The Diaries of Eve and Adam

What if Adam had recorded his days in a diary?  What if Eve kept a diary, too?  What do you think they would have written?  What if Mark Twain got hold of the original manuscripts (or carved rocks?) and "translated" them for us?

I have just completed reading facsimile editions of Extracts from Adam's Diary (1904) and Eve's Diary (1906), each of which has the same subtitle:  "Translated from the original MS."  These are the funniest Mark Twain books I have ever read.  To begin with, Adam isn't too sure what he thinks of the "new" creature that we know as Eve.

Tuesday
"The new creature names everything that comes along, before I can get in a protest.  And always that same pretext is offered -- it looks like the thing.  There is the dodo, for instance.  Says the moment one looks at it one sees at a glance that it 'looks like a dodo.'  It will have to keep that name, no doubt.  It wearies me to fret about it, and it does no good, anyway.  Dodo!  It looks no more like a dodo than I do" (p. 5).

Saturday
"She fell in the pond yesterday, when she was looking at herself in it, which she is always doing.  She nearly strangled, and said it was most uncomfortable.  This made her sorry for the creatures which live in there, which she calls fish, for she continues to fasten names on to things that don't need them and don't come when they are called by them, which is a matter of no consequence to her, as she is such a numskull anyway; so she got a lot of them out and brought them in last night and put them in my bed to keep warm, but I have noticed them now and then all day, and I don't see that they are any happier than they were before, only quieter" (p. 33).

After reading Adam's diary, I imagine this cartoonist has the right idea.  Adam, after all, says right there in his diary that fastening names on the animals is all about the animals coming when they are called by those names, right?  Then THIS makes perfect sense:

Here's Adam's idea of appropriate work for the woman and for himself:

Wednesday
"Another thing, she says it is ordered that we work for our living hereafter. She will be useful. I will superintend" (p. 49).

Adam was not around when their first child was born, so it's interesting to see him trying to figure out what "it" is:

Next Year
"We have named it Cain.  She caught it while I was up country trapping on the North Shore of the Erie; caught it in the timber a couple of miles from our dug-out -- or it might have been four, she isn't certain which.  It resembles us in some ways, and may be a relation.  That is what she thinks, but this is an error, in my judgment.  The difference in size warrants the conclusion that it is a different and new kind of animal -- a fish, perhaps, though when I put it in the water to see, it sank, and she plunged in and snatched it out before there was opportunity for the experiment to determine the matter.  I still think it is a fish, but she is indifferent about what it is, and will not let me have it to try" (p. 55).

Three Months Later
"The short front legs and long hind ones indicate that it is of the kangaroo family, but it is a marked variation of the species, since the true kangaroo hops, whereas this one never does" (p. 65).

Poor Adam.  Life was so confusing to him.  Decades ago I ran across a slogan that tickled my funny bone -- and seems entirely appropriate here:  "Adam was a rough draft."  Eve's diary shows us her curiousity and industriousness.  Here's a long quote that comes from pages 51, 53, 55, 57 -- every left page has drawings, and every right page has words.

"I laid a dry stick on the ground and tried to bore a hole in it with another one, in order to carry out a scheme that I had, and soon I got an awful fright.  A thin, transparent, bluish film rose out of the hole, and I dropped everything and ran!  I thought it was a spirit and I was so frightened!  But I looked back, and it was not coming; so I leaned against a rock and rested and panted, and let my limbs go on trembling until they got steady again; then I crept warily back, alert, watching, and ready to fly if there was occasion; and when I was come near, I parted the branches of a rose-bush and peeped through ... but the sprite was gone.  I went there, and there was a pinch of delicate pink dust in the hole.  I put my finger in, to feel it, and said ouch! and took it out again.  It was a cruel pain. ...

I was curious to know what the pink dust was.  Suddenly the name of it occurred to me, though I had never heard of it before.  It was fire!  I was as certain of it as a person could be of anything in the world.  So without hesitation I named it that -- fire.

