"Pussy Jones " is one of my favorite authors.
Known for- The Age of Innocence, House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, The Reef, and The Decoration of Houses.
Let's discuss her, her work, and her life.
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"Pussy Jones " is one of my favorite authors.
Known for- The Age of Innocence, House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, The Reef, and The Decoration of Houses.
Let's discuss her, her work, and her life.
by Anonymous | reply 69 | July 15, 2023 9:40 PM |
The Age of Innocence is my favorite novel
by Anonymous | reply 1 | July 5, 2022 6:17 PM |
No one has anything to say?
by Anonymous | reply 2 | July 5, 2022 8:34 PM |
I'm currently reading the House of Mirth! It is so good!
by Anonymous | reply 3 | December 8, 2022 3:38 PM |
She terrorized Henry James! Very difficult for him to deal with.
by Anonymous | reply 4 | December 8, 2022 3:42 PM |
R4 No, they were good friends
by Anonymous | reply 5 | December 8, 2022 3:49 PM |
She was undoubtedly a gifted writer but she is most appreciated for [italic]recording[/italic] her experience more than contextualizing it. I enjoyed Age of Innocence and House of Mirth, but found them both lacking in a searching exploration of contemporaneous America as a society. Her POV thus her characters, were exclusive and predominant, the setting of her cloistered enclave and her place in it. Her minor characters were two dimensional and only of passing importance.
Every writer is encouraged to start by “write what you know” but the best don’t stop there. Seminal writers are humanists as much as story tellers. They go in search of the things they don’t know after they refine their voice. She didn’t, in as much as she was capable. But she was great for what she was.
by Anonymous | reply 6 | December 8, 2022 3:55 PM |
R6 I disagree. I think her lead characters are very three dimensional. She knew them.
Her descriptions of the scene are very telling. They paint a gorgeously elegant picture that mean absolutely nothing.
by Anonymous | reply 7 | December 8, 2022 3:58 PM |
R7 her lead characters were three dimensional. Her minor characters weren’t. I understand they were minor but she wrote caricature. Even non principals have humanity and good writers pay them that dignity even if they aren’t central to the story being told.
by Anonymous | reply 8 | December 8, 2022 4:05 PM |
I completely disagree with r6 from beginning to end. At her best, her novels are superb anthropological studies of a vanishing way of life.
And it's not true that writers are all encouraged to 'wrote what they know." That was popular among some (lazier) schools in the mid to late 20th century, but Toni Morrison told her writing students at Princeton, for example, NOT to write about what they knew. "I don;t want to hear about your little lives," she would tell them.
by Anonymous | reply 9 | December 8, 2022 4:09 PM |
R9 Respectfully, I’m completely surprised by you identifying yourself as an English professor. You don’t seem to even understand what I wrote.
Regardless, they are my opinions of her writing, nothing more.
by Anonymous | reply 10 | December 8, 2022 4:13 PM |
CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY is an underrated masterpiece. I don't know why it isn't more popular. Has it ever been made into a film?
And her unfinished novel THE BUCCANEERS is definitely worth a read.
And, of course, there's always THE HOUSE OF MIRTH and ETHAN FROME.
Oddly enough, THE AGE OF INNOCENCE left me cold.
by Anonymous | reply 11 | December 8, 2022 4:24 PM |
Well she certainly was a handsome woman. I've never read any of her shit.
by Anonymous | reply 12 | December 8, 2022 4:27 PM |
Every character in The Age of Innocence has depth:
Newland, May, and Ellen for sure.
Mrs. Mingott is slowly watching family, and her death rapidly decline.
Newland's sister and mother and completely dependent on him.
The Van Schuylers are not as influential as they think. The Emperor has no clothes.
Sillerton Jackson is a "confirmed bachelor"
The French tutor fell madly in love with Ellen and still loves her.
Lawrence Lefferts is envious of Newland.
Julius and Regina are cash poor. They hide it well.
I'm sorry, but I do not under stand HOW these characters come off as two dimensional?
