A Room with a View - April CC Book Club Selection

[HImom]

Fascinating article and glimpse of the author! He did lead an interesting life, especially in those times.

Am I the only one who thought Cecil Vyse = Vise? I know it’s supposed to mean Wise but I thought Vise as well.

Did just finish watching the free video —Merchant Ivory version. It did breathe life into the story.

[mathmom]

I think Cecil was more vise than wise. That was an interesting article Mary! It always interested me that Forster stopped writing novels so early in his life.

[Caraid]

@Mary13 - Your ending is perfect! Thanks!

[VeryHappy]

I just got the DVD from the library. Maybe I’ll like the book more after I watch the movie.

[mathmom]

I’ll be interested to see if you do. There’s still not much evidence for the connection between George and Lucy. I read some interesting film critique (scholarly article) that talked about how shots were framed to emphasize their connection. I had fond memories of the film course I took in college. It was actually interesting to compare it with the far less faithful BBC version.

[Mary13]

@mathmom

There’s still not much evidence for the connection between George and Lucy.

I just read an article about E.M. Forster by Zadie Smith. She points out what you and @ignatius and others have said about Forster’s disinterest in showing the reader exactly why George and Lucy love each other:

The heart has its own knowledge in Forster, and Love is never quite a rational choice, as it was for Austen. Elizabeth Bennet needs to be convinced of Darcy’s virtues. Lucy never sees anything rational to convince her of George’s, unless back-flipping into a pond can be counted virtuous.

Smith also offers some insight on discussion question #6:

6. “Muddle” is one of Forster’s favorite words and seems to carry more weight in his work than in current colloquial usage. Lucy declares at the end of Part 1, “I want not to be muddled. I want to grow older quickly.” What does Mr. Emerson mean when he uses the word to describe Lucy’s state of mind near the novel’s end, saying, “It is easy to face Death and Fate…It is on my muddles that I look back with horror”?

Smith writes: “Forster’s folk are famously always in a muddle: they don’t know what they want or how to get it…his was a study of the emotional, erratic and unreasonable in human life.” She adds that Forster’s narrative structure is a muddle in itself – a flaw of the book that was mentioned above (e.g., the jump from Italy to England, the quick introduction of Cecil, etc.)

As for what Mr. Emerson is saying to Lucy, I think it’s just that it’s the little things in life that trip us up: small regrets, missed opportunities, and confusion or indecision about what path to take next.

Here’s the link to the Zadie Smith article, but I offer it with a caveat: I don’t find her writing style very appealing – too easy to get lost in a tangle of words: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/01/classics.zadiesmith

[Mary13]

Those of you who weren’t thrilled with the book—who felt it had promise, but was ultimately lacking—will enjoy this quote from author Katherine Mansfield:

EM Forster never gets any further than warming the teapot. He’s a rare fine hand at that. Feel this teapot. Is it not beautifully warm? Yes, but there ain’t going to be no tea.

[mathmom]

Wow, that reminds me why I never took an English class in college! After about 10 minutes of that sort of stuff, I ran away. That said, when I could understand what Zadie Smith was saying, I did think she had some good observations. I liked this:

Lucy Honeychurch, for example, is rigorous in her determination to avoid gaining either sense or sensibility. She would much rather take the second-hand report than discover a truth herself. “Mr Beebe,” she asks the vicar, “Old Mr Emerson - is he nice or not nice? I do so want to know.”

And I’m not sure that by the end of the novel she’s really changed.

I liked this too:

Forster, like Austen, abhors the vain, the self-important, the mannered, the blind and the foolish. But there are some fascinating differences. What one might call conscientious abstainers appear frequently in both authors: Cecil Vyse, Mr Beebe, Philip Herriton find their matches in many of the paternal figures in Austen, most noticeably Mr Bennet. By conscientious abstainer, a specific philosophic type is meant here: this is the man whose life-reading skills are as good as we might hope them to be, but who chooses only to read, to observe, but not to be involved. They are the novel’s flaneurs. They invariably think of themselves as “students of human nature”, and they are condemned by both authors as Aristotle properly condemns them, as people inured to the responsibilities of proper human involvement.

And this is such a good observation:

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practise, and we welcome ‘nerves’ or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire. She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should be reversed?"

Thanks for the link @Mary13 , it was a really interesting read.

[VeryHappy]

I watched the 1985 BBC version of the movie. Some observations:

Boy, were all those actors young!! It was 34 years ago!!

I enjoyed the movie more than the book, since in the movie George showed some passion – no worries about his being depressed – and Freddy was delightful. Seeing George so passionate, I could understand why Lucy chose him, but one wonders why in the world she agreed to marry Cecil in the first place. The movie offered no rationale at all.