I had created something that didn't exist before; I had added a new thing to the world's uncountable properties; I realized this, and was proud of my achievement, and was going to run and find him and tell him about it, thinking to raise myself in his esteem -- but I reflected, and did not do it.  No -- he would not care for it.  He would ask what it was good for, and what could I answer?  For if it was not good for something, but only beautiful, merely beautiful --

So I sighed, and did not go.  For it wasn't good for anything; it could not build a shack, it could not improve melons, it could not hurry a fruit crop; it was useless; it was a foolishness and a vanity; he would despise it and say cutting words.  But to me it was not despicable; I said, "Oh, you fire, I love you, you dainty pink creature, for you are beautiful -- and that is enough!" and was going to gather it to my breast.  But refrained."

Eve discovered fire?  Why not?

I rate both Extracts from Adam's Diary and Eve's Diary 8 of 10.

International Women's Day ~ March 8th

The first International Women's Day was in 1911, so today is the 100th time this event has been celebrated.  This photo by NaPix - Hmong Soul shows "Black Hmong woman Khu, planting rice with her baby, Mi Tu, on her back all day long."  When I ran across this photo, I thought about childcare.  Mothers have their children "on their backs" always, even if not physically. Women are the ones who feel the weight of caring for the children.

Remarkable Creatures ~ by Tracy Chevalier, 2010

See the (pale) creatures at the top of this book cover? See the coiled fossil above the title?  These are things that Mary Anning found on the beaches and in the cliffs of Lyme Regis, back in the nineteenth century.  Yet men took credit for her discoveries.

You may wonder why, having found these things, Mary Anning wasn't hailed as the amazing fossil finder she was.  First, she was unlearned.  No, it wasn't a matter of not being bright enough to study science or get into college.  As a matter of fact, she was self-taught.  That's because she was a mere woman and considered, therefore, not capable of such.  It was systemic, with women being denied any chance to learn things like paleontology.  Mary was denied a formal education simply because she was a woman.

Second, she was poor.  She rummaged on the beach for curiosities to sell in her father's shop.  It was a way to supplement her family's meager income, though often she received no compensation at all for showing famous scientists how she could find these fossils.  How many discoveries has the world missed because women were not allowed to be involved?  And how sad is this bit from the book?

"We label the specimens, recording where and when we found them, and display them in cases with glass tops.  We study and compare specimens, and we draw conclusions.  The men write up their theories and publish them in journals, which I may not contribute to myself" (p. 97).

Now we have two books published recently about her.  We are nearing the 200th anniversary of Mary Anning's first major discovery, at the age of 12, in 1811.  Remarkable Creatures, a fictional account of her life, and The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World, a journalistic account by Shelley Emling.  I read about this second book in a New York Times article about books on science:  Tale of an Unsung Fossil Finder, in Fact and Fiction.  That's also where I found this picture:

I've already mentioned this book three times recently -- in a teaser, in a list of books for my new discussion group, and yesterday when I wrote about women's history month.  You can be sure, if I talk about a book a lot, that it's a book I like a lot.  I probably won't read The Fossil Hunter unless my library gets a copy, but my rating of Remarkable Creatures is 9 of 10, an excellent book.

Book lover ~ women's history month

 

I'm a book lover who has found some more books I think I'd love.  I went looking for a picture to illustrate this post and found one more perfect than I could have imagined.  I ran across it on a science blog, followed it to this blog, and again to this one, which I couldn't read.  The earliest blog calls the image "literary hug," but I had already saved it as "book lover."  I don't know who the woman is, but I love this picture!  Now that THAT is settled, let me share the books I am lusting after today.  March is women's history month, so all of these books relate to women.

First is a children's book by one of my favorite writers, Laurie Halse Anderson.  Abby (the) Librarian wrote a great review about Independent Dames: What You Never Knew About the Women and Girls of the American Revolution by Laurie Halse Anderson, illustrated by Matt Faulkner.  Laurie wrote a guest post this week about her writing that has a photo of her cottage "in the forest" (which I've shared here, at the left).  And I ... well, I put Independent Dames on hold at my library, so I'll tell you more about it after I have read it.  This much I do know already, that women did much more during our war for independence than we have been told.  One example:  Paul Revere rode 16 miles to spread the word, but 16-year-old Sybil Ludington rode 40 miles through the night to warn American militia of a British attack.  Why isn't she in our history books?

