What Old Book Do I Read If…

by Carrie Hill Wilner

Hi you lever-hitting-cocaine-rats, it’s been a while. I totally ran out of old books. Now I only read current non-fiction (mostly true, but I also read the Hunger Games trilogy. Und3rwh3lm3d, or “wh2lm2d” as the current joking goes). Plus I got a new job (true). Plus I busted up my arm rollerskating at a bachelorette party (true).

Which old book(s) should I read if I really just want to watch Downton Abbey, but can’t because season three probably won’t air in the US for ages and ages? I want lavish settings, flawed but fabulous heroines, complicated romance, the works. Thank you!

“I want a book with a dad, a MILF, and tuxedo people in the basement. . . ”

No but really, which season of Downton, the awesome first season or the totally not awesome second one?

*** SPOILER/BITCHINESS ALERT ***

The problem is, of course, that the first season was character-driven, while the second was entirely plot-driven. A+ presentation, C- me caring about anyone in that show anymore. Ethel should have given her baby to another show so it could be raised in a world of textured moral complexity. Haha, Ethel’s baby in Girls. Ethel’s baby in Mad Men. Ethel’s baby in Game of Thrones. Also Richard Carslile might have been a soulless capitalist, but at least he didn’t invite people over to stay for the weekend and watch him eyefuck his cousin, give him a break. I did like Lady Cora being all “really?” about hosting wounded soldiers, because at least it was a counter to the general hum of “well, WWI sucked but at least it taught us to work across social and economic divides.” You guys. You guys, I just want to make sure you know that’s not what WWI taught us.

*** END SPOILER, BITCHINESS CONTINUES***

I can’t believe I haven’t talked to you about Ann Radcliffe, but you’ve given me the perfect chance. You know in all those old novels where someone is scolding someone to stop reading even older novels because it will make them run off with soldiers or ghosts? Those older novels they’re talking about are by Ann Radcliffe.

Really — she was one of the first gothic novelists. And, honestly, her books read like she was one of the first gothic novelists — i.e. “good try!” Beautiful, typically kidnapped, heroines; evil Catholics; improbable exposition improbably overheard. AHEM: plot-driven rather than character-driven.

And, laden with lavish settings. Her descriptions of landscapes are both epic and minute. They have a corresponding moral dimension of course; the wild waves crash on the rocks like your wanton soul propels you to destruction, etc. — but mostly I’ve never read other books where I felt so much like I was looking at a picture; it’s synesthesia for non syesthetes. I guess the question is, do you want to look at a picture of lightning flashing over a crumbling cliff side castle? (Yes.)

I say The Italian. Mysteries of Udolpho has its partisans too (the other part of my brain), but it’s too long.

I just watched the first season of Game of Thrones, and that show is so good. It’s one of those special ones where instead of just like “yeah, I like that show,” the rest of your life blurs into the background while it’s going on. Sort of like when I started reading Anna Karenina and an older female figure (I actually can’t remember who right now — my old professor?) told me to “enjoy it, because it was going to become [my] best friend” while I read it. And actually it didn’t totally become my best friend, but I knew what she meant, and I did really like it. Lonesome Dove later became my best friend when I read it, though. (Ditto The Caine Mutiny.) But: what old books would become my best friend? Something like Game of Thrones — sprawling, epic, fur, sex — but a book, and not a television show. Oh, and I’m going to read the Game of Thrones books for sure, I think. But, after I finish those. Also do you know any good drugs for staying up for weeks on end so one can read all the Game of Thrones books as quickly as possible?

Re: Game of Thrones itself, normally I actually can’t stand things where children are killed, but children KEPT getting killed in those books and I never learned my lesson. (AGAIN?! UGH, BUMMER page page page AGAIN?! page page page AGAIN SERIOUSLY?!!!!, for five books.) Would I hang out with my real best friend if it turned out she were a serial killer of children? I don’t know, you guys ask the hard questions. Probably not. I don’t know?

Meanwhile, Anna Karenina? I would totally hang still out with my best friend if (“if”) she were an adulterous suicidal Russian noble and yet I have no idea what your English teacher was talking about. AK is one of those books that I really really like — love, even! But have literally never thought of picking up a second time. Is that a good proxy for best friend? “Would voluntarily and repeatedly hang out with?” Is that too unsentimental? Okay, “Would voluntarily and repeatedly hang out with, in the moonlight.”

So, epic fur sex aside for a moment: books I have voluntarily reread as an adult and for which I am therefore comfortable providing a friendference:

(1) Jane Eyre*

(2) . . . I think that’s it.

AHHHHHH!!!! (Peeks out from behind fingers with which she is covering her face.) I know I made you all go out and get your Villette trampstamps like my first day here. And I want people to read that book so hard it’s not even funny. I will lend you my copy, if that will do it. Seriously, first commenter who hasn’t read Villette and makes me crack up can have my copy, I guess. It’s both. . . more realistic and weirder than Jane Eyre? And how her affections never totally resolve themselves on one object (she is NOT over Dr. John Grahmn Isiodore Grahmn John John, you guys), and then it doesn’t really matter who she likes because THE ENDING? Whatever, I’ve been through all of this already. But again, I only, for some reason, ever reread Jane Eyre. And you can’t have my copy of that, because what if I want to read it again right now?

Hm. I think partly I’m a sucker for genre novels, and Jane Eyre is such an exquisite gothic novel (I know not really a genre novel but whatever yes), but against this sort of formulaic though incredibly well-evoked setting there is this deeply felt kind main character who is a little bit hostile to the reader. It would be 100% impossible for someone to write this now. I mean, the equivalent would be “what if we took a normal, ornery teenager and put her in a crime procedural,” and the answer is Veronica Mars, which is great, but there’s a great big postmodern “wink, wink” in there which there isn’t in Jane Eyre (I mean, there is obvious self-awareness and genre-bending, but you see the character congratulating herself for her own cleverness a lot more than you see the author doing it WHICH IS EVEN CLEVERER). I mean, also Charlotte Bronte is just such a writer, it is dizzying.

Here’s where my personality comes in, and why my best friend book may not be your best friend book, which is okay, because imagine if we all had the same real best friend, how would she ever have enough lambrusco for all of us? I find something very familiar and comforting in heroines who are sort of displaced and confused without being that exceptional (“something”). Jane is certainly clever and resourceful and all of that, but it’s not like some “Her Soul Was Too Pure” or “Parents Just Don’t Understand” thing — it is about one weirdo who is, for all her general perceptiveness, not that reflective about her weirdness (“so my boss who I loved seemed to like this other girl, so the way I made myself handle that was to make voodoo dolls of both of us, which totally helped me calm down, duh”) bumping up against other weirdos and their weird groups and worlds. Seriously, those of you who have read it, what is a single thing anyone does in that book that makes any sense? I ask genuinely, I’m thumbing through it in my mind right now, and I cannot think of a single reasonable decision contained therein. It’s the total opposite of contemporary mentalhealthspeak re: boundaries/knowing needs/agency/communication — it’s permeability and confusion and chance and hostile silence and trying to be a (written) human made of and surrounded by those things, and that is where I guess I like hanging out, since I keep hanging out there.

Also best depiction of childhood fear and rage ever, and angry children are pretty much my favorite people. (True.)

*(As far as meeting your actual criteria: the sex is sublimated but present, it is Epic without being an epic, and is there fur? Doesn’t the nice teacher have a fur trimmed DRESS? I think so. I think she has a purple dress trimmed with black fur.)

Previously: The Spreadsheet!

Carrie Hill Wilner likes to read. Do you need an old book? Write her for advice.

Photo by lafoto, via Shutterstock