Remember, this is 1870's New York City. Nobody discussed their true feelings. It was bad manners. You have to read between the lines.
by Anonymous | reply 13 | December 8, 2022 4:28 PM |
R13 her health, not her death
by Anonymous | reply 14 | December 8, 2022 4:29 PM |
R5 Yes, he came around after ten years or so. But he was suspicious of the socially grand and excessively rich milieu she came from.
by Anonymous | reply 15 | December 8, 2022 5:10 PM |
R15 that is funny, considering they both were friends with the Vanderbilts and visited Biltmore frequently
by Anonymous | reply 16 | December 8, 2022 5:23 PM |
I love her, too. The House of Mirth is just a wonderful novel. Great character development and a true word-lover's artistry with English. Like Jane Austen, Edith Wharton wrote perfect sentences.
by Anonymous | reply 17 | December 8, 2022 5:34 PM |
[quote] The Van Schuylers are not as influential as they think. The Emperor has no clothes.
I think you mean the van der Luydens, but I'm not sure what you mean here.
The omniscient narrator is quite clear that they have authority over all of Old New York: "The van der Luydens were morbidly sensitive to any criticism of their secluded existence. They were the arbiters of fahion, the Court of Last Appeal, and they knew it, and bowed to their fate."
They are the ones that throw the big dinner party to teach Lawrence Lefferts "a lesson" in badmouthing Ellen (and of course he attends and stops badmouthing her), and they are also the ones who engineer Ellen's removal from New York at the end so she will no longer be a threat to newland and May's marriage.
by Anonymous | reply 18 | December 8, 2022 5:39 PM |
House of Mirth was my favorite! Poor Lily Bart.
by Anonymous | reply 19 | December 8, 2022 5:42 PM |
R18 but Ellen bluntly puts it: They do not show up a lot because if they did they would lose their power
by Anonymous | reply 20 | December 8, 2022 5:55 PM |
Love her. Love her.
I think I've read everything by her. Ethan Frome is my current favorite.
by Anonymous | reply 22 | December 8, 2022 6:55 PM |
Ellen Olenska is an ungrateful whoar, and she deserved to be cancelled. When she bitched about the Vander Luydens, who went out of their way to help her, I wanted to slap her accross her whore face really hard.
by Anonymous | reply 23 | December 8, 2022 6:59 PM |
I'm not big on short stories, but Wharton's "The Bunner Sisters" is well-written tragedy.
by Anonymous | reply 24 | December 8, 2022 7:04 PM |
Pussy Jones?
by Anonymous | reply 25 | December 8, 2022 7:26 PM |
Her parents owned a magnificent property in Newport (still private). She and her husband lived nearby at Pencraig Cottage. Must have been nice.
by Anonymous | reply 26 | December 8, 2022 7:33 PM |
R25 Pussy was her childhood nickname.
by Anonymous | reply 27 | December 8, 2022 7:47 PM |
Good but never achieves the finesse of Flaubert or the range of Nabokov. And then there's Dostoevsky. I snorted at the Toni Morrison cunting remark at R9. Good writer but Lordy her grande dame act in life was de trop.
by Anonymous | reply 28 | December 8, 2022 7:57 PM |
[quote] Good writer but Lordy her grande dame act in life was de trop.
Mary!
by Anonymous | reply 29 | December 8, 2022 7:59 PM |
She was a spitfire
by Anonymous | reply 30 | December 8, 2022 8:02 PM |
I love The Buccaneers and re-read it often.
by Anonymous | reply 31 | December 8, 2022 8:22 PM |
Having once found myself broke, recently dumped and all alone wandering the cold streets of New York, Lily Bart’s demise struck very close to home.
by Anonymous | reply 32 | December 8, 2022 8:55 PM |
Did you shoot yourself in your own foot out of pride, delusions of lofty mission, and misguided good morals? Lily Bart's is a cautionary tale.
by Anonymous | reply 33 | December 8, 2022 9:42 PM |
Has anyone else been to Edith's estate The Mount in Lenox, Mass.? The house isn't necessarily that spectacular but the grounds are gorgeous. I remember acres of ferns, growing in the shade.
by Anonymous | reply 34 | December 8, 2022 9:44 PM |
Fern?