I found the next one in the March issue of Bookpage (p. 31) and may have to buy it, unless my library has it on order.  Published this month, Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper looks great!  According to Bookpage, wheelchair-bound Melody Brooks has cerebral palsy.  Here's the synopsis from BN.com:

"Melody has a photographic memory. Her head is like a video camera that is always recording. Always. And there's no delete button. She's the smartest kid in her whole school, but no one knows it. Most people -- her teachers and doctors included -- don't think she's capable of learning, and up until recently her school days consisted of listening to the same preschool-level alphabet lessons again and again and again. If only she could speak up, if only she could tell people what she thinks and knows ... but she can't, because Melody can't talk. She can't walk. She can't write. Being stuck inside her head is making Melody go out of her mind -- that is, until she discovers something that will allow her to speak for the first time ever. At last Melody has a voice ... but not everyone around her is ready to hear it. From multiple Coretta Scott King Award winner Sharon M. Draper comes a story full of heartache and hope. Get ready to meet a girl whose voice you'll never, ever forget."

The next one is The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science by Julie Des Jardins, published March 1st.  I found this photo in an article, appropriately enough, entitled Female scientists undervalued.  This book is about women's contributions to science and how they have been ignored.  Des Jardins said,

"To succeed in men's fields, women couldn't be themselves; they had to perform better than men."

N. Peart ("book gobbler") wrote a review on Amazon.com about this book that says, in part:

"Every day at the bookstore where I work I have to stare at the cover with a photograph of Francis Crick. I do not enjoy it. If you do not know who Francis Crick is then you should read The Madame Curie Complex. Francis Crick is only a small part (ultimately in the history of science a big part) of one of the many stories of men getting credit for women's work and great women scientists who were undermined or not recognized for their scientific successes."

Men taking credit for women's work.  That sounds like what I read in Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, a book that I need to review soon.  I'll try to write that review in the next day or two, maybe today.  It's a book about Mary Anning, a real woman, who made five major fossil discoveries and inspired the tongue twister "She sells sea shells by the seashore."  That's a picture of Mary Anning at the left.  I posted a teaser about Remarkable Creatures a month ago.

What books have you discovered lately?

Evensong ~ by Gail Godwin, 1999

Evensong by Gail Godwin, the sequel to Father Melancholy's Daughter (which I reviewed yesterday), is also told from Margaret Gower's point of view.  This story shows us Margaret as a married woman, who has become an Episcopal priest, like her father.

I had read both of these books, years apart, back when they were new (or at least newer).  So it's been a very long time (published in 1991 and 1999).  So I was in for a couple of surprises when I decided to re-read them -- together -- for the Women Unbound reading challenge.  I remembered that Margaret had become a priest and the general story line.  But let me tell you about a couple of things that surprised me.  Some of you may remember that I wrote about having a RE-birthday party to celebrate one year since my bypass surgery, which gave me new life and vitality.  Exactly one week later, I started reading this book and found THIS on page 9:

"I remember one evening in particular, the evening of Madelyn's 'new birthday.'  She had proclaimed that from now on she would celebrate her birthday on the date of her successful triple bypass the previous year, when she had been born again."

Madelyn wasn't the main character, and her "new birthday" was just a couple of sentences in a 405-page novel.  Did I subconsciously remember that from about a decade ago?  Or did the author and I both dream it up independently?  Whatever, the synchronicity of finding it just after celebrating MY new birthday was really a strange feeling.

Another part of the book that was much more immediate and real to me this time was a fire at the church in the novel.  It felt eerie in that I had witnessed the fire that burned down the church a block from my house only six months earlier.  I wrote about the church fire back in August, here and here.  This photo is one I took while the church blazed.  The destruction of the St. Elmo church hit me hard because I had preached a series of sermons there a few years back and had visited a Sunday morning service not long before it burned.

This book had already been one that I felt a kinship to because Margaret, the main character, was the pastor of a church.  I am an ordained United Methodist minister, which means we don't do the rituals and wear the same vestments that Episcopalians do, but I could relate to her doing weddings for members of her church and being called in the middle of the night to go through the fog to be with a new widow at the hospital.  I wrote down what the undertaker said when he was talking to that widow.  It's an interesting thought:

"Much better ... to die living than to live dying" (p. 120).

I don't know if life is imitating art or the other way around, but I found a lot of agreement with things Margaret thought:

"I recalled my father saying he sometimes felt his most vital mission at St. Cuthbert's wasn't to comfort the afflicted but to afflict the comfortable.  'We can't all be so fortunate as to minister to lepers and thieves and prostitutes,' he'd say.  'Some of us are called to the much less dramatic task of stirring up the sediment in complacent souls'." (pp. 42-43).