Daniel Day-Lewis was absolutely fabulous as Cecil. Whose name, I had assumed, was pronounced Cee-sil, but in the movie was pronounced Sih-sil.

Mr. Beebe’s name is pronounced “Beeb”? I thought it was Bee-bee.

And that’s why it’s always better to read the book before seeing the movie. The movie helped me enjoy the book more, since the characters in the movie were much more developed than those in the book. But IMO, that just highlights how thin the book is.

[HImom]

How does one tell whether the version is the BBC or the Merchant Ivory? I saw one that was free and enjoyable. In it, George dies in the war and Lucy goes to Italy alone afterwards. The Italian driver admits he understood Lucy had wanted to be led to the clergyman but led her to George because he WAS “a good man.” Lucy admits he WAS a good man!

[mathmom]

@HImom, that’s the BBC version. It’s not actually that terrible, but the driver stuff was dumb. I thought it was good at showing how Italy was really a release for stuffed shirt Brits - all those naked statues! all those cute boys! I think we waatched Room with a View via Amazon prime.

[Mary13]

I think we’ve hit most of the high (and low) points for A Room with a View. Feel free to toss out ideas for our June selection.

Also feel free to carry on with the current discussion!

[author]

Getting here right as the review is over. I read the book years ago, and re-read recently. I enjoyed the chapters in Florence. Maybe because I’ve spent hours at the Uffizi, especially in the Botticelli room.

"A smell! a true Florentine smell! Every city, let me teach you, has its own smell.”
“Is it a very nice smell?” said Lucy, who had inherited from her mother a distaste to dirt.

“One doesn’t come to Italy for niceness,” was the retort; “one comes for life."

Do you have a scent for your city or town’s life?
Here we have the scent of energizing citrus, which is now in bloom, otherwise everyday it is the saturated breezes of our briny ocean air.

My grandmother was high-school English/Spanish teacher, she would declare one a “Charlotte Bartlett” when anyone would be gallantly yielding and we would acknowledge our self sacrifice:

“The ground will do for me.”

I have not seen the movie yet either.

[ignatius]

For the next selection:

Once Upon a River - Diane Setterfield. Published 2019. Historical fiction/magical realism. Good discussion book + gorgeous writing.

I still want to read

The Heart’s Invisible Furies - John Boyle

The House of Broken Angels - Luis Alberto Urrea

[VeryHappy]

Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeline Thien.

ETA: Do we ever read nonfiction books?

[Marilyn]

DVD is in at the library. I suspect I’ll like the movie better than the book but I always like reading the book first.

[ignatius]

Here’s Elaine Newton’s 2019 Summer Reading List: https://artisnaples.org/uploads/files/resources/documents/lifelong-learning/19-CCSummerReadingList.pdf

(SouthJerseyChessMom first told us about it.) At a quick glance I’m interested in Daisy Jones and the Six and Where the Crawdads Sing. I’d have to look others on the list up.

Still, I’m putting a strong plug in for Once Upon a River. I read and really really liked it and heartily recommend it.

[Mary13]

@author, it ain’t over 'til it’s over.

@@author

My grandmother was high-school English/Spanish teacher, she would declare one a “Charlotte Bartlett” when anyone would be gallantly yielding and we would acknowledge our self sacrifice

Love this! I wonder how many of our kids today would understand that reference.

@@author

Do you have a scent for your city or town’s life?
Here we have the scent of energizing citrus, which is now in bloom, otherwise everyday it is the saturated breezes of our briny ocean air.

Either citrus or briny ocean air sound wonderful compared to what the Chicago suburbs sometimes offer. I do love the smell of a summer day by Lake Michigan though. Most of my “comfort smells” are right at home – lilac and cedar in the backyard.

[Mary13]

@VeryHappy

Do we ever read nonfiction books?

There’s no rule against it, but when we have done so in the past, we’ve paired it with fiction (e.g., West With the Night and Circling the Sun or Reading Lolita in Tehran and Persephone). My fear is that we couldn’t sustain a solely non-fiction discussion for more than a couple of days, but I could be totally wrong about that. I’m open to anything. Would still like to read Educated, for example.

[VeryHappy]

Educated is wonderful, but I don’t know that I’d recommend it for a book club read. I guess regarding nonfiction I was thinking more along the lines of The Outliers by Gladstone or Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner or A Walk in the Woods by Bryson. Something that might generate discussion. All of those are old so I’m not necessarily recommending them.

One could read Educated with *The Glass Castle/i and My Dearest Darling by Tallent (fiction). All deal with abusive families.