Wednesday, December 01, 2010

True romance

How, or did, Edith's fiction parallel her reality? Did you get the feeling one influenced the other or would do so in the future? Could she go back to writing happy endings after her stay at Hotel du Lac?
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2 comments:

kc said...

Good question. One of my favorite passages in the book is when she is talking to her editor. She really shines in that scene because she's being the writer, the professional, the wit — herself. She also seems in that mode in her letters to her lover, and maybe that's one of his main attractions to her, that he "gets" her, that he appreciates her intelligence. Anyway, with the editor she is talking about the tortoise and the hare fable and how women love it because they want to think slow and steady will win the race.

In my books it is the mouse-like unassuming girl who gets the hero, while the scornful temptress with whom he has had a stormy affair retreats baffled from the fray, never to return. The tortoise wins every time. This is a lie, of course. ... In real life it is the hare who wins.

Then — this is so funny! — she says: It is my contention that Aesop was writing for the tortoise market. Axiomatically ... Hares have no time to read. They are too busy winning the game.

Is she going back, returning to the fray, to win the game, if not in her personal life, maybe to be a more honest writer?

7:45 PM, December 01, 2010
Erin said...

I certainly get the impression she's tired of being a tortoise. (That was one of my favorite scenes, too, kc.) She's seen what being a tortoise gets her. Then again, I doubt she'd jump into the hare camp right away. People have to naturally be hares, right? You can't fake hareness. (Perhaps I'm belaboring the metaphor.)

4:00 PM, December 02, 2010

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