THE AGE OF DESIRE: “If only we'd stop trying to be happy, we could have a pretty good time.”

I am always getting closer to the idea of reading an Edith Wharton biography, without actually doing it. Since Jennie Fields' novel of Wharton's later years, THE AGE OF DESIRE, actually contains excerpts from her letters and diaries, this is probably the closest I've gotten.

This Edith is already a successful author, the toast of the Paris salons, but personally lonely: Her husband Teddy's health issues don't seem to be getting any better, and meanwhile he hates France and would rather be sequestered at their Massachusetts farm. Edith's new novel (that will, spoiler, become THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY) is troubling her, and her assistant Anna -- Edith's old governess and the only one she trusts with each fresh page -- knows that, but doesn't know how to advise her. Then Edith meets a younger journalist named Morton who flatters her and begins spending time with him, over Anna's objections for how it might look and its implications to her work.

THE AGE OF DESIRE is told alternately from Edith and Anna's perspectives (assisted by their many, many real life letters to each other, brought to light in a 2009 auction) for the Upstairs/ Downstairs perspective on what a successful writer's life would look like back then. (I'm guessing rare is the author these days who has someone else type her or his pages up for them.) I also appreciated the cameos from Wharton's longtime friend Henry James (stop following me everywhere!) and her admiration for a much younger Parisian countess whose shocking behavior makes Edith question the properness of her life.

The historical details were fascinating, but the relationship that develops between Edith and Morton is marked by an abrupt tonal change to syrupy, romance-novel-style scenes in which Edith is classically tortured by his absence, has never felt like this before, and so on. Its sogginess made it hard to root for, and the heightening of the stakes seemed excessive -- it was hard to believe that anyone would stop Edith from pursuing her interest, even though she saw the relationship as rife with obstacles. (Interestingly, we know very little about Edith and Morton's actual relationship, but what we do know stems from her letters to him -- letters she begged him to burn but he never did. This is convenient for the novel as Edith is constantly trying to measure Morton's ardor without being able to discern how he really feels about her, and I thought that tension worked.)

I didn't think of it while I was reading, but the Wharton novel THE AGE OF DESIRE most closely speaks to isn't THE HOUSE OF MIRTH, whose publication precedes its events, nor THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY but my personal favorite THE AGE OF INNOCENCE. (And it's... right there in the title.Sometimes I am not very observant!) Newland Archer is the Edith in this book, regretting past decisions, but with just enough freedom that they could be undone -- but at great personal cost. "We men may say more, swear more, but indeed: our shows are more than will," and all that. I don't know if THE AGE OF DESIRE is essential to all Whartonia, but if you've read this far, you will probably enjoy it with a little glossing over the swoony stuff.

When You Say Wharton, You've Said It All

Or have you? THE AGE OF INNOCENCE and THE HOUSE OF MIRTH are just two of the books on Doree Shafrir's terrific list of favorite New York fiction. Our lists would overlap in a lot of places but I'm so happy to see THE BEST OF EVERYTHING on there as a choice I think is somewhat overlooked. And HARRIET THE SPY! A book I never really associated with New York City, but she did eat egg creams and own a dumbwaiter, so.

The rent is too damn high

The mansion where parts of Martin Scorsese's adaptation of THE AGE OF INNOCENCE were shot is looking for a tenant if you've got a spare $18,000 a month lying around. Surprisingly, it's not in Gramercy Park or the Upper East Side as I would have guessed, but in Park Slope in Brooklyn.

Not lonely in the City of Light

There's a lot to dream about in this past weekend's New York Times travel piece on Edith Wharton in Paris, a city she fled to amid the wreckage of her marriage, conducted an affair in using tourism as her cover (smart!) and outside of which she is now buried. It does, however, spoil the end of THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, so consider yourself warned.

I finished the NYRB collection of Edith Wharton's New York stories a few weeks ago, and though all but its ultimate story (the excellent "Roman Fever") take place on this side of the Atlantic, having read it sheds a lot of light on why Wharton, who was born in New York, would want to separate herself from the social whirl. I had to return it to the library before I had a chance to write about it, but I'm thinking of one story in particular in which a woman who was forced to leave for Europe during a nasty divorce returns to New York for her daughter's second wedding. The stigma over ending a marriage has been erased in a generation, but nevertheless she chooses the Continent, where she can live without scrutiny. With a little sadness, but not much, she orders her trunks be packed.

Wharton's visits must have been tremendously circumscribed even with the relative freedom she found there, but she had the wherewithal to choose, and she chose Paris. Times writer Elaine Sciolino describes her eating dinner with her lover in neighborhoods which for her stood for “the end of the earth ... where there is bad food & no chance of meeting acquaintances.” The balls and ritual leaving of calling cards look like a lark to us, but conceal that these women were almost never alone upon reaching adulthood. (This is the primary weakness of Anna Godbersen's Gilded Age YA series THE LUXE, the mechanics of whose plots require that its teenage characters manage to slip away from everyone to accomplish their goals.) True, attachment parenting hadn't been invented yet, but the hours they didn't spend with their kids were filled with parlor visits and servant directions. Letter-writing and the last months of pregnancy were probably their only respite from having to perform socially; in Europe, there were fewer people to visit.