I know her.
by Anonymous | reply 35 | December 8, 2022 9:46 PM |
No, but I've thought about it, R34. I'd love to see it.
I saw Dickinson's homestead in Amherst. That was pretty cool.
by Anonymous | reply 36 | December 8, 2022 9:53 PM |
Interesting that her childhood nickname was Pussy. I read her short story, Beatrice Palmeto and saw another side of a favorite writer. It concerns a father/daughter incestuos relationship. Everything but before, preserving her virginity for her wedding night. Afterwards they consummate their love. There is much more to the story, but I'll not spoil it.
Here is an excerpt.
by Anonymous | reply 37 | December 8, 2022 9:57 PM |
What are those sleeves called? Mutton-chops?
by Anonymous | reply 38 | December 8, 2022 10:00 PM |
Yes, r38.
by Anonymous | reply 39 | December 8, 2022 10:04 PM |
More like Turkey Drumsticks.
by Anonymous | reply 40 | December 8, 2022 10:06 PM |
She should have shot her milliner.
by Anonymous | reply 41 | December 8, 2022 10:11 PM |
I've been to The Mount several times. My grandmother loved Lenox and liked the programming and cafe at The Mount.
And when I was young, I had a Wall Street banker suitor who loved everything old and WASP (he was entirely NEW and catholic) and would helicopter me to gilded age watering holes for the weekend. It was very strange. We went to the opening of Canyon Ranch for example. It was obvious to everyone what was going on. But I was impeccably turned out ivy leaguer so I was a classy young squire, that's for sure. I took him over to The Mount and up to The Clark to talk to him about literature and art. He loved that and destroyed my ass every night, with his huge latin cock, which I loved, in plush frauish rooms in mansions converted to hotels. This was before my own Dim Age, when I traded the bankers for gangsters and trannies and a cold loft on the river in Dumbo.
by Anonymous | reply 42 | December 8, 2022 10:18 PM |
Were Buster Keaton & her ever seen in the same room
by Anonymous | reply 43 | December 8, 2022 10:20 PM |
Good times and bum times, r42...
by Anonymous | reply 44 | December 8, 2022 10:22 PM |
'Twas the best of times, 'twas the worst of times.
by Anonymous | reply 45 | December 8, 2022 10:23 PM |
She used to shove her porcelain figurines in her pussy
by Anonymous | reply 46 | December 8, 2022 10:42 PM |
Odd looking dog faces.
by Anonymous | reply 47 | December 8, 2022 10:49 PM |
The Mount is quite lovely because it's not Gilded Age excess. Wharton hobnobbed with the new money and was a guest in their palaces and chateaux but she was old money including Dutch patroon money. Old. Similar house would be FDR's Springwood in Hyde Park, which offers a striking contrast to the Vanderbilt palace up Route 9.
by Anonymous | reply 48 | December 8, 2022 11:00 PM |
I read (and loved) Wharton's Custom of the Country earlier this year. Undine Spragg -- what a name! What a character you love to hate. (She only wants the best, you know.) I can't believe it hasn't been made into a movie or miniseries. That is a delicious part for an actress. And while it could easily be updated to today's Gilded Age (well, Gilded for a few), I'd love to see it as a period piece.
Terrence Davies' The House of Mirth is now available to stream (Showtime, Prime Video, Paramount+). It's been unavailable for years.
by Anonymous | reply 49 | December 8, 2022 11:06 PM |
R48, you're right about The Mount. A lovely home of proportion for entertaining just a few close friends. Edith designed the home after setting up a large Newport estate with and for her no-good husband. BTW, R48, another wonderful, family home from the Gilded Age is Naumkeag in Stockbridge - built by a [art of the Choate family.
by Anonymous | reply 50 | December 8, 2022 11:14 PM |
Jay Leno bought Land's End a few years ago. Next up, Cardi B at Hammersmith Farm.
by Anonymous | reply 51 | December 8, 2022 11:21 PM |
R16 James visited Biltmore once, in 1905. Do your homework, dear. Naturally I don't mean to suggest that the Jameses were of the lower orders socially, but he expressed numerous times his wariness of "the great ones of the earth." His letters are available to be read.
