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Oh, hi! I was in earlier today & missed this. We must have been online at the same time while I was in the other forum.

Respect for this. Hemingway is true as sunrise. I love his work as well. x

Oh! I see what you're saying. I've never met a "Tolkie" {I just coined that!}, but it is rather absurd to actually start wearing the Hobbit clothes and longing for hairier toes.

I had to be extremely serious growing up -- watching my siblings' backs as well as my mom's, trying to survive -- that sort of thing. Childhood was not fun or wonder-filled for me: it was something to be survived, so I never experienced the "wonder" of sinking into a good book. I read sometimes, but with a skeptical viewpoint. I still tend to be extremely analytical and skeptical when I read. I almost never sink in. When a writer can weave a tale so well I enter it heart and soul, I know I've found one I'll love forever.

When I read Gone with the Wind for the first time, I was sixteen. Well-entrenched in the life of white-knuckled survival. Scarlett was a life-saver. Here was someone who refused to sink.

I love the book because it went beyond story for me. It completely shook me -- this small girl/woman facing trial after trial after trial and always getting back up, right to the end. I thought she was magnificent, and after I read the book, I would feel her with me, when I needed strength: "I will never go hungry again." When I was afraid, I'd pull her to me.

Tolkien got into me like that. I find him lovely, somewhat for the same reason? The idea of all those people {creatures} rallying together, and the one small figure taking on the burden? What? That is such a show of honor. Fictional sure! But it came out of Tolkien's imagination, so it came out of life. It came out of humanity & hope. I think -- that makes it real for me. Part of what I love about the books is that after about a book and a half, I was so engrossed in the story I didn't even think about the fact that they are dwarves and hobbits. I saw people when I read. He puts so much humanity into it I stopped thinking about what they looked like or where they were from, & saw something timeless and absolutely magical. When I say "magical," I'm not referring to the wizards. I'm referring to the potential of the human spirit.

Ha! And why shouldn't you have? It's terribly represented in the media.

There's a term here for people who fanboy/fangirl Gone with the Wind, by the way: "Windie." I loathe the label and avoid it at all costs. No "Windie" I've met has ever said anything literary about the book. Many haven't read the book! But they can tell you how much they long to see Rhett and Scarlett together, and how pleased they are that sequels have repaired that inefficiency in the original novel {the gall!}. And how many events they have attended in full Scarlett garb.

That's PROBABLY part of why Gone with the Wind has a reputation as fluff. That and all the media images of Scarlett in a red dress swooning over Rhett. They distort the story, making it about the romance & leaving off all the times Scarlett stands alone or shoulder-to-shoulder with Melly.

One time at my bookstore job {a couple years ago} one of the associates paged me to the front desk to introduce me to a woman who LOVES Gone with the Wind {everyone I know knows I love Gone with the Wind, so the guy paged me to help me meet a like mind.} She introduced herself as a Windie and I shuddered. WHY WOULD YOU CALL YOURSELF THAT HAVE YOU NO PRIDE, and also, that probably means you dress up as Scarlett on the weekends & collect doilies monogrammed with Rhett and Scarlett's names.

Well, she told me all about how she knew Robert Osborne {the recently deceased host of TCM, a classic movie network here in America that frequently shows Gone with the Wind} and had met Anne Rutherford {the actor who played Careen in the film} and one of the actors who played Beau, the baby. She puffed herself up while I stared blankly, then she offered to add me to her email feed: apparently she emails people every week with every link she has found pertaining to Gone with the Wind. I wanted to tell her Google will do that automatically & also I have things to do, but I was afraid of being impolite, so I gave her my email address. Then she started telling me about all the events "Windies" go to all year, basically pertaining to visits with the few actors left from the original film, and Robert Osbourne {I'm not exactly sure why he is in any way tied to Gone with the Wind, but he seems to be central to the conversation of the Windies.}

Well, by now I'm becoming amused and tell her politely that I am a college student with a job, and while I appreciate the offer, I really can't go off across the country to take part in all the Windie events: I have exams. SHE TELLS ME THAT I SHOULD SKIP THE EXAMS SO I CAN VISIT THE FORMER CHILD ACTOR WHO PLAYED BEAU. Because hearing him not remember what happened during the filming due to his status AS A BABY will complete my life & possibly I can touch his sleeve.

WINDIE! It's a thorn in my side. I don't get it. My interest in Gone with the Wind is about the WRITING, & the author {not in a creepy way, but in an "I appreciate your writing and observe that you are an underanalyzed contributor to the American canon. I would like people to take you more seriously because I believe you were doing fine things in Gone with the Wind -- scholars, please give her another look" kind of way. I love encouraging people to read Gone with the Wind & watching them glow as they realize it's an actual STORY & not the strange representation of a story left after the Windies have cleared the room.

