Reading and eating
Jun. 10th, 2019 08:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunabee341. We have eaten so well the last few days. A couple days ago, we had roasted broccoli and roasted butternut squash with baked chicken thighs and sauteed dandelion greens and vidalia onions. Last night we made a ham. Josh and I try to do a fair amount of cooking large cuts of meat like Boston butt or a beef roast and getting multiple meals out of it. A 12 lb ham cost $18, and we'll get at least five meals out of it. We crusted the ham with brown sugar, and Josh made dressing to go with it. OMG, it was so freaking good.
2. Have a Good Omens rec:
Ins and Outs bymisbegotten
Aziraphale/Crowley
2646 words
Missing scene from the show
3.
The Shadow of the Sun by A.S. Byatt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is not my favorite of Byatt's novels, but I still enjoyed it very much.
In many ways, this book is about the patriarchal world of genius; it's about the repression of women who are expected to support this genius (or in some cases who find fulfillment in supporting this genius), and it's also about the way that these men abdicate their role as patriarch. If the system insists that men are geniuses and women are the scaffolding, then men have a responsibility to educate and grow the intellectual potential of women that is not being met here.
Henry is the genius author. He's an ass but an oblivious one. He's selfish but not in a malicious way. He's so remote and so caught in the grips of some kind of mental illness (I think probably manic depression) that he doesn't realize he's being selfish. When it's brought to his attention that he's being selfish, he's sorry and grateful for his wife's support even if that sorrow and gratitude are not going to be enough to change him fundamentally.
Oliver is the critic who wishes he was a genius but who knows he isn't and will never be. He orbits Henry and desperately wants Henry's friendship and validation but never gets it. Oliver is selfish in a malicious way, I think. He treats his wife horribly. He preys on Henry's daughter Anna. I can't be sure, but I think the narrative sees him much more sympathetically than I do. I've got no patience for Oliver which is a shame since he occupies so much of the novel.
The novel contains three women: Henry's wife Caroline (who perhaps should resent being the helpmeet of genius but instead thoroughly enjoys the role and finds her life's meaning in it), Oliver's wife Margaret (who wants to be the helpmeet of genius and would thoroughly enjoy the role and find her life's meaning in it except that Oliver knows he's not a genius and so keeps her at arm's length), and Henry's daughter Anna who is 17 when the book begins and in her early 20s by its end. Caroline is a static character who doesn't change over the course of the novel. Margaret descends into madness; if she cannot be Oliver's perfect wife, she has no idea what else to be or do, and by the end of the book, she is hallucinating and drinking enough bloody Mary's to fell a horse.
Anna is the most interesting character of the book to me. Byatt spends a great deal of time describing the artist's mind, what Henry sees in his manic episodes and how that translates to his writerly genius. Anna sees like her father. There's a scene in a bathroom where she has an epiphany of vision that is so like her dad's. There is also a Merricat-ness to her inner monologue that I quite like. Anna spends most of the novel aware of her incipient genius and trying to figure out how to make it emerge. I hoped that she would end up a writer like her dad and Oliver would end up being her Caroline but alas. By the end of the novel, Anna is pregnant with Oliver's child and while this is ambiguous, possibly leaving the whole idea of awakening her genius behind. I am really disappointed in her ending. I'm not sure if Byatt is trying to say that the domestic and maternal expectations that most women grow up with shut them out of genius and writing, but I do know that she struggled a great deal with that idea. One of her teachers told her that women had to eschew love and family if they wanted either of those things. I wonder if this novel would end differently if Byatt wrote it now in the 21st century. I hope so.
View all my reviews
2. Have a Good Omens rec:
Ins and Outs by
misbegottenAziraphale/Crowley
2646 words
Missing scene from the show
3.
The Shadow of the Sun by A.S. ByattMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is not my favorite of Byatt's novels, but I still enjoyed it very much.
In many ways, this book is about the patriarchal world of genius; it's about the repression of women who are expected to support this genius (or in some cases who find fulfillment in supporting this genius), and it's also about the way that these men abdicate their role as patriarch. If the system insists that men are geniuses and women are the scaffolding, then men have a responsibility to educate and grow the intellectual potential of women that is not being met here.
Henry is the genius author. He's an ass but an oblivious one. He's selfish but not in a malicious way. He's so remote and so caught in the grips of some kind of mental illness (I think probably manic depression) that he doesn't realize he's being selfish. When it's brought to his attention that he's being selfish, he's sorry and grateful for his wife's support even if that sorrow and gratitude are not going to be enough to change him fundamentally.
Oliver is the critic who wishes he was a genius but who knows he isn't and will never be. He orbits Henry and desperately wants Henry's friendship and validation but never gets it. Oliver is selfish in a malicious way, I think. He treats his wife horribly. He preys on Henry's daughter Anna. I can't be sure, but I think the narrative sees him much more sympathetically than I do. I've got no patience for Oliver which is a shame since he occupies so much of the novel.
The novel contains three women: Henry's wife Caroline (who perhaps should resent being the helpmeet of genius but instead thoroughly enjoys the role and finds her life's meaning in it), Oliver's wife Margaret (who wants to be the helpmeet of genius and would thoroughly enjoy the role and find her life's meaning in it except that Oliver knows he's not a genius and so keeps her at arm's length), and Henry's daughter Anna who is 17 when the book begins and in her early 20s by its end. Caroline is a static character who doesn't change over the course of the novel. Margaret descends into madness; if she cannot be Oliver's perfect wife, she has no idea what else to be or do, and by the end of the book, she is hallucinating and drinking enough bloody Mary's to fell a horse.
Anna is the most interesting character of the book to me. Byatt spends a great deal of time describing the artist's mind, what Henry sees in his manic episodes and how that translates to his writerly genius. Anna sees like her father. There's a scene in a bathroom where she has an epiphany of vision that is so like her dad's. There is also a Merricat-ness to her inner monologue that I quite like. Anna spends most of the novel aware of her incipient genius and trying to figure out how to make it emerge. I hoped that she would end up a writer like her dad and Oliver would end up being her Caroline but alas. By the end of the novel, Anna is pregnant with Oliver's child and while this is ambiguous, possibly leaving the whole idea of awakening her genius behind. I am really disappointed in her ending. I'm not sure if Byatt is trying to say that the domestic and maternal expectations that most women grow up with shut them out of genius and writing, but I do know that she struggled a great deal with that idea. One of her teachers told her that women had to eschew love and family if they wanted either of those things. I wonder if this novel would end differently if Byatt wrote it now in the 21st century. I hope so.
View all my reviews
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