|
|
|
Tonight I write about literature! - but not my own, it's okay. Today I have nothing to say about myself (hooray you say!) so instead I'll talk about that book Yelayna and I are reading. It is not called Woman's Waist, it has nothing to do with a woman's waist, but there's a picture of a waist on the cover. It's called The Portrait of a Lady. I've made it almost a quarter of the way through. To get you up to speed, here is the plot thus far: There's this girl, and she goes to England with her aunt, and she's real smart, and she has a cousin, and her cousin has a friend, and she has a friend herself. She has two friends, actually. Her cousin's friend tries to make her marry him but she says no. They eat lunch and then they go to London. And here's what will probably happen: Isabel's cousin George, his name isn't George, I never remember names, I have to look it up - her cousin Ralph falls in love with Miss Stackpole, and it turns out that Miss Stackpole has been going to visit him in the night the entire time she's been visiting. Miss Stackpole's waist begins to expand, Ralph wants to marry her, she says no and goes off to join a tribe of Gypsies, Ralph dies of consumption. Isabel's aunt and uncle die in a tragic fire and she inherits their entire estate. She runs around Europe being pursued by both Mr. Goodwood and her cousin's friend the Count, or the Lord. The Count, or the Lord, is obviously insane - he had no right to get so upset and mean after Isabel told him no - they'd only met a couple times! She didn't owe him anything! It's his own fault! Psycho! He sinks further into insanity and obsesses about her. One moonlit night in Florence over the Arno Mr. Goodwood finally catches up with Isabel and proposes; she accepts because she is high after smoking a hookah all afternoon; out of the shadows steps the Count, or the Lord, with a gun. It appears that he will shoot Isabel or Mr. Goodwood but instead he shoots himself and falls over the bridge into the river below. Isabel is upset, Mr. Goodwood "consoles" her, her waist begins to expand, just like Miss Stackpole's had. Isabel begins to think her mind has been infiltrated by the ghost of the Count, or the Lord. She severs relations with Mr. Goodwood, kills her baby when it's born, begins to prostitute herself out for money and opium, and ends up marrying a clown and joining him in a travelling circus. She dies when the chemicals from a bad dye job - this was before clowns wore wigs, they actually dyed their hair rainbow colors - get into her ears and eat her brain from the inside out. Her graphic letters to Miss Stackpole, who has become a great anthropologist and an intimate friend of Franz Boas, are published in a magazine in America and the entire country is captivated, enthralled, and horrified by the degeneration of such a wholesome American girl. Parents refuse to let their daughters visit Europe anymore, fearing the Isabel Syndrome. Relations between America and Europe deteriorate but are eventually ameliorated when Isabel's grandnephew Fitzhubert McHumphrey opens a small hamburger stand that will soon become that beloved symbol of humanity, McDonald's. There was a movie based on this book, starring Nicole Kidman's waist and John Malkovich's hand! When I'm done reading it I will rent it. I read about two pages a day, I will be done next year, I will let you know how close my predictions are.
|