willoughby was terribly entertaining for a while. Yes, yes, yes.

I'm probably the billionth lady to ever think and say all this. It's nothing new, but sometimes you have to celebrate something, even when it's old.

Ahem...

I can't say I've been up to much. Though I have been reading. Observe my recent achievements:





I haven't been writing...or posting....about anything. Whoops. I think I've been feeling a little introspective and uninspired lately. Just today I decided to leap around and peruse some of my favorite vintage blogs and it reminded me how much fun I have being a classsy pin up girl. I confess I've gotten lazy due to summer. I seem to wear a lot of stretchy cotton and t-shirt dresses, and while I play with hair and make up sometimes, my vintage wardrobe has been hanging around, bored. I tried to start reading Middlemarch by George Eliot but sometimes I have to confess to myself: I may be patient for a girl of the 21st century, but I may not be patient enough for seven hundred pages of George Eliot. I KNOW I'll like the Masterpiece Theatre miniseries, though. You understand my dilemma.

Oh yes: I learned to do a fishtail braid (exhibit E):

Oh Diane Kruger is so cute.

Also, tomorrow I plan to bake not one, not two, but THREE gorgeous-delicious-yum pies for the cast and crew of Trek in the Park....including a new recipe for me. So you see? It's not like I haven't been DOING things....I just haven't been doing as many things as normal people do.....but that'll change. La la la....the end of the random post about random things.

Thursday afternoon.

Half-watching a PBS film on biological weapons online, reading The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje, considering some food that isn't chocolate, considering making a pie, going over some lines, experimenting with pomade in order to make my hair look like Grace Kelly's.

The Eyes of Irene Bordoni

So you may recall that I was reading Our Hearts Were Young and Gay. Sadly, I've had to take a pause. Why? Because in the year 2003, I bought the fifth Harry Potter book along with almost Everyone else. At about page 80, I got bored with Angst-Harry and set it aside, saying to myself, "I'll finish it later...and anyways, this way I'll get to enjoy Harry Potter longer than everyone else." I've always been a fan of suspense and looking forward to things.

Flash forward six years, and I haven't purchased the sixth or seventh book and the bookmark is still in the exact same place in the fifth book. Finally, I decided: the sixth film is coming out and I want to see it in theaters. I missed seeing the last one in the theater, because I wanted to read the book first. But I'm babbling.

The last time I read Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, the new pop culture item that kept rising up was Irene Bordoni. Apparently this is another star that young Cornelia Otis Skinner looked up to. Bordoni was a French singer and Broadway star during the 1910s and 20s, and later made some movies in Hollywood. According to Wikipedia (what can I say? it's handy) Claudette Colbert copied Irene Bordoni's style in some ways, too.

Gypsies, Vamps and Thieves*

I've been reading Our Hearts were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough. It was published in 1942 and basically contains the memoirs of the two friends' trip abroad after they had just graduated from Bryn Mawr in the 1920s. My great aunt recommended it to me ages and ages ago, and my copy actually came directly from her dusty bookshelf. Anyway, it's fun to read something that refers to so many cultural items of the past. So often I have no idea who or what is being mentioned. Skinner refers to Theda Bara at least three times in the first forty pages. The name did sound familiar and I guessed she was an actress. If you asked me to name silent film stars, though, only four come to mind right away: Louise Brooks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Those are the ones we probably see the most of, today. Anyway, I love having my eyes opened to the fun, everyday pop culture world of the past and this book is sort of like reading a twenty year old girl's personal newspaper.

Here are some photos and a film clip of Theda Bara, one of the first vamps and sex symbols of silent film.

*I miss Cher.

Reading for Fun!

It was a regular old spring day at Powell's City of Books in Portland, Oregon.  I was in the Blue Room (also known as the literature section) aimlessly browsing the shelves when I saw the cover of a book that simply said, "Maaaaargaux!! Reeeead meeee!!!"  This book was The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy.  I love avocados and the title was quirky. There was an art photo of a naked woman on the cover and she didn't look seductive or provocative, she was simply lying stomach down, her head up, eyes staring into the camera, like a thinking human being.  When I read the back cover, I KNEW this book was for me.  I read it and realized just how right I was.  

 "The Dud Avocado follows the romantic and comedic adventures of a young American who heads overseas to conquer Paris in the late 1950s. Edith Wharton and Henry James wrote about the American girl abroad, but it was Elaine Dundy's Sally Jay Gorce who told us what she was really thinking. Charming, sexy, and hilarious, The Dud Avocado gained instant cult status when it was first published and it remains a timeless portrait of a woman hell-bent on living."