{It should be noted that I am currently formulating a list of all the books Mitchell read so that I can read them & know the things she read that inspired her writing. Possibly I am going a tad too far. I also love a music box & a porcelain figurine, so I wouldn't turn away a box that plays Tara's Theme or a doll shaped like Scarlett. Full disclosure. However, I have no need for a Hobbit figurine.}

Well, Dill. I'm afraid you may have to withdraw any esteem you've ever held for me.

I entered the Tolkien books {beginning with The Hobbit} expecting to find them dry and dull. I was pulled in almost immediately {amusing dialogue, clever characters}, & have devoured the books & films this summer. I find The Lord of the Rings one of the most imaginative things I have ever read, & I can't believe I ever avoided it. It's rare to find a story you so love it gets inside you, but this one did it for me, alongside Gone with the Wind and Little Women. I'm afraid I can no longer claim to dislike Tolkien. I like him A LOT. As in, I felt MANY EMOTIONS and ended the story feeling as if there was a symphony inside me. My favorite character was Frodo. I love the idea that he was so, so small, yet took on the task anyway. For me, that says so much about humanity. {I know, history could say the same thing, but also, so could fiction.} In the final film, when they all bow to Frodo? CHILLS. My goodness, I found the story an adventure. It's like he made it about creatures so it could be about everyone, & then he made it seem as if it COULD have happened, and history just forgot to record it, and that made it less pretend. Well, I confess, the magic got in me. It's like a fairy tale for grown ups, & I do like a fairy tale. (Apparently.) The theme! What! Small people can transform kingdoms. And the humor! And Aragorn. How did all of that come out of someone's imagination? I would like to hug Tolkien and give him a daisy. And I want to go to the Shire.

Sorry. I expected to drudge through it so we could dislike it mutually, but I'm afraid I laughed and cried and hung on the edge of my seat through the books and otherwise failed miserably in my task. We will have to shake hands and look uncomfortable and grim.

I'm probably going to do a sixth read of Gone with the Wind next. Long books are my favorite because they can last a year. x

yuge

That's happened to me, but for me, it was a side character who took over the story. She was supposed to have a small role, and decided that instead she would be the protagonist and make the story entirely about her own issues. I wasn't experienced enough as a writer to keep her in her place, so she took over & destroyed the story I was meaning to tell. I think she'd be great in another story, but I would have preferred she wait for her own book.

When I write, I vanish. I don't care if there's music or no music, though I find sometimes that music can alter what I'm writing, sometimes for the worse, as I'll find myself writing to the mood of whatever is playing. So it's often better for the story to turn it off. Anyway, I vanish, as in, I blink, and twelve hours has gone by. But like Ann, this process can be shattered even by a moment in the real world. It's as if I'm creating strings of thoughts in my head, and they're leading me somewhere -- and someone poking in at the door expecting me to answer even a minor question shatters the strings, and within seconds I lose everything. But if I'm left alone, they build and build, weaving something in a place well beyond conscious thought. I think following the strings is the creativity? And knowing your story well enough to turn off the music and tell the side character to wait for her own book is the common sense.

I have no idea if that's the normal writing process.

A precious memory. Far beyond what I was talking about. x

Yes, it does feel a bit like that. I envy your history with London. I imagine it is the same sensation: so many before you, passing through.

"Actual event" -- you mean Newton Knight? Well, soul brother, that's because no one had ever heard of him. Someone had to write the book, and then film the film.

I've never read Uncle Tom's Cabin either, but I plan to. I visited the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati a couple years ago. I looked out over the Ohio River where so many people crossed into the North for shelter during the Underground Railroad. I found it a beautiful scene: the clouds were low that day, and the river was covered in fog. I felt for a moment as if I'd gone back there.

I love the story of the writing of Uncle Tom's Cabin: Stowe was mad to get abolition on the popular agenda. No one was listening. They saw it as radical. They thought, "Well, slavery is bad, but if we end it, will things change for us?" And they did nothing and avoided the topic. She made it graphic for them. I've heard the book is quite a melodramatic and over the top read today, but at the time? That was the style {of most literature by women.} Her intended audience was the wives of important Southern men. She wanted to slap them in the face with a graphic presentation of slavery so they would slap their husbands in the face and get things moving. She wrote it as a melodrama because that was what {many} women read. Silly she had to do that to make a dent? QUITE. But it worked. And I think it's crazy excellent that literature can do that. Speak across miles and divides and history.

I think it's important to remember the different ways a woman's voice was likely stifled in popular literature. A woman couldn't hope to publish speaking plain facts. Not popularly. She had to play the system, and write for the audience, if she hoped to reach anyone. There's a filter you have to recognize is going to be there. Example, Austen. That woman had PLENTY to say about society. She had to cloak it behind a wink and a romance story, and appear to be simply entertaining.