This book is perfect for the Women Unbound reading challenge (this link takes you to my musings on being a feminist).  Margaret is musing here about the discussion she and her oldest friend had about names:

"She had been baiting me, in her usual Harriet-way, this time about my choosing to take Adrian's name.  Having 'kept' hers when she married Georgie Gaines, she was going on about this being yet another symptom of my self-obliterating intentions, meanwhile preening over her own 'gesture of independence' until finally I had enough and pointed out that it was no more independent to keep your father's name than to take your husband's, and, if she really believed independence was a matter of what you called yourself, then the truly independent gesture on her part would be to give herself an entire new name, devoid of all parental input" (p. 112).

My rating stays the same as before:  10 of 10, because I couldn't put it down either time.

NOTE:  I also wrote about this book here, where I also mentioned the 10/10 rating.

Father Melancholy's Daughter ~ by Gail Godwin, 1991

Father Melancholy's Daughter by Gail Godwin is told from the point of view of Margaret Gower, daughter of an Episcopalian priest.  The story begins with 6-year-old Margaret being upset that her mother has skipped some of their daily routines because an old school friend is visiting.  Margaret childishly decides not to wave to her mother when she boards the schoolbus, and it turns out to be the last time she ever sees her mother.  As the story continues, we see the child grow into a teenager, we see her wishing she had a mother to ask this or that question of, we see her trying to ease her dad through his "melancholy," his black curtain  of depression.

Here's a quote from Father Melancholy's Daughter that relates to the Women Unbound reading challenge.  Mrs. Dunbar, the woman Margaret roomed with while in college, is talking with Margaret (p. 107):

"You girls today have so many choices.  In my day you got married or maybe if you were real brave you taught school or became a nurse.  Nowadays girls can be jockeys or steelworkers . . . or even priests.  Funny!  I don't have anything against a female jockey -- women have always been good riders -- and I don't even mind if some girl sets her heart on a blowtorch and a hard hat, but I just can't go along with women priests."

"Daddy has trouble with it, too."

"I'm like your Daddy.  I just can't look up to a woman priest.  And I never know what to call 'her.  I can't call her 'Father' and I can't call her 'Mother.'  So she ends up being just 'you,' or 'Karen' or 'Linda' or somebody.  And the vestments never fit women right in front, do they?"

The story ends with some surprises which, on reflection, make sense to me.  This book has a sequel showing Margaret still struggling with her past; I'll write about that one tomorrow.

I rate Father Melancholy's Daughter 9 of 10, an excellent book.

Neighborhood book club

We have a listserv for the folks in my neighborhood, and one woman has sent out a call for anyone interested in starting a book club in the 'hood, as she put it.  I've never thought of myself as living in a 'hood, but I do live in books.  So I wrote back expressing my interest, asking what she likes to read, and naming some of the books I have enjoyed.  I had in mind the kinds of books that would, in my opinion, probably be good for discussing in a group.  Have you read -- and maybe discussed -- any of these?  Which books would you suggest for a new book club?  I've led many, many discussions, but I'm also open to new ideas.  Here's the list I sent to the woman in my neighborhood (F = fiction, NF = nonfiction, and links are to the books I have reviewed or written about):

Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible (F) and Prodigal Summer (F);

Gail Godwin's The Good Husband (F) and Evensong (F);

Masha Hamilton's The Camel Bookmobile (F);

Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper (F);

Tracy Chevalier's Remarkable Creatures (F) and Girl with a Pearl Earring (F);

Jennifer Donnelly's The Tea Rose (F);

Elizabeth Berg's The Pull of the Moon (F) and Talk Before Sleep (F);

Anne Tyler's Ladder of Years (F) and Digging to America (F);

Gail Tsukiyama's The Samurai's Garden (F);

Sarah Addison Allen's Garden Spells (F);

Geraldine Brooks's People of the Book (F), Year of Wonders (F), and Nine Parts of Desire (NF);

Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake (F);

Valerie Martin's Property (F);

Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees (F) and The Dance of the Dissident Daughter (NF);

Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan (F);

Dee Dee Myers's Why Women Should Rule the World (NF);

Kris Radish's Annie Freeman's Fabulous Traveling Funeral (F);

Gail Collins's When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present (NF).