PECKERWOOD BOOK CLUB: What Are Your Favorite Old Books? Plus A Scandalous Ex-Wife!

Welcome book sluts, to another meeting of The Peckerwood Book Club, where we can share our thoughts about the books we've been reading, what books we're looking forward to - and just as crucial, what we indulge in snack-wise while doing so. By the way, if you dare tell us that you never nosh while reading a book, we won't believe you, so don't even try. 

Since it's summer, I find myself pursuing easy beach reads, and in some cases, revisiting old favorites. 

One of them is "The Comfort Of Strangers," my favorite Ian McEwan novel, which remains shockingly potent despite the poky 1990 Harold Pinter/Paul Schrader movie adaptation, which feels all too listless in comparison to McEwan's chilling examination of brutality, dominance and subservience in modern day relationships. At just over 120 pages, it streaks past like a deadly snake poised to strike. 

The same might be said of another favorite, "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," a collection of early Pauline Kael film reviews. It includes her notorious, still hilarious, takedown of "The Sound Of Music," and "The Making of 'The Group,'" her behind-the-scenes expose of the Vassar College femme ensemble movie, wherein she details the many ways in which director Sidney Lumet was "prodigal with bad ideas." Upon reading the essay, Lumet furiously denounced her as a "very dangerous person." Yet Kael is more than just bitchiness - though no one wields a pen-as-scalpel like her. I re-read her now for her mastery of language, her one-of-kind slangy prowess. There's still no writer like her. 

What old books do you find yourself returning to? A literary classic? A soapy romance from the 1950s? A Raymond Chandler crime novel? 

Speaking of older books, "Ex-Wife" was published to considerable fanfare in 1929, and not only because of its subject-matter and sometimes risque storyline, but because it was penned by Ursula Parrot, "a lady writer." It later provided the basis for "The Divorcee," a just-okay pre-code movie adaptation with Norma Shearer (who inexplicably won an Oscar for her portrayal over Marlene Dietrich in "Morocco"). "Ex-Wife" is far superior and very much stands on its own. A brisk, surprisingly modern, drama, the novel introduces Patricia, a young, whip-smart advertising executive going through a painful divorce in New York City as the Jazz Age draws to a close. Her adventures are stylish, frank and still eye-opening with respect to sexual relations, work-life balance, even abortion and rape. 

Equally well-drawn is her ex-husband, Peter, and in fact, the novel’s best moments chart this couple’s ongoing sexual relationship after their split, which is combative, intermittently tender and sometimes vicious on the part of Peter, who decides that the only way he can move forward from the failed marriage is to regard Patricia as a “slut,” even though it fell apart due to his own infidelity. There’s also Lucia, Patricia’s best friend and divorcee who cannily shows her the way forward.

In addition, there’s Patricia doomed love-affair with Noel, a journalist who’s hoping his bitter wife, disfigured in a car accident, will grant him a divorce. That she won’t doesn’t exactly come as a surprise, yet Patricia’s calm grace in the midst of this grievous heartbreak surely does. 

As the author later told an interviewer, “This, I think, is the most difficult age for a woman to be happy in. Not only has a wife to be a combined Madonna and Cleopatra, but she has often to be a business woman, sharing a 50 percent economic burden with her man, as well as a fairly good athlete, a perfect listener, and — if she hopes to hold her man — she must also put on a ‘clinging vine’ act.” That was in 1929. 

 

Meanwhile, your happy-go-lucky Bibliophile Bendy Boy™ is eager to dive into something new and old, or really anything that you believe will keep him firmly compelled. So go on, tell us all about your favs which you can't help returning to!

Photo Credits: Dell Books, Associated Press