I probably read like a historian. I've said I see books as primary documents. I tend to value them for the place they have in history. I'm not sure if that's a flaw or simply a different approach. I'm guessing the latter.

TKAM is held up as a national treasure here, rather like the Thanksgiving turkey and the Founding Fathers. I think we're on the same page about it. The fault here is the readers who fail to read beyond it, imho.

Yes {speaking specifically of myself! Of course.}

I haven't! That's a really interesting idea. Like a saga that covers generations, based on reality but amped up for entertainment and thematic cohesion? If I was smart, I'd put in some vampires. No really, I am liking the idea. There's a story from the revolution in my family I'm particularly interested in. {I mean the American Revolution. The War for Independence? I'm not sure what it's called in the UK.} The grandson who survived that story {descended from Reginald de Crawford} was all over the ACW.

I think if I did it I'd have to try to follow a single line...

My line is farmers. For ages going back! Not rich planters. Just farmers. Through my Scottish line as well as the line that came in through London into Massachusetts. When that line {the London one} arrived in Georgia, it won a bunch of land in a land lottery.* It's up in Ellijay. My cousins still own it. I was able to walk it a couple autumns ago while one of my cousins told me about my great-great-great grandfathers and grandmothers. Surreal. Then we visited generation after generation of my ancestors, all buried together in a family plot that stretched all the way back to our first days in Georgia.

* Which is ironic because I have Cherokee in my blood through the line that came in through Scotland. That line would eventually marry the one that won the land lottery.

I've always felt a longing to plow a field, all day long, every day. It's a strange longing, especially in 2017, as a five foot tall woman living in the city, but sincerely, I've always been pulled to such a life. As a child, I used to simply love the smell of dirt. I'd get it under my fingers and in my hair {my mother was appalled} just because I loved to be part of it. Soil, earth, growing things, animals. I think that if someone told me, "Here's a plow, here's a plot of land, here's a cow," I'd be utterly happy simply plowing all day long, rhythmically, listening to the music of the land. Now where does that come from? I've never plowed a field. I've barely grown a houseplant. I've always lived on small plots of land surrounded by concrete. I've never known the sort of life that seems to be sewn into my dna. Because I can't plow a field I run. I run everywhere. I love to push my body to the brink like that. To be outside and do manual labor. What an odd thing! It has to be because of all those many, many farmers before me. Well, maybe.

I wonder if such a legacy is in you -- your line, your people's daily movements, the memory of who they were, echoing through you?

Concur. I'm seeing your point on To Kill a Mockingbird. I'm not sure why I was so dense on the topic before, but pardon me, I was dodging you remarks on Americans. However, I see your point now. I think simply as a piece of American history TKAM  is valuable: it made a dent in our country the same way Uncle Tom's Cabin made a dent a century prior, and that has meaning. But yes -- let's not read it and assume we have the whole story, any more than we should read Uncle Tom's Cabin & assume it can speak to our era the way it spoke to its own.

William Wallace is {apparently} my first cousin {quite a few times removed.} Reginald Crawford was my great+ grandfather -- Wallace's uncle. I'm directly descended down Reginald's line. Is he in the novel you're reading?

My Scottish line is pretty distant. We left Kilbirnie in the 1600s & landed at Jamestown, Virginia when America was just a glint in England's eye. My ancestor must have wanted to leave Scotland for some reason. I'm not sure what yet, except wanting to see the New World or start fresh somewhere. He crossed the ocean with his father, but when he arrived in America his father immediately took the ship back to Kilbirnie. Pa must have simply wanted to see his son safely across. I doubt they ever saw each other again. Hard to contemplate! Well, this guy lingered at Jamestown for a while, married, had a bowlful of babies {one was later hanged as an adult} and then after about half a century, the line moved through the Carolinas for several decades, & into Georgia by the early 1800s. Probably intermarrying British, Native Americans, and other nationalities within America along the way.

Another line came in directly from London to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1600s. {This person immediately became an indentured servant.} Then another came in through Alsace-Lorraine during the Franco-Prussian War: we were fur traders. Another is fairly recent: she was born in Ireland, raised in London & Canada, & settled in Alabama as a madam! My mother looks exactly like my great-grandmother Maggie, so of course I tease her about when she's going to open a brothel house.

BUT I POPPED IN HERE ON ANOTHER MATTER: You know I work in a bookstore? This morning I was glancing at the new release table & spied an ACW era novel called The Beguiled {Thomas Cullinan}. Apparently it's a reprint of a 1966 novel, which they're reissuing because Nicole Kidman {& several other big names} are starring in the film. I'm not sure what I think of it by the trailer {rather creepy!}, but it's Nicole Kidman so I thought I'd point out the trailer to you.  x

I read Baldwin's story a few years ago, but I'll revisit. Thanks for the suggestion!