Re: JCO: The Gravediggers Daughter - SPOILERS INCLUDED

In a message dated 8/14/2007 9:16:15 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, Cyranomish@aol.com writes:

Hi, Eric and everyone.  I had read the final chapter of GGD -- published separately as the letters between the two cousins -- last year in a story collection:

High Lonely, I think.  R's cousin, of course, had a completely different background.  She and her family had great struggles in exile from their Austrian home, but those experiences made the cousin (whose name I now forget) into a tough, cosmopolitan person, at a great cost, of course.  Whereas Rebecca remained "buried alive" in her "safe" upstate New York home.  The cemetery theme: how people bury their pasts and suffer as a result, is well done. Both women were both flawed and strengthened by their experiences -- the Dr. is a harsh, aloof, lonely person (hence the story collection title "High Lonely," I wonder.)  Rebecca found a kind husband and moved into a saner life than she had with her frustrated father.  The theme of leaving one's earliest identity behind -- of metamorphosing into a new kind of creature -- goes back to the novel "them" (1969) and beyond that to "Shuttering Fall" (1964)?)  Psychic death and rebirth being a major JCO theme.

 

I hope Rebecca made contact with her battered brother, who thinks he recognizes her in a crowd toward the end of Gravediggers Daughter. Neither woman's life is "better" than the other's.  Both lives required self-mutilations in the name of survival.

 (I don't have the book with me; and some of the story and most of the names have faded from my memory.)

  I find it notable  that "recovering" one's Jewish identity in this book and others has gently skirted the whole issue of religion. JCO's heroine's do not visit Jewish places of worship in their explorations, nor do they make contact with practicing Jews.  Perhaps those adventures lie ahead in other stories.  Thus far Jewish heritage pertains simply to blood lines.  I wonder how the two families would have developed had R's cousin's family been able to make it to upstate NY, as planned. It would have broken the nutty, fatal isolation of R's family to some degree.

Best,

Cyrano

 

 

 

Best,

Cyrano

In a message dated 8/14/2007 6:44:49 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, erickarl78@hotmail.com writes:

Hi Nicole

 

Thanks for your message. I was hoping we could discuss this novel here. I think it's one of my new favorite novels by Oates, one of her absolute best. As Michael Silverblatt commented in his interview with her, Gravediggers Daughter seems to bring together a lot of the themes and subjects which are closest to Oates as a writer. One of the things I think he was referring to was the way in which Oates often writes of the survival of an individual girl who perhaps feels she wasn't meant to survive (either in the personal sense or within her own species)… The man Rebecca meets on the path home who might have killed her or her own father's decision to execute his family.

 

I found the book very moving as well. It's compelling how Rebecca feels throughout her life that she both belongs to America, yet doesn't belong. She's accepted as a bright pretty American girl, but only if she disguises her Jewish heritage. She (finally) finds herself in a successful marriage to a good man, but feels she can't continue her ties with her surviving family in order to maintain her new position. This distortion of the self raises obvious questions about to what degree the individual is really surviving if her identity is so thoroughly transformed and denied. Perhaps because America is such a great melting pot this is why Oates is particularly concerned with this theme in Gravediggers Daughter and so much of her other work.

 

Which parts perplexed you? The ending was quite a surprise – though in a way it felt right as well. Rebecca's long lost cousin is someone who took the complete opposite approach to Rebecca, did not distort her identity and feels absolutely no need to either apologize for who she is or expect different treatment because of her family's struggles. This has, of course, created an entirely different set of problems for her. What we seem to glimpse at the end is a possibility that these two diametric personalities might come together (though for Rebecca it may be too late). They may be able to set aside their strategies for dealing with life within a larger society and come together as a family. If it doesn't sound to achingly sentimental, I think Oates is saying by this ending that family is where many people draw their strength to really survive - from both the supporting influence of their love and the ability to be with those who share a common heritage.

 

I'd love to hear what other people think as well. I'm seeing Oates read from the book tonight in London and will relate anything back to the group which is of particular interest.

 

eric

 

 

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Re: JCO: Glenn Gould & the JCO short story Premature Autobiography

Hi, Rob.  I look forward to it.

Best,

Cyrano

 

n a message dated 8/16/2007 6:33:50 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, faliol@yahoo.com writes:

Cyrano,

i have this collection and will read the story in the
next few days then discuss - OK?

cheers

rob

 

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JCO: Guardian JCO Audio link

folks,

go here for the podcast and the ability to listen to
the event via windows media player, 47 minutes.

i have just listened to it and it is very good indeed.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/bookclub/0,,1549565,00.html

rock on

rob

Rock music is a recognised religion in my house - but only by me!

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Re: JCO: The Gravediggers Daughter

Nicole

I am around two-thirds of the way through this and
think so far that is it brilliant.

i should finish it within the week and will post my
thoughts in full then.

cheers

rob (stockport, UK)

--- "Provencher, Nicole D"
<ndprovencher@lake.ollusa.edu> wrote:

>
> I have just finished The Gravediggers Daughter. I
> am both deeply moved and perplexed by the work -
> especially the ending. Has anyone else read this
> work? Any thoughts?
>
> - Nicole
>

Rock music is a recognised religion in my house - but only by me!

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Re: JCO: Glenn Gould & the JCO short story Premature Autobiography

Cyrano,

i have this collection and will read the story in the
next few days then discuss - OK?

cheers

rob

--- Cyranomish@aol.com wrote:

>
> Hi, Steve. In the story "Premature Autobiography,"
> the genius-pianist
> Breuer listens to the student-heroine play one of
> her own compositions on the
> piano; then he remarks: "It is all very cold, what
> you have done...but is that a
> bad word 'cold'? I mean it is logical, it is not
> very like a girl. It is
> not to be expected, this kind of thing. You are a
> daughter of Bach....?"
> I think the story, if inspired by Gould, would
> not have presented Gould
> directly as a biographical figure -- for example
> GG's humming along with
> himself as he plays. The character Breuer, I think,
> would be a composite of
> many elements: Gould, recordings of Gould's playing
> as heard by JCO, other
> musicians JCO has heard, other people JCO knows, and
> JCO herself.
> If anybody is able to get hold of the story
> "Premature Autobiography,"
> (It's in the 1976 story collection The Goddess and
> Other Women) let's have a
> discussion here about it in the days ahead.
> In brief, "Premature Autobiography" is about
> "a famous man (Breuer)
> and an unknown girl; a man of 42 and a girl of 18."
> who meet in 1955 at "Sisley
> Academy," a music conservatory in the posh Delaware
> neighborhood of Buffalo,
> NY (a neighborhood, I note, that contains at least
> three Frank Lloyd Wright
> houses built in the early 1900s). The young
> girl-composer is, of course,
> bowled over by her mentor Breuer and (Watch out! I
> give away the plot here!!!)
> Has an affair with him, which lifts him out of the
> clinical depression that
> has bogged down his work for several years. There
> are some nice images & side
> themes in the story: a long, elegant cigar ash that
> is thoughtlessly flicked
> away. The girl's off-stage mother, whose fate
> becomes an Appointment in
> Samara for the girl by the end of the story. An
> autobiography of Breuer, which
> is published 14 years after their affair. I'd love
> to read it with some of
> you aficionados. Anybody game?
> Cyrano

Rock music is a recognised religion in my house - but only by me!

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