by Anonymous | reply 52 | December 9, 2022 1:15 AM |
Custom of the Country's Undine Spragg would have been a perfect role for a young Lana Turner in a great old-fashioned Hollywood film produced by MGM with all of its expertise and excess and a grand supporting cast of its roster of character actors.
by Anonymous | reply 53 | December 9, 2022 4:54 AM |
In this book it gave a history of one block in New York from the ice age to present day on West 23 6th Ave. to 5th Ave. Though at one point in time it was where the early Gilded Age lived in mansions, during Edith Wharton’s childhood much of the crowd had moved up to the Upper East Side. The Whartons were one of the last families remaining on the block along with another prominent family. What’s really fascinating is that a hundred plus years later it’s the same block that Robert Mapplethorpe will have his loft financed by Sam Wagstaff. So Edith Wharton and Robert Mapplethorpe are connected through time.
by Anonymous | reply 54 | December 9, 2022 5:05 AM |
In present day, her home’s first floor is now a Starbucks.
by Anonymous | reply 55 | December 9, 2022 5:09 AM |
She sho is ugly
by Anonymous | reply 57 | May 29, 2023 11:30 PM |
[quote] Every writer is encouraged to start by “write what you know” but the best don’t stop there.
She did [italic]not[/italic] stop there. You don't know what you're talking about.
ETHAN FROME and SUMMER, two of her best books, are not about the wealthy at all.
by Anonymous | reply 58 | May 29, 2023 11:34 PM |
[quote] "What are those sleeves called? Mutton-chops?"
Leg-O-Mutton, R38.
by Anonymous | reply 59 | May 29, 2023 11:57 PM |
OP, thank you for this thread.
Wharton is, IMHO, among the finest of all American novelists, equaled only by Melville and Fitzgerald. She deserves to be read, remembered, and revered.
I highly recommend Hermione Lee's biography. Wharton's discipline as an artist was extraordinary. Fitzgerald, not incidentally, was a great admirer of her work.
by Anonymous | reply 60 | May 30, 2023 1:07 AM |
R60 thank you
Wharton has excellent prose.
by Anonymous | reply 61 | May 30, 2023 1:17 AM |
[quote]And it's not true that writers are all encouraged to 'wrote what they know." That was popular among some (lazier) schools in the mid to late 20th century, but Toni Morrison told her writing students at Princeton, for example, NOT to write about what they knew. "I don;t want to hear about your little lives," she would tell them.
R9, thank you, today I learnt. Perhaps Josh Hawley had her as a tutor at some point which would explain him writing about Manhood then!
by Anonymous | reply 62 | May 30, 2023 11:55 AM |
She pings. Was she one of us?
by Anonymous | reply 63 | May 30, 2023 12:34 PM |
The opening scene of the 1995 miniseries The Buccaneers reminds me of a scene from Anne Of Green Gables.
by Anonymous | reply 64 | May 30, 2023 12:50 PM |
[quote] She did not stop there. You don't know what you're talking about. ETHAN FROME and SUMMER, two of her best books, are not about the wealthy at all.
I was at The Mount yesterday and purchased a book containing both "Ethan Frome" and "Summer." I began reading "Ethan Frome" last night.
by Anonymous | reply 65 | July 15, 2023 8:44 PM |
[quote] Has anyone else been to Edith's estate The Mount in Lenox, Mass.? The house isn't necessarily that spectacular but the grounds are gorgeous. I remember acres of ferns, growing in the shade.
Yes, R34—just yesterday. I agree with what you say about the house and grounds.
On the walk up to the house from the stables, there are lots and lots of ferns growing. So spectacular.
by Anonymous | reply 66 | July 15, 2023 8:48 PM |
"Stop bothering me, Edith!"
by Anonymous | reply 67 | July 15, 2023 8:56 PM |
Plain as a mud fence, poor thing.
by Anonymous | reply 68 | July 15, 2023 8:56 PM |
Love her work how she used her characters to act againt societys norms and then slayed them in utmost delight.
by Anonymous | reply 69 | July 15, 2023 9:40 PM |
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