'Tis the season to travel through books when you can't get away otherwise. (Anyone know of a good book set in Washington state?) This post should also remind me that I own Hermione Lee's Wharton biography, mentioned in the article, and haven't read it yet; maybe in a few months.

Summer Reading #3: Edith Wharton, ETHAN FROME

Edith Wharton: Author. Society matron. Inventor of Seasonal Affective Disorder?

A stranger comes to a small town in Massachusetts and meets the sad and disfigured Ethan Frome, of whom a wise local says, "Guess he's been in Starkfield too many winters." Does he have a tragic past? Oh, does he!

Book-long flashback: Ethan is a poor farmer and the light of his life is a fresh flower of youth named Mattie Silver, who unfortunately is also his disabled wife Zenobia's caretaker. (That's how he met his wife as well; she came to nurse his ailing mother and he couldn't bear to see her leave. Sir, you have a type!) Ethan and Zeena haven't been happy for ages, but predictably she is Not Pleased to see her husband do things for Mattie, like finish her chores or shave regularly. As the song goes, it's tough to have a crush. Then one day, Zeena goes to the doctor a few towns over...

I figured I wouldn't take to ETHAN FROME because of its rural setting, but the difference between Ethan Frome and the similarly torn Newland Archer isn't geography, it's money. The cold hand of poverty clamps around this threesome and squeezes. Ethan dreamed of entering a trade once, but then his parents went crazy and he had to take care of them, and then his wife got sick; we're told he isn't a good farmer and she's a spendthrift. Newland can buy distance from Madame Olenska with livery cabs and European tours, but there's no getting away for Ethan; at the end of the day, he still has to come back to the same house as Mattie. (And she can't afford to go either, her father having died and left the family so destitute she was forced to sell her piano.)

At one point Ethan passes a graveyard with Mattie and is comforted by the thought that she will eventually lie there beside him when they're both dead. A graveyard. It's a remarkable passage, but that's not Puritan, that's downright medieval.

I didn't really enjoy this book, but I am glad I read it, and not just for the score-settling. I hadn't specifically planned to read it in the summer, but it helped with the bleakness factor. (Incidentally, and perhaps inappropriately, if you are feeling a Frome-ish level of dissatisfaction with your life, please get help. Life is too short to live in Starkfield.) When I returned it to the library I found a collection of Wharton short stories set in New York, which I think will suit me better.

Never go in against the offspring of an English teacher when death is on the line!

--So she said, "Ellen's probably into that Jane Austen stuff, right?" And I said, well, actually, one of her favorite books is THE HOUSE OF MIRTH--
--I probably like it better than any Jane Austen book, yeah--
--She digs HOUSE OF MIRTH, and ETHAN FROME too--you have read ETHAN FROME, right?
--Um.
--You haven't read ETHAN FROME?
--Oh no. Oh man.
--Because I said "Yeah, she really likes ETHAN FROME too..."
--There goes my last chance. Now I have to read it and like it, or else.
--[laughter]
--Easy for you to say. "You haven't read ETHAN FROME? Get out of my house!"

Okay readers, now it's your turn to either tell me why I will definitely like ETHAN FROME, because somebody backed me into a corner on this one, or confess the last book you pretended you'd read which you didn't. Don't worry, death is not really on the line.

Filmbook: The Age of Innocence (1993)

If nothing else, Martin Scorsese's film "The Age of Innocence" is unfailingly faithful to the Edith Wharton novel it adapts. The movie's narration (by Joanne Woodward) is taken straight from the book and, more importantly I think, the novel's original ending is preserved from any Hollywoodizing influence. The teacher I had for the class in which we read the book faulted the film for making the naive fiancee a brunette and the sultry temptress a blonde, but Winona Ryder's wide-eyed May and Michelle Pfeiffer's perpetually on edge Madame Olenska both suited their roles really well. (This was back when Winona Ryder was everywhere... ahh, the '90s.)

I'm not familiar with Daniel Day-Lewis' body of work (with the exception of his Oscar-winning role in "There Will Be Blood") but I think he did about as good a job embodying Newland Archer as anyone could. I have a very particular idea of Newland in my mind, and Day-Lewis didn't fit exactly, but that's all right.

Still I couldn't help but feel like the heart of what makes THE AGE OF INNOCENCE great was absent from the film. What social commentary of Wharton's Scorsese managed to get into this movie just made me miss the book more; moreover, I didn't feel like the filming of the story really added anything to my idea of the book. Scorsese did use several interesting shots, but many of the dinner scenes, the setting of the opera and even Newland's private library looked familiar to me from other romantic dramas like this. I never got the feeling, as I did with "Atonement" (no, I will not shut up about the movie) that I was gaining new insight or experiencing the text in a new way. It did give me new insight on Scorsese, a director whose films I have only lately started to watch, but given the time I would rather re-read passages from the book than watch the movie.

Verdict: Read the book; if you like period dramas, or (like my roommate) Michelle Pfeiffer, see the movie.